Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,29

He looked as impressive as I’d remembered. It had been a year or more since we’d last met.

From his point of view, I suppose he saw brown curly hair, light brown eyes and a leanness imposed by the weights allocated to racehorses. Perhaps he saw also the man whose fiancée he had lured away to esoteric delights, but to do him justice there was nothing in his face of triumph or amusement.

‘I’d like a drink,’ Danielle said abruptly. She sat down, waiting. ‘Litsi …’

His gaze lingered my way for another moment, then he turned to busy himself with the bottles. We had talked only on racecourses, I reflected, politely skimming the surface with post-race chit-chat. I knew him really as little as he knew me.

Without enquiring, he poured white wine for Danielle and Scotch for himself and me.

‘OK?’ he said, proffering the glass.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Call me Litsi,’ he said easily. ‘All this protocol … I drop it in private. It’s different for Aunt Casilia, but I never knew the old days. There’s no throne any more … I’ll never be king. I live in the modern world … so will you let me?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you like.’

He nodded and sipped his drink. ‘You call Aunt Casilia “Princess”, anyway,’ he pointed out.

‘She asked me to.’

‘There you are, then.’ He waved a large hand, the subject closed. ‘Tell us what has been disturbing the household.’

I looked at Danielle, dressed that day in black trousers, white shirt, blue sweater. She wore the usual pink lipstick, her cloudy dark hair held back in a blue band, everything known and loved and familiar. I wanted fiercely to hold her and feel her warmth against me, but she was sitting very firmly in an armchair built for one, and she would only meet my eyes for a flicker or two between concentrations on her drink.

I’m losing her, I thought, and couldn’t bear it.

‘Kit,’ the prince said, sitting down.

I took a slow breath, returned my gaze to his face, sat down also, and began the long recital, starting chronologically with Henri Nanterre’s bullying invasion on Friday afternoon and ending with the dead horses in Wykeham’s stable that morning.

Litsi listened with increasing dismay, Danielle with simpler indignation.

‘That’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Poor Aunt Casilia.’ She frowned. ‘I guess it’s not right to knuckle under to threats, but why is Uncle Roland so against guns? They’re made all over the place, aren’t they?’

‘In France,’ Litisi said, ‘for a man of Roland’s background to deal in guns would be considered despicable.’

‘But he doesn’t live in France,’ Danielle said.

‘He lives in himself.’ Litsi glanced my way. ‘You understand, don’t you, why he can’t?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded. Danielle looked from one of us to the other and sighed. ‘The European mind, I guess. Trading in arms in America isn’t any big deal.’

I thought it was probably more of a big deal than she realised, and from his expression Litsi thought so too.

‘Would the old four hundred families trade in arms?’ he asked, but if he expected a negative, he didn’t get it.

‘Yes, sure, I guess so,’ Danielle said. ‘I mean, why would it worry them?’

‘Nevertheless,’ Litsi said, ‘for Roland it is impossible.’

A voice on the stairs interrupted the discussion: a loud female voice coming nearer.

‘Where is everyone? In there?’ She swept into view in the sitting room doorway. ‘Dawson says the bamboo room is occupied. That’s ridiculous. I always have the bamboo room. I’ve told Dawson to remove the things of whoever is in there.’

Dawson gave me a bland look from over her shoulder and continued on his way to the floor above, carrying a suitcase.

‘Now then,’ said the vision in the doorway. ‘Someone fix me a “bloody”. The damn plane was two hours late.’

‘Good grief,’ Danielle said faintly, as all three of us rose to our feet, ‘Aunt Beatrice.’

SEVEN

Aunt Beatrice, Roland de Brescou’s sister, spoke with a slight French accent heavily overlaid with American. She had a mass of cloudy hair, not dark and long like Danielle’s, but white going on pale orange. This framed and rose above a round face with round eyes and an expression of habitual determination.

‘Danielle!’ Beatrice said, thin eyebrows rising. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I work in England.’ Danielle went to her aunt to give her a dutiful peck. ‘Since last fall.’

‘Nobody tells me anything.’

She was wearing a silk jersey suit – her outdoor mink having gone upstairs over Dawson’s arm – with a heavy seal on a gold chain shining in front. Her fistful of rings