LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

However, it was just as painful, if not more so, to see him struggling to keep up and always falling behind, and if they went far, he simply could not make it.

      At that moment, an orange cat came daintily down the banister of the stairs and made the short leap onto Angela’s shoulder. It draped itself with familiarity around her neck. Angela went up the stairs, her collection of animals following her, and along the hall to the drawing room her grandmother preferred. Along the way, another cat joined the group, this one a fat gray Persian with a face so flat that Jeremy said it looked as if it had walked into a door.

      The two dowager Lady Bridburys, both her mother and grandmother, were in the drawing room, her mother half reclining on a fainting couch and her grandmother sitting ramrod-straight near the fire. The elder Lady Bridbury let out an inelegant snort at the sight of Angela surrounded by her animals.

      “Honestly, Angela, people are going to start saying you’re odd if you persist in walking about with that entire menagerie.” She lifted her lorgnette and focused on Trey. “Especially when some of them are so … different.”

      “No, they will simply say that they fit me perfectly. Everyone already thinks I’m odd, you know.” She crossed the room and gave the old lady a peck on the cheek in greeting, then turned toward her mother. “Hello, Mama. How are you this afternoon?”

      “Not well,” her mother replied in a die-away voice. “But, then, I am rather accustomed to it. One learns to adjust.”

      “I should think you would be accustomed to it,” Angela’s grandmother, Margaret, commented. “You are never well.”

      Laura, the younger Lady Bridbury, assumed a faintly martyred look, her usual expression around her mother-in-law, and said proudly, “Yes, I do not enjoy good health. But, then, it was always so with the Babbages.”

      “Pack of weaklings.” Margaret dismissed them contemptuously. “Thank God the Stanhopes don’t suffer from such nonsense. I did not have so much as a chill all winter.”

      Laura gave her mother-in-law a rather pitying look. She had known the dowager countess for almost thirty-five years now, and she still was unable to understand why the woman took so much pride in her robust condition. In her own opinion, a woman ought to be suffering from something most of the time; otherwise, she would never get enough attention from the male members of her family.

      However, Laura knew it was useless to try to make Lady Bridbury understand any point of view other than her own, so she turned back to her daughter. “Have you been out walking, my dear? You should wrap up. You might catch a chill. I know it is April, but the wind, you know, can be so dangerous. You should wear a muffler.”

      Angela’s grandmother rolled her eyes, but Angela merely smiled at her mother and replied, “Doubtless you are right, Mama.”

      She kissed her on the cheek as well, and nodded toward Miss Monkbury, her grandmother’s self-effacing companion, who sat away from the fire, knitting. Miss Monkbury gave an odd ducking nod in reply and continued to knit. Angela sat down between her mother and grandmother, saying, “Did Jeremy come home? I saw the carriage outside.”

      “Yes. And he brought a decidedly peculiar young man with him,” Margaret answered. “An American.”

      “An American? I wasn’t aware that Jeremy even knew anyone from America.”

      “One doesn’t, normally,” Laura agreed.

      “That is one of the things that is so odd about his coming here. A Mr. Pettigrew, Jeremy said he was. Jason Pettigrew. I ask you, what sort of name is that? Sounds like a commoner, but then, I suppose all Americans are, aren’t they? He looks like a solicitor, but when I told him so, he denied it.” Her frown seemed to indicate that she suspected he had lied to her.

      “I found him rather shy,” Laura put in. It was rare that her opinion on any matter agreed with her mother-in-law, though she never disagreed directly. “Of course, he does speak in that American way, but other than that, he seemed quite gentlemanly.”

      “Yes, but what is he doing here? That is the question, Laura,” Margaret put in impatiently. “Not whether he is polite.”

      “But what is Jeremy doing here, either?” Angela asked. She, of course, lived at Bridbury year-round, and had for four years now, ever since the divorce and its attendant scandal. But Jeremy and his wife spent most of their time in London.

      “That is what I asked him,” Margaret assured her. “But he would not tell me. He said he had to talk it over with you first.” She looked affronted.

      “With me?” Angela was astonished. She loved her brother, and owed him a great deal for what he had done for her over the past few years. They had a pleasant relationship. But she could not imagine anything that he would want to discuss with her before he would discuss it with their grandmother. Angela was well aware that her position in the family was the least important of anyone’s, except perhaps Miss Monkbury’s.

      “Yes. Apparently this Mr. Pettigrew is to be a part of the discussion, also. He and Jeremy retired to the library. I have rarely been quite so astonished. However, I find that the present generation is so often graceless.” She sighed.

      Angela stared at her. “Mr. Pettigrew? But why?”

      “I just told you, I haven’t the slightest notion,” her grandmother replied acidly. “I was not taken into your brother’s confidence. You had best go to the library and ask him yourself. However, do, please, go up to your room and change into something a trifle more presentable first.”

      “Yes, Grandmama, of course.” It was useless to point out that if Jeremy was waiting for her, her grandmother might have told her so when she first came into the room. She stood up, saying, “If you will excuse me, Grandmama. Mama.”

      “Of course, dear child,” her mother responded, sniffing her lavender-scented handkerchief, obviously suffering another of her weak spells. Her grandmother gave Angela a peremptory nod.

      “And, Angela!” Margaret called out as she neared the door. “For goodness’ sake, leave those animals behind. You cannot meet this American person looking like a zookeeper.”

      “Yes, Grandmama. Perhaps I should leave the dogs here.”

      Her grandmother raised a single icy brow at this sally and waved her out of the room.

      Angela walked down the long gallery that stretched across the front of the house and into the west wing, where the bedrooms lay. She found her maid, Kate, waiting for her in her room. Kate already had one of Angela’s better dresses, a dark green velvet, spread out on the bed, and a pair of slippers to match it waiting at the foot of the bed.

      It did not surprise Angela that her personal maid was well aware that Angela was to join her brother and their surprise guest. In fact, she would not have been astonished if Kate knew why Jeremy had come to Bridbury. There was nothing as swift or as efficient as the servants’ grapevine.

      Kate, a woman much the same age as Angela, with laughing brown eyes, a wealth of chestnut hair and a buxom figure, jumped up from the chair when Angela entered and hurried over to her, clicking her tongue admonishingly. “Where in the world have you been? You look like half the county is clinging to your skirts. Out drawing them pictures again, eh?”

      “Yes, I have to confess that I was.” Angela glanced down at her skirts, a little surprised to find that several burrs and a few sticks, as well as dust and pieces of dried grass, were clinging to the hem of her dress. “I was hoping to find some flowers out already, but I could find nothing but lichen on the rocks.”

      “Well, if it isn’t flowers, it’s birds, or some kind of berry bush or something.” Kate shook her head. “I’ll tell you the truth, my lady, I can’t fathom what you see in them little flowers, growing in cracks and such, looking more like a weed than anything else.”

      “They intrigue me—so secret and hidden. It’s like finding a prize when you do spot something unique. And they’re

Скачать книгу