Read Online The Lady of Lyon House by Jennifer Wilde - Free Book Online

severe, serious old men with such sober eyes and tight mouths. I don’t see myself hanging alongside them in an ornate gold frame.”
    â€œHave you always lived at Lyon House?” I asked.
    â€œYes. My father was the second son; his misfortune. He went into the Army, and later my mother followed him there. I was born in Calcutta. My mother slowly expired under the climate, and she died three years after my birth. I was sent back to England to live here in Devonshire. When I was seven, my father died of the fever in Bengal. I never knew either of my parents.”
    â€œHow very sad,” I said.
    â€œSo you and I have something in common,” he said lightly, flicking the whip over the horse’s back. “Both orphans, but we’ve turned out rather nicely, don’t you think?”
    I asked him about Oxford, wishing to divert the conversation from its rather maudlin course. Edward Lyon launched into a colorful account of his exploits among the halls of ivy. He had been shockingly poor in all his studies and had managed to leave the school only through the grace of a flock of tutors and the strength of the family name. He told me about his drinking and gambling and the mountain of debts, about the frolicksome escapades that had threatened to send him home in disgrace. He told me how he had wanted to throw everything to the winds and run away to Greece with a young companion and write poetry among the ruins.
    â€œByron’s influence, you know. Never came to anything. I stayed to take my exams and, believe it or not, passed them all. Rather a lark, the whole thing.”
    â€œAnd so now you are back at Lyon House, champing at the bit,” I remarked.
    â€œNot champing exactly. Restless—or at least I was until now. Now Lyon House seems delightfully promising.”
    â€œYou’re being gallant again,” I said.
    â€œDreadful of me. You’ll have to learn to put up with it, Julia.”
    The horse trotted down the curving gray road. We passed fields of grain, waving golden brown in the breeze, and tenant farms, all neat and clean, square white houses with thatched roofs, large red barns, pastures with cows grazing beneath the trees. The pale blue sky was momentarily blotted out as we turned into a long avenue of trees, their branches joining overhead to form a tunnel. Sunlight sifted through them and dappled the road with specks of gold. I looked up at the dark green leaves, seeing occasional patches of sky when they separated. The horse’s hooves pounded on the firm packed road.
    â€œDevonshire is lovely,” I said.
    â€œParticularly at this time of year,” Edward Lyon replied. “There are flowers everywhere, if you care for that sort of thing.”
    â€œYou don’t?”
    â€œNot madly, no. Corinne does. Her gardens are famous in these parts. They’re her great pride.”
    We passed over a gray stone bridge that spanned a small river that bubbled over flat white pebbles. Willow trees dripped their jade green branches along the white sand bank and into the blue water. He told me that the stream wound through the Lyon estate, passed through the village and eventually went out into the sea, a few miles away. We passed another farm. A farmer was plowing in a field, turning over rich black soil with his primitive plow. There was a patch of woods, and then a clearing filled with scarlet-orange poppies growing in wild profusion. Their odor was heady. I closed my eyes to savor it.
    â€œThe country has a strange effect on people,” Edward Lyon remarked as we drove over another stone bridge. “Some people fall in love with it immediately and some immediately grow nervous and long for the pavements of the city. I fall somewhere in between the two categories. Is this your first time in the country?”
    â€œYes it is,” I replied, “and it is a revelation.”
    Edward Lyon smiled. He flicked the whip again and the horse moved at