This Way Out Read Online Free Page B

work. His relatives, though – Hugh Lumsden was a bachelor – scarcely filled a pew.
    None of them now lived in Yarchester. His dowager sister, Helen Cunningham, had driven from Worcestershire the previous day and had stayed at the Duke’s Head. It was a comfortable timber-framed hotel, conveniently situated just opposite the main gateway to the cathedral close, and Mrs Cunningham had arranged for refreshments to be available there for members of the family immediately after the service. She had ordered champagne and smoked salmon sandwiches. As she said to the oldest of her cousins, Godfrey Lumsden, who had also stayed overnight: ‘Might as well see the dear man off in style.’
    The rest of the family – mostly cousins, middle-aged or elderly – drifted into the hotel after the service exchanging news as they came. The last to arrive were also the youngest: an uneasily matched couple.
    The man was in his middle thirties, short, with handsome swarthy features, dark curly hair, and a touch of the dandy in his dress. The girl was some twelve or thirteen years younger, and taller by half a head.
    She was almost a beauty, the physical type the pre-Raphaelite painters sought as their mistress-model-wives: well-built, full-bosomed, with a magnificently curved throat, strong symmetrical features, large heavy-lidded eyes. But nature had unkindly deprived her of some of the essential Rosettian details. Her skin, instead of being creamy, was almost transparently thin. Her hair, instead of being heavy and richly auburn, was fair, straight and wispily fine. Her eyes were a watery, beseeching blue.
    She was obviously embarrassed by the fact that she was altogether larger than her escort; she wore clothes that could have been chosen only for their inconspicuousness, and she walked with her head shyly lowered. But she watched him all the time.
    Although there were no more than eight of the family present when the couple arrived, the lounge of the Duke’s Head seemed to be full of Lumsdens. They were all tall, clear-voiced, self-confident. One end of the room had been reserved for them, with sofas and armchairs arranged round low tables decorated with bowls of yellow and white flowers. Two champagne bottles stood in an ice bucket, and an assistant manager hovered, waiting to do the uncorking, but most of the Lumsdens were too busy greeting each other in the middle of the room to think of sitting down.
    â€˜We shouldn’t have come, Hugh,’ whispered the girl, hanging back. ‘It’s just for the family—they’re not expecting us to join them.’
    â€˜Oh, shut up,’ said her companion through his teeth. ‘ I count as family too, on this occasion, and I’m not going to let them pretend I don’t exist. The old boy sitting down must be cousin Godfrey. Come on, we’ll start with him.’
    He gripped her arm just above the elbow and pushed her ahead of him through the assembly, rather as though he were a tugboat controlling a liner. And like a tug’s, his relative size belied his strength. The girl winced with the pain of his grip, but said nothing. When they reached their destination she allowed herself to be put aside.
    â€˜How do you do, sir.’ Her escort thrust out his hand to the elderly man who had just limped over to a chair and taken his weight off his lame leg. ‘I’m Hugh Packer – Colonel Hugh’s godson.’
    â€˜What?’ Godfrey Lumsden, long-faced, grizzle-haired and with somewhat raffishly distinguished outcrops of additional grizzle high on either cheek, had been clutching his knee and grimacing. Surprised by a stranger, he peered suspiciously at the young man. Then, ‘Oh – oh yes, come to think of it I did hear there was a godson.’ He gave the proffered hand a brief, firm shake. ‘How d’ye do.’
    â€˜And this is my fiancée, Belinda Brown.’ Hugh Packer pulled her forward. ‘Sadly,