Joan Smith Read Online Free Page B

the cup away. “I am to be the friend companion to show the Trois Fen ê tres at you. Tante Louise, she tells me so. Yes?”
    “Wasn’t that sly of her? Shall I try to speak French, Mr. St. Clair? It might be easier for you.”
    “But no absolutely! Speaking the French becomes very difficult to me. I speak the English best. I think to stay absolutely at England now on, with Tante Louise.”
    “Lucky Tante Louise.”
    “Lucky Pierre also too. I am very much at the home here. My chap friend, Welland Sinclair, who is my cousin you recall—he tells me every day I am more English. No one guesses but that for my name, so I call me Peter Sinclair in the future. You also will call me Peter Sinclair, please you.”
    “I shall be very happy to, Peter Sinclair.”
    “Good. Now stop eating, or you become too gross. We walk.”
    “I haven’t finished my breakfast.”
    “Tante Louise, she wants that I show you the horse for jumping something. I don’t know what it is. A very big she horse.”
    “My tollbooth-jumping mount! Excellent, I’ll go with you.” I hopped up, eager to see my mount, and wondering where Aunt Loo had got hold of it so early.
    “Mon Dieu!” Pierre (sorry, Peter) exclaimed as I arose to tower above him. “Comme c’est une grande fille!”
    “The English is best, Peter,” I reminded him.
    “The most best English girl I ever see,” he smiled fatuously, offering his arm to accompany me to the stable. “I think the horse, she is too big for a girl, but now ... ” He gave a Gallic shrug that speaks so many words and hastened along to the stables, his elegant little shiny Hessians hopping to keep up with me. He tried to slow us down, for he was low-set, and not very agile in motion.
    The mount was a cross between an Arabian and a Percheron, my favorite sort of jumper. She was a mare, called Nancy. “Whose mount is she?” I asked Pierre.
    “The Hill medicine man lent her. You can drive this animal?”
    “No, but I can ride and jump her. I’m going to change into my habit now and try her paces. Want to come along?”
    “I do not have a horse here. In France, I have many stables. My cousin, he is lending me a horse later soon. We English can’t do without our horses,” he assured me.
    He jabbered incessantly all the way back to the house. It was a relief to my poor ears to leave him at the door.
    Pinny came running to my room when she saw me enter the house. She got out my riding habit and bonnet, brushed them meticulously, and took my gown to hang up as I pulled it off. It was lovely to have her there, picking up after me, and feeling honored to be allowed to do it. I suppose for her it was no worse than sweeping carpets and polishing furniture. “That Mr. St. Clair is a wicked rattle-jaw, Miss Ford,” she warned me, somewhat belatedly to be sure. “Carries on with the girls when her ladyship’s back is turned, and that isn’t the worst of him either.”
    “What could be worse, Pinny?” I asked her mischievously.
    “He has a conning way about him. The mistress is so fond of him I don’t doubt he’ll become a tenant for life.”
    “What, settle down at Troy Fenners you mean?” I asked, surprised that my aunt could tolerate his jabbering.
    “We all think that’s what he has in his mind. He certainly likes it here, especially since Mr. Sinclair moved into the gatehouse. Close as winkle-weavers, the pair of them. If you want my opinion, miss, it’s a case of the scavengers gathering to see what they can pick from her, and they pick plenty . ”
    “What on earth are you talking about, Pinny? You mean she gives them things—money?”
    “She’s doing something with it since they came. We never were short of anything before, and that’s a fact. She hasn’t paid us our last quarter wages. Of course she was away visiting, but she’d never have let it go before, and she hasn’t mentioned it since her return either. Cook says the grocer in the village was a-knocking at the back door