Maulever Hall by Jane Aiken Hodge Read Free Book Online

even Miss Lamb.”
    “I am sure your real name is much prettier. Now come along downstairs, do, and stop arguing. What do you think of our grand stairway? Pitiful, is it not? I keep urging Mark to have it rehung with that striped paper you see everywhere, but he won’t do it. Some nonsense about the portraits—that’s my father-in-law, the old tyrant—” She crossed the large downstairs hall. “I keep begging Mark to have his likeness taken, but he won’t do that either ... it’s all of a piece. One of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portraits would have been some kind of company for me, but of course Mark was always too busy— and now he’s dead—Sir Thomas, I mean.” She sounded personally affronted about it. “This way, my dear. I usually lunch in the breakfast room when I’m alone.”
    It was a sunny, comfortably shabby room, with more family portraits round the walls. Seating herself obediently at the small oval table, Marianne made her last protest: “But what will Mr. Mauleverer say? May he not object to my presence here?”
    “Mark?” Mrs. Mauleverer bridled. “I hope he knows better than to be making objections to the company I choose to keep. Particularly when he favors me with so little of his own.”
    Marianne was amazed. “But, dear madam, even if you feel you can brave his displeasure, I must be thinking of it.”
    “My good child, have you taken leave of your senses? It is true that Mark is of a somewhat impatient turn of character, and indeed never could brook being crossed from a child, but I have yet to learn that a mother must be asking permission from her son before she provides herself with a companion.”
    Her son! It was Marianne’s turn to exclaim. “What an idiot I have been! You must forgive my stupidity, ma’am, but I quite thought Mr. Mauleverer was your husband.” She stopped, horrified at what she had said, and wondering what deep springs of grief she might not have touched.
    But to her delighted amazement, Mrs. Mauleverer burst out into her gay, almost childish laugh. “Oh, that’s too rich,” she said. “Mark, my husband! No wonder you looked so shocked when I spoke of how he neglects me. It is bad enough in a son, but in a husband ... No, no, my dear, poor Mr. Mauleverer has been dead these twenty years or more—I do not precisely remember the date. I am afraid I found wearing widow’s weeds a dead bore and abandoned them years ago, which, I suppose, is what misled you. But now you can see that though I love Mark dearly I do not need to be deferring to him on matters that concern me alone. Though as a matter of fact I did write to him the other day to tell him all about you and Thomas. I don’t suppose he’ll trouble to answer, though.” Again the faintly querulous tone. “I have not heard from him this age. And as for Thomas”—she took one of her characteristic leaps of subject—“Mark will never notice whether he’s here or not. And don’t, pray, say anything more about your looking after him. For one thing, Martha dislikes you quite enough as it is without your taking him away from her. For another, I don’t want to share you with a brat like him. Tell me, do you play cards?”
    “Cards? I—I believe so.”
    “I was sure you did. Andrew.” She turned to the footman. “The card table in the library; at once.”
    For a moment, an expression of—what? flickered over that marble countenance. Then, “Very good, madam,” said Andrew.
    Marianne was surprised to find that Mrs. Mauleverer’s favorite game was bezique, delighted to find herself entirely mistress of the complicated rules of the game, and then surprised all over again to find she lost so steadily. Of course, in a sense it made no difference. Mrs. Mauleverer had suggested that they play for sixpence a thousand and had got over the difficulty of Marianne’s having no money by starting her off with ten shillings out of her own purse. She derived such simple pleasure from winning them back again