Read Online Amy Lake by The Marquess Takes a Fall - Free Book Online

to.”
    “Maddie does, as well,” commented Fiona.
    His lordship seemed surprised. “Has she been schooled?”
    “Of course,” she replied, rather shortly, but she knew that the question was a fair one. Most of the children of the village did not, in fact, go to school. When her father was alive he had seen to it that anyone who was willing to spend time after a Sunday service would be taught to read; the current vicar of Saint Thomas-the-Apostle was, unfortunately, less interested.
    “She is as well educated, I imagine, as any girl or boy of her age. She reads English, of course, and Dr. Fischer is teaching her maths and . . . Greek.”
    She hesitated on the last word, knowing that it probably sounded ridiculous.
    “Greek!”
    “Yes. Dr. Fischer is a great believer in the language,” she said, unable to keep her nose from tipping just a degree higher. “He says it organizes the mind.”
    “But—”
    He hesitated, and Fiona looked at him sharply. But what? she wanted to say. But she is a village girl, and will never have need of such knowledge? Fiona did not add that she was learning classical Greek herself, and was making her way slowly through Xenophon. For Maddie it was, perhaps, a game. The girl seemed to soak up every new word and never forget. For Fiona, it was something different. Difficult, yes, but each sentence of the ancient authors was as bracing as a gust of chill air, and the clarity of the writing seemed to make her own life clearer.
    When she read Greek she could relax and forget everything else.
    She was not sure Lord Ashdown would understand. How could he know that that this was her greatest worry, that Madelaine—who was as bright and intellectually curious as any child she had ever met—would never find a life where these traits were valued, would never find a person to value them?
    But his lordship’s next words surprised her. “That’s extraordinary,” said Colin. “I have some knowledge of the subject—”
    Of course he had.
    “—and I would love to read with her.”
    A comment which gained him a wide smile from Mrs. Marwick.
      * * * *
    Lord Ashdown was always perfectly polite to Mrs. Groundsell. They shared suppers with the woman, a circumstance made more bearable, and indeed almost amusing, as long as Dee was present. Agnes would begin a long-winded bout of flattery and obsequiousness directed at his lordship—whose eyes sometimes glazed over, Fiona thought—when the doctor would interrupt to ask her about some ache or pain that she had recently complained of. One could almost see the conflict within Mrs. Groundsell’s mind—the lord or the doctor?—and she usually settled on complaints.
    “You are a martyr to the cause,” Fiona said to Dee after one such meal.
    “’Tis only from concern for my patient. My reputation would suffer if Lord Ashdown died of boredom after we’ve worked so hard to heal his leg.”
    But suppers were about as much as a recently-injured gentleman could bear. His lordship made the habit, with Maddie on patrol outside to give fair warning, of being at rest in his room whenever Agnes Groundsell returned from her day of tea-drinking and gossip at the post office. So he was not there to notice that one day she brought Mrs. Marwick a letter.
    “Oh,” said Fiona, frowning at the envelope. She had gotten only a handful of letters in her life, most of them notes of condolence sent after Joseph’s death.
    She couldn’t imagine who it was from—the handwriting was unfamiliar, and there was no return—and she did not wish to read it with Mrs. Groundsell hovering nearby. “Thank you,” she told Agnes firmly, putting it aside. “I must see to our dinner.”
    There was nothing the woman could say to that and she left a few minutes later, as Fiona knew she would. Agnes disliked the kitchen, Mrs. Marwick had decided, a place where someone might expect her to peel a potato. Fiona waited a few minutes, curious all the while, until she was sure that Mrs.