The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate

Author:Isabel Colegate [Colegate, Isabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141966304
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

‘Oh we’re certainly aristocratic,’ said Aline gaily.

Sir Reuben smiled, enjoying the joke in anticipation with Minnie, who had once told him that Gilbert Hartlip had married Aline in order to ‘dorer le blazon’. Her father was a Scottish industrialist, still living and in the meantime not sufficiently dazzled by his daughter’s elevation to have been more than really rather mean with the marriage settlement.

But he had underestimated her.

She suddenly laughed and putting her arm though his said, ‘Of course the truth is I’m no more of an aristocrat than you are.’

Lionel Stephens was to stand at the end of the line, in the Park just beyond the corner of the wood. Nodding in a friendly manner to Gilbert Hartlip who was to stand nearest to him on the ride and whose preoccupied air he failed to notice, he walked on slowly with Olivia. There was no hurry because the beaters could not be expected yet to have reached their starting point. He preceded Olivia over the stile so as to be able to turn back to help her. Glancing behind her along the ride he saw Gilbert deep in conversation with his loaders. Instead of merely holding out an arm, he put both hands on her waist as if to help her jump down from the stile. She hesitated.

‘You were going to tell me something,’ he said looking up at her. ‘You said, as if…’

‘As if what?’

‘You didn’t finish. I said we’d known each other before and you said it was as if…’

‘Oh,’ she said, smiling and hopping neatly down from the stile. ‘As if…’ He had not stepped backwards and still held his hands on her waist so that they were very close. She looked up into his face with an expression of unabashed and affectionate friendliness. ‘As if you were my long-lost brother.’

‘Brother!’ He turned away sharply, put his hands in his pockets and walked a few steps with head bent along the fence bordering the wood.

Percy Maidment, who was waiting further out in the Park with the boy who had been assistant loader, raised his arm as if he thought Lionel might have failed to notice him.

Olivia, distressed, hesitated by the stile. Her first thought was, he must have had a sister who had died. How could she have been so clumsy?

He had stopped, apparently staring at a fencing post. She approached him.

‘I am so sorry for what I said. I wouldn’t for the world have said anything you wouldn’t like. Will you forgive me?’

He raised his glance from the post to meet hers. Her eyes had tears in them. Unable to look away he said ‘I love you terribly,’ and saw her expression change from concern to astonishment.

‘Sir, Mr Stephens, sir,’ Percy Maidment was trying to attract his attention by a harsh whisper. Lionel raised his arm to show that he had understood. Distant whistles and tapping sounds showed that the beaters were approaching, though still with some way to go. Lionel began to walk slowly towards the place where he was meant to be standing.

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