Lavender Lady Read Free

Grandfather? ‘Sides, you know Hester’s mama died when she was born, Rob, so she never had a proper mama and that’s not fair either.”
    “Hush, children. I shared your mama, and you share my Grandpapa, so all is perfectly fair.” Hester quickly changed the subject. “Jamie, in the morning you had best remove your books from your bedroom. You may use my desk for your studying as long as Mr. Fairfax is with us.”
    “Thank you. I’ll not disturb your accounts.” He hesitated. “I suppose you could not tell from his conversation whether Mr. Fairfax is a university man? I do not wish to. sound conceited, but I rather think I know as much Greek as the vicar, and I should welcome assistance from someone who has studied somewhat more recently.”
    Since the Reverend Smythe had not seen the inside of a college in fifty years, not opened a Greek volume in near as long until he offered to coach Jamie, Hester considered this a reasonable request.
    “You must ask him,” she proposed. “Be tactful, though. You will not wish him to feel mortified should he be unable to help. Even if he was at Oxford or Cambridge, I daresay it is nine or ten years since. I am sure he must be thirty. Geoff, are you able to manage the horses, or shall you see if they will put them up at one of the inns?”
    “Jarvis would take ‘em at the Catherine Wheel, but we have room enough for them,” replied Geoffrey, “and I can take care of them. I’ll have to buy fodder, though, unless Jarvis will give me a bale or two. Of course, I shall get the manure for the garden, so—”
    “Geoffrey! Must you discuss such things at the dinner table, you horrid creature?” objected Alice in disgust. “Really, you grow more like a farmer every day, I do declare.”
    “And why not?” queried her brother indignantly. “I should like nothing better than to be a farmer. And I notice you do not despise the fruits of my labours, all grown in good aged cow manure.”
    Alice dropped the peach she had been about to bite into.
    “Hester!” she wailed. “Stop him, or I shall never be able to touch another morsel!”
    “And a good thing, too,” said Geoff maliciously. “You are growing positively fat, Allie.”
    “You are both at fault,” reproved Hester. “Geoff, it is not at all the thing to speak of such matters at table. Indeed, you almost put me off my food. There is no harm in being a farmer, but there is no reason you should not be a gentleman, too. And Alice, you are by far too old to indulge in squabbles like this. If your aunt invites you to London, she will think I have made a sad failure of teaching you to behave as a lady ought.”
    “Oh, Hester, I am very sorry. It is not your teaching that is at fault. I daresay my aunt will not invite me anyway. I do not think she remembers our existence.”
    “We do very well without her,” growled Jamie. “She did not offer to help when Papa died, not even when we had to sell Hilltop Manor.”
    “Lady Bardry is not particularly well-to-do, and I don’t expect any help in that direction, James. However, if I pay all expenses, I can see no reason why she should not introduce Alice to the Fashionable World and give her a proper season. She moves in the highest circles, as Papa did, you know. I was not going to tell you, lest nothing should come of it, but I have written to her suggesting just such an arrangement.”
    “The expense must come out of the estate, Hester,” protested Jamie hotly. “It is outside of enough that your fortune provides the greater part of our living. I cannot let you pay for Alice’s come-out.”
    Grandfather Stevens took an unexpected hand in the discussion. “When I settled twenty thousand pounds on Hester at her birth,” he declared pedantically, “I niver thought her papa would get through my Muriel's dowry so fast, nor that Hester’d be taking on the bringing up o’ you lot. But being as how she’s done it, I taught her how to reckon, and she’ve got it all