Read Online Spider Light by Sarah Rayne - Free Book Online

happened straight after they woke up. Maud hated the early-morning times most of all; she always felt crumpled and stale when she woke up, and thought that if she had to be prodded by Thomasina’s hands and fingers and be made to prod Thomasina back, she would have much preferred to get out of bed and wash, clean her teeth and brush her hair first.
    But there were compensations. Three days after that night they had driven into the nearby town to talk to someone about artists’ materials, and had returned to Quire House with the forward seat of the carriage piled with packages containing silky paintbrushes, sticks of charcoal, blocks of satiny paper and–best of all–a real easel which was to be set up in the music room.
    ‘That will be your very own room,’ said Thomasina watching Maud unpack her parcels and smiling indulgently. ‘And next week we’ll see about a new piano.’
    So really, being prodded and licked a few times each night (and some mornings), was quite a modest price to pay for such bounty. Maud thought that surely to goodness she could learn to put up with it.
    Apart from the inevitability of ‘It’, Maud’s days at Quire were filled with good things. Sketching in the park where you could make the trees appear to have faces–‘How very macabre,’Thomasina said when she saw them–and mastering new piano pieces. She was trying to move away from the delicate filigree sounds of Chopin and Debussy, to more ambitious works: Mozart, Beethoven, Paganini.
    ‘That’s a bit gloomy,’ said Thomasina, listening to Maud playing Schumann’s piano arrangement of one of Paganini’s Caprices . ‘What’s it supposed to represent?’
    Maud had already realized that Thomasina, so kind and generous, had absolutely no glimmering of the intriguing darknesses you could find inside music, or the way it had a voice that told you things you had not known. But she tried to explain about Paganini, who had composed beautiful eerie music, and had been such a virtuoso on the violin that at one time he had even been suspected of being in league with the devil.
    ‘I’m not surprised after hearing that,’ said Thomasina caustically.
    And then, on the very evening of Thomasina’s meeting at Latchkill, while they were having dinner, came the bolt from the blue.
    Thomasina said she wanted Maud to have a child.
    At first Maud stared at Thomasina in bewilderment, because although she had only the sketchiest idea of how babies were born, she did know that a man had to be involved.
    But Thomasina said what a lovely thing it would be–a little baby of their very own to look after and bring up. It would mean that Thomasina would have an heir (or heiress) for Quire House and the farms and cottages. This was not the main reason of course, but it was something to consider.
    Maud listened to all this, and then nervously broached the question of the man, to which Thomasina replied quite casually that there would have to be a man, of course, but that was nothing to worry about. These things could be very easily arranged; she would see to it all, and would tell Maud what had to be done.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Thomasina Forrester was not much given to introspection–life was too busy for that–but during these last few weeks she had several times paused to wonder how it was that something could slyly trickle into your mind and end in almost taking possession of you.
    A child. That was the idea that had come from nowhere and had gradually come to occupy her mind so overwhelmingly. A child who could be brought up in all Quire’s traditions, and who would one day inherit the place and carry those traditions forward into the twentieth century. People said it was wrong to become too attached to buildings and old customs, that these things did not matter, but they mattered to Thomasina because she had been brought up believing in them. She loved Quire with a fierce possessiveness. She would like to think of it going on and on, lived in by people