Murder Most Royal — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

As its glow caught the Roman profile and the tousled curls of his strawberry blond hair, she was reminded of her Google Images search from three days before.

‘You’re not related to Edward St Cyr, are you?’

‘The missing man? Um, yuh,’ Henry said. ‘I think he’s like my second cousin twice removed. I’m related to most people, though, one way or another, if you go back far enough.’

‘I bet you’re not related to my family,’ Rozie challenged him.

‘Well, no, I don’t have any ancestors in Lagos that I know of. Wouldn’t swear to it, though.

‘You don’t have a ring like his,’ she observed.

‘No. We’re the Shropshire branch of the family. It’s the Norfolk St Cyrs who go in for the bloodstone ring. We always thought big stones like that were rather naff.’ He raised his left hand, which bore a small gold ring on the little finger, similar to many that Rozie saw on the hands of royals and senior household staff.

‘No,’ Henry told her, tracing one of his fingers down her arm from shoulder to wrist. ‘I like your fingers bare.

She threw a pillow at him and crawled out of bed.

The shooting party set out together across the estate in a motley collection of Range Rovers, Land Rover Defenders and an ancient shooting bus, in the direction of Wolferton, towards the marshes. To avoid paparazzi lenses, they drove down a series of tracks made for military vehicles during the war, observed only by a hovering kestrel and the occasional pheasant that whirred up from the ground like a helicopter before breasting the hedgerows on the breeze.

Overnight, a hoar frost had layered every twig, leaf and seed head with heavy ice. The almost horizontal rays of a pale sun, penetrating a light layer of low cloud, made the wide fields of stubble glint and twinkle. Rozie could see why the royals got out of bed for this. In fact, she felt sorry for anyone who had chosen not to come out with them. If there was a way of doing it without dressing up in tweed and shooting the funny, silly, colourful pheasants out of the sky, she’d be all for it.

She stood at the edge of the field where the first drive was due to begin. The guns were having their safety briefing on one side while the observers and pickers-up shared conversation and slugs of sloe gin in a huddle on the other. Henry, her equerry-with-benefits, was among the guns.