The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ellington Manor

Meadvale

Surrey

"This is insane?" Harrison Slade hissed as he led Diane through the rose garden, just a few paces in front of Charles Montague and his wife on a pre-dinner stroll in the glorious evening sunshine.

"Which bit in particular?" His wife murmured as he tugged gently on her leash, guiding her around a bush that she could not actually see because of the width of her skirts and the wings of her bonnet. According to Lady Brogan, who apparently kept up with such things as best she could, the new leashing regulations had allowed fashion designers to go a little mad with crinoline dimensions, and thanks to the continuing generosity of their hosts, Mrs Slade and Mrs Blackstone were dressed in the very latest wide-skirted styles. "You walking me around on a leash, dressed like Scarlet O'Hara, or that fact that we are dining with the good bishop, Charles Montague and Bishop Brown?"

"All of it, actually...this evening is particularly surreal?" He sighed, expertly leading her to their left, avoiding snagging her cream and pale blue silk evening gown on any thorns as he glanced back at Hugh Blackstone, who was just behind Montague. "After you go to bed I get to set out the current legal position affecting Sebastian's proposals to the architect of the modern renaissance and two bishops...and then we will settle down to watch Bellamy debate with whatever government minister they put up against him on BBC One? I couldn't be doing more to antagonise the government if I tried?"

"Well...everything you are doing now is actually legal, isn't it?" Diane pointed out, giving him a loving smile from deep within her poke bonnet.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean I am not antagonising anyone?" Slade pointed out, wondering how Diane could be so calm about things. "Sebastian is deliberately provoking Archbishop Carter, with my help...and now we are breaking bread with the man who betrayed his friends for our friends, who now seems to be joining the Social Democrats to support his son...whose constitution I wrote, by the way? If I wasn't a target before, I must be now? It's such a mess Di...potentially?"

"Which is why we are still here...and your work is important, isn't it?" Diane insisted and he nodded, because he certainly hoped it was. He was a very small cog in a wheel that went back all the way to Florida and the Rosen Foundation, via the White House, but he had helped expose both Ralph Winstanley and Drew Symonds, whilst also getting Caris out. But as he had suggested to Sean Fletcher, his focus had shifted since he married Diane. It was not just him in the firing line anymore. "Harrison...my love...we are law-abiding citizens...whatever happened here in the recent past is forgotten and you are currently working for the church so we are quite safe? You've said it yourself, many times...they do abide by the law?"

"It's just unsettling...and I really don't know how you can be so calm about all this?"

"I have lived forty years trying not to fall back into the Order, and this is the end...I am a Daughter of Eve...and I am safely married...there is nothing else to worry about...and only Miss Bryant to endure...and she is endurable?" Diane maintained, smiling at him again as he turned her for the walk back to the house, alongside the river. "As long as I am with you my darling...I think most things are endurable? And like millions of other women, I will just get on with my life with you?"

Hugh Blackstone was equally concerned about the company they were keeping at Ellington Manor, and was receiving much less encouragement and reassurance from his wife. Caroline hated Miss Bryant and found her routine almost impossible to cope with, whilst Diane Slade managed to do most things with a smile on her face. Much to his surprise, and Slade's to be fair, Diane had clearly fallen in love. Not that he begrudged two old friends a little happiness of course, but he was a little jealous that Harrison was not getting so much earache.