The Original Miss Honeyford by M.C. Beaton Read Free Book Online

Alistair was joining a company of five richly dressed gentlemen and ladies at a table in front of the fire.
    She lowered her eyes to her book again, but somehow she could not focus on the print. Everyone in the room seemed to be talking at once and so she could not hear what Lord Alistair was saying.
    Six young men at a table near the window had been quarreling, not very loudly, but enough to cause an uneasy feeling in the room.
    “Damn you, Giles!” yelled one, jumping to his feet and oversetting a chair. “I demand satisfaction. Name your seconds.”
    “You are a card cheat and I stand by what I said, Jerry,” said the one called Giles. “Tom and Billy will act for me.”
    “And Frank and Harry for me,” said Jerry.
    An old gentleman wearing a bag wig said loudly, “If you gentlemen insist on trying to kill each other, then I beg you to quit this room while you make your arrangements. You are frightening the ladies.”
    The six men rose from their seats, grumbling among themselves, and left the room. Everyone went on talking. Honey put down her book and sat amazed. Wasn’t anyone going to
do
anything? Then she decided they probably knew the duel would come to nothing, and the six men were probably all drinking in the tap right at this moment.
    She looked more openly at Lord Alistair, who appeared to see her for the first time. He gave her a small bow from the waist and turned his attention back to Mrs. Osborne, a dashing matron with a high complexion and brown curls topped with an outrageous bonnet which looked like a Roman helmet.
    Honey felt disconcerted. There were three fashionably dressed ladies at Lord Alistair’s table, including Mrs. Osborne. They all seemed to dote on him and hang on his every word. But, somehow, Honey had thought he would pay her a little more attention. Feeling rather piqued, she got to her feet to leave the room. She could not help stealing a glance at Lord Alistair to see whether he was watching her leave, but he carried on talking.
    A disgracefully feminine thought flashed through her head. “I am wearing my
best
gown and he didn’t want to know me.”
    She entered her room and stared sulkily around the magnificence of Barnet’s best posting house from the tasteful hangings to the framed landscapes and the Chippendale bureau and chairs.
    Morosely, she undressed and went to bed. There was really nothing else to do.
    Sleep came in fits and starts. Every time she decided she simply must get up instead of lying tossing and turning, she would plunge down into another fitful burst of sleep.
    At last, she awoke properly at five o’clock in the morning. She decided to go for a short walk, got dressed, and opened the door of the old powder room which now served as a dressing room.
    The one warm item she had was a sage-green cloak which had been her mother’s. Honey had never worn it, considering its large hood and sweeping folds unsuitable for the country. It was, in fact, the most fashionable-looking item she possessed, the other few clothes that she had being the product of an elderly spinster dressmaker in Kelidon whose only other customers were the elderly ladies of the town. She was just adjusting it around her shoulders when she realized she could hear perfectly plainly what the two men in the next room were saying.
    “I say, Frank,” came a plaintive voice. “You don’t s’pose old Giles is capable of
killing
Jerry, do you?”
    The one called Frank gave a great horse laugh. “Giles is a fine shot, but he won’t do any damage today. Fact is, Tom’s sick and tired of Giles’s moralizing and so he’s only going to pretend to load Giles’s pistol.”
    “But what if Jerry kills Giles?”
    “Good riddance,” came the laconic reply.
    “Where do we meet?”
    “The pasture on Hermitage Farm at a half past five. Just be getting light then. We’ve got time to walk there. Tom put it about that the duel was off. Don’t want any of the stuffed shirts alerting the