The Battling Bluestocking Read Free Page B

must have arrived at Shaldon Park.”
    Though he was quite puffed up with offended indignation, Lord Gordon was momentarily diverted by Jessica’s words and cast a glance out the window. The respite was a brief one, however, and he soon renewed his tirade, assuring her that as master of the house in which she was presently residing, he did indeed have every right to scold, and adding a catalog of Jessica’s misbehavior over the past five or six years’ worth of visits to Gordon Hall. Though she did not interrupt, she paid not the slightest heed to him now, fixing her interest instead upon the lovely hedge-protected park through which they were passing and upon the distant occasionally glimpsed view, beyond the tall, thick hedges and a wide variety of flowering and deciduous trees, of the gray Atlantic, which had become visible again as a result of their having been traveling steadily uphill. A few moments later, she enjoyed a brief view of gray water from either window, for Shaldon Park was located just at the point where Cornwall narrows before flaring into the rounded hook known as Land’s End or, more properly, the Penwith Peninsula. The neck of the peninsula being a mere four miles wide at that point, visitors to Shaldon Park were thus rewarded on clear days and from specific vantage points with a spectacular view of the Atlantic to the north and west and the English Channel to the south.
    “Tell me about Sir Brian Gregory,” Jessica said, suddenly curious to know more about the man who owned Shaldon Park.
    Since she had cut into his lecture mid-sentence, Lord Gordon looked more offended than ever, but because he could not resist puffing off his knowledge of the local gentry, he responded more temperately than might otherwise have been the case.
    “Undoubtedly the wealthiest landowner in this part of Cornwall,” he said grandly. “Owns a dozen mines here, in Devon, and in Somerset, plus a plantation—sugar, I believe—in the Indies.”
    “Goodness,” Jessica said, properly impressed. “Have I ever had the privilege of meeting this King Midas?”
    Lord Gordon frowned in disapproval of her levity, but his lady shook her head. “I cannot think that you have,” she replied, “for he was abroad when you visited us last year, and I think he was nearly always gone to London for the Season just prior to your annual visit to us. I know he generally departs several weeks before we do. He does occasionally favor us with a call, and twice he has accepted invitations to dine, but we rarely meet him in London, and being a bachelor, he does not entertain here. He’s very handsome,” she added with a sidelong glance at her husband. “At least, I think he is.”
    “Rubbish,” pronounced her spouse. “Man’s a fine rider to the hounds…A Melton man, you know…keeps a snug little box in Leicestershire. Excellent seat. But he pays scant heed to the proper mode of fashion. Dresses all by guess. Not the sort of fellow to attract the ladies at all.” Lord Gordon smoothed his coat with a finicking finger as if to punctuate his statement.
    “My goodness, Cyril,” Jessica murmured dulcetly, “how well you understand our sex.”
    “Bound to,” he replied, puffing out his cheeks. “Been on the town since I don’t know when. A goodly number of years—must be twenty by now, I expect. Fancy I ought to know a point more than the devil.”
    “Indeed.” She smiled at him sweetly, winked at her startled sister, then leaned forward to peer out the window, hoping to catch a view of the house that went with the beautiful park. Dusky pink wild roses were budding along the roadside, and daisies waved their cheerful heads in a nearby grassy meadow. Then, just ahead and above them on the hillside, loomed the house. It was built in the Palladian style of mellow South Somerset sandstone from the Hamdon Hall quarries, its broad central facade domed in white Luxulyanite, an attractive porphyritic granite quarried from the Cornish