Read Online The Lily Brand by Sandra Schwab - Free Book Online Page A

whom, who had a new bonnet or a new walking dress. Lillian usually just stared out of the window without seeing anything.
    “Nanette, have you seen it?” Aunt Louisa asked the older woman, who sat knitting in a corner of the room. “It is truly charming, is it not?”
    Lillian magicked a smile on her face as she stepped beside her aunt to admire the fan, which was laid out on the small side table in front of them. The smooth ivory plates of the fan were, indeed, embellished with an Arcadian scene, showing a woman in a shift cuddling close to a donkey-headed man. Lillian touched the fan with the tip of her finger. How curious this was—a man with a donkey head.
    “And so very clever,” Aunt Louisa went on and clapped her hands in delight. “To send you a fan with a scene from the play we are to attend tonight.”
    Lillian, now truly enveloped in violet perfume, nodded and smiled and kept her ignorance to herself. There had not been many books in Château du Marais. They were things Camille had no use for.
    All at once, clouds seemed to darken the sunny March sky, and Lillian had to fight to keep her smile in place. “Will I take it with me to the theater, then?” she asked quietly.
    “Of course , my dear, of course.” Aunt Louisa turned to Nanette for support. “We want our Lillian to encourage the viscount’s suit, do we not? A very eligible young man, that Alexander Markham. And very handsome, too, if I may say so. I know his mother.” This hardly came as a surprise to Lillian. Aunt Louisa seemed to know everybody in London. “A very nice woman. Very elegant, very refined. She was quite a catch in her time. How devastated she was when her nephew was reported to be missing in action two years or so ago. Dreadful story that. But thankfully, the boy returned. He looked horribly haggard for some time, they say, but nothing like poor Ponsonby. Have you heard of Frederick Ponsonby, my dear?”
    Lillian nodded. Aunt Louisa had already told her all about Frederick Ponsonby.
    “A stab in the lungs is no laughing matter, or so they say. That boy should be happy to be alive. Well, Murgatroyd Sacheverell is probably happy to be alive, too, I say, even though he just looked haggard for a month or two. Now, that one is quite a catch, too. The Earl of Ravenhurst. A girl could do worse.” She gently patted Lillian’s cheek. “But this is nothing our girl has to be concerned about. You are quite well off, yourself, my dear, if I may say so. To have caught the attention of Alexander Markham, Viscount Perrin! He will be a marquis one day, you know.” Her face took on a dreamy expression. “The Most Honorable the Marchioness of Waldron—wouldn’t that be a fine title for our Lillian?”
    ~*~
    He came to their box that evening, during the interval. He brought a napkin and oranges, which he proceeded to peel and separate into juicy slices to tempt the ladies. Their fresh scent mingled with the perfume of violets as Aunt Louisa chatted on about dreadful incidents she had seen happening on and off stage. “And the night Drury Lane burnt down…” Like a trapped bird, her fan fluttered against her heaving bosom. “The whole sky across London was lit up by the blaze. And the moon was all red that night, blood red…” She sighed, rather theatrically so.
    To Lillian it seemed as if going to the theater had a certain stimulating effect on her aunt, and she nearly smiled when she heard her grandfather’s snort behind her. Yet Aunt Louisa carried on, lost in memories of bygone Seasons. “And the elegant Apollo on the roof sank into the sea of flames and was seen nevermore. Very tragic, very tragic that. What a fate for a god! Even for one who was just cast in bronze.” She sadly shook her head. “And that just after Covent Garden had burnt down in the year before.”
    “A dreadful story,” the Viscount Perrin said wistfully as if he had seen the blaze reflected on London’s sky himself. He offered a slice of orange to