Read Online The Tudor Signet by Carola Dunn - Free Book Online

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    Twelve paces from one end of the drawing room to the other. Twelve paces back again. That damned Clementi sonatina was driving him mad, Emily practising the same passage over and over accompanied by the click of Miss Thorne’s knitting needles. But if he went elsewhere, he’d either have less room to pace or he’d be wandering the corridors like an unhappy ghost. He could not sit still while the doctor was with Miss Bertrand.
    “I fear you will wear a path in the carpet, Lord Malcolm,” Miss Thorne reproved him without a pause in her endless knitting of endless lengths of mustard wool. Distracted for a moment, Malcolm pitied the deserving-poor recipients of her charitable diligence.
    The Clementi stopped in the middle of a phrase. “Never mind, Uncle. The carpet is already sadly worn and Mama has been saying this age that she means to replace it.”
    “Your mama told you to practise your music, Emily,” Miss Thorne said sharply.
    “Yes, ma’am.” Emily obediently turned back to the pianoforte.
    “Sing us a song,” Malcolm suggested in desperation.
    Emily hunted through her sheet music. “Here, this is a pretty one.” She struck a few preliminary chords and warbled soulfully:
     “‘Come away, come away, death,
     “‘And in sad cypress let me be laid;
     “‘Fly away,...’“
    “For pity’s sake, not that! Not now.”
    “But it is about a gentleman dying, not a lady. Only listen:
     ‘I am slain by a fair cruel maid.’
    So it must be a man singing, must it not?”
    “Pray do not argue, Emily,” said Miss Thorne. “You will beg your uncle’s pardon at once.”
    “That is not necessary.” Malcolm ran his hand through his hair, a shocking gesture for one who claimed to be a dandy, and one which would have appalled his valet. “I’m sorry for snapping at you, Emmie. It’s just that I am dev...extremely anxious about Miss Bertrand.”
    Emily clasped her hands. “She is not really going to die, is she?”
    “We must pray that Miss Bertrand will recover,” Miss Thorne pronounced, “but any young person who goes racketing about the countryside utterly heedless of propriety must expect to bear the consequences.”
    “Propriety be damned! She’s suffering from exposure to the cold, not lack of propriety!”
    Emily’s shocked glee more than Miss Thorne’s affronted sniff made him regret his own lapse from decorum. He was about to apologize for his language, if not the sentiment, when Lilian came in. Eagerly he went to meet her.
    “What does he say?”
    “He fears she may develop an inflammation of the lungs, Malcolm. She must be watched constantly lest she grow feverish or start to cough. For the present she is resting as comfortably as may be expected.”
    “Thank heaven your Miss Pennick had prepared for a hot bath and warmed her bed before we got back, as well as sending for Dr. Barley.”
    “Pennick takes a great deal too much upon herself,” Miss Thorne observed with another sniff.
    “Jenny is a gem, Cousin Tabitha,” Lilian contradicted, her voice gentle but her lips tightening. “I cannot think how I should go on without her.”
    “You are excessively indulgent, Lilian. It never answers.”
    Emily started up, obviously ready to take up cudgels, but she subsided at a glance from her mother. “Mama, may I help to watch Miss Bertrand.”
    “No, my dear, but I am glad you offered. Malcolm, I must speak with you. Will you come to the morning room?”
    The green, white, and gold room was bright with wintry sunshine. Lilian sank with slightly weary grace onto a chair by the fire. Malcolm stood for a moment looking down at her.
    “You will not let that woman watch Miss Bertrand!” he said angrily. “She’s more likely to drive her into a decline than to aid her recovery.”
    “Cousin Tabitha? Do stop hovering over me like an avenging Fury, Malcolm, and sit down. No, I shall not ask her to help. She would only do so in a spirit of grudging martyrdom.”
    “I cannot imagine why