Dying For a Cruise (3 page)

Lucas leered at her. ‘Surprise me, darlin’.’

‘Give us a kiss,’ the parrot interpreted helpfully.

Jenny looked at the bird thoughtfully, then glanced at its laughing-eyed owner.

‘I might just do that,’ she murmured.

And then smiled. Well, he’d asked for it!

J
ENNY HAD NO
intention of sleeping in the narrow and cramped room on the
Stillwater Swan
that night if she could possibly help it. And certainly not when Wainscott House itself was standing nearby practically empty and presumably just full of comfortable bedrooms with nice big beds! She’d arrived on a Friday afternoon strictly for Mr Lucas Finch’s convenience, and she intended to sleep in one of the spare rooms at his country residence that same Friday night for her own.

A labourer was still worthy of her hire, after all. And so she set about securing these sleeping arrangements with all her usual tact and diplomacy – not to mention downright sneakiness. As with most things, timing was all.

Just before the deliveries of food were due to arrive, Jenny was sitting on a garden chair under a large plum tree, with her small case by her feet. She had deliberately kept it by her side, and now she gave it a thoughtful glance. She was waiting, very patiently, for the opportunity to deposit it where she wanted it and, inevitably, her patience was eventually rewarded.

Catching sight of a grey-haired figure at the kitchen sink, she promptly rose to her feet, grabbed her case and made her way to the kitchen through the well-tended vegetable garden. The housekeeper, busy filling a glass vase with water ready for a spray of gladioli, jumped a little as a large shadow fell over her, then turned sharply, her rather frosty face thawing a little at the sight of the cook. She obviously had no objection to her employer asking an outside agency to cook for his weekend guests, and Jenny guessed that the woman was glad to have a weekend off. So much the better – in her subconscious at least, she probably already felt as if she owed the new arrival a favour.

Jenny smiled at her pleasantly. ‘Hello. You must be Mr Finch’s housekeeper?’ She held out her hand, forcing the woman to put down the vase. ‘I’m Miss Starling – please, call me Jenny.’

The older woman shook her hand, looking a little flustered now.

‘I was hoping you could show me to my room?’ Jenny said, and looked at her case helplessly. ‘I’m expecting the food to be delivered soon and I must go over it all. I wouldn’t put it past the greengrocer to try and palm me off with bruised peaches or marked plums.’

The housekeeper, who introduced herself as Beatrice Jessop, tut-tutted and agreed that nowadays shopkeepers would indeed take the most atrocious liberties, should you let them.

‘Exactly,’ Jenny agreed, as if she’d been listening to the Wisdom of Solomon. ‘So I’d really like to just unpack my night things and stow away my case before rolling up my sleeves, so to speak, to do battle. I imagine I’m to be put up in the room next to yours? We are the only two ladies in the house, I presume? Or does Mr Finch have a partner?’

The housekeeper, who’d obviously had no such orders from her employer to prepare a room for the cook, very quickly agreed that, obviously, Jenny was to have a room next to hers. Where else? Professional women should stick together after all. And no, her employer was so far very much a bachelor.

Soon Jenny was helping the by now thoroughly thawed housekeeper to make up a fresh bed in a pleasant and large room at the rear of the house. It had a charming view overlooking the village, with its old church, well-maintained village green and picturesque cottages.

Mrs Jessop then very tactfully withdrew, and Jenny slipped a voluminous – but quite sexily diaphanous – white nightdress under her pillow and straightened up again. She gave the sturdy double bed a satisfied smile, nodded once in satisfaction, and left the room. On the landing she couldn’t resist stopping at the window to look down at the winding, wide river, and the
Stillwater Swan
at her mooring. From the second floor, the boat looked even more impressive. Having an overall, prow-to-stern look at it, she saw at once that it was surprisingly large. It was a good thing, she mused, that the river had been recently dredged and enlarged or she’d doubt the
Swan
would be able to clear it. Although she supposed that good old Father Thames had seen – and accommodated – much more prestigious boats in his time.

She’d spent the afternoon minutely exploring every inch of the beautiful paddle steamer, being unable to resist it. It had, she knew, three large bedrooms on the top floor, including the master suite, which faced the front. A spacious bathroom had every modern convenience, including flushing toilet, shower and full bath. Down below, as well as the main salon/dining room and galley, it had a games room, and another toilet. At the rear was a large expanse of open decking, on which to play quoits or even, if you didn’t mind being just a touch cramped, a game of tennis.

