Free Elisabeth Kidd by A Hero for Antonia

nankeen breeches and a hunting jacket, with a Barcelona handkerchief knotted carelessly around his throat.
    They picked their way around furniture shrouded in holland covers, and Antonia was several times obliged to brush dust from her sleeve. She thought it a pity that the house looked so sadly neglected, but as they walked along the narrow passageway called the Long Gallery, she remarked, “I have always liked this passage. As children, we were used to race one another madly down the length of it, but when I grew up ...”
    She paused and looked up at the high, narrow windows along one wall, through whose leaded panes a faint, rosy light penetrated. “Later, I sometimes sat here for hours on end, reading or only looking up through those windows at the sky. I felt like an ancient alchemist or a mediaeval scholar, or a nun in her cell. There is such a wonderful peace here.”
    They paused and heard only the click of Octavian’s footsteps on the tiled floor far ahead of them.
    Kedrington’s expression was inscrutable, and he said only, “Miss Fairfax, I suspect you are a romantic at heart after all.”
    She made a helpless gesture at her own fancies. “Oh, no—merely too indolent to seek greater excitement. Come! We must go ahead or they will be wondering what has become of us.”
    During their nuncheon, the conversation stayed strictly within the bounds of the prosaic, but Antonia felt herself no less at ease for it. She talked more than she normally would have done about Windeshiem, and thus also about Wyckham and her experiences as its mistress, about her land and her tenants, and her bailiff and the price of hens. Kedrington listened to her much as Ned would have done, respecting her knowledge and her opinions, and asking questions which were intelligent, but which revealed an ignorance, resulting from his long absence, of conditions in England in recent years.
    They moved into the library, Mr Kenyon with his pipe and Mrs Curtiz with a glass of tea. Octavian and Isabel set up a small table with a backgammon board, from which Isabel placed herself at a cautious distance, keeping the board within her limited vision but not so far away that Octavian might think her standoffish. Antonia, who alone knew the reason behind this manoeuvre, smiled when the puzzled Mr Gary leaned forward to be closer to the girl.
    “Maidenly modesty?” whispered the viscount into her ear. Antonia shook her head, but did not explain Isabel’s behaviour. Indeed, she did not entirely understand it herself and was unsure whether her own wishes were obscuring her perception of what was, in reality, occurring. To all appearances, Octavian behaved more as a brother than a suitor toward Isabel, and she seemed to accept him as such. But Antonia was uncertain whether this was clever strategy on Octavian’s part or whether she was reading too much into his behaviour. Her niece’s motives were becoming entirely inscrutable to her. She sighed.
    “Shall we walk in the garden?” Kedrington asked, breaking into her reverie. The day had begun dully after a cold night, and they had seated themselves before the long French windows to watch as it brightened. Antonia wondered how long he had been regarding her rather than the view, but when she turned to him, his face was unreadable. Perhaps he was only restless at being indoors in fine weather.
    “You forget the proprieties, sir!” she scolded him.
    “What? Oh, I suppose you mean we must have a duenna. Gothic, but still required in this civilised society of ours.” He stood up and addressed his host with a counterfeit heartiness. “Kenyon! Shall we take a tour of the garden?”
    “Thank you, no,” Mr Kenyon declined civilly, placing his feet firmly upon an ottoman so as to preclude his being asked a second time.
    “Perhaps the children would like to go,” Mrs Curtiz suggested, but Octavian declined vigourously, if with false bravado.
    “Can’t you see I’ve almost beat her?”
    “Ha!” said