This Heart of Mine by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online

youngest sister, and Velvet felt a twinge of sadness, for Deirdre looked so very much like their mother.
    “Velvet poppet, thank goodness you’ve come! I’m at my wit’s end, and the queen is due by two o’clock!” Deirdre exclaimed.
    Velvet flung an arm about her older sister. “I came to help, sister. You have only to tell me what it is you need done and I will do it.”
    Deirdre lowered her slender form, with its very distended belly, into a chair. “I’m not sure where to begin, Velvet. I’ve never entertained the queen before. I don’t even know how she knew of Blackthorn Priory , but her secretary wrote that she had heard of our fine gardens and wished to see them.How could she have heard of our gardens? We are not a part of the court and neither is anyone else in the family except for Robin, and he withdrew from it after Alison’s death. I doubt Robin made any remarks to the queen about our gardens. Gardens are not our brother’s métier.”
    “Don’t fuss so, Deirdre. ’Tis a great honor the queen does you and John. She rarely ventures out of the home counties to come to Worcestershire.”
    “Better she hadn’t decided to venture this far!” said Deirdre irritably. “Do you have any idea what it costs to entertain royalty? Nay, how could you? You’re just a child!”
    “I wish that Scots earl claiming to be my betrothed understood that,” muttered Velvet, but her elder sister didn’t hear her for she was too concerned with her own problems.
    “It will cost us a small fortune to have the queen and her court here. Of course, John wrote to Her Majesty’s household controller, Sir James Crofts, that we could not entertain the entire court. The priory is simply not big enough for all those people. Do you know what he wrote back? That Her Majesty would only expect us to put up fifty or so of her people within the house and that the rest would be housed in tents upon our lawns! Can you imagine what the lawns are going to look like after five hundred people, their horses, and baggage trains have trampled upon them? It will take us five years to restore them!” She shook her head in an agitated fashion. “I don’t mean to sound inhospitable, Velvet, but what will we get out of all of this besides debts—and the privilege of saying that the queen stayed in the Rose Bedchamber, which of course will have to be renamed the Queen’s Room now. She won’t even be sleeping in the bed there since she travels with her own and will sleep in no other.”
    Velvet listened to her sister with a sense of growing amazement. She had never known Deirdre to be this way. Deirdre was the serene daughter. She had never fussed like Willow or Velvet herself.
    “It’s all too much,” wailed Deirdre, “and I’m sure that we have neither enough food or drink for such a huge gathering. We shall be disgraced, I am certain.”
    “Tell me what’s been done so far, Deirdre,” Velvet said soothingly. She could see that her sister was growing more nervous by the minute.
    “The whole house has been turned out,” Deirdre began. “The Rose Bedchamber has been completely redone. Heaven only knows where I’m going to put the rest of her attendants! Thank the Lord they will only be here for one night. God’sbones! I only hope I have enough food for the whole company!”
    “What have you laid aside?”
    Deirdre furrowed her brow in concentration. “There are six dozen barrels of oysters packed in ice, twenty-four suckling pigs, three wild boars, trout from the river, twelve legs of lamb, another dozen sides of beef, six roe deer, and six stags; two dozen hams, five hundred lark pastries for tonight, capons in ginger sauce, goose, at least three dozen, larded ducks, pigeon pies and rabbit pies, a hundred apiece. Every house in the neighborhood has baked for us.” She stopped to draw a breath. “There will be bowls of new lettuce, cress, radishes, scallions, artichokes in white wine, carrots glazed in honey, and enough