Read Online The Emerald Swan by Jane Feather - Free Book Online Page A

as she returned to the kitchen yard. How could she be certain she could do what Lord Harcourt wanted? What kind of life did he lead in London? What kind of people would she meet? Like none she had known hitherto, of that much she was certain. And the familiar faces and voices, the familiar way of life, hard though it was, suddenly seemed very precious, with a value she had not properly appreciated.
    She paused at the rainwater butt and splashed water on her face, smoothing down her hair with wet fingers. She tried to sponge the grubby marks from her sleeve but without much effect. Milord Harcourt would be freshly shaven, his linen fresh and clean, at the breakfast table, while she looked as disreputable as any street urchin.
    She was scrubbing with renewed vigor when Gareth stepped into the kitchen yard. He watched her as she combed through her hair with her fingers, wiped her wet face on her skirt, and disconsolately examined her sleeves.
    She looked up from her ablutions and saw him in the kitchen doorway. “I beg your pardon, milord, have I kept you waiting?” She hurried over to him, confiding ruefully, “I was trying to tidy myself, but I don’t seem to have had much success.”
    “No,” he agreed, scrutinizing her with the glinting smile that always reassured her. “But then you were hardly starting from a promising point. Come, let us break our fast.” He put a hand on her shoulder, urging her ahead of him through the kitchen and into the taproom, deserted save for a serving wench laying dishes on the long scrubbed central table.
    Miranda licked her lips at the spread of coddled eggs, sirloin, manchet bread, and a pig’s head. She slid onto the long bench, her mood of loneliness and apprehension lifting. “I’m ravenous.”
    “I’m not surprised after your dawn exercise.” Gareth took up the carving knife. “Brawn? Or sirloin?”
    “Both, if it wouldn’t be greedy.” She pushed her bread trencher toward him so he could lay the slices on it, then dipped her spoon into the dish of eggs.
    The serving wench put tankards of ale beside them,curtsied, and hurried to the inglenook to rake through the previous night’s embers.
    Miranda ate in appreciative silence for a few minutes then said, “Where’s Chip? He’s disappeared.”
    “God’s in His heaven after all,” Gareth murmured. “I was wondering why my breakfast was so peaceful.”
    Miranda swung her legs over the bench and went to the window that looked out onto the street. A lad with a tray of pies passed by, shouting his wares, followed by a man pushing a handcart laden with onions and cabbages. An elderly woman was sweeping rubbish out of her house and into the kennel in the middle of the lane. She retreated hastily at the alerting cry of “Gardyloo,” just managing to escape the contents of a chamber pot hurled from a window above.
    A perfectly ordinary early-morning street scene, but there was no sign of Chip.
    Miranda returned to the table, but her appetite had gone. “I’ll just go and see if he’s still in the kitchen yard.”
    Gareth nodded amiably and took up his tankard again.
    A piercing scream brought him to his feet, knocking his tankard over, dropping his knife to the table. He was halfway to the door to the kitchen before he realized that the scream was not human, and he was through the door before the animal shrieks were joined by Miranda’s no longer melodious tones. She was yelling, wordlessly, but at such an extreme pitch of rage and pain that the sound went through his head like a knife.
    He raced through the kitchen, pushing through the circle of gawping kitchen folk crowding the door. In the yard, he stopped. Chip was screaming in high-pitchedterror, a burning brand tied to his tail. He was running round and round in panicked circles as Miranda tried to capture him amid a group of laughing louts pelting both the petrified animal and the girl with stones and lumps of horse dung.
    “Miranda, you won’t catch him if you