Ghost Gum Valley Read Free Page B

holding onto the bedpost as Agnes laced her so tight she could hardly breathe. ‘It’s not as if I need this. I’m built like a boy. I wonder if I shall ever have any curves.’
    â€˜Keep still, lamb, and I’ll have you all trussed up in a minute. You’re seventeen – you can’t run around like a tomboy, it ain’t seemly.’
    â€˜What’s the point? I’m not allowed to go into the village nor attend church. Nobody ever sets eyes on me except you, the other servants and occasionally the family. I haven’t even been allowed upstairs to visit Cousin Martha in her sickbed. I might as well be in Newgate Prison.’
    â€˜Don’t say such things, even in jest,’ Agnes said quickly. ‘You must not dwell on the past. Your sleepwalking sickness was to blame, not you, dearie.’
    Isabel sighed, ‘“What’s done is done and cannot be undone.”’ Her hand flew to her face in horror. ‘My God, I just quoted from The Scottish Play – that’s bad luck!’
    Realising she had broken the theatrical taboo against quoting from Macbeth in a dressing-room, Isabel flung a shawl around her shoulders and broke free from the bedchamber she had been forced to share with Agnes for the past three years. She bolted along the long, winding corridors with Agnes racing after her, begging her to stop.
    On reaching the kitchen herb garden she turned around three times and spat into the garden, watched in horror by Agnes.
    â€˜Have you gone out of your mind, Isabel?’
    â€˜No, that’s what actors must do to reverse their bad luck if they quote lines from Shakespeare’s The Scottish Play . You see they call it that to avoid saying its true title.’
    Agnes looked thunderstruck. ‘But you’re not an actress! You’re a born lady, a de Rolland!’
    â€˜Yes, unfortunately. But I would far rather be an actress. And I don’t want to tempt fate to bring me any more bad luck than it has already wished on me.’ Her mood was suddenly serious but she pushed past images from her mind.
    â€˜Come indoors, lamb, or you’ll catch your death of cold,’ Agnes said, gently shepherding her inside. ‘Your guardian wants to see you at three o’clock sharp and we must have you looking presentable.’
    Back in the chamber, Isabel sat impatiently while Agnes dressed her hair with side curls. A pretty blue ribbon was small compensation for her scuffed shoes and the hand-me-down jacket and skirt that she had outgrown over the past two years and now needed to tug down to cover her ankles. New clothes never came Isabel’s way – one small sign of the severely straightened circumstances into which the grand de Rolland ancestral home had been sinking for several years, sucked down by the quicksand of extravagance and gambling.
    With an hour to spare before her encounter with her guardian, Godfrey de Rolland, Isabel insisted they go to the library, the one communal room in the great house that she was free to enter. She had continued her studies there alone following the departure of her governess – another luxury the family no longer chose to afford.
    Isabel knew exactly how she would spend this precious hour. For years Cousin Silas had forbidden her access to their ancestral family tree, claiming it was for her own protection. Why? What was the dark secret involving her? This question had gnawed at her curiosity until yesterday during Silas’s absence in London. She had chanced on a rare encounter with her guardian, as he paused on the landing of the staircase, frowning as he read some papers that she recognised by their red seal as legal documents.
    Seizing her chance Isabel had made a hasty curtsey. ‘You know how much I love history, Uncle Godfrey. Is there any reason why Cousin Silas says I may not study our de Rolland family tree?’
    Godfrey de Rolland peered at her over the rim of his pince-nez