The Brigadier's Daughter. Catherine March

clenched. ‘Sometimes, Georgia, I absolutely loathe you!’

      The drawing-room door banged on her retreat and they could hear her feet pounding as she ran up the stairs. Lady Packard clucked her tongue and gave her daughter Georgia a look that was both a little amused and chastising. Georgia merely shrugged, with raised brows and a demure smile playing on her shapely lips.

      In the next few days Captain Bowen was a frequent visitor to Roseberry Street, yet the girls saw little of him, as he spent long hours with the Brigadier in the library, engaged in intensive Russian lessons. Until the day before Christmas Eve, when the Brigadier summoned his daughters to assist him, a not unusual occurrence if he had more than one student. He directed Sasha to sit with Colonel Bellamy and converse with him in French, and Captain Bowen he assigned to Georgia. The two sisters, impeccably dressed in long-sleeved, crêpe de Chine tartan dresses, bustled and bowed, sat down at opposite ends of the room and not for the first time the Brigadier noticed that his eldest two daughters were not on speaking terms. He frowned, hands behind his back as he contemplated Sasha for a moment, and then Georgia, yet he had no idea what ailed them. He returned his grim attention to young Lieutenant Liptrott, whose inability to grasp the basics of either French or Russian would most likely get him killed in some far and foreign land.

      Colonel Bellamy, a portly man well into his sixties, sprouting a thick white beard and a monocle from one eye, did not hold much truck with a snippet of a girl trying to educate him on the niceties of the French language. Sasha, too, was not greatly concerned with her charge, her eyes wandering across the room to where Georgia sat with Captain Bowen. They laughed a lot, and Georgia was leaning towards him, touching his arm with her fingers, tossing her blonde head in a most coquettish, annoying manner, Sasha thought. And here she was lumbered with Colonel Bellamy, who clearly would rather be somewhere else, the Officer’s Mess, presumably.

      ‘How are we getting on?’ The Brigadier stopped by their desk, hands behind his back as he made his enquiry.

      ‘Listen here, old chap—’ the Colonel began to remonstrate about his youthful tutor, but he was cut off mid-sentence by the Brigadier.

      ‘Sasha, I wonder if I might have a word?’

      ‘Of course, Papa.’ She rose from her seat, with obvious haste and relief.

      ‘Won’t be a moment, Colonel.’

      ‘But listen here—’ exclaimed the Colonel and then muttered, ‘Oh, damn and blast!’ What was the point? he fumed inwardly. He might have the advantage of age over Packard, but he was damn well outranked by him!

      In a quiet corner of the library, between the heavy curtains and a potted palm, the Brigadier confronted his daughter in his usual direct manner.

      ‘What on earth is going on between you and Georgia?’ he asked in a soft voice, his bright blue eyes catching her firmly in their spotlight.

      ‘Nothing, Papa.’ Sasha turned her face away and stared out of the window, her eyebrows raised a little defiantly.

      ‘Oh, come now.’ Her father was not convinced by this nonchalant denial. ‘Something’s afoot, you are not speaking a word to each other.’

      ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

      ‘Sasha, tell me at once what is going on!’

      ‘There’s nothing going on, Papa.’

      ‘Is it because of that young Felix Westfaling?’

      Sasha turned to look at him then, with her dark, soulful eyes so like her mother’s, and assured him truthfully, ‘No, Papa, it is nothing to do with Felix.’

      ‘Aha! I knew it, there is something afoot.’

      ‘Papa, I really must get back to Colonel Bellamy, he looks fit to burst like a Christmas cracker, and liable to pounce on poor Lieutenant Liptrott at any moment.’

      Her father turned then, and with a sigh hurried off to rescue the young cavalryman from a nasty verbal volley. The Brigadier realised that nothing more could be achieved on this afternoon when thoughts were wandering to the Christmas festivities and goodness knew what else. He dismissed the class, with a stern reminder to practise their vocabulary and to return in the New Year. As the three gentleman left, the Brigadier called out, ‘Georgia, wait a moment, if you please. Close the door behind you, Sasha.’

      Sasha did as her father asked and turned to find Captain Bowen hovering, and he fell into step with her as they walked to the front of the house. He spoke a few faltering words of farewell in Russian, and she turned, with a smile, answering him in the same language. In the hallway, as Lodge handed him his coat and hat, Captain Bowen bowed to Sasha.

      ‘Your Russian is much better than your sister’s.’

      ‘Thank you, kind sir.’ She smiled, her hands clasped as she waited for him to depart, but he seemed in no hurry to go. He was quite tall; she had to tilt her head back to look up at him, and the late afternoon sun beaming in through the glass fanlight above the front door gilded his blond hair and shone a light in his dark blue eyes. He was certainly a most handsome man, she sighed inwardly, watching as he shrugged on his coat over broad shoulders.

      ‘I shall see you all tomorrow evening, then.’

      ‘Oh?’ Sasha frowned, puzzled.

      ‘Christmas Eve,’ he reminded her.

      ‘Of course.’ She felt her cheeks heat with a pink blush, and wondered why she always made the impression, with this man, of being a ninny.

      ‘Goodbye, Miss Packard.’

      ‘Goodbye, Captain Bowen.’

      He bowed and walked to the door, and then turned back and called out in Russian, ‘Until tomorrow.’

      She smiled and nodded. ‘Da.’ Her heart was aflutter, hardly daring to believe that a man like Captain Bowen would even look at her. Not when Georgia was about.

      Christmas was always a special occasion in the Packard home, and that afternoon on the Eve the four sisters spent a happy few hours decorating a magnificent tree in the hallway, despite the frosty relations between Sasha and Georgia, who, beneath their father’s watchful, frowning gaze, made the pretence that all was well between them. The house smelled pleasantly of pine, roasting turkey and plum pudding, and great boughs of holly and ivy were strewn in garlands about the walls and stairs and over the mantel of the fireplace. The girls had decorated oranges with cloves and ribbons to make fragrant pomanders, and hung them all about the drawing room and hallway. Presents had been wrapped and placed under the tree and by four o’clock they had hurried to their rooms to dress for the evening’s festivities.

      When Sasha came downstairs, wearing an emerald-green, off-the-shoulder evening gown and her hair swept elegantly up, she went into the drawing room and checked that all was ready for their guests. A great silver punchbowl with mulled red wine steamed gently by the dancing flames of the fireplace, and a table covered with a snowy white cloth was being stacked by one of the maids with plates of fresh-baked mince pies, and small silver dishes of dried figs, nuts and pink Turkish delight.

      The Brigadier carried his wife downstairs and settled her on the chaise longue near the fire, with a rug over her lap. If it was up to him he was quite content to spend the evening with just himself and the girls. Yet he knew how Olga loved company and so he had invited a dozen friends to dinner, including Avery Westfaling, to whom he was distantly related, although he had little liking for his wife and offspring. Lady Westfaling had a doubtful pedigree and he considered her to be a loose woman, and her son certainly seemed to have inherited her less attractive traits, being fickle and vain. Why, the boy would squander his inheritance before he was thirty and no daughter of his was going to get involved with a fellow like that!

      The guests began to arrive, bearing gifts, the sisters taking turns to receive these and place them under the Christmas tree in the hallway. The drawing room was warm and noisy with the gathering, the hubbub of chattering voices interspersed with laughter. Olga was surrounded by her favourite friends, who remarked on how well she