Joan Smith Read Free Page A

himself.”
    Mrs. Harrington snorted. Her brindled head shook angrily, and her lips pinched into a thin line. “Top of the dung pile. That’s what I think of your Sir Charles. He was rolling his eyes at you, Trudie. I do believe that Rolfe woman has taken the notion Nicolson is your beau. She looked very sour when he came in yesterday evening. She spies on us. I hear her door open and close every time one of your gentlemen comes to our door. Then when young Clappet came to call for him after his lesson, she was at it again.”
    Trudie gave a tsk of annoyance. “If she has nothing better to do, let her spy. She shan’t see much.”
    “She’ll hear plenty! That piano was still banging away at ten o’clock last night. Nicolson was very miffed when I closed the lid on him, but to be playing a pianoforte at ten o’clock in a flat is not considerate. I never hear the Rolfes playing theirs past nine-thirty.”
    “It was hammering till midnight on Saturday. I’m surprised you forgot it; you mentioned it nine or ten times.” Trudie felt a twinge of guilt over Nicolson, and her guilt lent a note of asperity to her answer. She knew perfectly well that he was infatuated with her, and letting him remain for a social visit after the lesson was unwise. But it was better than being perpetually alone with her aunt.
    “The noise did go on rather late Saturday, but it stopped before the Sabbath broke. Had they played into Sunday morning, I should have felt obliged to lodge a complaint with Mr. Evans,” Mrs. Harrington said.
    “I won’t let Sir Charles play the pianoforte again, and I shan’t let Peter bring any more of his friends to be coached in Latin. Will that satisfy you, Tartar?” Trudie asked, softening the harsh word with a smile. “Papa was quite a scholar, you know, and as I’ve managed to master the arcane matter myself, I might as well make some use of it. It will please Lady Clappet when Peter is reinstated at university. She kicked up quite a fuss, it seems, when he was plucked, and it was only the Latin that was holding him back.”
    “I have no objection to Clappet’s coming,” Mrs. Harrington allowed. “He has often enough been to us at Walbeck when he was in school with Norman. If only he were a few years older,” she added wistfully.
    “Yes, a very eligible parti, Auntie, but he is not a few years older. He is not quite twenty, and I am an old hag of three and twenty years. An ape leader, I believe they describe such antiques as I here in the city.”
    “Such a very odd expression.”
    “Shakespeare,” Trudie said vaguely. “It has to do with leading apes in hell, from ‘Shrew,’ I believe.”
    Mrs. Harrington shook her head in despair. “It is amazing how a young lady who knows so much doesn’t know enough to nab an eligible parti when it is clear as day he is in love with her.”
    “In love?” Trudie asked, and laughed heartily. “No, he only plays up to me to pester Nicolson. A boy not yet finished school is not eligible. And I don’t know anything either, except what I’ve read in books. Sir Charles tells me I am a bluestocking, and a greenhead. Not a very harmonious combination, chromatically speaking, I fear.”
    “The devil take Sir Charles! I don’t think he cares in the least for learning Latin. He comes to flirt.”
    “He’s a brave man to attempt it with you guarding me like a Vestal Virgin,” Trudie said pertly. “I only let him come to wile away the dull evenings. I’d never go out with him. Let us speak of other things, since my ‘gentlemen’ annoy you so,” she said, lifting Norman’s letter. “I’ll try if I can decipher this sheet of hieroglyphics. Yes, he’s bought his hope for the Triple Crown and calls her True Lady after us—since we share the name Gertrude. True Lady has gone off her feed, poor dear. They are concocting a new mélange to tempt her jaded palate. Lucky Lady, she should be called.”
    She studied another passage, then looked up brightly.