Dempsey stood by the fire in the big hall and surveyed the room. The sleep he had fallen into earlier had deepened just enough to leave him with a surreal drugged feeling he couldn't seem to shake, and the buzz of chatter from Lord Winfield's guests was doing little to bring him out of it.
He wished they could have stayed upstairs in Harry's rooms to enjoy the time alone together, but she was adamant they couldn't be absent from the meal, and he knew she was right. Twenty minutes after she roused him, he was dressed in his tux and ready to go, in body at least.
He took sip of champagne, savouring its dryness and the faintly tart after-taste. There were a dozen or so guests in attendance, most of them in late middle age. Harry stood with her father close to the doorway where they were chatting convivially to a well-to-do couple. Although that would be an accurate description of pretty much everyone here, he thought. The atmosphere reeked of money, as his mother would have said: the women decked out in expensive fabrics and diamonds and the men in tuxes. A fairly formal gathering, but then Lord Winfield was of the old school.
From a distance, he observed Harry. Her sleeveless black dress fell straight down to her feet - its high neck created a perfect balance between sensuality and the appropriate degree of decorum the occasion demanded, he thought admiringly. As usual, she looked exquisite. Were they really here together, rather than just on a job? He had to keep reminding himself that this weekend was just about pleasure, and that knowledge only added to his dreamy sense of unreality.
Suddenly she looked his way and their eyes met. Smiling, she said something to her Father before making her way towards him.
"I was feeling scrutinized then, Lieutenant," she slid her arm easily around his waist. "Were you subjecting me to the infamous Dempsey gaze?"
"Just checking up on you Sergeant. Makin' sure you're behaving."
She raised an eyebrow. "James, I'm an expert when it comes to these occasions. Years of practice. I'm worried about you though; how are you coping?"
'Just fine." He drained his glass on impulse. To hell with this polite sipping.
"This may come as a surprise to you Makepeace, but contrary to popular reports, I'm not incapable of being civilized when the need arises."
"Of course it doesn't," she said quickly. "I never doubted it for a second. I know you eat hotdogs with your fingers, but I have every faith that a dinner table setting with multiple pieces of cutlery won't send you into a panic. I wouldn't have invited you otherwise."
He looked down at her, trying to decide whether to be insulted or merely aloof. She was eying him so archly however, that he found he was incapable of either.
"Don't worry on my account baby." He slid his hand around and down to the small of her back, stroking it gently and out of the view of anyone in the room. The flesh was warm under the sheer fabric, and he felt her respond; move closer to him and press her leg subtly against his.
"I give you my word I won't pick the roast beef up with my fingers and start hollering for ketchup and mustard, okay?"
The eyebrow went up again, but this time her lip was twitching. She leaned in and kissed him quickly.
"Deal. Now come and meet my uncle and aunt."
Grabbing his hand, she pulled him in the direction of a small group seated close by.
Harry's uncle was considerably younger than Lord Winfield. Dempsey put him at around sixty to the Lord's seventy. Still, the family resemblance was clear – he had the same bright eyes and angular jaw. Seated next to him on the couch was a woman, presumably his wife, who was younger still – late forties at the most.
"Uncle Giles, Aunt Esther, how are you?"
Harry was back on autopilot. She wasn't lying about having plenty of experience with the social niceties thing he thought, then checked himself. She couldn't help her upbringing, any more than he could.
"I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is my very good friend, James Dempsey."
Giles stood up, although Esther remained in her seat.
Dempsey shook his hand. "Pleased to meet you, sir."
Giles nodded, looking rather taken aback. "An American, Harriet?"
She actually blushed. "There's a little bit more to him than that you know, Giles. James is my partner at work. He's participating in an exchange with the NYPD in New York. And he's a very good friend out of work too. She put her hand on his arm and Dempsey swallowed his annoyance. There was something about Uncle Giles he disliked on sight.
The soiree progressed relatively smoothly, with the help of much free-flowing wine. At nine pm, the guests were ushered into the dining room and served terrine of duck, roast guinea fowl (shot only that morning on the estate, Lord Winfield proudly informed them) and Baked Alaska. By the time the cheese board was placed in the centre of the table, things were becoming more surreal by the minute to Dempsey.
He wasn't sure what exacerbated his sense of strangeness. Perhaps it was the man servant, Porter, who was forever hovering in the doorway surveying proceedings, always at the ready to fetch anything - whether a jug of water or gravy, or just yet another bottle of Montrachet - at the Lord's behest.
Or perhaps it was the increasing drunkenness of the guests. As the wine flowed, there seemed to be a blatant unconcern for the fact that that most of them had driven to Winfield Hall that evening and would presumably be required to return the same way through the deepening snow. With each course cleared away, the laughter became more raucous and the stories more outrageous, from Mrs Everton-Smythe (the large woman seated next to Dempsey)'s description of skinny dipping with her young groomsman in the stream on her property last week "because he promised me it was be ever so much fun, and do you know, he was right?" (her husband sat silent and benignly smiling throughout the anecdote) to Colonel Aldred's jocular recounting of how he had accidently shot his eldest son in the buttock on a recent grouse hunt, wrongly believing him to be a poacher.
As Porter filled his glass for the twentieth time, Dempsey became ever more convinced that the mean streets of New York were positively tame compared with the lives these people lead. Meanwhile, Harry remained perfectly composed even though she seemed to be drinking as much as everyone else. He was perplexed; ordinarily it didn't take much to get her tipsy. He guessed this was more of her 'other side' he was seeing.
The only unsettling thing that broke through the haze of unreality and alcohol was his increasing awareness of Uncle Giles's eyes on him from across the table. Once, Dempsey met his gaze and saw malevolence there. Why he wasn't sure, but experience had taught him not to look too hard for answers - that it was there at all was enough.
He was pondering tiredly on this when a muted rumbling sound to his right interrupted his reverie. He started. Mrs Everton-Smythe was fast asleep and snoring gently, head resting on her forearms.