Read Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) for Free Online

to have a healthy dose of the fforde-Beckett gene.”
    “For … theatricality?”
    “No, for a certain cold-bloodedness. Look us up. Not
Burke’s
. Try the
Daily Mail
. I think I will have this cigarette,” she added, placing her empty glass on the balustrade. “Do you have a light?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t smoke. Do you? You seemed adamantly against it.”
    “I’m not adamantly against anything, really, but I’d rather my nephew’s innocence not be poisoned by my brother.”
    “Which brother?” Tom asked without thinking.
    “Oliver, of course. ‘Mad’ Morborne, as he likes to call himself. The one who gave Maxie the cigarette.” She raised a shapely eyebrow. “Then you know a bit about the twisty twigs on the fforde-Beckett family tree.”
    “Only a bit. Lady Kirkbride kindly filled me in.”
    “My two brothers are only halves—to me. A good half and a bad half,” she added glumly.
    “I expect you could get a light over there.” Tom gestured towards the other end of the terrace where a wreath of smoke floated lazily above heads in the evening’s luxuriant light. With the boy gone, he allowed himself a more candid appraisal of Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett, of whom he had only been vouchsafed glimpses through the afternoon from the prison of his sickbed in the middle of the lawn. The simple, creamy frock cut low across the shoulder seemed to hug the curve of her body, an invitation for his eyes to linger then follow as she waded through the human sea of villagers and children, her half brother Dominic, similarly attired in off-white,in tow. There was something alluring, too, in her bearing, with its athletic fluidity and self-confidence, and he realised, as his eyes roved around the lawn in search of her, that he was enduring an uncomfortable spurt of lust.
    Now as she looked over towards the group of men at the other end of the terrace, he could behold her more properly. With the earlier flush subsided in her cheeks to tiny strawberry patches, her skin was revealed almost translucent, fine and white, in the Elizabethan ideal, even after months of summer sun in the south of France. There was a fineness, too, to the bones of her face, to the graceful jaw, and to her hair, tousled filaments of gold and auburn. But her eyes trounced all these measures of female delicacy. Heavy-lidded, under high-arched brows, they were immense, remarkable and bold, and somehow managed to seem both challenging and withholding. As she looked towards the knot of casually dressed men, Tom saw those eyes harden with a flashing hint of some strong emotion. At the same time, one of the men, Oliver, distinguishable by his embroidered African-inspired shirt and coloured kufi hat, turned his head, as if inexorably drawn to do so. He was at the centre of the men, a passel of other peers, winding up some story with a burst of chortle and boom, his right eye screwed up against the smoke ascending from the cigarette bobbing on his lips. He scowled, his left eye telegraphing a beam of such contempt that Tom caught himself suppressing a gasp. Brother and sister held each other’s gaze for a time longer than was decent. And then Lucinda turned back, her face altered by a thin veil of loathing. She flicked the cigarette over the balustrade.
    “Do you have a family, Mr. Christmas? Of course you do.Maxie is entertaining your daughter. Where then is Mrs. Christmas this weekend?”
    “I’m a widower, as it happens.”
    “Oh?” Doubt shaded her voice as she glanced at his hands.
    “I am, truly. Yes, that is a wedding band, but I’ve put it on my right hand. A little hard to let go completely.”
    Lucinda regarded him speculatively for a moment. “Have they put you in the bachelors’ corridor then?” She smiled. “I expect not. Far too many stairs.”
    “It’s only a light sprain,” Tom protested. “Lady Fairhaven has kindly supplied me with a pair of crutches.” He gestured to an antique dark oak pair leaning against the