An expectant silence followed his announcement and Beatrice felt her spirits plummet as she observed the four pairs of waiting eyes. The task of finding and then keeping staff to run the huge Victorian house and its gardens was a constant thorn in her side.
No sooner was someone suitable found and installed than for one reason or another they decided to leave. Mrs Meadows had been with them less than three months.
‘Where’s Mrs Meadows?’ she asked sinkingly.
‘She got angry because Lucilla told her she was bringing some people round for dinner,’ Miranda told her carelessly. ‘So Lucilla told her she was fired.’
It was only with the greatest effort that Beatrice was able to hold back the words springing to her lips. With magnificent fortitude she managed a weary, ‘I see.’
Obviously her words conveyed more than she allowed herself to say, and just as obviously she had not yet had the full budget of bad news. All the Bellaire offspring, apart from herself, were natural and effective hams. And, as the saying went, she could see from their faces that they were big with news.
‘Well, what is it?’
It was left to Miranda to produce the scrawled note.
‘Lucilla said to tell you that they’ll be here at half past eight. She wants you to make your salmon mousse for starters, and then she wants that lamb thing that you do with the apricot stuffing, and then raspberry pavlova. She said to tell you that it was terribly important to make a good impression, so could you make sure that the silver’s polished and that you use the Waterford glasses.’
Controlling her temper, Beatrice muttered under her breath, ‘If it was that important, why didn’t she take them out to dinner?’
Unlike the rest of them, Lucilla was comparatively well off. Her father had left her some money—a trust fund which was administered by her brother, Elliott Chalmers.
Already eighteen when his stepmother remarried her former husband, Elliott, on the verge of departing for Oxford, had remained, like herself, outside the charmed Bellaire ring, but unlike her he had not looked into it enviously. In fact, occasionally, watching Elliott watching her family, Beatrice suspected that she had detected signs of almost sacrilegious mockery, not to say impatience, in his cool grey eyes.
‘Oh, and by the way, she’s bringing Elliott with her,’ Benedict put in with a grin. Beatrice’s dislike and antipathy towards Lucilla’s half-brother was a well-documented fact.
Beatrice herself felt as though she wanted to scream. Elliott Chalmers! That was all she needed! Of all the supercilious, bossy, domineering, sarcastic men, he really took the biscuit. She seethed bitterly as she headed for the kitchen, remembering how, after their parents’ death, Elliott had advised her to keep the children in their boarding schools, warning her against landing herself with the responsibility of their welfare.
‘They’re my family!’ She had thrown the words at him, her face flushed with temper.
‘They’re miniature vampires,’ he had countered unrepentantly, ‘and if you let them—and you will—they’ll suck you dry.’
She had never forgiven him for his callousness, and she never would.
Alerted by the sounds coming from the kitchen, the four younger members of the Bellaire tribe retreated into the wings. Had anyone accused them of selfishness, they would cheerfully have accepted the accusation, but not really felt much guilt. They all loved Beatrice, but she was not like them. She was quite content with her life; she had no ambitions, no bright, luring dreams like their own. All of them took the security she had brought to their lives for granted, and, although they didn’t know it, that they were able to do so was one of the most precious gifts Beatrice had given them.
She had been in her last year of a catering course at an exclusive private college when her parents had been killed in an air crash, and although all her dreams of owning and running her own restaurant had long since died, normally she still loved cooking.
Not today, though. She fumed inside as she set about preparing Lucilla’s dinner party.
William, judging from the diminishing clatter of utensils that it was safe to do so, emerged into the kitchen and looked hopefully at her.
He would be wasted at Oxford, Beatrice thought wryly. With a talent like that he should have been headed for the stage. Even so, she found herself weakening and stopping what she was doing to make a perfect melting omelette, which he devoured with relish.
Long experience informed her that, while Lucilla expected her to prepare and serve food for her dinner party, she would not want her sister nor her younger siblings sitting down at table with her guests.
In spite of her beauty and her success as an actress, Lucilla was one of those people, always restless, never contented, who go through life defensive and envious of anyone they believe has something they do not.
Quite why there had always been a thread of antagonism between them Beatrice didn’t know, but it was undoubtedly there. She knew that Lucilla resented her, but she could never understand why. If anyone, she ought to have been the one to feel resentful. After all, Lucilla had been Charles’s favourite, not her. Lucilla had inherited the looks and the talent. It was her own guilt over that tiny seed of enmity that always made her go to greater lengths to appease Lucilla than she would have done for anyone else, but it never worked. Lucilla was relentlessly contemptuous of her.
At seven o’clock, with everything for the dinner party under control, she produced pizza and salad in the kitchen for everyone else.
William, despite his earlier omelette, ate almost twice as much as the others. At the moment he was tall and gangly, but in a few years’ time he would have the same beautiful physique as his older brothers.
Oddly enough Elliott, who wasn’t as tall as the twins, being just under six foot, always somehow seemed to make them look smaller whenever he walked into the room. He dwarfed everyone around him with the power of his personality—and with his wealth, Beatrice thought bitterly.
Knowing that he would be here tonight was really the last straw. Her head was still pounding despite the tablet she had taken; it showed all the signs of progressing into a migraine. The smell of food almost nauseated her, and she longed to go upstairs and lie down.
‘Aren’t you going to get changed?’ demanded Miranda when she had finished eating. ‘You can’t sit down to dinner like that. You know what Lucilla and her friends are like. It’ll be designer dresses and everything that goes with them.’
Miranda was heavily into clothes. She was doing a course at college which she hoped eventually would lead to a career in theatrical costume design.
‘Oh, come on, Mirry,’ Sebastian cut in. ‘You know our dearest Lucilla would never allow Bea to sit down with her friends. You shouldn’t let her get away with it!’ He frowned, looking so severe for a moment that Beatrice couldn’t help smiling.
Of all of them Sebastian was perhaps her favourite: just a little less colourful than his elder twin, just a little less self-confident and consequently just a little less overpowering. He was the one she felt closest to. He came up to her now and hugged her.
‘Poor Bea, we all treat you dreadfully, don’t we? But despite it all you still love us, don’t you?’
Oh, so easily they tied her to them… How many times after their parents’ death had she heard those words? How could she have deserted them? How could she have been selfish enough not to care?
Very easily, if you’d been a true Bellaire, a surprisingly strong inner voice taunted, but she ignored it, quickly clearing the table and shooing them out.
A quick last-minute look at the dining-room showed her that Lucilla would not be able to fault a thing.
The dining-room was at the back of the house overlooking