His hand was steady. His grip was correct. The knife was sharp, because Mrs Farrow maintained her kitchen with the operational rigour of a field hospital, and yet the blade skidded off the skin and scraped against the porcelain with a sound that made his mother’s left eye twitch. He repositioned his knife and pressed down. The breast shifted on the plate, resisting the angle, and a potato rolled free and came to rest against his salad.
His father ate, each bite received the full attention of his jaw, his gaze fixed on some middle distance between his plate and the sideboard. He had never, in Barnaby’s lifetime, chewed his food this carefully. The Duke of Chatham ordinarily ate with the speed of someone who’d bolted National Service rations between exercises and never adjusted to civilian pacing.
His mother reached for her wine glass. “I had a lovely letter from Camilla Donnelly today,” she said. “She’s redone the orangery at Biddenden. Italian tiles. Very handsome, apparently, though I suspect she’s overspent. She always overspends. Do you remember the gazebo?”
“The gazebo,” his father said, seizing the topic with relief. “Good Lord. That was a production.”
“She had three architects on it. For agazebo. She flew one in from Milan!”
“Italians do love a gazebo.”
“It leaked within six months.”
“Did it?”
“Catastrophically. They had to re-do the roof entirely. James Donnelly was livid.”
Barnaby sawed at his chicken. The knife slipped again. A green bean launched itself off his plate and landed on the tablecloth, where it lay in a small pool of butter.
His mother did not look at the bean. His father kept chewing. Barnaby retrieved it with his fork, returned it to his plate, and continued cutting with a grip that was now white-knuckled.
“And the gardens,” his mother continued, her voice light and constant, a verbal stream of banality and absolute inconsequence. “She’s put in a parterre. Box hedging. I told her the box moth would have it within two years, but she’s very determined. She says the new cultivar is resistant.”
“Is it?”
“No cultivar is resistant to box moth, darling. It’s simply a question of when.”
They discussed box moth for four minutes. They discussed the Fortescues’ new Labrador for three. They discussed a village fête committee dispute involving the placement of a tombola stall with a seriousness that suggested the matter had been referred to The Hague. At no point did either of them mention the internet, boxing, kebabs, or any topic that shared even a syllable with the name Lex Murphy.
Barnaby was not eating. He had rearranged his plate twice, pushing potatoes into different configurations, shredding his salad into ribbons with the edge of his fork. The chicken breast remained largely intact, scored with pale lines where the knife had skated across its surface without committing to a cut.
He was fine. His posture was perfect and the sting behind his eyes was because of the tarragon, which Mrs Farrow had been heavy-handed with this evening.
His father set down his cutlery. He reached for his wine, took a measured sip, and placed the glass back on the table. This was his usual move when he was about to change the subject and wanted both hands free for the landing.
“Did you hear about Tarquin Acaster?”
Barnaby looked up. His father’s expression was mild and open, the same expression he wore when discussing drainage ditches or the cricket scores.
“Tarquin,” Barnaby repeated.
“Lord Ickworth’s eldest. You remember him. He was at school with your cousin Hugo.”
“I remember Tarquin.”
“He and his partner David have just had a baby.” The Duke cut a potato in half, speared one piece with his fork, and examined it before eating it. “Through surrogacy. A little boy, I believe. Charles, or possibly Colin. One of the C names.”
Barnaby’s knife stilled against his plate.
“Very lucky,” his mother said, “that the late King Arthur sorted out the peerage inheritance provisions before he passed. The Succession to Peerages Act. The one that extended legitimate heir status to children born through surrogacy and civil partnerships.” She speared a green bean with far better accuracy than Barnaby. “Otherwise the title would have skipped Tarquin’s line entirely, and gone to that dreadful nephew in Hampshire. The one who breeds ferrets.”
“We owe Arthur a great deal,” his father agreed. “He was a forward-thinking man who had the measure of the modern world.”
Barnaby stared at his chicken. The score marks on the breast blurred behind the heat pulsing through his eyes.
“David is doing well,” his mother said. She took a sip of wine. “He’s settling in marvellously, actually. I must say, I had my reservations about him at first.” She set the glass down. “He was rather… loud. And Australian.” She saidAustralianwith the particular intonation she reserved for things she had made peace with but would never fully understand, alongside Peregrine’s cereal and the concept of contactless payment. “But Tarquin has done well with him. David’s learned the way of things. He knows when to speak and when to let the room breathe. He’s doing wonderfully now. All he needed was a bit of time, and some instruction.” She paused. “You might ring Tarquin, darling. I think you’d find it useful.”
The dining room was quiet. The candles on the sideboard flickered in the draught from the hallway. His father was chewing studiously again, slowly, his gaze on his plate. His mother smoothed her napkin across her lap and waited.
