Blossom Time by Joan Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

laurels, Roz,” he said. “Your mentor has got the whiff of money for his magazine. I, it hardly needs saying, did not oblige him with the thousand pounds he tried to dun me for. I would advise you to be deaf to his hints as well.”
    “He didn’t ask me. Camena is not the sort of magazine where one pays to have her work published,” she said with lofty disdain. “In fact, the magazine paid me a tidy sum.” She did not mention the extremely minuscule tidy sum paid. It wasn’t the money that drove her.
    If Sylvester was courting Lady Amanda as a backer, he was too clever to mention money, but he certainly harped on Camena until the table was sick and tired of hearing it.
    “Fascinating!” Lady Amanda said, smiling relentlessly between sips and sups. Next to dalliance, food and drink were her main pleasures.
    When Sylvester realized that his plate was still full while all about him had cleaned theirs, he applied his fork to a tenderloin of mutton.
    “You must come to Merton Hall, Lord Sylvester,” Lady Amanda said. “I have a wonderful library there. I bought the place fully furnished from old Lord Dinsmore, you know. He was a literary gentleman, like yourself. He mentioned some original manuscripts of John Donne’s love poems. There is half a poem there that he never finished. You might like to publish the fragment in Camena as a literary curiosity.”
    Lord Sylvester was suitably impressed. A previously unpublished Donne fragment would be a coup, and it wouldn’t cost him a penny if he played his cards right. Unfortunately, Lady Amanda could give him very little notion what the poem was about. “It is written on the back of a laundry list,” was all the poetry lover could tell him.
    Throughout dinner, the usually voluble Annabelle Fortescue scarcely spoke, except a few words in a low voice to Dick. She was listening avidly, for she sometimes felt the lack of breeding in her background, never more so than when Lord Sylvester’s bright eye had speared her and hinted that a solicitor was no better than a costermonger. Anyone who could insult her like that must be a real gentleman. Lord Harwell never spoke so haughtily.
    Three couples were not enough to form even one square, so there was no dancing when the gentlemen joined the ladies after taking their port. And, as no sane person ever sat down to cards with Lady Amanda, who had picked up a bag of sharp tricks from her late husband, conversation had to be the postprandial entertainment. Lord Sylvester sat with Rosalind, discussing her autumn series of poems and her remove to London until the tea tray arrived.
    Harwell watched with growing concern and was relieved when Lady Amanda joined them. Sylvester asked Rosalind if he could call on her in the morning, and she graciously agreed, before going to have a few words with her host.
    “You must have diverted him from his favorite subject,” Harwell said. “You were actually smiling.”
    “We were discussing my favorite subject: my visit to London.”
    “Shall I write to my housekeeper to let her know you will be using the house?”
    “I think not, but thank you for the offer, Harry. Lord Sylvester’s papa owns a set of flats on Glasshouse Street. I am thinking of hiring one of them. As I may be staying for some time, I cannot impose on your hospitality. You use the Grosvenor Square house on and off yourself, and it would look odd if I were staying with a bachelor.”
    “It could hardly be construed as a love nest! My aunt is always there, and God only knows when I will get Uncle Ezra bounced off.”
    Rosalind hesitated a moment before answering. “When I said I would be staying for some time, what I meant was that I hope to remove permanently to London.”
    “Permanently!” Harwell spoke loudly enough to draw the attention of the others, who turned in surprise.
    “Lower your voice!” she said.
    “But why on earth would you do a thing like that? You have always lived at Apple Hill.”
    “Yes, as its