The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter by Mary Ellen Dennis Read Free Book Online

“The Beresfords’ help are a snooty lot. They never tell me nothin’.” She scrutinized the rows of spacious town homes where servants were scrubbing muck from the entrance steps. “No wonder everything’s so filthy. I thought ’twas coal dust but it must be ashes.” She clucked her tongue. “I remember last month when I was cleanin’ the fireplace at the White Hart and yer mother—”
    â€œStepmother.”
    â€œâ€”Mrs. Wyndham tells me to use wood ash to scour the andirons, but I like a mix with baking soda and some other ingredients, I forget which ones right now. I was cleanin’ like I usually do—”
    â€œPardon me?” Elizabeth interrupted, already irritated beyond endurance. “I’ve never noticed your penchant for cleaning.”
    â€œI thought writers was supposed to notice everything. I wonder what kind of books ye write, Mistress.”
    Elizabeth’s fingers tightened on her parasol. She felt the same urge toward violence that had overwhelmed her during the last leg of their journey from the Dales. If London had been but a few miles farther south, Grace never would have arrived intact.
    In any case, at her advanced age she didn’t need a chaperone. “Do be quiet, please,” she said, as the carriage passed through a park where expensively garbed couples strolled beneath towering oaks. “You’re giving me a headache.”
    â€œI’ve not seen one gent so handsome as Lord Stafford,” Grace said as she surveyed the scene. “I trust ye’ll appreciate him more when ye return. I hear he’s been seein’ someone in Richmond who’s a good ten years younger than ye, Mistress. Don’t keep him waitin’ too long, or ye’ll lose him altogether.”
    â€œBut he’s not a real man,” Elizabeth murmured, thinking of John.
    â€œWhatever d’ye mean?”
    â€œReal men are hard and muscular, with chiseled faces and callused hands. Real men wear rough woolens, and they have beards that would scratch my cheek should I rub against them.”
    Delighted by Grace’s shocked expression, Elizabeth continued. “Real men smell of leather and horses and sweat. They smell of sandalwood and the sea and faraway places where no lace-cuffed gentleman would ever dare travel.”
    â€œHorses and sweat,” Grace said with a disdainful sniff. “Mercy, Mistress, ye’ve just described Tim the Ostler.”
    John’s hands are callused, Elizabeth thought, as she experienced an overwhelming sadness. Upon returning to the Dales, she would try unsuccessfully to conjure up John’s face ten years… nay, ten weeks from now, and she would always wonder what she might have missed.
    Damn the lawless footpad who had fumbled his attempt to rob Lord what’s-his-name! Instead, he had stolen John and robbed her of John’s kisses.
    As Grace droned on and on, Elizabeth put aside thoughts of John and concentrated on her mission. What would she find at the central library? James Waterman, the curator, had agreed to translate portions of the Alcester Chronicles. Elizabeth believed she must be missing something pertinent about Simon de Montfort and the rebel uprising, something that the Chronicles would reveal. Mr. Waterman’s reply to her written request had been so gracious, Elizabeth had momentarily forgotten that if she had been a man, she would have no need of the curator’s assistance. If she had been a man, her childhood tutor, Lester Dubbs, never would have dared refuse to teach her Latin.
    â€œToo much cultivation of the mind is selfish and unfeminine,” Dubbs had been fond of saying. When Elizabeth pressed, claiming that no one need know, Dubbs had charged that she was trying to establish her mental equality with a man, an unacceptable ambition. “A woman doesn’t need intellect to be successful in this world,” he had said. She had