Read Online The Interrupted Tale by Maryrose Wood - Free Book Online Page A

nearby. Penelope had often suspected that he was watching her and the children. She had come to think it was out of friendship, for he had been distinctly helpful to them on several occasions—but had he merely been spying on them all along?
    Lord Fredrick rose and paced the length of his study. “The moment I laid eyes on those three, barking and running wild in the forest, it came to me. ‘Eureka!’ I thought. Three children raised by wolves. If they can be taught to stop scratching and howling, then maybe . . . well, maybe so can I.” He gestured with his cigar. The trail of smoke seemed to form letters in the air that disappeared before they could be read. “I had Constance place the advertisement, though I put in the bit about ‘experience with animals strongly preferred.’ Then you showed up. And you do seem to have a knack for handling them, Miss Lumley. They’ve never bitten you, have they?”
    Penelope’s mind clickety-clacked like an abacus, trying to sort out this new information, but Lord Fredrick’s question demanded an answer. “No, my lord. They have not,” she said meekly.
    His study was filled with taxidermy, and Lord Fredrick wandered from one lifeless creature to the next, idly petting their sawdust-filled heads. “The truth is, Miss Lumley, I’m sick of it. Sick of missing Christmas parties and openings on the West End, just because they fall on the full moon. I try to keep track, but that blasted almanac won’t stay put.” Nervous, he glanced out the window of his study. “The moon is always catching me unawares.”
    Penelope was no astronomer, of course, but she understood enough to know that the moon had been keeping a rather predicable schedule for countless thousands of years. She resisted the urge to point this out to Lord Fredrick. Instead she replied, “My lord, are you suggesting that I try to teach you to stop acting so wolfishly, just as I have taught the children?”
    â€œWhy not? But my condition only comes upon me when the moon is full. So there won’t be many chances for lessons. You’ll have to work quickly. And you can’t tell a soul, of course. Will you do it?”
    What a plot twist this was! Not only was she not being fired, Lord Fredrick Ashton himself wanted to become one of her pupils! It would make a thrilling conclusion to her CAKE speech, if only she were not sworn to secrecy. Yet at the same time Penelope feared Lord Fredrick was being optoomuchstic (that is to say, he had taken his optimism much, much too far) in thinking she could help him.
    After some consideration, she replied, “Sir, if you wish to proceed with lessons, of course I will oblige, but I should warn you—the children’s circumstances are different from yours. They have some wolfish habits, true, but the moon plays no part. It has more to do with their upbringing among the animals of the forest, as if they spoke English with a charming accent left over from their native tongue. In your case, I believe it would be helpful to know more about this family legacy your father spoke of.” She paused, and recalled the warning words of Madame Ionesco. “Have you ever considered that the Ashtons might be under some sort of a curse?”
    He flinched at the word. “Curses? Poppycock! And what if there were such a thing? Everyone’s cursed one way or another, what? One fellow has bad eyesight and howls at the moon. This one suffers heartburn; that one’s a terrible dancer.”
    As he spoke, Lord Fredrick rested his hand on the head of a stuffed tiger. The glass eyes flickered yellow in the firelight. “‘It’s what you do with the curse you’re under that counts.’ That’s what Father always told me, anyway. He was full of pithy sayings like that.” He paused. “Blast, Father did use to say that! I wonder now if he was giving me some sort of clue? Pity