Seven for a Secret by Victoria Holt Read Free Book Online

Sophie.
    “Nearly as old as St. Aubyn’s.”
    “Oh, not as grand as that,” said Rachel.
    “It has great charm,” insisted Aunt Sophie.
    “Tamarisk is late.”
    “Tamarisk is always late,” said Rachel.
    “Hm,” grunted Aunt Sophie.
    “She’s ever so keen to meet you,” said Rachel to me.
    “She’ll be here soon.”
    She was right.
    “Oh, here you are, my dear,” said Aunt Sophie.
    “Delayed, were you?”
    “Oh yes,” said the newcomer. She was quite attractive, with very fair curly hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a short retrousse nose which gave her a jaunty look. She looked at me with undisguised curiosity.
    “So you’re the niece.”
    “And you are Tamarisk St. Aubyn.”
     
    “From St. Aubyn’s Park,” she said, her eyes sweeping round Aunt Sophie’s tastefully furnished but not very large drawing-room and somehow belittling it.
    “How do you do?” I asked coolly.
    “Well, thank you, and you?”
    “Well,” I replied.
    “You’re going to have lessons with Rachel and me.”
    “Yes. I’m looking forward to it.”
    She screwed up her face and made a pouting expression with which I was to become familiar, implying that I might change my mind when I met the governess.
    She said: “Old Lallie is a slave-driver, isn’t she, Rachel?”
    Rachel did not answer. She seemed timid and perhaps in awe of Tamarisk.
    “Old Lallie?” I asked.
    “Lallie Lloyd. Her name is Alice. I call her Lallie.”
    “Not to her face,” put in Rachel quietly.
    “I would,” retorted Tamarisk.
    “I am starting on Monday,” I told them.
    “You three can get to know each other,” said Aunt Sophie.
    “I’ll see about tea.”
    And I was alone with them.
    “You’ve come to live here now, I suppose,” said Tamarisk.
    “My mother is ill. She’s in a nursing home near here. That’s why I’m here.”
    “Rachel’s mother and father died. That’s why she’s here with her uncle and aunt.”
    “Yes, I know. She’s at the Bell House.”
    “It’s not as good as our place,” Tamarisk told me.
    “It’s not bad, though.” Again she gave Aunt Sophie’s drawing-room that look of pity and contempt.
    “We’re going to school later on,” Rachel told me.
    “Tamarisk and I shall go together.”
    “I think I probably shall too.”
    “Then there’ll be three of us.” Tamarisk giggled.
    “I shall
     
    be glad to go to school. It’s a pity we’re all so young. “
    That will change, of course,” I said, a little primly perhaps, and Tamarisk burst out laughing.
    “You sound like old Lallie already,” she said.
    “Tell us about your old home.”
    I told them and they listened intently and while they were talking Lily came in with the tea.
    Aunt Sophie followed.
    “You’ll look after our guests, Freddie,” she said.
    “I’ll leave you to it. Then you can all get to know each other without the help of the grownups.”
    I felt important pouring out the tea and handing round the cakes.
    “What a funny name,” said Tamarisk.
    “Isn’t it, Rachel? Freddie! It’s like a boy.”
    “It’s Frederica really.”
    “Frederica!” Her expression was disdainful.
    “Mine’s more unusual. Poor old Rachel, yours is ordinary. Didn’t Rachel do something in the Bible?”
    “Yes,” said Rachel.
    “She did.”
    “I like Tamarisk best. I shouldn’t like to be called by a boy’s name.”
    “Nobody would mistake you for one,” I replied, which sent Tamarisk into gusts of laughter.
    Then we talked together freely and I felt they had accepted me. They told me about the vagaries of old Lallie, how easily she could be hoodwinked, though one had to take care when attempting this; how she had had a lover who had died when he was young of some mysterious illness and that was why she had remained unmarried and had to go on being a governess to people like Tamarisk, Rachel and me instead of having her own home, with a loving husband and a family.
    By the time tea was over I had lost my apprehension and felt I