Duainfey Read Free

said Mother patiently. "And be more careful."
    Caroline pulled another card to her, dropping the spoilt one to the pile on the carpet.
    "Can't we close the window?" she asked. "The wind makes it difficult to write."
    "The desk is rickety and moves under your pen," Rebecca said, as she finished Lady Quince's card, and put her pen down. "It is that which makes writing difficult—" she raised her head and met her sister's wide blue eyes "—not the breeze."
    Caroline's eyes narrowed, which foretold unpleasant things when the two of them were alone. The Beauty, alas, possessed a thin skin and a spiteful temper.
    "It might also help," Rebecca continued, turning her gaze away, and sanding the card, "if you faced the desk straight on and not as if you were riding sidesaddle."
    "Your sister gives you good advice," Mother said, glancing at her youngest daughter. "Address the desk squarely and you will make fewer errors. You may make fewer still if you will write at the card table with Rebecca. The escritoire is not as solid a surface as one might prefer."
    Sighing prettily, Caroline turned in her chair and faced the escritoire, her skirts ruched and untidy, and dipped her pen.
    Rebecca drew the next card to her, picked up her pen, ticked off Lady Quince's name and glanced at the next on the list—
    Sir Jennet Hale.
    She did not sigh. There was no reason to do so, after all. Sir Jennet was the man to whom her father had promised her hand, and astonishing it was that he had found anyone to take her. That he had located a gentleman of lineage, who was neither a newlander nor a merchant must be to his credit.
    As for Sir Jennet himself—Rebecca held nothing against the gentleman, having met him precisely once, at her betrothal dinner. He was a quiet-spoken man of about her father's age, somewhat portly and a bit red in the face, who had recently come heir to his elder brother's estate. His brother's lady having tragically predeceased him, Sir Jennet required a wife to hold his household. That Rebecca was the daughter of an Earl could only increase his consequence.
    For herself, she found it slightly fantastical that by summer's end she would have left her parents' home, the land she had grown up on, an elder brother of whom she was sincerely fond, and a younger sister of whom she was, perhaps, not quite so fond, to become mistress of an estate in the Corlands, and the wife of a second son.
    There was surely nothing to sigh about in any of that. In truth, she was fortunate to be established in an unexceptional marriage, which her father and her sister took great care to impress upon her.
    So thinking, and sighing not at all, Rebecca wrote out Sir Jennet's card in her best hand. She then paused for a moment, pen poised, considering if it would be polite or unbecomingly forward to add a note indicating that she would be happy to see him at the dance. In the end it was the realization that she would be neither dismayed nor gladdened by his presence that stayed her pen.
    Sir Jennet was to become a fact of her existence, like rain, or sun, or Caroline's pouting. He had thought enough of her future comfort, during their single conversation, to tell her that his estate included several gardens and a conservatory.
    "They'll need a dab o' work, mind," he'd told her, as he poured himself a third glass of wine. "M'brother didn't care to keep 'em up. I hear you're a keen one for the plants and flowers, though, and I'm sure you'll know just what to do to bring 'em 'round."
    Her fingers itched to set the neglected conservatory right, and she dared hope that one or another of the other abandoned plots he had offhandedly mentioned might be allowed to become a wild garden. She would not wish to lose her lore.
    The door to the ladies' parlor opened precipitously, admitting the young viscount, still in his riding clothes, his fair hair rumbled and his cheeks rosy with exercise.
    "Good afternoon!" he said cheerily to the room at large. Laying his hat,