Read Online The Deception by Joan Wolf - Free Book Online Page B

demanded.
    He stared at me in amazement. “Apologize to Noakes? Whatever for?”
    “For calling him a mutton-face.”
    His mouth dropped open.
    “Apologize,” I said again.
    He closed his mouth. “Sorry, Noakes,” he muttered. “Didn’t mean to insult you, you know.”
    The old man’s look of displeasure did not change. “Will you be staying for dinner, Mr. Harry?”
    Harry looked at me once more. “Yes.”
    Mr. Noakes’s frown deepened.
    I regarded Harry’s riding breeches and boots and asked him what he had done with his horse.
    “I know Lambourn is lightly staffed, so I left him at the stable,” he replied.
    I nodded my approval of such thoughtfulness. “I was just going out for a ride, but I should be happy to offer you some tea first.”
    His gray eyes, which were considerably lighter than his brother’s, flicked downward from my face. Then he said, “Madeira would be better than tea.”
    I knew what he was looking at. The Noakeses had been scandalized when I had first appeared in the divided skirt I wore for riding. It was a costume Papa had designed himself. “You can’t continue to wear breeches,” he had said when he presented me with the skirt when I was fourteen. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll ruin the best seat I’ve ever seen by making you ride aside.”
    I had been so pleased by the compliment that I had not even objected to giving up my breeches.
    The divided skirt came to my ankles, and I wore it with high boots, so it was perfectly modest, but it had caused a sensation more than once. Everyone usually forgot about it once I was on the back of a horse.
    I invited Harry to take a seat in the library. “I don’t use the drawing room very much, so there is no fire in there,” I apologized as we sat in the two worn blue-upholstered chairs that flanked the fireplace.
    “It don’t matter,” he replied breezily. “This has always been my favorite room at Lambourn.”
    “It is my favorite room too,” I confided, looking around at the mellow book-lined walls, the big polished desk, the large globe, and the two mullioned windows that looked out over the Downs.
    Mr. Noakes came in with Madeira for Harry and tea for me. He also served us a plate of Mrs. Noakes’s delicious buttered muffins, which he put on a small table between us. I thanked him, and Harry and I helped ourselves to the food.
    “So,” Harry said after he had finished his first muffin, “tell me all about how you came to marry Adrian.”
    “What has he told you?” I asked cautiously.
    “Nothing. I’m up at Oxford, you know, and he wrote me a letter saying that he had married Charlwood’s niece and was going to rejoin Wellington inParis. He ain’t mentioned you since.”
    I chewed on my lip, regarded the small bronze statue of a dog that graced the mantelpiece, and wondered how much I should tell him.
    “Are you really married?” he asked me.
    “I am afraid that we are,” I said mournfully.
    “And you’re Charlwood’s niece?” His voice sounded incredulous.
    “I am afraid that I am.”
    “Damn,” he said, adding belatedly, “I beg your pardon.”
    I was quite accustomed to hearing men swear. “It is all right,” I said, and went on staring at the statue of the dog. It looked like some sort of a mastiff, I thought. Perhaps it was supposed to be one of King Alfred’s dogs.
    Harry took another bite of muffin, and I could feel him looking at me while he chewed. He brushed some crumbs off his lap and said, “How did it happen?”
    I removed my eyes from the dog, looked at Harry, and decided there wasn’t any point in not telling him the whole story. He would be bound to hear it from his brother one of these days.
    “How rotten for Adrian,” Harry said when at last I had finished. He scowled. “Charlwood must have loved putting the screws to him like that.”
    “I have thought about it a great deal,” I said, “and it certainly does appear as if Charlwood planned the whole episode. Otherwise he