Read Online Aunt Dimity and the Duke by Nancy Atherton - Free Book Online Page A

From her balcony Emma could look out over the great lawn and the castle ruins. She wasn’t quite high enough to look down into the ruins, but a few fortuitous gaps in the walls revealed the wrought-iron finial of the birdcage arbor. The dome-shaped finial was almost as elaborate as the arbor itself. It looked like a smaller birdcage set atop a much larger one, and it, too, was liberally embellished with decorative ironwork. She could see the roof of the chapel as well, pointing like the prow of a ship over the vast sweep of the Channel, where a bank of dark clouds was blowing in from the west, filling the air with the scent of rain.
    Emma leaned on the balustrade and sighed. She didn’t know what to make of Penford Hall. The chapel, the castle, the wonderful arbor, even the odd, stiff collar worn by the storklike head butler, all hailed from an earlier era. Yet every time she turned around she saw evidence that the twentieth century was alive and well at Penford Hall—Hallard’s laptop computer, Newland’s hip-slung radio, Gash’s pocket telephone. Emma felt as though she stood with a foot in two worlds, and knew that she didn’t belong in either.
    She certainly didn’t belong in such a lovely room. The rose suite was aptly named. The nightstand, the four-poster, and the writing desk, adorned with a discreet burgundy telephone and a jeweled enameled clock, were made of rosewood. The creamy walls were hung with framed botanical illustrations, hand-colored woodcuts depicting roses from bud to blossom. The quilted satin coverlet on the four-poster was embroidered with a sprinkle of crimson rosebuds, and the pair of plump chairs before the tiled fireplace were upholstered in a pattern of blowsy grandifloras.
    A dressing room and bathroom adjoined the bedroom. Emma’s skirts had been hung in the wardrobe; her sweaters placed in the cedar-lined drawers of the dresser. Her plastic comb and brush had been carefully arranged beside a silver-backed brush and a tortoiseshell comb on the skirted dressing table. Her travel bottles of shampoo and hair conditioner had been set within reach of a deep tub boxed round with mahogany.
    Closing the balcony door against the freshening breeze, Emma looked at the beautiful bedroom, and groaned. Clearly, an error—a whole string of errors—had been made. The duke had misread the Pyms’ message, misunderstood the reason for her visit, and mistaken her for someone else. If he hadn’t hurried her so, she’d have explained that she hadn’t been sent by his aunt to restore the chapel garden.
    Not that she didn’t want to. The pleasure of touring a garden couldn’t compare with the joys of creating one. It was an impossible task, of course. Even a professional gardener would need more than three months to bring the chapel garden back to life again, regardless of the high-tech gardening gadgetry the duke might see fit to supply. Still, she thought wistfully, it would have been an unforgettable three months.
    Her reflections were interrupted by a knock at the door, followed closely by the entrance of a petite blond teenager who was, unmistakably, the maid. Her starched white apron, dove-gray uniform, and white cap, with its ribbons and lace, looked as though they’d been borrowed from the BBC’s costume department, and her curtsy was equally anachronistic. Emma’s thoughts swerved from space-age gadgets to Edwardian manners, and once more she had the jangled sensation of coming slightly unstuck in time.
    “I’m Mattie, miss, Crowley’s granddaughter,” the maid announced shyly. Mattie showed Emma a luxuriant blue terry-cloth robe in the wardrobe, then went soberly about her tasks, drawing a bath, closing the drapes, and laying a fire, while Emma changed out of her soiled skirt.
    Mattie came to life only once, when Emma asked for her advice on what to wear for supper. After surveying Emma’s limited wardrobe gravely, she selected the one nice dress Emma had packed, a calf-length jersey