AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What makes you think so?”
“You’ll charm them.” He smiled.
“I? Charm them? That is my task?” Sarah hadn’t thought her spirits could sink any further. Now they did. She wasn’t charming. Her friend Ada was charming. Just as Charlotte was acerbic and Harriet unflappable. Sarah was intelligent and thoughtful and a mistress of arcane facts. Those were her talents. People either enjoyed them or they didn’t. Her new in-laws were obviously going to fall in the second category—those who found Sarah odd and annoying. She couldn’t imagine them “coming around.” And she didn’t know how to be any different. She would be herself, and things would get worse and worse. Was this what a nervous spasm felt like? she wondered.
“They always cool down,” Kenver said. “That’s the way they are. They make a great fuss, and then after a while, it’s all right.”
For him, perhaps. But Sarah was not a beloved only son. She was, clearly, a massive disappointment, an enemy to be vanquished. She didn’t think the word was too strong.
Kenver stopped and opened a door on the right. He walked in like an advance scout checking for ambushes.
Sarah paused to look at the closed door opposite. Lady Trestan’s bedchamber sat there, a sentry to be passed each time she entered. And she would have no password to give her safe conduct.
“Come in.”
She stepped forward. It was not a grand room, given Poldene’s size and state. There was space for a bed, a wardrobe, a washstand, and a small dressing table with a mirror. There was no writing desk or shelves for the books she’d brought along. One of her two trunks held mostly books. And there were her trunks, back in a corner. The hangings and coverlet were blue. Lemon and beeswax scented the air. Yet it was not welcoming.
“This won’t be for long,” Kenver said. “I’ll oversee the work, and we’ll move into the state suite as soon as may be.”
“What is that?” she asked, wondering where he had hoped to establish them.
“A sitting room and two bedchambers in the other wing,” said Kenver. “They say Prince Henry stayed there in 1611 when he was Duke of Cornwall.”
Sarah’s mind automatically supplied facts. “He was the Stuart prince who died young.”
“Trust you to know that. Many people have never heard of him.”
“Historical sources suggest that he would have made a better king than Charles the First.”
“Do they?”
“It’s the sort of things they would say, of course.”
“It is?” Kenver looked amused and perhaps even interested.
“Well, a dead prince is all hopes and potential, isn’t he? Chroniclers can admire him all they like. Theorize and postulate far more than they can over an inept, beheaded king.”
“Ha.” He smiled at her, and Sarah felt a tiny bit better. “There is a library downstairs,” he went on. At her look, he said, “I thought that might interest you. You are free to use it, of course.”
“Is it much…frequented?” Sarah asked.
He didn’t misunderstand. “My parents don’t often go there. I have always found it…peaceful.”
Perhaps they could retreat there together. Perhaps it could be a haven.
“This room is yours,” Kenver added. “Feel free to change whatever you like.”
There seemed little room for changes. And how was she to make any on his—their—small allowance? Hehadtold her about that. It seemed they were wholly in the power of his parents. Would it be a terrible scandal if she stole a horse from the stables and rode home again? Yes, it would. It would also be an act of cowardice. Sarah tried to feel braver.
There was a knock at the door. Sarah braced herself as Kenver bade the person come in.
An older servant entered. “I’ve come to see to the unpacking,” she said. She eyed Sarah without enthusiasm. Perhaps fifty, with streaks of gray in her tightly coiled brown hair, she wore a black dress that did not flatter her sallow complexion. Sarah took in her downturned lips and flat brown eyes and understood that this woman would never be her friend.
“Cranston?” said Kenver. “I had thought Gwen would…”
“Her ladyship sentme,” was the flat reply.
“Ah.”
