Court of Foxes by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

nid-nodding curtseys. The would-be highwayman, hugely grinning, conducted his lordship, willy nilly, to the door.
    Upstairs, however, the heroine was by no means lying upon her bed but standing with her back to the fire in the old, familiar attic sitting-room, roundly declaring that nothing would induce her to become a countess. ‘I’ve been a marchioness already for near three months, and the dullness of it is beyond enduring. What, sit all the rest of my life in a box at the playhouse—?’
    ‘Once you’re married, Gilda, you need never hear another murmer—’
    ‘Pouff, that’s all you know! The place is stiff with dowagers on the nights when the solemn pieces are played, sitting poker-faced, bored to a thousand tears. To go is an obligation, and to take along with them such poor, down-trodden daughters-in-law as they may have acquired. The only fun is in the boxes where the harlots entertain. Oh, who could have dreamed,’ mourned Gilda, wringing her hands, her genuine despair tempered, as ever, by laughter, ‘that he would want to make me an honest woman?’
    ‘Child, you’ll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.’
    ‘What’s the use of being rich if we may not spend our money as we wish to? He’ll immure me down there in wild Wales, I shall moulder away in the damp till my hinges grow rusty, moss will grow over me, great cracks appear in my structure…’ She made up her mind. ‘I shall tell him the truth; if he loves me so much, he will still, surely, take me for his mistress?’
    The family burst into protestations. A tiny house, a few jewels, an all-too-uncertain tenure — against lands and title as great as any in the Kingdom. ‘Once he has a wife, of course the town house will be opened. Dear heaven, child, you’ll be queen of society — Marigold, Countess of Tregaron—!’
    ‘Marigold the Cow of Carmarthen,’ said Gilda. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mother, don’t call me by that name! Besides, what of the Honourable Harrington?’ Hope rose in her. ‘He is long ago formally affianced, he has no right to ask me.’
    ‘That’s between him and his family — and hers. He has evidently made all right. You’re sure, though,’ said Sam, suddenly anxious, ‘that it was a proposal of marriage? You didn’t misunderstand?’
    But she had not misunderstood. ‘Do you think I don’t know a proposal of marriage from the other kind? I’ve had one or the other, God knows, from every hickory-stick in Gloucestershire.’ And that gave her fresh hope again. ‘We could never get away with it. Once he’s my husband he’ll make it his business to investigate the fate of my fortune in the paws of the ravening wolves. He’ll discover then the whole deception, from Gloucestershire onwards.’
    ‘Once he’s your husband,’ said Mrs Brown tartly, ‘what does it matter? He can’t un-marry you because you were never in Italy.’
    ‘He could leave her,’ said Bess.
    ‘But not unprovided for. She’ll still be his countess. Whereas if she were merely his mistress—’
    ‘An hour ago,’ said Gilda, ‘it was the height of your dream that I should be his mistress.’
    Sam gave a warning glance at his mother. He sat down in the old, shabby armchair and pulled his sister on to his knee. ‘Come, sweetheart, consider this thing calmly, there’s no need for dissension: you fly off at the slightest word, like a sitting pheasant.’ And he held her lightly, lovingly, in the old brotherly way and talked to her gently and quietly. ‘No one wants you to do what is not for your happiness. What is it you’re afraid of? As a man — don’t you care for the fellow?’
    ‘Oh, as to that…’ She would have burst out into ridicule of the muff and the snuff-box and the clouded-amber cane, but the memory came flooding back over her, of those arms that had closed about her so passionately, of the fierce, hard lips pressing down, parting her own: of the fire that so utterly unexpectedly had blazed up within her,