The Gilded Madonna Garrick Jones (ebook reader online .txt) 📖

they had the European summer at a training camp in Sardinia. Not so difficult for those of us who aren’t short of a penny, and I consider it money well spent because I did some business in Europe while I was away. I know it won’t last with Dai, more because of him than what I feel, he’s a career athlete. But why not enjoy it while it lasts, eh?”

“Bore da!” the young man said, striding up behind us, stark naked, drying his hair with a towel. “Howard told me you both meibion Cymry,” and then, when we looked puzzled, explained, “sons of Welshmen.”

My Welsh was minimal and I knew Harry had none.

He held out his hand, smiling brightly. My throat tightened at the sound of his gorgeous lilt. There was too much of my father’s accent in his voice for me not to react.

“Hello,” we said, in turn, shaking his hand.

He was incredibly fetching. Far more so in person than his photographs had led me to believe. It was his personality that shone, rather than his even white teeth or mass of tousled short blond curly hair. No one could say he was classically handsome. His attractiveness radiated from within.

“It’s always a mess,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. He’d seen me glancing.

“Well, look at us four,” Howard said. “Standing here as nature made us. I’m glad you two aren’t shy.”

“Army boys can’t afford to be shy, Howard, as well you know,” I replied.

“Just teasing. Two’s just about to arrive with morning tea. There’s tea or coffee, or something stronger in the gazebo if you wish. Baking was done this morning so cakes and biscuits are not long out of the oven—just given enough time to cool. Please, eat if you wish. If you don’t nothing goes to waste around here.” He patted Dai’s tummy, who kissed the side of Howard’s face. It was very sweet, and such an enormous contrast to the serious businessman we’d had dinner with, and the anguished man I’d watched sitting opposite Greyson during his interrogation, that I couldn’t help but grin and wonder that I seriously wouldn’t mind cultivating a friendship with Howard Farrell.

*****

When Harry had suggested we move under cover because of his pale skin, Howard had stood and pressed a button on the wall of the gazebo. A large white canvas awning, ventilated at the top by loose flaps to allow the hot air to escape from underneath, had unfolded from a section along the front of the building. It was easily eight feet deep and twenty across, more than enough to shade the table and chairs at which we were to eat.

Lunch was to be served by Two, who arrived with a trolley a few minutes after the awning had been unfurled. He was dressed in the house uniform the triplets all wore—black shorts, a white opened-neck shirt, and woven straw espadrilles. There were no house rules, Howard explained, we were free to do whatever we liked. The estate and its amenities were at our disposal.

However, dinner was the only exception to “do whatever you like”. Cocktails at seven and then a formal evening meal at seven thirty. Tom had informed us that one of Howard’s staff had phoned on Friday to tell us to bring our dinner jackets.

I had to admit I wasn’t surprised at the food when Two started to lay out lunch. I immediately assumed Augusto must have had a hand in the menu. The food could have been something one might have been presented sitting at the Lido in Venice, or on one of the trattorie that lined the canals at Ostia, outside Rome. Antipasti, panzanella, insalata di pomodoro e mozzarella, carciofini ripieni, and the most splendid, but enormous, Budino, the Italian word for crème caramel.

The food was absolutely delicious, and Howard informed me it had been prepared by a cousin of Augusto’s who’d moved to Australia a few years ago and who now worked at Zephyr as the chef/baker. “Where is he, by the way, Howard? I’d have expected to see him when we arrived, jumping up and down on the front stairs.”

“Augusto’s in Melbourne, choosing some horses for me, Clyde. I’ll tell you all about it later, after lunch, when we go for a walk.”

The word “we” had a definite inflection; he meant he and me going for a walk. Harry picked up on it as well, but as cool as a cucumber, turned to Dai and asked if he’d be able to show him around the property, with the excuse that he’d need to walk off his lunch.

*****

“How do you cope with so much beauty?” I asked an hour later, while Howard and I walked through what seemed like an endless green garden. A “Foliage Garden” he’d called it. Nothing to distract the eye except for the few white flowers that peeped out randomly from a strap-leaved lily Howard explained was a weed. It looked beautiful to me.

“How do you cope waking up every morning faced with such beauty, Clyde?”

“Who, Harry? I’m not sure, Howard. I still think he’s a dream and I’m going to wake up and find my life where it was a year ago with Sam, who used me for sex, and two casual partners on the side with whom I never had truly satisfactory relationships because of my guilt over him.”

“Why on earth would you feel guilty over Sam Telford. He’s a nice enough man, but not in Harry’s league.”

“Isn’t that a bit judgemental, Howard? I mean you don’t really know Sam.”

“Ah, but I do know Vincenzo Paleotti.”

I stopped, not only because I was surprised to hear what he’d just told me, but because a flock of rainbow parakeets had flown into a tree above us and had begun to chatter noisily, chewing on whatever seedpods they’d found up there, the remnants of their feast falling down over us.

“Come, this way, Clyde,” Howard said, taking my elbow and leading me between two enormous bushes into an open,