Jenny looked at the gleaming white vessel and felt herself smile. She couldn’t have stopped herself from falling in love with the craft even if she’d tried to. It so effortlessly brought back memories of the elegance and elan of days long since perished. She could just imagine Greta Garbo lounging on one of the main salon’s white leather couches with a gold cigarette holder about a foot long in one hand, and swirling a fluted glass of champagne in another. Clark Gable wouldn’t have given a damn whilst playing poker in the games room, and Noel Coward wouldn’t have looked a whit out of place holding court by the mock fireplace in the salon. It wasn’t very often she got an assignment as glamorous and as different as this one.

She took a long deep breath of pleased anticipation. She could hardly wait for the morning to come. The lure of a short river cruise was beginning to make her feel as excited as a little girl on Christmas Eve.

With her bed-finding mission now satisfactorily accomplished, Jenny made her way tranquilly back to the garden.

Wainscott House, she saw at once, had been built around a large quad. In the middle of the quad there had been placed a large square lawn, with a sundial in the exact centre, which looked both old and original, and she wondered if it had truly come with the house. This lawn was in turn surrounded by colourful and tightly packed herbaceous borders. The house occupied two sides of the square, and on the opposite sides were two small converted cottages, that had once been stables, and a variety of outbuildings.

From one of the large cottage doors, wide enough to have admitted the horses that had once lodged there, a man stepped out and into the sunshine. He wasn’t a tall man, and he wasn’t a young man, and from the way he moved down the path in a curiously circular, rolling gait, Jenny had no difficulty at all in labelling him as an old sea-dog. Only sailors walked like that in her experience. Which was considerable. Either that or he was someone who had had way too much grog. This, then, she surmised, could only be the captain.

Jenny left her seat in the shade in order to waylay him. ‘Hello. You must be Captain Lester?’ she asked pleasantly.

The man jerked to a halt, obviously taken aback by the sound of a woman’s voice. Jenny wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t thought that the housekeeper, Mrs Jessop, was the kind of woman to take to crusty old sea-salts, and from what she knew (or rather, guessed) of a sailor’s lonely life, they probably preferred to keep themselves to themselves. Not that she supposed that piloting a riverboat was the same thing as taking to the oceans. Still, one sailor, or so she’d discovered in her early twenties, was very much like another.

‘Aye, that’s right. Tobias Lester, ma’am, at your service.’

Tobias Lester was, she supposed, in his mid-fifties. His hair had once been golden but had now settled into that silver-blond salt-and-pepper shade that could be so attractive on a man. His eyes were the same blue/green of the sea, and looked attractive in a rather round, pleasantly creased face. His skin had the look and consistency of leather – no doubt as the result of years of working outdoors.

‘I’m your cook for the weekend,’ Jenny introduced herself, instantly liking the older man’s warm smile of greeting.

Tobias Lester’s smile widened. ‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am. A sailor’s always glad of a first-rate cook. I joined the Merchant Navy when I was just eighteen, and reckon I’ve sailed every sea that’s out there. But I can’t say that any of the ships I was on had what you might call a first-class cook – not a priority, see? But with pleasure cruises, well, that’s different, isn’t it? Got to keep people happy. Will this be your first cruise?’

They began to walk in unspoken mutual consent down the path and out towards the river. Jenny took the captain’s assumption that she was, in fact, a ‘first-rate cook’ for granted. But it pleased her nonetheless. What a
nice
man Captain Lester was.

Jenny nodded. ‘Yes, it is my first time on the water.’ And then, thinking rather uneasily of Bora-Bora and typhoons, she added a shade uncertainly, ‘I hope the going won’t be too rough.’

Captain Lester laughed heartily. ‘Good grief, no! The river’s as flat as a mill pond. It’d have to be, I reckon – the
Swan
’s a flat-bottomed boat, you see. She can’t take much rocking about.’

Jenny nodded but didn’t, really, quite ‘see’ at all. What she knew about boats could be written on the back of a pea. And a
dried
, very shrivelled pea at that.

