Free The Admiral's Daughter by Judith Harkness Page A

certainly my condition is nothing that cannot be readily relieved by a little refreshment and a great deal of conversation.”
    One of the other men standing at the pianoforte, a gangly-looking fellow with immense whiskers and an apricot cravat, remarked jovially, “The tea you shall no doubt have, and the best in England—mark you, Ramblay has a special mix from Hunt’s. But as to the conversation——”
    The sentence was not finished, but it inspired a round of laughter from the other guests, who had left off their conversations and were now all staring at the intruder. Feeling as if she had missed the point of a private joke, Maggie smiled good-humoredly.
    â€œI hope you are not serious, sir, for I have traveled very far precisely for the conversation. My cousin is everywhere accounted so clever a man, and so witty, that it was my dearest wish to hear him speak.”
    â€œWell, no doubt you shall have plenty of that ,” said the unknown gentleman, grinning widely at his host. “For though Percy won’t utter two words to me, he always has a clever mot for the ladies.”
    Lord Ramblay seemed to find nothing humorous in his friend’s words. Frowning slightly, and still more so when a titter was heard about the room, he moved toward his cousin.
    â€œMiss Trevor may not be quite done in, Whiting, but surely she is too weary to be amused by this sort of nonsense before she has been in the house an hour. Allow me,” he said now, in a quieter voice, and taking Maggie’s arm, “to introduce you to my mother. Then you may listen to Whiting’s tomfoolery all you like, or any other of them. I must warn you that hunting is a most exhausting business; after a day in the field it often seems to me a man’s good sense has been slaughtered as cleanly as the fox.”
    Maggie glanced at her cousin in surprise as she was led across the room. He might have spoken those words in a jesting tone, with the good humor of a host reprimanding an overly lighthearted guest, which the man in apricot didreally seem to be, but there was a real coolness in his tone, something almost of irony. Lord Ramblay lacked that easiness of disposition, she thought, that marks the best hosts. Thinking this, she wondered why he bothered to hold house parties at all. Such kinds of affairs were generally thought equally amusing by host and guests alike. If there was so little enjoyment of them, they lost all their purpose.
    The guests were arranged about the room in little groups; Maggie did not at first see the dowager Viscountess. But as Lord Ramblay led her across the floor, she began to feel a strange sensation, as if she was being watched. In a moment she saw why. Seated on a sofa at the end of the room was a woman older than any others in the company. Lady Ramblay was constructed upon so magnificent a scale, her countenance was so threatening, her bosom so high and heaving, her attire so rich, and the crown of hair piled atop her head and held in place by several dozen diamond combs, so high, that she gave at first more the impression of a royal barge than of a mere woman of between fifty and sixty years of age. At the moment Maggie glimpsed her, she was sitting upon her sofa as if it was a throne, and the several younger persons about her, courtiers. Maggie was in truth a little taken aback by the sight of her hostess, but Lady Ramblay apparently felt no consternation on seeing her. The Viscountess’s lorgnette was held up to her eye, and she perused the young lady as she advanced on her cousin’s arm as if she was examining a fish that was to be served her for dinner. Maggie might have been more embarrassed than she was, had she not been so tempted to laugh. As it was, her first sensation of awkwardness at being thus perused, without one flinch or one smile, was almost instantly erased by the anger that welled up in her bosom. That anger only increased in the moments that