The Sleeping Sword Read Free

me, but the sight of her hand on my father’s arm at dinner time, the voluptuous curve of neck and shoulder she offered him through the lamplight aroused in me a prickly sensation I recognized as shame.
    â€˜Jonas darling, it is late,’ and to avoid the hush that fell around them whenever she spoke those simple words I became an almost professional guest in other people’s houses, lingering with Aunt Faith and her daughter Blanche from Christmas to Easter, spending easy, if well-chaperoned summers at the sea with my other Barforth cousin, Venetia. A guest, a close friend, not quite a member of any family not even my own, so that growing sharp-eyed, self-contained, careful of how and where I might tread, it was no hardship to me to go abroad to Italy and Switzerland, to acquire the accomplishments thought appropriate to the heiress—no less—of Fieldhead.
    I was as tall as my father when he came to Lucerne to fetch me home, my hair piled high and swept back in a cascade of curls, my skirts most fashionably tight in front, most fashionably and intricately draped behind, over a bustle I had learned to manage with style, having acquired by studious practice the art of kicking my train aside in order to turn smartly around, the equally precise art of sitting down. And as I demonstrated my knowledge of Italian and French and German Swiss, of painting and sculpture and as much philosophy as they had thought safe for a young lady—my flair for mathematics being considered quite unladylike—I found him far less exacting, an easier or perhaps just an older man than I remembered. I had gained not only an understanding of art and science but of humanity—or so I imagined—and now that my father was no longer the centre of my universe, now that I was the polished Miss Grace Agbrigg whose experiences had ranged far beyond the confines of Cullingford, I believed I could be at peace with him.
    â€˜You see it all through such young eyes,’ Aunt Faith had said, but my eyes were kinder now—I thought, I hoped—while my tongue might even school itself, in the interests of domestic harmony, to call my father’s wife ‘mamma’.
    She was on the carriage drive to greet us, smooth, impassive, her gown of chocolate coloured silk drawn into a modest bustle, nothing but a fall of lace at neck and hem to relieve its housekeeper’s plainness. But the fabric itself was very rich, the cross at her throat was of massive gold, there were rings of great value on her patiently folded, housekeeper’s hands, her voice speaking its soft welcome, her eyes going beyond me to my father, wryly conveying to him, ‘So she’s home again. Ah well—we must make the best of it, you and I.’ And everything was the same, exactly as it had always been and as I had known it would be.
    There were great things astir in Cullingford. My cousin Blanche was to be richly married, which was the destiny Blanche Barforth had always envisaged. My other Barforth cousin, Venetia, was believed not for the first time to have involved herself with an unsuitable man. While as to myself, for all my new found philosophy and compassion, it was very clear to me from the hour of my return that the only way I could ever restore harmony to my father’s house was by leaving it.

Chapter Two
    My cousin, Blanche Barforth, was married on a sparkling summer morning, her veil of gauze embroideries mistily revealing the silver and ivory tints of her hair and skin, her long, quiet hands clasping their bouquet of apricot carnations and white roses. She looked fragile and mysterious, passive as a lily, the prize men seek for their valour and expect for their cunning. A most perfect bride.
    She was not, of course, in love nor did she wish to be. She was merely following to its logical conclusion her personal and undeniably excellent strategy of doing the right thing at the right time and doing it magnificently. In the