The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(14)

He hadn’t seemed to notice it.

‘Ah, just coming to round us up, hey, love?’ Lucas’s voice seemed to suddenly galvanize the tableau into action.

Jenny smiled and nodded. ‘Breakfast is ready,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve written out the menu and left it at the table.’

‘How marvellous,’ Gabriel Olney said, patting his ridiculously lean stomach. ‘I’m starving.’

Jenny was distressed to see just how lean the old soldier was. Although she didn’t suspect him of being ill, she did suspect him of not eating enough. Stripped off, she could probably count every single rib the man had. She made a firm note to pile Gabriel Olney’s plate with extra sausages.

Jasmine Olney made no comment on her husband’s starvation, real or otherwise. Her eyes had gone straight to Brian O’Keefe, and had stayed there.

It was not surprising. With his shirt undone all the way to his waist in an effort to beat the heat, he was really something to look at. Especially since, with the block and tackle slung casually over his shoulder like a bag of swag, he reminded the cook of a pirate from one of those 1940s films, the kind that Errol Flynn had done so well.

O’Keefe himself was not unaware of his new audience, she noticed, with a wry twist of her lips, for he turned on Jasmine Olney the same kind of quick but comprehensive glance that he’d given the cook just a few moments earlier.

His own lips, Jenny noticed, turned up into a twisted smile that was almost insolent. Jasmine Olney flushed. She looked annoyed. And pleased. The sexual tension between them was so palpable that Jenny wished she had a knife about her person, just to see if she could actually cut it.

Lucas Finch was too busy ogling Dorothy Leigh to notice, but Dorothy had seen the speaking look that had passed between the dirty, sweating engineer and the impeccably groomed Jasmine Olney, and she quickly looked away in embarrassment.

Her eyes skidded to a halt as they met Jenny’s probably equally embarrassed expression, and the two women promptly pretended not to notice that there was anything at all amiss.

‘I’ve cooked some porridge as well as some tomato and herb omelettes, for those who might not prefer a full English breakfast,’ Jenny said, clearing her throat. In her opinion, food was an excellent choice of conversation whenever a social gaffe had been committed. It was so comfortingly safe.

‘Hmm, lovely,’ Dorothy quickly said. Jasmine Olney merely smiled.

Brian O’Keefe nodded and strode off, rudely not saying a single word to anybody.

Gabriel Olney’s lips tightened a mere fraction. ‘A surly fellow, that,’ he muttered, to nobody in particular.

Lucas tore his eyes from Dorothy and met those of his guest. ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, I dare say he is. But he’s a damn good engineer.’

‘Did you see that positively torturous thing he was holding?’ Jasmine purred. ‘It looked like he was taking off to a dungeon with it. I do hope you don’t have a prisoner’s brig on this boat, Lucas,’ she laughed, and gave her husband a highly amused glance.

She was, Jenny thought with some surprise, deliberately baiting him. In her experience, wives with a roving eye usually tried to hide it from their spouses, not rub their noses in it.

For the first time since arriving at Buscot, Jenny began to feel distinctly uneasy.

‘It was only a block and tackle,’ Dorothy Leigh said, dampeningly.

‘And how would a pretty little thing like you know that, my dear?’ Gabriel said, allowing his words to drop to a caressing whisper. His eyes smoked over Dorothy with such undisguised approval that both David Leigh and — more comically — Lucas Finch stiffened in anger.

Jasmine looked more amused than angry at this attempt to upstage her. No doubt, Jenny surmised, she thought her husband was merely trying to make her jealous in his turn. Getting his own back, so to speak. Jenny thought it all rather childish, and wished they’d knock it on the head.

She had good food waiting!

And then she noticed how David Leigh was looking at Gabriel Olney and caught her breath. Her unease intensified into something solid and ugly. She was beginning to think that this river cruise might not be as pleasant as she’d hoped. For there was more than mere pique in the look that David was giving the old soldier. Now, any man with a wife as pretty as Dorothy was bound to have to put up with a fair bit, Jenny supposed — men did so like to ogle, after all. But whereas David Leigh had been faintly amused by Lucas Finch’s obvious infatuation with her, he was looking at Gabriel Olney as if . . .

Well, as if he’d like to kill him.

‘My father worked on building sites for most of his life.’ Dorothy answered Gabriel’s question as if he’d been serious. She seemed unaware of the undercurrents passing around them, and her voice was still rather matter-of-fact. ‘He owned his own construction company. I often used to meet him at work in the summer holidays,’ she recalled, her face softening in remembrance of those happy days. ‘He used to let me help to mix the cement and put some bricks in place. He even let me use the crane once. I sat on his knee, of course, and he guided my hands. It was great fun,’ she finished, with a seemingly genuine, carefree laugh.

Gabriel smiled. ‘You could sit on my knee any time, my dear,’ he purred, so archly à la Terry Thomas that Jenny almost expected him to caress his moustache villainously as well.

Dorothy gave him a rather furious look, rivalled only by David’s.