Read Online Lace for Milady by Joan Smith - Free Book Online Page B

Gentlemen.
    “Well, half the men doing it are so poor it is all that is keeping body and soul together,” he went on. “With the common lands enclosed they have nowhere to graze a cow, and with fellows like Clavering trapping their land so that even a hare is beyond them, what are they to do? Of course they can fish. We on the coast can at least depend on cheap and ready food from the sea.”
    We arrived at Eastbourne, a quaintly formal little place, rather elegant in appearance. McMaster went to the grain merchant, and I poked about the shops for an hour, meeting him for lunch at an inn. It was a trifle chilly on the way home. Quite a brisk breeze blew in from the ocean, and when we got to Hillcrest, I asked him in for tea. Slack was on her high ropes at having been abandoned. She had not gone to visit Lady Inglewood, after all, but had sat home the whole time to make me feel guilty.
    She succeeded only in making me angry. “Cut off your nose to spite your face if you like,” I told her, after McMaster had taken his tea and left us. In retaliation she kept from me a note that had been delivered at our door shortly after my departure. This was not given over to me till an hour after dinner, when we were sitting by the grate where we had again laid a fire. No rattling had followed the lighting, and I assumed it was at an end.
    “Oh, this note came for you after you left,” she told me then and handed me an envelope bearing a crest. I am morally certain she hadn’t forgotten it for a moment but kept it back for spite.
    “Kind of you to bother giving it to me,” I replied, mistaking it for my aunt’s stationery. Naturally, Aunt Ethelberta used nothing but crested paper. In fact, the ugly Inglewood crest designed by some totally unaesthetic person adorned many of her belongings. But this was not her crest. I did not recognize it at once, but as I was acquainted with only one other titled person, I had a fair idea it was from Clavering, as indeed it was.
    “If it is an offer to purchase Hillcrest, I will pitch it straight into the grate,” I said angrily.
    It was not an offer to purchase. It was a bare two lines scrawled in black ink in a fist that managed to be both casual and arrogant. The two lines filled the card, as Clavering’s black presence filled a room. “Please come to tea tomorrow at four o’clock,” it said, and was signed “Clavering.” Not your obedient servant, or yours truly, or anything but “Clavering.” Blunt to the point of rudeness. He could make even a social invitation an insult.
    “You should have given it to me sooner and I could have sent in our refusal,” I told her, handing the note along to her.
    “Refusal? Will you not accept?”
    “Certainly not. This is no invitation; it is a summons.”
    “I’d like to see Belview. It looks very interesting from what I can glimpse through the trees.”
    “We would be overset by mantraps along the road, I fancy. I shall not accept.” She returned the card, and I flung it into the flames.
    “Lady Inglewood says he asks no one there,” she began, trying to tempt me.
    “Which means he does not ask her.”
    “It would be fun to go to spite her.”
    “What a petty mind you hide behind that pious face, Slack. I’m ashamed of you. Well, I suppose I can’t reply before tomorrow. I don’t intend sending my servants out into the night.”
    “You might change your mind.”
    I saw Slack was eager to go. I was curious to see Belview myself but would not accept a summons. “My mind is made up.”
    We discussed the trip to Eastbourne, and I painted a rosy picture to give Slack an idea what she had missed by her sullen temper.
    “It seems I am not to go to Eastbourne and not to go to Belview. I might as well take to my bed, for it seems I am to go nowhere of any interest!”
    “You go to visit Belview if you think it is your company he seeks. But pray don’t sell Hillcrest out from under me. That is what this invitation is all about.”
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