Read 02 - Murder at Dareswick Hall for Free Online Page B

is.’
    ‘Quiet!’
bellowed the baron, his face quite purple with rage. ‘That will do, Hallam. How
dare you act so outrageously and discourteously to a guest in my house? If you
can’t be civil and hold your tongue then you can jolly well go up to your room
and have your dinner brought up to you there on a tray.’
    ‘But....’
But Hallam did not finish his sentence. Cedric had placed a steadying hand on
his arm and had shaken his head slightly to indicate that while he understood
how the young man felt, this conversation should take place outside the drawing
room when no women were present and preferably not just before they were all
due to go into dinner. Hallam looked for a moment as if he would resist these
attempts to curtail his behaviour, but then he sighed, threw up his hands in
desperation and just looked miserable.
    There
was a tense, uncomfortable silence in the room as everyone else wondered what
would happen next. Casting a glance at Crabtree, Rose found that even the
butler looked ill at ease. In fact, this very moment in the drawing room he
positively looked quite unwell. She wondered whether it was Hallam’s outburst
that had caused this, by upsetting the decorum of the house, or the unexpected
identity of Isabella’s guest. Certainly the inattentive service of the
servants, first with the cocktails and then with the champagne, appeared out of
character from what Josephine had said. Looking across at the baron, given the
anger on his face and the manner in which he had admonished his son in public,
Rose could not believe that he was a man who would tolerate sloppy, slatternly
service from his servants.
    She
looked across at Josephine. The girl, she thought, looked very pale as if she
had suffered something of a shock. Her hand, almost instinctively and
unconsciously it seemed went to touch a spot on her forehead covered by her
hair in very much the same way one might put a hand to one’s mouth or heart to
try to steady oneself from a fright. Rose studied Josephine’s face closely. She
was clearly surprised and distressed by the young man’s unexpected arrival but
there was something else that Rose detected in her face. It seemed to her to
make no sense at all given the circumstances, but she could have sworn that she
detected a look of relief, albeit fleeting, to be replaced almost at once by a
look of apprehension as her eyes darted to her brother. Josephine was very
obviously moved by the state Hallam was in and went to join him where she took
his arm and bent forward to whisper something in his ear. Almost instinctively
Rose moved closer so that she might catch the whispered words.
    ‘It’s
alright, Hallam. Don’t worry on my account. Really, I am quite over him now; I
really am.’
    It was
only now that Rose looked over at Isabella to see her reaction to her siblings’
somewhat negative response to the announcement of her engagement. Her face, to
Rose, looked surprisingly blank and unmoved by the events that had unfolded.
True, she had moved to stand beside her fiancé, but she did not appear
particularly surprised or distressed by Hallam’s outburst or Josephine’s
discomfort. If anything her face looked distinctly devoid of any emotion, as if
while she was there in body, she was not there in spirit. She caught Rose
watching her and met her gaze. The look she gave her was cool and Rose found
herself shrinking back from such a stare, but not before she wondered at Isabella’s
detached reaction to everything. Certainly Isabella did not apparently see the
need to give assurance to Lord Sneddon in the light of the opposition expressed
by her brother to their engagement. It was almost, Rose thought, as if she did
not care how he might be feeling.
    Lord
Sneddon himself, she saw, was clearly furious at Hallam’s outburst but trying
very hard not to show it. He was pretending to laugh as if he found the boy’s reaction
rather amusing. Oh, the ideals and emotions of youth, his look seemed to