Read Lady of Spirit, A for Free Online

another cup of tea, then sipped it and made a moue of distaste. “The pot has gone cold. Howel, would you ring for another? Lady Claire, gentlemen, girls … we have invited several guests for dinner this evening to meet you. Once you have rested and changed, we dine at seven. We keep town hours here. When you hear the gong, please be prompt.”
    Town hours in London and Munich meant eight, or even nine. But perhaps in Penzance the sun set earlier.
    While Mr. Malvern escorted the Lady and the hens out to hail a hansom cab to take them to the airfield, Claude showed the girls and Tigg upstairs. “I’m on this landing, and Tigg, you’re here, in the bedroom overlooking the rose garden. I’m afraid the grands are a bit stuffy about ladies and gentlemen occupying the same wing, so Lizzie and Maggie, if you’ll follow me along here?”
    Their house on Wilton Crescent was posh, and heaven knew Gwynn Place was like a fairyland of wealth. But Seacombe House could hold its own in the grandeur department. It was not overly large, but it had dignity in the smooth polish of the balustrade under Maggie’s hand, and when she looked down into the hall below, she saw the portraits of family members that she had not really noticed before.
    Her family.
    She would need to get back on the right foot with her grandparents, and learn about the people in these pictures. Elaine had had her portrait painted, and it now hung over the fireplace in the drawing room at Wilton Crescent—and would, Maggie imagined, until Lizzie someday married.
    Perhaps there would be a picture of Catherine here at her childhood home. Perhaps she would finally see her mother’s face, and learn something of her story.
    And in doing so, learn something of her own.

5
    “I have no intention of resting,” Maggie said briskly after the maid—whose name was Tamsen—had unpacked their valises and shaken out and hung the dresses they were to wear to dinner. “I want to explore the house.”
    “I do, too … but do you suppose we’ll upset Grandmother?”
    “She can hardly be more upset with me than she is already,” Maggie said on a sigh. “I shall endeavor to be particularly silent at dinner.”
    “Then the Lady will think you’re coming down with something. Just be yourself, Mags, and they can’t help but love you.”
    But Maggie was not so sure. There had been a definite difference in the way the Seacombes had received her and the way they had treated Lizzie. She was quite sure that if Lizzie had spilled her tea, they would have asked if she had burned herself and offered napkins.
    But perhaps she was being too sensitive—or too self-centered.
    Maggie tapped on Claude’s door, Lizzie on Tigg’s.
    “Didn’t I tell you this was forbidden territory?” Claude whispered when he opened it. “The grands are just down at the end of this hall, in the big bedroom overlooking the sea. They’re taking their naps.”
    “Come and explore with us,” Maggie whispered back. “We want to see the house.”
    “All right, but you must be quiet until we get out of this wing. Let me get my jacket and we’ll begin downstairs.”
    Along with the big drawing room, there was a morning room, a study, and a library. At the back of the house, as one might expect, were the kitchens, where the staff looked up, startled, from their preparations for dinner. Claude made the introductions, and Maggie flushed a little at being curtsied to for the first time in her life.
    “That felt very strange,” she whispered to Tigg as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
    “Best get used to it,” he said. “The Seacombes seem to be persons of importance here, if the size of this place is any indication. That makes you important, too.”
    “Nonsense,” Lizzie said. “It’s not our names that make us important, it’s what we do to bring honor to them, as you should know better than anyone.”
    Names again. Time to change the subject.
    “Who sleeps in the other rooms in your