“No.” Diana shook her head. “I know Sean had the gun and—” She broke off at Sara’s look. “I don’t know it all. If Sean was...murdered, I don’t know who did it.”
“What about hiding his body in the old well?” Kate asked.
“What well?”
“In the conservation area.”
“You mean that old fenced-off acreage in the north? Bertie said there were fox holes there. He was afraid one of the horses would be hurt.”
“Afraid one would fall down the hole and never be seen again. By the way, I’m Jack and this is Kate.”
Diana smiled. “Puck hasn’t stopped talking about you three.” She looked at Sara. “Sorry about what my country’s paper said about you. From what I read online, you’ve had enough success for a dozen lifetimes. Sure is better than trying to run a horse farm.”
“Thank you,” Sara said. “So that’s where you’ve been all these years?”
“Yes. I guess I should have contacted them and told them where I was, but...” Her hands went into fists, her teeth clenched.
“But you never wanted to see them again,” Sara said. “I can understand that.”
“So how does this play thing work?”
“Today, one by one, everyone who was there that night is going to tell Byon and me what they did and what they saw. Then we’re going to write individual plays for each person. No one will know what the others do.”
“Just like that night,” Diana said. “We didn’t know where anyone was or what they were doing. Puck told me about Nadine and Sean. I guess she was why he wouldn’t leave with me.”
“How did you leave?” Jack asked.
Diana smiled. “On one of Bertie’s pregnant mares.”
“Impregnated by stolen semen,” Jack said.
Diana nodded. “Right, but Sean and I figured that part was payback. Bertie was ripped off by every horseman in three counties. They owed him.”
“Maybe I’m being presumptuous,” Sara said, “but you don’t seem like one of the Pack.”
“That is a great compliment. Thank you,” Diana said. “Nicky thought the world owed him, Byon gloried in his ability to use words and Nadine was obsessed with how good she looked.”
“What about Clive and Willa?” Sara asked.
Diana gave a snort of laughter. “Talk about love-hate. Those two! Her family ancestry was all ol’ Clive had ever dreamed about. He’d been tossed around by his own family, then here came Bertie. Offered him a ratty little room in the house in exchange for eternal servitude.”
“And Willa?”
“Pathetic. She just wanted to belong. To anyone.”
“If your own family doesn’t want you,” Sara said softly, “you hunger after being part of any semblance of a family that you can find.”
Kate put her hand over her aunt’s. “Tell us how you met them. I assume it’s a happy story and we need some happy.”
“I can tell it the way Byon told it to all of us. He expanded it, embellished it and made us laugh. He didn’t like me much at first, but I eventually won him over.”
The four of them leaned back in their chairs as they prepared to listen.
Twenty-One
Byon and Nicky were on their way back from university to spend the weekend at Oxley Manor. They were dreading it. Bertram would be there, ready to tell his son he was a wastrel. Clive was at school, but he was so eager to please he would arrive hours before the others did. To add to the horror, lately, Bertram had been asking Nicky when he was going to get a wife. “At least get something from your years at that school.”
“We could go somewhere else,” Byon said. “Maybe to...” He had no words to finish the sentence. Nicky’s image at school was of a young earl-to-be who had responsibilities at his Great House. He couldn’t just go drinking all weekend—or heaven forbid—study.
Besides, Nicky only liked a few people in the world—and the feeling was mutual.
When the old car slowed down, then stopped completely, they didn’t know whether to be glad or terrified. They were on a country road with nothing around them but trees. They got out.
“What the hell do we do now?” Nicky asked.
Byon looked around. “Find someone to ask for help?”
“Are you going to walk?” When things weren’t going his way, Nicky attacked whomever was nearest. Usually, that was Clive. “The income-sucker,” Nicky called him. “Taking what isn’t his.”
They were leaning against the boot of the car, both smoking Spanish cigarettes, when out of the trees came a woman on a big horse.
When she saw the car in her direct path, she yelled, “Bloody hell!” then reined in. The horse, angry, confused and torn between obeying and fighting, reared up. The young woman gripped with strong thighs and iron fists.
It took minutes but she brought the animal under control and halted in front of the car. She dismounted, soothed the frightened animal, then tied the reins to a tree branch.
Nicky and Byon were in exactly the spot they’d been in. They prided themselves on being cool, on being “men of the world.”
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted at them. “You could have killed Raven.”
“Is that your horse’s name?” Byon asked blandly.
“Mare,” she snapped.
“Forgot to look.” Byon bent over, his head low as he looked toward the underside of the horse. “No dangly bits so you might be right.” He straightened his shoulders and smiled at her.
She took a few seconds to decide on keeping her anger or not. She let it go. “I see you two at school.” She glared at their cigarettes. “Do you ever stop smoking those filthy things?”
Byon took a long, deep puff, but Nicky dropped his cigarette to the road and crushed it with the toe of his custom-made Lobb shoe.
She looked at Nicky. “Oxley Manor, right?”
He nodded.
Byon was looking from one to the other, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. Nicky was his.
“What’s wrong with your car?” she asked.
“How would we possibly know that?” Byon snapped.
She gave him a look up and down that was pure dismissal. He wasn’t worth her time.
Nicky got out of his slouch and walked to the front of the car. “It quit running.”