Free Death at Bishop's Keep by Robin Paige

magic?
    Aunt Sabrina ignored the intrusion and continued calmly. “This work, which I will explain in detail at a later time, is not especially onerous, nor will it encompass all your hours. But it does require intelligence, attention to detail, and a clear facility in writing, as well as a mature, judicious discretion.” She smiled gravely. “These are virtues, Kathryn, in which I am told you excel.”
    Kate felt that she could meet Aunt Sabrina’s qualifications without difficulty. But she had been given only part of an answer.
    â€œThank you for your confidence,” she said. “But surely you might have discovered these virtues in any number of young women close at hand.”
    â€œPerhaps.” Aunt Sabrina returned her direct look. “But you can operate a typewriter, and you read and write German. This combination would have proved most difficult to find, even in Colchester. Furthermore, I have begun to feel that it is important to become acquainted with you, Kathryn. While the work you will do is certainly important to me, it is your person in which I have the greater interest.”
    â€œI see,” Kate said, more softly. Aunt Sabrina’s eyes had saddened and her gaze had gone to her brother’s photograph. For a moment there was silence, as Kate reflected on the fact that the sins of the fathers could often be visited upon the daughters as well. Perhaps Aunt Sabrina hoped to make up to her niece and herself what George and Thomas Ardleigh had denied them both. Watching the older woman, something in her warmed and she was glad she had come—not for the sake of Beryl Bardwell’s grand adventure, but because, in some way Kate did not quite understand, she felt that Aunt Sabrina had called her home.
    Aunt Jaggers broke the silence. “Your emphasis, Sabrina, may be upon the ...” She coughed. “Familial relationship. As I am responsible for the household, mine must rest upon practical matters. The matter of employment, for instance.” She turned to Kate. “You will talk with me soon about what is expected of you during your stay here, however short or long it may be. For the moment, I will simply say that we keep the Sabbath strictly, and that I expect daily attendance at prayers and weekly at chapel. At chapel,” she repeated meaningfully. “And, not least, novel reading is not permitted of the servants.”
    Aunt Sabrina spoke quietly, but though her rebuke was muted, her anger was plain in her short reply. “I hardly think your belowstairs regimen should affect Kathryn’s reading habits, Bernice. And her religious practices are a concern proper only to God and herself.” She turned to Kate. “You and I can continue our discussion of your duties in the morning.”
    Kate nodded, glancing from one to the other. She could read in their faces the concealed truth of the relationship: that Aunt Jaggers hated her sister and that Aunt Sabrina both disliked and feared Aunt Jaggers. It was an obviously complex and painful situation in which the two women found themselves entangled, Kate thought, and then stopped herself, with an unexpected flash of consternation.
    Whatever the source of Aunt Jaggers’s malice, she was now entangled in it too, and blindly, for she did not understand it. She would have to be on her guard not to offend—something to which she was not temperamentally inclined! And she would have to take special care to safeguard the secret of Beryl Bardwell’s existence. Kate could imagine the fracas should Aunt Jaggers learn that not only did she read novels, she wrote penny-dreadfuls—and the most luridly sensational kind!
    Aunt Sabrina glanced up as a butler in a dark morning coat and formal trousers sailed into the room at the helm of a large, heavily laden tea cart, a gleaming silver urn like a figurehead at its prow. He was followed by the brown-haired, brown-eyed maid who had shown Kate