Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree Read Online Free

under normal circumstances, served as the village hall. Her husband, Theodore Bunting, the mild-mannered vicar of St. George’s Church in Finch, presented the fruits of their labor to me along with a fervent prayer for deliverance from food poisoning. Although I prayed with him, I also made sure that perishable items were stored in the refrigerated truck I’d rented from a restaurant supply company in Upper Deeping. I was sure that God would understand. He was rather keen on helping those who helped themselves.
    The Handmaidens produced so many pastries that Willis, Sr., could have opened his own bake shop. Elspeth Binney, a retired schoolteacher, turned out hundreds of pastel-colored petits fours. Millicent Scroggins, a retired secretary, made madeleines, macaroons, and meringues. Selena Buxton, a retired wedding planner, delivered a variety of dainty fruit tartlets. Opal Taylor, who had the unfair advantage of being a retired professional cook, outdid them all by baking batch after batch of vol-au-vents filled with everything from smoked oysters to curried prawns.
    The only villager missing in action was Sally Pyne, the energetic, grandmother-shaped widow who owned the village tearoom. When I heard Sally’s hoarse voice and rasping cough on the telephone, I told her to go back to bed and to stay there. Her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Rainey Dawson, was on hand to look after her, but even so, the timing of Sally’s illness couldn’t have been worse. She and Rainey would miss the party, which would be a great disappointment to them both. I was disappointed, too, because Sally would have been a model guest—she was the only widow in town who’d shown no interest in seducing my father-in-law.
    The kitchen crew and the waitstaff I’d hired at great expense through a catering firm in Oxford arrived at half past six to set up food stations and to learn the layout of the ground floor. A young man named Chad appointed himself head butler and took up his post in the entrance hall, while his friend Rupert volunteered to act as car valet, a position that hadn’t even occurred to me. Though Fairworth still smelled of fresh paint and damp plaster, we were as ready as we could be to welcome our guests. At seven fifteen, Willis, Sr., who’d exchanged his casual flannels for an immaculate black three-piece suit, gave me my marching orders.
    I made a mad dash for the cottage, where, much to my delight, I found a pair of freshly bathed and neatly dressed little boys as well as a dapper husband. I took a quick shower, passed a blow dryer over my dark, curly hair, and slipped into the summery forget-me-not-blue silk dress I’d had made for the occasion.
    Bill forced me to take a calming breath before he would allow me to join Rob and Will in our canary-yellow Range Rover. After I was seated, he took his place behind the wheel, paused to caress my cheek lightly with his hand, then hit the gas and gunned it all the way to Fairworth House while the boys egged him on from the backseat.
    Rupert took Bill’s car keys, Chad opened the front door, and Willis, Sr., greeted us in the high-ceilinged entrance hall. As we strolled into the morning room, I heard the faint strains of a Mozart concerto floating toward me from the library, breathed in the heady scent of tuberoses, and smiled as one fresh-faced young woman offered the adults champagne, another offered sparkling cider to the children, and still another presented us with a gleaming silver salver dotted with delicate canapés. I took a glass of champagne and turned to Willis, Sr., but before I could salute him, he raised his glass to me.
    “To the heroine of the hour,” he said.
    “To Hurricane Lori,” Bill added.
    “To Mummy!” the twins chorused.
    I blushed happily, accepted their accolades, and allowed myself to savor the first moment of peace I’d had all day.
    It would also be the last.

    By half past eight, I understood why houses had ballrooms. Parties confined to one