Seacliff Read Free

“All right, all right, if you’re going to whine like a pup.”
    “Whine?” Gwen’s back straightened. She was shorter than Caitlin, plumper but not as voluptuous. Her hair and eyes were midnight, and her will just as strong. “Whine? Me?”
    Caitlin’s expression assumed a parody of sternness. “Whine,” she said sharply. Then she poked her riding crop at Gwen’s arm. “You must learn your place, Gwen. It’s not proper for a servant to rebuke her mistress.”
    “Servant? You’re calling me a servant?”
    Her lips quivered in the effort to hold back a smile. “But of course, my child.”
    “Child?”
    “Just the other day, in Eton, didn’t that duke or baron or whatever the devil he was, tell you he’d like to have you in his household for an evening or two? To help you come of age, as it were. Isn’t that what he said?”
    “Caitlin Morgan! If your father could hear you—”
    But she was forestalled when Caitlin gestured a warning and began easing her mount to the side of the road. A moment later came the rhythmic sound of carriage and horses approaching behind them. Caitlin quickly adjusted her skirts and cloak, and pushed herself forward so she rode higher in the gleaming English saddle on the chestnut’s back. She threw an apologetic glance to Gwen and began moving sedately along the grassy verge. It was disappointing to have to rein in their joking; it was something they had little time for when Morgan was home from one of his business trips. He always insisted on prim comportment, an attitude he felt befit the wife of Sir Oliver Morgan, retired major in His Majesty’s army. He did not seem to understand— or he refused to acknowledge—that she was also, and most emphatically, Caitlin Evans Morgan, daughter of David Evans and mistress of Seacliff, Cardiganshire, Wales. And no matter what Oliver or any of the others might say, it was a heritage that she most profoundly cherished.
    The carriage behind them slowed, and when she turned, she saw two pairs of matched grays approaching, each with a flowing white plume affixed to the leather strap between its ears. The coachman and footman were in scarlet and silver livery, and the closed, gold-trimmed vehicle looked impressively bright beneath its faint powdering of road dust. Within sat a bloated, powdered, and rather myopic old woman who had pulled aside the linen curtain and nodded a stiff, imperious greeting. The coach halted beside Caitlin.
    “Lady Coming,” she acknowledged, thinking that of all people she had to encounter on the road it would have to be one of the most self-important harridans she’d ever met.
    “My dear,” the older woman said. “Enjoying the air, I see.”
    “We’ve just come from Egham,” she said. “We ordered some stained glass for my husband’s home.” She smiled. “Egham is such a lovely little place, don’t you think? And the work there is positively superb.”
    “It is indeed. And how are you enjoying your stay in England, child?”
    Her smile stiffened somewhat, but her response was nonetheless genuine: “Oh, lovely! I’ve never seen such marvelous things in my life.”
    From the shadowed confines of the coach came a barely stifled laugh. Lady Coming’s sister, no doubt, Caitlin thought. “But it’s true,” she insisted.
    “Of course it is, my dear,” Lady Coming said. “I hear that response from all visitors to our country. They just cannot seem to get enough of it.”
    Caitlin frowned in puzzlement. “But I’m not really a visitor, you know. That is, I do spend almost as much time here as I do in Wales.”
    A snort from the sister, and Lady Coming smiled tolerantly. “Wales, my child, is not really England.”
    “Well, I know that,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended, “but it’s been part of the country for nearly two hundred years. More, if I’m not mistaken. And certainly far longer than the place those sour-faced Scots call a country.”
    “Yes,” Lady Coming said