Free Snare of Serpents by Victoria Holt Page A

they come, I suppose. A man needs a wife … even a gentleman like Mr. Glentyre, and having a daughter to bring up.”
    “I think I am brought up by now, don’t you, Mrs. Kirkwell?”
    “Well, there’ll be things to arrange and a woman’s best for that even if …”
    “I am glad you and Mr. Kirkwell are not too upset by all these changes.”
    She shook her head sadly and I guessed she was thinking of the days when my mother was alive. I wondered if she were aware of Miss Grey’s nightly excursions. Mrs. Kirkwell was shrewd and she had always liked to be aware of what was going on in the house.
    I imagined she and Mr. Kirkwell might have decided that when there were certain “goings-on” in a respectable house— men being what they were—it was as well to have them legalised.
    And so the house settled down to a mood of greater serenity than it had enjoyed since my mother died.
    Later I heard Mrs. Kirkwell’s comments on the mistress-of-the-house-to-be. “She’s not the interfering sort. That’s the kind neither Mr. Kirkwell nor me would work for.”
    So, unsuitable as the match might seem to outsiders, it was— if somewhat grudgingly—accepted in the house, largely because it was recognised that a man needed a wife and the chosen one in this case was “not the interfering sort.”
    T HE WEDDING was, as had been decided, quiet—just a simple ceremony performed by the Reverend Charles Stocks who had been a friend of the family all my life.
    There were few guests, chiefly friends of my father. Aunt Roberta did not appear, for the feud between her and my father continued. There were no friends of Zillah Grey present. The reception at the house was brief and very soon my father, with his bride, left for Italy.
    THE GOVERNESS
    I went at once to my room to write to Lilias.
    “I have a stepmother now. It seems incongruous. So much has happened in the last year. Sometimes I wonder what is going to happen next …”
    Jamie
    WHEN THEY HAD GONE the house seemed very quiet and the strangeness of everything that had happened struck me afresh. I could not get out of my mind the fact that just over a year ago my mother had been alive and Lilias had been with me.
    I had reached my seventeenth birthday in September and had left my childhood behind me—not only because of my age. I had learned so much—chiefly that people were not what they seemed to be. I had learned that a man like my father—outwardly a pillar of virtue—was capable of urges as powerful as those which had lured Kitty to abandon herself recklessly to disaster. They had carried my father so far that he had not only brought a woman like Zillah Grey into the house but had actually married her. So there was no doubt that I had grown up.
    A sense of aloneness came over me. I had lost my best friends. There was no one now. Perhaps that was why I was so ready to welcome Jamie into my life.
    I found a great pleasure in walking. In the old days I should not have been going out alone, but now there was no one who could stop me. In the absence of my stepmother I was the mistress of the house. I was on the way to becoming eighteen years old … an age, I supposed, when one could, in some circumstances, take charge. Mrs. Kirkwell had made it clear that she would rather take orders from me than from the new Mrs. Glentyre.
    It will be different when they return, I reminded myself.
    There was comfort in exploring the city, and the more I saw of it, the more captivated I became by its inimitable charm.
    I was struck by the Gothic buildings which had been infiltrated with a touch of the classic Greek which gave an added dignity. In the first place, the situation was impressive. From one point it was possible to overlook the estuary of the Forth flowing into the ocean, and away to the west were the mountains. Such a superb position must be paid for, and the toll demanded was the bitter east wind and the snow from the mountains. But we had grown accustomed to that and it