Read Grahame, Lucia for Free Online Page B

coming.
    Now, as I tossed between the sheets I could hear my grandmother's
voice again, cautioning me to resist dangerous impulses, warning me never to do
anything in the heat of passion that might later bring me to grief.
    She'd been true to her own counsel. With what businesslike
determination she had gone about her career! She had raised me, and no doubt my
mother, as well, with the same ruthless single-mindedness.
    She'd distrusted joyfulness and encouraged me to do likewise. But
her advice had the opposite effect. Her tales of her youthful exploits were so
unromantic that they'd made me swear I would never follow in her footsteps. She
spoke of her lovers in terms of their wealth and station, and their gifts to
her, but never did she display any hint of tender feeling... except when she
touched upon the few months she had spent in Florence with an overly emotional
Italian count who had allegedly attempted suicide after my grandmother had
coolly deserted him for a much wealthier but considerably less noble protector.
    When I'd lived with her, it seemed that her sole remaining
pleasure in life was to open the strongbox in which she kept the odds and ends
of jewelry that were to be my only legacy. She loved to display these cherished
possessions. Each had a story, the full details of which emerged only as I grew
older. The rose pearl had studded the collar of a marquis before the besotted
nobleman had it set in a gold ring for her; it was only the first of many such
rewards for her favors. The silvery mask, which had a little tearlike diamond
at the corner of each eye, had come from an aging crony of George IV; she had
worn it, but not much else, at a splendid masquerade. Dear God, what would Sir
Anthony Camwell think of me were he to know that this was my
inheritance!
    Years later, when my grandmother was dying, she'd made me swear
that I would never bail Frederick out of debt by selling any of the pieces she
was leaving to me.
    The day came, of course, long after my grandmother was gone, when
those jewels might have saved us. It was after Frederick had finally begun his
erratic recovery; he had produced and sold two paintings that were at last
worthy of his talents.
    But as soon as his creditors got wind of this, they came banging
at our door more insistently than ever, and the money couldn't be stretched far
enough to satisfy them all.
    That was when I told Frederick that we had to sell the jewels and
clear our debts up altogether.
    "No, darling," he had said, with a weary sadness that
made my heart ache. "Your grandmother was right, you know. Those jewels
are the only insurance you'll have, if anything should happen to me. I won't
let you break your word to her. It was I who plunged us into this morass of debt
and it's my job, not yours, to pull us out of it."
    So the promise wrung from me by my poor dead grandmother remained
inviolate.
    In some ways I still felt as if she had never died; she'd
impressed herself so forcefully upon me, that whenever I was hesitant or
indecisive, she would charge in upon my thoughts with her worldly, unwelcome
advice.
    "A baronet!" she'd have cried out, had she known of
today's adventure. "But what on earth were you thinking of! That
dress—why, it makes you look like a lump of charcoal! Good heavens, girl, black can be very effective, you know— if it's worn correctly."
    And she'd have been taking in seams, stripping away every inch of
excess fabric, until the black clung to my figure like a blazing invitation.
    "There," she'd have announced with shameless
satisfaction. "Now you look deliciously vulnerable, very much in need
of... protection. Not even your well-behaved chevalier can remain immune to this for long."
    Of course, I would never stoop to such ploys. The last
thing I wanted to do was to draw to myself the kind of pointed attentions that
my grandmother had regarded as the only kind worth having. Nor was I interested
in a pointless flirtation.
    A pleasant friendship, yes, but