The Viscount's Revenge (The Royal Ambition Series Book 4) Read Free Page B

do not function as well as they ought?”
     
    “Never mind that,” said Richard, walking through the door at the back of the hall and out onto the shaggy grass of the lawn. “I’ve been thinking. There is nothing up with work, Amanda. It seems downright immoral to take someone’s money away from him by robbery.”
     
    And Amanda, who had been thinking that very same thought, suddenly felt cross and argumentative.
     
    “I don’t see anything so very bad in taking a few jewels and trinkets away from people who would not miss them,” she protested.
     
    “Just imagine if everyone felt like that,” replied Richard. “There would be a terrible revolution, like the one in France.”
     
    “But we are only thinking of doing it
once.
…”
     
    “Have you thought how I am to get
rid
of these baubles? I don’t know any fencing kens.”
     
    “What has a fencing academy got to do with—?”
     
    “A fence is a receiver of stolen goods. Usually a low type of pawnbroker.”
     
    “Oh,” said Amanda, breaking off a shrivelled rose head. The day was a sad sort of uniform gray. The morning’s hoarfrost was only melting in the center of the lawn but still glittered whitely in the uncut shaggy grass at the verges. A starling perched on the edge of a branch and sent down one long, dismal, piping note.
     
    Woodsmoke drifted lazily across the fields from someone’s bonfire, carried by the lightest of breeze.
     
    “Oh,” said Amanda again in a dismal note like that of the starling. Then her face brightened. “But we could travel to London, Richard, and find one of these low places. We could tell, you know, by simply
looking
at the pawnbroker. The marks of his evil life would be writ on his features. Or rather, that’s what they say in the sort of books I read.”
     
    “We’ll see.” Richard shrugged, fighting down a rosy dream of venturing down noisome London alleys with only his father’s rusty sword as protection. “At least we are taking some sort of action. We may as well go to this ball. Perhaps some grand person might like to employ me as a secretary.”
     
    Amanda giggled. “Not unless he doesn’t want to read his own letters. Your writing is atrocious.”
     
    “Then I shall run away to sea,” said Richard cheerfully. “You can dress in boy’s clothes and come along as a cabin boy and we’ll sail to South America and find gold.”
     
    “And I shall come back a fine lady,” sang Amanda, dancing across the lawn.
     
    Richard laughed, running after her. “There’s work to be done, I have logs to chop and you have all those berries to turn into jam.”
     
    He put an arm around her waist, and, laughing together, they went into the house.
     
    They had had a long childhood, unmarred by any of the doubts and fears of adolescence. Amanda’s dreams of love and marriage were still those of a schoolgirl.
     
    The twins were about to be forced to grow up.
     

2
     
    Friday seemed quite far away one moment and then it was upon them. Aunt Matilda was the calmest of the three, the smell of hot hair from the curling tongs, the smells of scent and new silk and pomade reminding her of the days of her youth.
     
    Her busy needle had transformed the sea-green silk into a demure ball gown with puffled sleeves and deep flounces at the hem. She had bravely sacrificed one of her old silk gowns to trim the hem with a thin border of gold silk and to make Amanda a handsome gold silk stole. Amanda had a pair of white kid gloves, although the palms were somewhat soiled. At last it was decided they would have to do and Amanda must remember never to show the palms of her gloves.
     
    Amanda’s hair had been curled and brushed out and curled again, and each time it fought its way back into a soft aureole of auburn frizz.
     
    It was decided to leave it as it was and decorate it with a pretty crown of ivy leaves, fashioned by Richard. He threaded the leaves with a gold watch chain and ornamented the base of each leaf