Free Rose Trelawney by Joan Smith Page A

me lessons? I never can remember whether two and two are four, or four and four are two. I’m quite sure he is cheating me, and want to check out my interest when he has calculated it.”
    Abbie handed me the ham for passing along without any comment on my jibe. She delighted to have me tackle her brother, but gave me little support. I set the meat down without offering it to Kessler, in a subtle effort to curb his appetite.
    “Ludwig wants the ham, Rose,” Annie reminded me.
    “Oh, excuse me! I thought Sir Ludwig had already had some ham.” I had to either give it to him then or make an issue of it. As he was regarding me with a challenging eye, I passed it.
    “We’ll strike a bargain,” he said with a sardonic smile. “I won’t eat another slice if you will. That way we will both be improving our figures.”
    I felt completely foolish, but also completely full. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”
    “Rose is not too thin. Why do you say so, Lud?” Annie asked. She had allowed me to be just right in size as soon as I fell back into the habit of taking a little sugar in my tea again. “And neither are you too fat. What the devil is this nonsense? Both of you have some,” she ordered. In fact, neither of us had. My hints were beginning to sink in. The night before, Sir Ludwig had refused dessert.
    With such good success in all their eating, I felt the time had come to begin varying the fare offered at the table. In five days we had eaten only roast meat, always with the same pan gravy, if there was a sauce served at all. Some clever Frenchman said the English have a hundred religions and only one sauce. He was right, but the Germans have been known to do better. I had had initially some hope of tasting a meal done in the nach Jägerart style, served with mushrooms sautéed in a wine sauce along with other vegetables. The cook’s name was Feilotter, but her way with a piece of meat was dreadfully English. Nor did she ever give us a ragoût. However, we were spared both wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut, to do her justice.
    “I’m a little tired of ham myself,” Abbie remarked, giving me an excellent cue.
    “One does tire of the same old things. Does Mrs. Feilotter never make you up a ragoût?” I asked.
    They all three stared at me as though I had suggested we eat roast rat. “We had a rabbit stew last month,” Ludwig thought.
    “Last month! You have the memory of an elephant,” I told him.
    “Elephants have need of a long memory.”
    “Why?” Abbie asked him.
    “Well, for one thing, the gestation period is something over twenty months.”
    This right at table, and with three ladies for company! I scowled up the board, to see him regarding me with a lazy smile, trying to get a rise out of me. “I hadn’t realized you were interested in such things, as you are still a bachelor.”
    “Gentlemen are always interested in the matter of begetting offspring.”
    “Ludwig!” Abbie howled. “Upon my word, what will Rose think of you! And you are usually so nice in these matters too.”
    “If I have offended your sense of modesty, Sister, I apologize.”
    “You had better apologize to Rose.”
    “I don’t believe I have offended hers.”
    I tried hard to look offended. “Shocked would be more like it!” Abbie said. With my honor thus gallantly defended, I said nothing.
    That interlude was fairly typical of the sort of conversations we had over dinner. There seemed little hope of bringing this crew to a sense of propriety, or of elegance, either. The meals were not changed.
    The newspapers arrived at the office of the stage, and were eagerly perused by Sir Ludwig and myself when he brought them home. He became quite excited when he read a black-edge notice proclaiming that a Miss Grafton was missing from her home in Gillingham. I must say the name sent a little shiver of something through me. I snatched the paper from him and read the item through carefully. Miss Lorraine Grafton, it said, had been