Lucy by M.C. Beaton Read Free Book Online

leave, Lucy.”
    Lucy paused in the doorway and looked fleetingly back at Miss Jones. Did the elderly spinster wink or was it merely one of her many facial ticks? Lucy did not wait to find out. She fled from the castle as if the hounds of hell were after her, down the tradesmen’s road that was nearest to the town, not stopping for breath until she was outside the grounds.
    The still morning was pearly with mist, the trees and bushes sparkling and shining with drops of moisture, as Lady Angela’s ball gown had sparkled with pearls. Great branches lay like severed limbs across the road where the storm had wrenched them apart and thrown them down. The leaves of the trees seemed to have disappeared overnight, leaving the gray branches pointing up into the mist, signposts of the winter to come.
    The day was so dark and misty that the gaslights had been lit in the town streets. Now that there was a chance that she might not see her hometown again, Lucy looked around at the shops and cobbled streets as if seeing them for the first time. Marysburgh was mostly made up of one main street and one main square which housed the town hall and the court. The wealthy trades-people lived in a smaller square at one end of the main street and the professional classes in an equally small square at the other end. Little lanes ran down to the pier and the small promenade in front of the loch shrouded that morning with mist.
    In summer, Marysburgh took on a brief life when the day-trippers arrived by boat from Glasgow to buy colored postcards and souvenirs while their children scrabbled to make sandcastles out of the mud beneath the pebbles on the scraggly beach. But Lucy loved it best at this time of year when the gaslights flared and the interiors of the shops shone with jumbles of color.
    Miss Johnstone lived in a little cottage on the far side of town. She was working in her garden when Lucy arrived, snipping dead heads from clumps of geraniums.
    She put down her scissors and straightened up as she saw the slim figure of Lucy approaching. Miss Johnstone, an elderly spinster, was dressed in sensible tweeds. Little beads of mist clung to her snowy curls and twinkled on her thick glasses.
    “You’re just in time for a cup of tea,” she called as Lucy opened the garden gate. She led the way around to the kitchen at the back and put the black kettle on the hob. Lucy had planned to lead up to her problem slowly but the hours of waiting until her day off had made her feel as if she were ready to come apart. She burst out with the whole scheme, words tumbling one over the other, of her luck at baccarat, MacGregor’s plan, and “Isn’t it
awful?”
she finally ended with, breathless.
    Miss Johnstone swung the kettle over and filled the teapot. “Now, we’ll leave the tea to steep while I try to sort this thing out. I cannot for a minute believe that any human being could be so consistently lucky at cards. You wait there. I’ve got a nice bit of Dundee cake and some fly cemeteries,” she said, unconsciously, using the school-children’s nickname for the latter, which was a type of raisin cake.
    She bustled back in a few minutes carrying a grimy pack of colored cards. “Now, all I’ve got is Happy Families but they’ll have to do. You drink your tea, like a good girl, and I’ll just write numbers on these. You’ll just need to imagine that Mr. Bun, the Baker, is the King of Hearts, for example.”
    Miss Johnstone bent her white head and scribbled away busily while Lucy looked on in amazement. She had expected a homily on gambling.
    “I’m ready,” said Miss Johnstone at last. “I think I’ve grasped the rules of baccarat. Now, I’m the banker.”
    For the next hour she systematically took Lucy through game after game. And Lucy won every time.
    “Well, I never did,” said the schoolteacher finally, sitting back in her chair and unconsciously echoing the butler. “Now I see what’s got that old scoundrel MacGregor excited. You