Crossed Quills Read Online Free Page B

not try to keep Mama from discussing your offer with Prometheus.”
    * * * *
     Standing at the parlour window, Pippa watched the gentlemen in their top hats and greatcoats tramping down the garden path in the dusk, on the way to take rooms at the Jolly Bodger. Their tethered horses’ ears stuck up above the beech hedge, still thickly hung with dead brown leaves.
     The dead leaves depressed her. So did the muddy flower-beds on each side of the path, though snowdrops bravely strove to raise their heads, battered and splattered by the recent rains, among green spikes of daffodil and papery crocus buds. In spite of their promise of Spring, she felt Winter would go on for ever.
     Much as she loved Mama and Kitty, the spice had gone out of life when Papa died.
     Her writing—the emotions aroused by the injustices she wrote about—were a palliative, not a remedy. When she laid down her quill and posted the result to Mr Cobbett, the emptiness returned.
     What frightened her was that she saw no end to the desert. Kitty would marry, whether John Ruddock or some other love-struck swain, and go away. Pippa might surrender her hand to Mr Postlethwaite, but her heart was untouched. Worse, she would have to give up the work which, she sometimes fancied, was all that kept her from running mad.
     Would children compensate? She found it impossible to imagine indulging with the vicar in those intimacies necessary to create a family.
     The click of the gate-latch returned her to the present. She swung back to the lamp-lit room.
     “Mama, this is the outside of enough. You know I dare not reveal my authorship.”
     “It would have looked very singular, my love, had we declined to convey Lord Selworth’s proposal. He might have attempted to approach Prometheus in some other way over which we had less control. At the very least his curiosity would be aroused, and by conjecture he might arrive at the truth. He struck me as an intelligent and determined young man.”
     “Pig-headed! As though a hundred others could not help him equally well—a dozen, at any rate. You are right, of course, but I wish you had insisted on writing with the answer instead of encouraging him to stay by inviting him to dinner!”
     Her mother laughed. “I had no choice in the matter once you had abused the Bodger’s fare.”
     “Perhaps that was a mistake,” Pippa admitted with a wry grimace. “You will just have to tell him tomorrow that you have spoken to Prometheus, who desired you to convey a refusal.”
     Mrs Lisle had opened her work-box as soon as the gentlemen left. She was darning a stocking-heel, and her needle flashed back and forth twice before she responded, “Are you so sure you ought to refuse, Pippa?”
     “Yes,” Pippa said promptly. Lord Selworth had succeeded in shaking her composure without even trying. To work with him would be to endure a constant state of uncomfortable ferment. “Even if I agreed, I expect he would change his mind as soon as he discovered Prometheus is a female. And though he may be willing to keep the secret, who can guess whether he is capable of it? Should he let slip only to Mr Chubb—”
     “No fear of Mr Chubb letting the cat out of the bag,” said Kitty, giggling as she glanced up from her hemming. “It was a struggle to extract a single word from him. He is woefully shy.”
     “With ladies, certainly,” Pippa said, “but I daresay he is on easier terms among gentlemen.”
     “Do you think so?” Kitty enquired with interest. “I hope you are right, for he is quite amiable. He was interested in my chickens, or at least kind enough to seem so, and he helped with the tea-tray, though I fancy he had never before set foot in a kitchen! I hate to picture him going through life with his tongue tied in knots.”
     “He had more to say for himself than John Ruddock,” Mrs Lisle pointed out tartly. “What a mooncalf the boy is!”
     “A veritable nodcock,” Pippa agreed, “but we are