Free The Christmas Wassail by Kate Sedley

said, a remark that earned Adela’s instant disapproval. She believed that you should never give in to the baser instincts of your nature.
    Margaret, however, merely nodded. ‘Understandable, I agree. But then, of course, relations improved somewhat between them. When he was grown, George went away and was away for some years. When he eventually came back to Bristol, he was married to his first wife, Lydia Carey, and Cyprian had been born. They didn’t return to the family home on Redcliffe Wharf but settled outside the city in that big house in Clifton Manor, close to the great gorge.
    â€˜Now if my memory serves me aright, old Brewer Marvell died the following year and his wife a few months later, leaving Drusilla the sole occupant of what, for some obscure reason, has always been known as Standard House. When I say “sole occupant”,’ she added, ‘I’m not including the army of servants who attend upon Drusilla. She likes to be pampered and to tyrannize over people.’
    â€˜Why did she never marry?’ I asked. ‘I can’t imagine it was for lack of suitors. Not with a fortune the size of hers.’
    â€˜You’re a cynic,’ Adela told me, pausing in her stitching. ‘Or you pretend to be.’
    I laughed but said nothing, merely looking at Margaret, waiting for her reply.
    She drank some more of her ‘lamb’s wool’, emptying the beaker and holding it out for me to refill. ‘You’re right, Roger. There were suitors in plenty when she was young, and I understand from Maria Watkins that she was betrothed at least twice. But, mysteriously, these affairs never came to fruition and Drusilla remained a spinster. She seemed content enough.’
    â€˜And her relationship with Sir George?’
    â€˜It was always distant, and she took very little interest either when he was widowed or when he married again. My guess is that she never really forgave him for being born. But there was no open animosity until three years ago when a handsome young cockerel of about your own age came on the scene and laid siege to her.’
    â€˜My age?’ I demanded incredulously. I was thirty-one.
    â€˜Your age,’ Margaret confirmed. ‘Drusilla was by then, even by her own calculations, at least eighty-two and should have known better, but madness set in. Whether or not her brain had softened because of her great age is a matter for speculation, but suddenly she announced she was getting married.’
    Adela frowned. ‘I heard nothing of this.’
    Margaret chuckled. ‘Hardly surprising, my love. It was all over before the gossip had time to spread to this side of the river. Once Sir George got wind of what was happening, he descended in Jehovian wrath from Clifton and the young man was gone in a cloud of dust. No one knows if he was bought off or simply succumbed to good, old-fashioned threats, but either way he disappeared and has never been seen again. What he had managed to wheedle out of the old lady before he was so summarily dismissed is anybody’s guess, but those few who had contact with him described him as a knowing one, so no doubt he didn’t depart empty-handed.’
    â€˜And Dame Drusilla blames her brother for this destruction of her plans?’
    â€˜Blames him!’ Margaret almost choked over her beaker. ‘Blames him? Word is that she threatened to kill him with her own two hands when she discovered what he had done. She hasn’t spoken to him since, but if necessary addresses him through a third party. And when she found out, after her neighbour, an elderly, childless bachelor, died, that Sir George had bought the house and was moving in next door to her, it was reported that she actually foamed at the mouth and fell down in a fit. It’s probably an exaggeration – but not much of one.’
    â€˜Why did he do it?’ Adela asked, laying aside the mended gown and removing her foot from the