Free The Arrangement by Joan Wolf Page B

Instead, I watched in silence as we passed through the huge, arched stone gate, which must once have been closed by a portcullis, and entered within the castle walls.
    Suddenly the Middle Ages vanished, and my amazed eyes beheld a snow-filled courtyard in the center of which stood an exquisitely beautiful Renaissance house built of rich golden-yellow stone streaked with reddish brown.
    It was a totally unexpected sight and I must have made a sound indicative of my astonishment, for at last the earl’s attention swung back to me.
    “It does that to everyone the first time they see it,” he said humorously. “I think it was the seventh Raoul who decided to tear down most of the medieval buildings and put up a modern residence for himself.”
    By “modern” I judged he meant either Elizabethan or Jacobean.
    “Your family rather went in for tearing down and starting fresh,” I said.
    He laughed.
    “Your family crest is the lion?” This was far from being a wild guess on my part, as stone lions topped all of the gables as well as the main entrance before which we had halted.
    “Yes,” said Savile, “as a matter of fact, it is.”
    A butler in full livery was coming out the front door. Savile opened the coach door on his side and stepped down before anyone could come to open it for him. For perhaps a minute he stood talking to the butler not far from the arched front door of the house, then the butler turned and went back into the house while Savile came to my side of the coach. A footman appeared with portable steps, and Savile assisted me to alight onto the snow-cleared drive.
    “I’ve sent Powell to find my sister, Mrs. Saunders,” the earl said genially. “She will see to it that you are made comfortable.”
    It annoyed me no end, but I suddenly found myself extremely nervous about staying in that great house.
    “Does Lady Regina know I am coming?” I asked Savile.
    “No one knows you are coming,” he returned. “In fact, I rather think your presence is going to be a shock.”
    He sounded pleased.
    That made me even more nervous.
    There were no stairs leading into the house; we simply went in the immense front door and found ourselves in what at one time had obviously been Raoul the Seventh’s Great Hall. I shot a glance at the stone fireplace, with its massive chimneypiece carved with lions and its ornate strapped overmantel, and thought incredulously, Do people really live in a place like this?
    The sound of piano music drifted into the hall from a room close by. It stopped abruptly, and Savile said to me, “That was Ginny at the piano. She should be here in a moment.”
    I nodded tensely.
    A woman came into the Great Hall from the doorway on my left.
    “Raoul,” she said warmly. “You’re here at last. You’ll be mortified to hear that everyone else made it before you. What an insult to your famous chestnuts!”
    She crossed the polished wood floor to the earl, who bent and kissed her on the cheek.
    “I’m late because I had to stop to pick someone up,” Savile said to his sister. “Ginny, let me make Mrs. Abigail Saunders known to you. Mrs. Saunders, this is my sister, Lady Regina Austen.”
    “How do you do, Lady Regina,” I murmured.
    “Mrs. Saunders,” she said, giving me a mystified look.
    “Mrs. Saunders figures in George’s will,” the earl said, “and I thought she should be present to hear it read.”
    Lady Regina’s look went from mystification to astonishment. She said feebly, “Indeed.”
    A small silence fell, in which I regarded Lady Regina gravely. She had her brother’s dark blond hair and finely sculpted face, but her eyes were brown, not gold.
    “You will have Mrs. Ferrer show her to a room, won’t you, Ginny?” the earl said.
    Lady Regina’s good manners reasserted themselves. “I will show her to a room myself,” she said, and smiled at me.
    The earl smiled at me also and said, “I will leave you in the capable hands of my sister, then, Mrs. Saunders.”