‘She hasn’t got a V-shaped hull,’ the captain continued, showing remarkable patience at a landlubber’s obvious ignorance. ‘If we hit a wave, she has no real way of riding it out comfortably. That’s why Lucas called her the
Stillwater Swan
, see? There’s a vast difference between the way river craft are made and ships that have to put out to sea.’

Jenny smiled, much relieved. ‘So it’s a guaranteed smooth ride then, is it?’

The captain laughed his hearty laugh again, his eyes crinkling attractively at the corners. ‘That I can promise you, ma’am. Even if it rains. Which—’ He looked up judiciously into a bright blue sky ‘—it won’t.’

And sailors knew these sorts of things. Or so she’d been led to believe. And, in truth, she was quite prepared to take his word for it.

The captain had an easy-going manner that would enable him, she imagined, to get on well with anyone who crossed his path. But he also had that unmistakable air of competence about him, that made you feel you could trust him, as well as like him. It came as no surprise then that the socially active Lucas Finch had chosen this experienced and presumably retired seaman for his captain. He looked the part, he wouldn’t embarrass him or his guests with too much social ineptitude, and he so obviously knew what he was doing.

The perfect man for the
Stillwater Swan
, in fact.

The cook glanced back at the house, her face thoughtful. ‘You live in the converted cottages, Captain?’ she asked, slightly curious. She hadn’t expected Lucas Finch to be such a considerate employer.

‘Yes, that’s right. Me and Brian O’Keefe, the engineer.’

‘Mr Finch must use the
Swan
a lot then – if he likes to keep his staff so close?’ she probed, wondering why she was so curious. Perhaps, she thought wryly, it was the siren call of wanderlust catching up with her rather late in life. But she found herself, rather unexpectedly, envying Lucas Finch and Captain Lester the idyllic life they appeared to lead.

‘Oh yes. Lucas loves the
Swan
almost as much as I do,’ the captain mused, casting such a loving look over the gleaming white boat that Jenny very nearly felt uncomfortable. ‘When I first came here, I’d been in the Merchant Navy for so long, it was getting harder and harder to keep finding a ship to take me on – they like their tars young these days. Can’t say as I blame ’em,’ he added, sighing, then shrugged. ‘It’s a young man’s game, I suppose.’

Captain Lester, Jenny realized, like a lot of solitary people, could become very loquacious when given the opportunity. Not that she minded. She was at a loose end until the food came anyway, and she was genuinely interested to hear about a life led on the water.

‘So when I saw this advertisement, like, for the skipper of an old river paddle steamer, I was down here like a shot. Especially when it came with board and lodging on site. Thought it was going to be one of those touristy things, though. You know what I mean? Take a cruise up the Thames for fifty quid a day, with a licensed bar thrown in. That sort o’ thing. I was expecting wedding parties and rowdy office outings and what not.’

He shook his head sadly at the thought of it, and Jenny nodded glumly in sympathy.

‘So you could’ve knocked me down with the proverbial feather, like, when I came here and met Lucas – Mr Finch. When he told me he was a private owner, I was quite surprised. And then he took me out to the
Swan
…’ His voice trailed off, and Jenny once more nodded in perfect understanding. Yes, she could well imagine his reaction.

As she herself looked at the boat, it wasn’t hard to understand what a dream come true she must have been to someone like Tobias Lester. He must have felt himself approaching the scrap heap, with nothing but rented accommodation in some anonymous town to look forward to, and a slow and lonely descent into old age. To find himself in charge of a beauty like the
Swan
, and with the added security of a full-time job as well, it must have felt like all of his Christmases and birthdays had come at once.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Tobias Lester leaned back against a large wooden pole that marked the beginning of the landing stage, and folded his arms across his muscular chest. ‘I’d more or less resigned myself to a life with my sister, see, up Banbury way. She’s a widow. Got a nice enough little semi, a bit o’ garden. Shops nearby. Nice enough, I suppose. If you like that sort o’ thing.’

But a bit of a graveyard for a man like you, Jenny instantly surmised, and shuddered. She could well imagine the gloom and despondency with which Tobias Lester must have considered a semi in Banbury. The fact that his words confirmed her hypothesis on his character came as no surprise to her at all. She’d always been good at reading people, and their situation in life.

‘And then I saw her.’ The captain nodded his head towards the beautiful white vision, his voice so full of love and slave-like devotion that, for the first time ever, Jenny understood why men would insist on calling a ship ‘she’.