Beryl and I accepted our drinks and Lady Swanson said, ‘You must let me introduce you to my husband.’
We followed her toward a large, gilded grandfather clock where a rotund, balding, florid-faced man was standing stiffly next to a stout woman with a pink face, fat, heavily bejeweled hands, and a snooty tilt to her nose. Her lipstick had bled into the leathery creases around her mouth.
‘Darling,’ Lady Swanson said, ‘this is Dr. Kane, the hypnotherapist I was telling you about. The one that’s treating Vivi.’ She turned to me. ‘Dr. Marlow Kane, my husband, Lord William Elliot Swanson.’
So that was little Olivia’s nickname—Vivi. Totally unsuitable.
‘Ah,’ he said, his bushy gray eyebrows raised, as he took my hand and pumped it heartily. I could imagine him in a waxed jacket, gun in hand, whistling for his dogs.
‘Hello,’ I said, and listened while Lady Swanson introduced the woman with the greasy lipstick. She had a double-barreled last name that I did not bother to remember. She looked at me vaguely—a subtle method of telling me I belonged to an inferior class.
‘And this is Beryl Baker, his assistant,’ Lady Swanson said. With that piece of information the woman’s eyes completely glassed over.
At that point the butler caught Lady Swanson’s eye. She nodded and excused herself. Lord Swanson nodded blankly at Beryl and turned to me. ‘Did you have much trouble getting here?’
I sighed inwardly. ‘No. It was fine.’
‘No traffic? Don’t people leave London like lemmings at the weekend?’ he boomed.
‘Not this weekend.’
‘Jolly good.’
And with that the conversation was apparently over. He smiled at us in an expansive if dim way, and nodded us away.
I steered Beryl away. Olivia’s father was dull and not particularly bright, but his birthright as the male heir of the Swanson fortune meant that he was deferred to so sycophantically that he had no idea how uninteresting and stupid he really was. All these people who bowed and behaved as if the sun shone out of his ass were happy to go along with the illusion of his greatness because it kept their importance in the scheme of things secure.
We were drifting toward the tall, mullioned windows when a familiar voice said, ‘Hello. So glad you could make it.’
We turned around to face Olivia. She was wearing a velvet black dress with a high neckline and black lace sleeves. Her glossy hair was up in some sort of chignon that made me imagine taking it down and twisting it around my fist as I rammed into her.
‘Hi,’ Beryl grinned.
‘I see you’ve met Daddy,’ she said softly, her silvery eyes straying from me to Beryl.
‘Yes. He seems…very nice,’ Beryl said.
Olivia’s expression said that she did not believe Beryl thought any such thing, but all she said was, ‘I’d like you both to meet my siblings.’
First was her sister, Lady Daphne.
She had inherited her mother’s beautiful eyes and she had very good skin. Otherwise she was, unfortunately, the spitting image of her father. She was only nineteen, but incredibly, she had already cultivated the critical, calculating hauteur of a dowager. Her voice was a sarcastic, assessing drawl and her cold gaze dismissed and traveled away from us even as she said, ‘How do you do?’
An awkward silence ensued as soon as the introductions were done. Olivia quickly herded us away and introduced us to a sleek man standing next to a painting of a dour ancestor, his eyes glazed with boredom. He was wearing a double-breasted, navy wool pinstripe suit, the pocket square, stuffed not folded, and the tie a different pattern but still working together perfectly. The tie knot was a gentleman’s knot, small, tight, four-in-hand with a dimple. Obviously a polo playing, champagne guzzling city boy.
Beryl said something quietly in Olivia’s ear and both ladies excused themselves. I presumed they were on their way to the powder room. My eyes nearly swiveled around to turn and watch her go.
‘So you’re the hypnotist?’ Jacobi Gough Swanson drawled, eyeing me curiously over the rim of his champagne glass.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Mummy seems to think you’re rather wonderful.’
‘It’s not certain that will be her deathbed opinion yet.’
‘I have no doubt you’ll do very well,’ he said suavely, but some quickly hidden expression in his eyes made me wonder if Olivia had a secret enemy in him.
‘I don’t suppose you hunt?’ he asked.
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ But not foxes, I added in my head.
His lips twitched unpleasantly. ‘Good. You can join us tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, but we’ll be leaving right after breakfast.’