Tallie's Knight by Anne Gracíe Read Free Book Online

appetite had quite vanished. Her cousin’s friends
were quite unbearable.
    “More coffee, Miss
Tallie?” murmured Brooks at her ear.
    A friendly face at
last.
    “Oh, yes, please,
Brooks.” Tallie beamed up at him and held her cup out for him to refill.
    As Brooks poured,
Miss Fyffe-Temple, one of Tallie’s neighbours, roughly jogged his elbow. Hot
coffee boiled over Tallie’s hand and arm. She leapt up with a shriek of pain.
    “Oh, Miss Tallie!”
exclaimed Brooks, horrified.
    “How very clumsy of
me, to be sure,” purred Miss Fyffe-Temple. “What a nasty red mark it has made.
I do hope it won’t leave a scar.”
    “Yes, it’s quite
disgustingly red and ugly. Is it terribly painful?” Miss Carnegie added.
    “Oh, how horrid. I
think I’m going to faint,” exclaimed The Honourable Miss Aldercott. The others
immediately gathered around Miss Aldercott, cooing with pretty concern.
    Blinking back tears,
Tallie ran from the room and headed for the scullery. She plunged her arm in a
pitcher of cold water and breathed a sigh of relief as the pain immediately
began to ebb. After a few moments she withdrew it and blew lightly on the
reddened skin. It was quite painful, but she didn’t think it was too serious a
burn. But why had Miss Fyffe-Temple done it? Tallie hadn’t missed the gleam of spiteful
satisfaction in her eyes as she had made her mocking apology.
    “Are you all right,
Miss Tallie?” It was Brooks, his kindly old face furrowed with anxiety. “I am
so sorry, my dear.”
    “It is not serious,
Brooks, truly,” Tallie reassured him. “It gave me more of a fright, really. It
hardly hurts at all.”
    “I don’t know how it
happened. She… My arm just slipped.”
    Tallie laid a hand on
his arm.
    “It’s all right; I
know whose fault it is, Brooks. The thing I don’t understand is why.”
    Brooks stared for a
moment, then suddenly looked awkward.
    “I think you’d best
speak to your cousin, miss,” he said. “She’s still abed, but I have no doubt
she’s expecting you.”
    Tallie frowned.
    “I shall go up to
her, then, as soon as I have put some butter and a piece of gauze over this
burn,” she said slowly.
    Judging from Brooks’s
expression, something was amiss. She could not think what it was. No doubt her
cousin would enlighten her.
     
     
    “Me?” Tallie’s voice
squeaked. She stared at her cousin, her jaw dropping in amazement. The effects
of her indulgences the night before had kept Laetitia in bed, and from the
sounds of things she was still inebriated. Or demented.
    “Me?” repeated
Tallie, stunned. “How can you possibly say such a thing, Cousin? He does not
even know my name.”
    “Ha!” spat Laetitia,
holding her delicate head. “I’ll wager he knows you in other ways, you hussy!
In the Biblical sense! Why else would he choose a wretched little nobody?”
    Tallie gasped, first
in shock and then in swelling outrage. It was one thing to be asked to swallow
such a Banbury tale —Lord d’Arenville wishing to wed Tallie Robinson, indeed!
But to be accused of immorality! She was not entirely sure what knowing ‘in the
Biblical sense’ meant, but she was very certain it was immoral. Tallie was furious.
She might be poor. She might be an orphan, shabbily dressed and forced to live
on other’s generosity. But she was not immoral.
    “Firstly, let me tell
you, Cousin,” Tallie said heatedly, “no man has known me in the Biblical sense,
and I am shocked that you could even suggest such a thing! Secondly, I cannot
help but believe you must have made an error about Lord d’Arenville’s
intentions. Perhaps you misheard him.”
    “I did not,” snapped
Laetitia. “Do you think I would imagine such an appalling thing?”
    Tallie gritted her
teeth. Imagination indeed! She could imagine no member of the aristocracy, let
alone the arrogant Lord d’Arenville, choosing his cousin’s poor relation for
his bride.
    “But I have not
exchanged even one word with his lordship,”