Keeping the Castle Read Free Page A

news is of much greater import than that! It is that Lord Boring has arrived at home, just in time for the ball, and he has brought a large group of gentleman friends! ”
    “Really, Clara!” murmured my mother, sending a reproachful glance in my direction. “Our dear monarch’s health is a matter of much greater import than a neighbor’s arrival at his home, with or without friends.”
    “Oh, of course I did not mean that that would not be a most dreadful calamity. It is only that . . . it seems so excessively odd that Miss Crawley would suggest that the king should die. I hardly thought it likely.”
    I cast my eyes to the heavens. The king had been ailing for years now, so much so that his son had been named regent, to rule in his place.
    “‘Let us sit upon the ground,’” suggested Prudence, pleased to be able to produce an appropriate quotation, “‘And tell sad stories of the death of kings; / How some have been deposed, some slain in war, / Some—’”
    “And of course, I knew you would be interested in the advent of such a large group of gentlemen into the neighborhood.” Luckily, Clara thought nothing of cutting Prudence’s recital short; had she not, we all would still have been sitting there when poor King Richard was carried out in his coffin in Act Five and the curtain fell.
    “We are interested,” I admitted.
    “Yes, dear Clara, do tell us who is coming,” begged Charity.
    “Why, he has brought his friend Major Dunthorpe, and the Hadleigh twins of Cornwall, and the Marquis of Bumbershook. Five young men counting His Lordship!”
    “How delightful,” said my mother, and, once Clara had been guided to the safest chair (much of our furniture was apt to collapse without warning), we settled down to an amicable discussion of the young men’s fortunes, manners, and characters. True, Charity once expressed her pique at Clara’s comment that I would be the “reigning beauty of the ball,” by a mean little pinch disguised as a sisterly pat on my arm, and Prudence twice talked over my mother’s remarks and thrice flatly contradicted her, but as our little chats went, it was tolerably pleasant.
    In their place, to be honest, I would find it irritating to have a much younger stepsister forever thrown up to me as the beauty of the family. However, since they each possessed a good dowry, while I had nothing but a pretty face to offer a husband, beyond an ancient name, one hundred a year, and a tumbledown pretend castle belonging to my four-year-old brother, I did not pity them overly much. And while pinches and barbed comments aimed at myself might be pardoned, I found it difficult to forgive rudeness towards my gentle mama.
    Greengages brought in tea. (I had made the cakes myself, tho’ this was a carefully kept secret—we could not afford a pastry chef or even a cook with a passing acquaintance with the art.) The tea itself was rather insipid, as it was our household habit to dry and reuse the leaves for a fortnight before replenishing them, and the liquid inevitably lost color and flavor. However, it was steaming hot, which was the great thing on a chilly April day like the present one, so we were quite snug. If the fire was perhaps a bit small to warm us, it was no matter; the thought of Lord Boring’s upcoming festivities provided animation and cheer.
    Prudence, Charity, and Clara were deep in conference over not their own dresses for the ball, as this subject had long since been canvassed, but rather the probable attire of every other young lady of the neighborhood, when Greengages reentered the room.
    “Sir Quentin and Lady Throstletwist,” he quavered, and cast an apprehensive look at the tea tray, no doubt wondering how long the cakes would hold out at this rate. The knight and his lady, frequent visitors to our home, looked around the room in search of the seating least likely to tip over or poke them in awkward portions of their anatomy.
    “Believe this one will hold your