Free The Sleeping Sword by Brenda Jagger Page A

the meanest operative, would be expected to obey; the heat, the dust, the grinding, monotonous toil of the sheds. ‘Come the first taste of autumn,’ they said, ‘and he’ll be off, riding down some poor farmer’s crops to catch those blasted foxes. They’re not steady , the gentry. They’re only glorified farmers themselves, after all, used to following the seasons instead of the clock. And if Nick Barforth can’t handle his own lad, what chance has he got with Lady Caroline’s?’
    But it was Gervase, as I had known it would be, who disappeared in mid-August, called to Galton Abbey by the early grouse, while Gideon could still be seen strolling towards the Piece Hall on market-day and afterwards in the bar parlour of one of our new commercial hotels where deals were often finalized, a most perfect man of business in his black frock coat and light grey trousers, plain grey silk waistcoat and immaculate linen, only the pearl in his neckcloth and his own very superior manner marking him as the son of a baronet, albeit the third.
    â€˜My father is very pleased with him,’ Venetia offered, too deep in her dream of Charles Heron to take the effect this might have on her own life in any way seriously. ‘Although I believe our managers dislike him, which is not to be wondered at, for they have been expecting an easy time of it under Gervase when father retires. And although Gideon cannot yet be sure of himself and has so much to learn, they can see that he means to be hard . No, they really don’t like him at all but I doubt he cares a fig for that, since he has not come to us for affection, simply to get rich.’
    â€˜Venetia—’ I said, wanting to say more, but she shook her head in the coltish movement that was so impatient of restraint, and smiled.
    â€˜Oh yes, I am not such a goose as you seem to think. I know they are all expecting him to marry me. But that is all nonsense, you know. It is just my father and Aunt Caroline thinking that everything must be arranged their way. And in any case I believe I have seen Gideon looking at you.’
    I replied very calmly that I had not noticed it, but her remark sent me out into the garden when she left me, needing solitude in which to ponder the growing trouble of my mind and my body, which had both endured the restraints of total dependence, of the ‘young-lady-at-home’, for too long.
    I had returned from Switzerland feeling myself to be a woman, my chaperonage abroad having consisted of governesses and paid companions, who although by no means careless of my reputation had been for the most part reasonable. And while I had done nothing disgraceful nor even particularly adventurous, I had at least been allowed the dignity of choice.
    In short I had been trusted, my own judgement of what I could or could not do, with whom I might or might not associate, had been respected. And since I had not abused that trust I had not anticipated its withdrawal. But from the day of my return Mrs. Agbrigg had shown a determination to keep me as cloistered as a flighty fifteen-year-old, not, I suspected, out of any concern for my virtue or my safety, but quite simply to drive me away.
    I had made a scene the first time she asked to read a letter of mine, had thrown it at her feet and vowed to take up her excess of zeal—her excess of spite—with my father. But he had come home late from the mill that night, weary and dispirited and coughing, a pain in his chest, a pain in his head, glad of the mulled wine she had ready, his chair with the cushions placed just so, the warm sympathy of her voice, not the shrill protest of mine; and watching her smooth the tensions out of him, I had found nothing to say.
    The immediate solution, of course, would be to go abroad again, to Paris, perhaps, now that the war with Prussia was over. It would be interesting, I thought, to watch the new republic emerge from its troubled infancy,