Read Online In Distant Fields by Charlotte Bingham - Free Book Online Page A

leg.’
    â€˜You’re teasing me, Mr Wavell.’
    â€˜I wish I were, Miss Rolfe.’
    â€˜But he’ll be in agony!’
    â€˜One of my grandfathers was in the Crimea,Father told me, He had his leg amputated without anything at all. No whisky, nothing, not even a chair leg.’
    â€˜How purely dreadful.’
    Harry and Kitty glanced at each other momentarily.
    In the distance the sound of guns came towards them, carried on a winter wind. Kitty pushed aside the image of dead birds falling silently from a sky that had now lost its bravely determined sun, and seconds later she excused herself and hurried into the house, leaving Harry standing by himself, staring over the familiar parkland, which now, for some reason he could not say, suddenly appeared to him to be vaguely different from before.
    Kitty scratched on Partita’s door.
    â€˜Come in, come in, do,’ Partita called. ‘I am so glad you are here, I am in seventeen different minds as to how I look.’
    â€˜You look stunning, Tita,’ Kitty assured her, before noting Partita’s day dress that was still lying where she had discarded it on a chaise longue. She turned away and then turned back as she saw there were bloodstains all down the skirt. She was so squeamish, the very thought of what must be the beater’s blood spilling all over Partita was enough to make her feel quite faint.
    â€˜You really will enjoy the servants’ ball,’ Partita continued before noticing Kitty’s expression. ‘Are you all right?’ She peered at Kitty. ‘Gracious, youlook white to the lips. Don’t tell me, it’s my dress! Don’t mind it, really, it is only blood,’ she reassured her, taking Kitty’s hand. ‘Fellow didn’t die or anything. He just had the shot taken out of his beam. Mamma did a first-rate job, as usual. She really would have made a number-one surgeon – but there you are – instead she mends and patches here whenever she can. So don’t worry – if you break an ankle dancing tonight, Mamma will have you back on your feet again as soon as you can say Viennese waltz!’
    With one final look at her reflection, Partita swept out of her room, pulling Kitty after her.
    Kitty found that Partita was right. There was no ceremony, no protocol and no precedence at the servants’ ball, other than the usual pattern of general polite behaviour that was always observed at Bauders.
    The Duchess, in deference to the importance of the occasion, took care to sport her tiara, always known affectionately among her children as ‘the family fender’, so everyone else followed suit and dressed in their best and finest gowns and jewellery, knowing that the servants would wish it. The family, after all, were the main attraction and they had to dress up; if they did not dress up, the servants would fear to, and half the fun of the evening would have been extinguished.
    Everyone that worked at Bauders had looked forward to the ball for months. It was, after all, the one night of the year when they could allbe expected to be at their best, the women’s dresses being either borrowed finery, or homemade gowns sewn by doting grandmothers, while the men wore their liveries, as appropriate.
    â€˜Mamma always looks forward to this ball more than any other, because she really is bohemian ,’ Partita remarked as she and Kitty stood at the side, fanning themselves and taking in the scene.
    Kitty was amazed, not only by the amount of people there – so vast was the castle there were people she had never set eyes on soon crowding the room – but also by the atmosphere, which was more lively than anything she had known.
    The opening dance was an old-fashioned waltz, which the Duke led off with his head housekeeper, the stately Mrs Coggle. They were followed almost immediately on to the floor by the Duchess and Mr Wavell.
    â€˜Wavell dances really quite well,