The Viscount's Revenge (The Royal Ambition Series Book 4) by M. C. Beaton Read Free Book Online Page B

bed was neatly made, but of her aunt there was no sign.
     
    Perhaps Aunt Matilda, still revived by the excitement of the ball, had walked down to the vicarage to talk to Mrs. Jolly.
     
    Amanda decided to occupy herself with the household chores until Richard or her aunt should return. She went around to the stables at the back of the house, catching her breath as a great buffet of warm wind struck her as she turned a corner of the building. She led Bluebell out of his stall and turned him out into the field at the bottom of the garden.
     
    The field now belonged to Mr. Brotherington but it was not used for anything and surely even he would not object to one small donkey using it for grazing.
     
    Bluebell was rather an ill-favored donkey, being slightly cross-eyed and dusty-coated. He was given to erratic turns of speed but Amanda had become used to this and pointed out to any critic that most donkeys would not budge at all.
     
    She wished she had a good, well-behaved horse to take on a mission like highway robbery. But Bluebell it would have to be. The animal was not without a certain intelligence fuelled by low cunning, and had a passion for sugar loaves.
     
    The whole of the day began to take on an air of unreality. Amanda’s mind flinched away from the prospect of the night to come.
     
    She left Bluebell and went into the back kitchen. The jam had to be put into jars and sealed. I could sell this, thought Amanda, for about tenpence a pot. Perhaps I should think along these domestic lines. We cannot possibly be going to hold up a coach!
     
    But in her heart of hearts, she knew that she would, because more than anything else in the world she wanted revenge on Lord Hawksborough.
     
    The jam being finished, Amanda made herself a dish of tea and sat at the kitchen table, looking out vaguely at the trees and bushes in the garden, being shaken and tossed by the blustery wind.
     
    A sudden squall of rain darkened the sky and flung raindrops against the glass of the kitchen window.
     
    New thoughts and frustrations and desires kept springing into Amanda’s mind. For the first time, she realised she envied her brother the freedom allowed him by his sex. For the first time she realised that women were destined to have a hard time of it unless they were very lucky. Unless you married a rich man, you were tied body and soul to that jam-and-preserve-making factory called home, and whether you loved your husband or not, childbearing was exacted with a pious and pitiless vigour. Everyone assumed that women had inferior minds.
     
    The wives of the farmers and yeomen of the surrounding countryside automatically adopted their husband’s political opinions and never for a moment thought of forming any of their own. They either shopped at a “blue” shop or a “pink” shop, according to their political beliefs. A Tory would consider it very wrong to give custom to a “pink” shopkeeper, and a Whig would avoid a “blue” shop at all costs.
     
    Amanda did not feel that her mind was inferior to Richard’s. Despite the fact that she had had no schooling, she knew she had managed to surpass him in knowledge by studying at home every book she could get her hands on. And yet, she wondered, surely the well-balanced, intelligent woman she liked to think herself could have foreseen that Uncle would not live forever. They could have scraped a little each month from the allowance and could have bought a piece of land. The garden at Fox End was laid out like a gentleman’s garden in miniature. They did not even keep geese or hens, and the vegetable garden was ridiculously small.
     
    She wondered all at once where Aunt Matilda had gone.
     
    The rain had stopped. She put down her teacup and was just getting ready to attack the rest of the housework when there came a furious banging at the garden door.
     
    A servant Amanda had not seen before stood outside. He was wearing buckskin breeches, white swanskin lapelled waistcoat, and a