Read Online The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey - Free Book Online Page A

teatime, and neither
the Undines nor the otters seemed prepared to give up their game any time soon.
They might be perfectly free to play until dark and afterwards, but she did
have things to do. Reluctantly, she donned her clothing
again—reluctantly, because after the freedom of being in the water, it
seemed heavy and confining—pulled her skirts up above her knees, and
waded back to dry land.
    She stopped in the orchard long enough to retrieve her
basket of apples and her book. With the basket swinging from one hand, she took
her time strolling back to the farmhouse.
    In the late afternoon sunlight, the gray granite glowed
with mellow warmth. When winter came, the stone would look cold and forbidding,
but now, with all the doors and windows open, flowers in the window boxes, and
roses twining up trellises along the sides, it was a welcoming sight.
    Tea was over, but as she’d expected, Aunt Margherita
had left her scones, watercress sandwiches, and a little pot of clotted cream
in the kitchen under a cheesecloth. There was no tea, but there was hot water
on the stove, and she quickly made her own late repast. She arranged the apples
she’d brought in a pottery bowl on the kitchen table, and retreated to
her room to fetch her work. After her swim, she was feeling languid, and her
window seat, surrounded by ivy with a fine view of the hills and the sunset,
seemed very inviting. Uncle Sebastian would be fiddling with his
Saint
Joan,
working on the background, probably; Uncle Thomas was carving an
occasional table, a swoopy thing all organic curves. And Aunt Margherita was
probably either at her embroidery or her tapestry loom.
    Her uncles expected a great deal of her in her studies;
they saw no reason why she couldn’t have as fine an education as any
young man who could afford the sort of tutor that Sebastian’s father had
been. Granted, neither Sebastian nor Thomas had attended university, but if
they’d had the means or had truly wanted to they
could
have. So,
for that matter, could Aunt Margherita. Perhaps women could not aspire to a
university degree, but they were determined that should she choose to attend
the single women’s college at Oxford regardless of that edict, she would
be as well or better prepared than any young man who presented himself to any
of the colleges there. She was not particularly enamored of the idea of closing
herself up in some stifling building (however hallowed) for several years with
a gaggle of young women she didn’t even know, but she did enjoy the
lessons. At the moment she was engaged in puzzling her way through Chaucer in
the original Middle English, the
Canterbury Tales
having caught Uncle
Sebastian’s fancy. She had a shrewd notion that she knew what the
subjects of his next set of paintings was likely to be.
    Well, at least it will be winter by the time he gets to
them.
If she was going to have to wear the heavy medieval robes that Uncle
Sebastian had squirreled away, at least it would be while it was cold enough
that the weight of the woolens and velvets would be welcome rather than
stifling.
    At the moment, it was the Wife of Bath’s Tale that
was the subject of her study, and she had the feeling that she would get a
better explanation of some of it from Aunt Margherita than from the uncle that
had assigned it to her. Uncle Sebastian was not
quite
as broad-minded
as he thought he was.
    Or perhaps he just wasn’t as broad-minded with regard
to his “niece” as he would have been around a young woman who wasn’t
under his guardianship. With Marina, he tended to break out in odd spots of
ultra-middle-class stuffiness from time to time.
    She curled herself up in the window seat, a cushion at her
back, with her Chaucer in one hand, a copybook on her knee, and a pencil at the
ready. If one absolutely
had
to study on such a lovely late afternoon,
this was certainly the only way to do so.
     

Chapter Three
    SEBASTIAN had gone down to pick up the post in the village;
no one