Read The Adultress for Free Online Page A

had expected from Lord Eversleigh’s letters.
    At last the door opened. A young woman stood there. I could not see her very clearly but she struck me immediately as being something of a slattern.
    “What you be wanting?” she demanded.
    I said: “I am Mistress Zipporah Ransome. Lord Eversleigh is expecting me.”
    The woman looked amazed. I thought she was half-witted. I tried to peer behind her but the hall was not lighted and there was only the dim glow from the one candle which she had set down when she unbolted the door.
    One of my grooms held my horse while I dismounted and approached the door.
    “Lord Eversleigh is expecting me,” I said. “Take me to him. Who is in charge of the household?”
    “That would be Mistress Jessie,” she said.
    “Then will you please call Mistress Jessie? In the meantime I will come in. Where are the stables? My grooms are tired and hungry. Is there someone who can help with the horses?”
    “There’s Jethro. I’ll get Mistress Jessie.”
    “Please do so … quickly,” I answered, “because we have had a long journey.”
    She was about to shut the door but I held it open and, as she scuttled away, stepped into the hall.
    She had left her candle on the long oak table and it threw a rather eerie light about the place.
    It occurred to me that there was something very strange going on here. I kept thinking of what Sabrina had said: “Calling for help!” It did not seem so very incongruous now.
    I was startled by what appeared to be an apparition, for at the head of the stairs a figure had appeared. It was a woman, and in her hand was a candelabrum which she held high, striking a pose like a figure in some stage drama. In the flickering candlelight she looked amazingly handsome. She was tall, plump, but shapely and about her neck glittered what could be diamonds. They also glistened at her wrists and on her fingers—so many of them that I could see them even as she stood there in only the light from the candles.
    She moved down the staircase in a stately fashion.
    She wore a wig of luxuriant curls, very fair—golden, in fact—with one curl hanging over her left shoulder. Her hooped skirt stood out round her like a bell and it was of plum-colored velvet, cut away in the front to show the very ornate petticoat of bluish mauve with white flowers embroidered on it. She was clearly a very grand lady and I could not imagine what her position in the house could be. As she came nearer I saw that the dazzling complexion had been applied rather too heavily to be natural and she wore a small black patch just beneath her large, rather protruding, blue eyes and another one beside her heavily rouged mouth.
    I said: “I am Zipporah Ransome. Lord Eversleigh was eager that I should come to see him. He knew I was to arrive today. We are a little late, I know. One of the horses had to be shod.”
    The woman’s eyes narrowed; she looked puzzled and I went on hastily: “Surely I am expected.”
    “I knew nothing of this,” said the woman. Her accent was overgenteel and but for her clothes I would have thought she must be a housekeeper.
    “I don’t think I’ve heard who you are,” I said. “Could you … ?”
    “I am Mistress Stirling. They call me Mistress Jessie. I have been looking after Lord Eversleigh for the past two years.”
    “Looking after him … ?”
    She smiled almost deprecatingly. “You might call me a sort of housekeeper.”
    “Oh, I see. And did he not tell you that he had invited me to come?”
    “I never knew it.” Her voice had lost a little of its assumed refinement. She was clearly annoyed at the omission and perhaps a little suspicious too.
    “Well,” I said, “this must be rather awkward. Perhaps I could see him.”
    She was thinking quickly. “You say you are Mistress Ransome?”
    “Yes, I gather I am his nearest of kin … or at least my mother is. Lord Eversleigh is the son of my great-great-grandmother. I think that’s right. It goes back rather a