The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig Read Free Book Online Page B

father. ‘None of your rose gardens! They’ll go riding,’ barked Mr Meadows, from the opposite end of the table, next to Aunt Prudence. ‘Survey the land. Kill two birds with one stone. Derek, you’ll call for the girl tomorrow. Need you to take a look at the fences near Scraggle Corner.’
    ‘I’m sure she’d much rather see my roses, wouldn’t you, dear?’Mrs Meadows sent what was meant to be a meaningful glance at her husband. ‘They’re so much more…romantic.’
    Turning to her left, Amy caught Jane’s eye and grimaced.
    She sent a look of appeal to Aunt Prudence at the foot of the table, but there was no help forthcoming from that corner. Aunt Prudence’s one passion in life was covering all surfaces in Wooliston Manor with miles of needlepoint, and she was blind to all else.
    Amy launched into plan B. She squared her shoulders and looked directly at her uncle. ‘Uncle Bertrand, I am going to France. If I cannot leave with your assent, I shall leave without it.’ She braced herself for argument.
    ‘Feisty one, ain’t she!’ Mr Meadows declared approvingly. ‘Would’ve thought the French line would weaken the blood,’ he continued, eyeing Amy as though she were a ewe at market.
    ‘The dam’s line bred true! You can see it in my girls, too, eh, Marcus? Good Hereford stock.’ It was highly unclear whether Uncle Bertrand was referring to his niece, his sheep, his daughters, or all three.
    ‘Bought a ram from Hereford once…’
    ‘Ha! That’s nothing to the ewe I purchased from old Ticklepenny. Annabelle, he called her. There was a look in her eye…’ Uncle Bertrand waxed lyrical in the candlelight.
    The conversation seemed on the verge of degenerating into a nostalgic catalogue of sheep they had known and loved. Amy was mentally packing for a midnight flight to the mail coach to Dover (plan C), when Jane’s gentle voice cut through the listing of ovine pedigrees.
    ‘Such a pity about the tapestries,’ was all she said. Her voice was pitched low but somehow it carried over both the shouting men.
    Amy glanced sharply at Jane, and was rewarded by a swift kick to the ankle. Had that been a ‘say something now!’ kick, or a ‘be quiet and sit still’ kick? Amy kicked back in inquiry. Jane put her foot down hard over Amy’s. Amy decided that could be interpreted as either ‘be quiet and sit still’ or ‘please stop kicking me now!’
    Aunt Prudence had snapped out of her reverie with what was nearly an audible click. ‘Tapestries?’ she inquired eagerly.
    ‘Why, yes, Mama,’ Jane replied demurely. ‘I had hoped that while Amy and I were in France we might be granted access to the tapestries at the Tuilleries.’
    Jane’s quiet words sent the table into a state of electric expectancy. Forks hovered over plates in mid-air; wineglasses tilted halfway to open mouths; little Ned paused in the act of slipping a pea down the back of Agnes’s dress. Even Miss Gwen stopped glaring long enough to eye Jane with what looked more like speculation than rancour.
    ‘Not the Gobelins series of Daphne and Apollo!’ cried Aunt Prudence.
    ‘But, of course, Aunt Prudence,’ Amy plunged in. Amy just barely restrained herself from turning and flinging her arms around her cousin. Aunt Prudence had spent long hours lamenting that she had never taken the time before the war to copy the pattern of the tapestries that hung in the Tuilleries Palace. ‘Jane and I had hoped to sketch them for you, hadn’t we, Jane?’
    ‘We had,’ Jane affirmed, her graceful neck dipping in assent. ‘Yet if Papa feels that France remains unsafe, we shall bow to his greater wisdom.’
    At the other end of the table, Aunt Prudence was wavering. Literally. Torn between her trust in her husband and her burning desire for needlepoint patterns, she swayed a bit in her chair, the feather in her small silk turban quivering with her agitation. ‘It surely can’t be as unsafe as that, can it, Bertrand?’ She leant across the