Amanda Scott Read Free

the brilliance as her due, saw nothing amiss and paid no heed at all to the brightly lit room. She had matters of greater importance on her mind.
    “Our people can dispose of our baggage, Moffatt,” she said, “but we are famished, so I trust Mrs. Moffatt can manage to prepare something nourishing for us. We are accustomed, you know, to large midnight suppers.”
    “Yes, my lady,” replied the butler, his expression nearly concealing his opinion of habits in Foreign Parts. “In point of fact,” he added with a slight twist of his lips, “I was on the point of serving tea in the drawing room when you arrived, and as it has been thought unnecessary to engage more than one footman at present, and him not being one of us and off to the village besides, supposedly to attend to important business, though how he can have business of any sort in a village far from his own—”
    “Serving tea to whom?” demanded her ladyship. “Surely, young Timothy has been in his bed these two hours past.”
    “Indeed, yes, my lady, although not because he was wishful to go. Growing right stubborn is that lad,” he added in an undertone as they moved to the graceful stairway at the rear of the hall and began making their way to the first-floor gallery.
    Margaret, hearing, grinned at him, but her curiosity was quite as avid as Lady Celeste’s. “Who is in the drawing room, Moffatt?”
    The butler’s features arranged themselves into nonexpression, and he avoided the eyes of both women. “Her ladyship and Mr. Caldecourt, miss,” he said as he moved purposefully toward the drawing-room door.
    “Her ladysh—Not Annis!” Lady Celeste quickly lowered her voice on the last word, for Moffatt—in self-defense, Margaret decided, hiding her own annoyance—had flung the doors to the elegant blue-and-white drawing room wide and was announcing their arrival to those within.
    The scene upon which they intruded was a cozy one. The two persons now facing the door had obviously been indulging themselves in a generous tea. A silver tray reposed upon a low table near the plump, black-clad Lady Annis Caldecourt, and the platter beside the teapot, though a large one, bore but one lone sandwich and a dusting of crumbs. Jordan Caldecourt, a sleek, sandy-haired young gentleman sitting opposite his mother in a straight-backed blue-velvet chair near a fire larger than the one below in the hall, had been caught taking a generous bite of a heavily buttered muffin. He choked a little but rose to his feet with studied grace to greet Miss Caldecourt and Lady Celeste. His mother, unperturbed, set down the blue-and-white Sevres china cup and saucer she had been holding and nodded regally without making any effort to rise from her comfortable brocaded wing chair.
    “So you are here at last, Celeste,” she said. “Now Moffatt can put out all the lights downstairs except for the porter’s lamp in the hall. Such a waste to have so many candles burning all at once.” Her tone was placid but marked by an incipient whine that grated on Margaret’s ears. She saw Lady Celeste’s slim shoulders tense, though whether at the younger woman’s words, tone, or use of her Christian name she was at a loss to say.
    “We made excellent time,” Margaret said. “At least, from London we made excellent time. Six weeks’ journey from Vienna, even in winter, is scarcely noteworthy.”
    “No, indeed,” put in Mr. Caldecourt, approaching her with both hands held out. “Why, one of my chums—Brevely, I believe it was—actually made the trip in half that time. Of course, it was summer then, and he hadn’t to worry about a coachload of baggage and servants.”
    Margaret, fearing that he meant to embrace her, quickly held out one hand to fend him off, withdrawing it immediately when he showed a desire to retain it in his own. “How do you do, Jordan? I trust we see you well.”
    “Indeed, coz, and anxiously awaiting your arrival, unexpected though it was.” He smiled