VIscount Besieged by Elizabeth Bailey Read Free Book Online Page B

situation—from which there would be no going
back, for once known as a famous and, she hoped, splendid
tragedienne she could kiss goodbye to her former identity
forever—but quite another to drag her unwilling family along with
her into exile from polite society. For that was what it would
mean. She had never pretended otherwise. She was neither as cruel
nor as selfish as that, whatever Fanny thought.
    No, if she was
to accomplish her plans, Roborough’s role must be to take on the
family, in whatever fashion he deemed most suitable. The only
difficulty would be in finding the way to her own destiny before
the viscount chose one for her.
    The thought
froze her on the short stairway in the path she had taken towards
her bedchamber—for it was almost time to change into her habit for
her accustomed early evening ride—which lay in the additional
side-wing that had been built on to the old house in Papa’s young
days.
    Would Roborough
acquiesce in her plans? No, he would not. Oh, fudge, she must
think!
    No solution had
yet occurred to her as she went off down the back way towards the
stables, to find her horse already saddled and waiting. The cooling
air was refreshing as she cantered down the bridle-path, her Juliet
neck and neck with Papa’s Titian, ridden by the hardy old groom
Totteridge, and the anxiety that had been building up began to
wane.
    The horses
slowed as the woods thinned out, and they turned to take the scenic
route back to the estate. She and Papa had always called it that,
she recalled with one of those unexpected pangs. It was near two
years since Papa had been able to ride it with her. At first, it
had been merely that he had not been well enough to ride, and
Totteridge had been detailed to accompany Isadora in his stead,
both to exercise the stallion and to keep her safe. Later, there
had been no question of him riding ever again.
    Tears pricked at
Isadora’s eyes as she automatically guided Juliet to pick her way
through the brambled edge of the fields that bordered their home
ground. The familiar view across the estate blurred, and she reined
in her mount at the top of the hill. Through a haze she saw the
Jacobean house squatting in the unrolling valley, below the
clusters of interrupting trees dotted here and there, a
two-storeyed, low-lying bulk, the single wing snaking out the side,
ivy encroaching up the walls.
    A tear sneaked
over her lashes as she remembered Papa’s laughing words.
    ‘ Such
an ugly building. I cannot imagine what possessed my
great-grandfather to employ such a poor architect.’
    Ugly, yes, but
it was home. Somehow, its very ugliness, its lack of line
and form, seemed all of a piece with the spirit of the inhabitants
within. There was no order to their lives, no beauty of shape or
design, although the servants managed to keep the shut saloon
downstairs in some semblance of tidiness. All was chaos and
comfort. And, to say truth, the arrangement of the rooms inside the
house only added to the sense of disarray.
    From the big
drawing-room at the front, which benefited from the many windows,
one might penetrate at either end into smaller rooms. One of these
had been Papa’s sitting-room in the first throes of his illness,
when he had not been confined to bed, and was now given over to the
sole use of Mrs Alvescot who was wont to doze there in the
afternoon. The other had ever been Cousin Matty’s sitting-room, in
use most of the time as a playroom for her two children.
    All the other
rooms—bedchambers, most of them, except for the informal family
dining parlour—were of the oddest shapes and sizes, and could be
entered by only one door from the central corridor. Downstairs, as
well as the one good saloon, was the library, the formal
dining-room, a couple of musty parlours and the range of domestic
offices in use by the servants. The wing comprised the bedrooms of
the younger members of the family, and housed those privileged
servants who were not obliged to sleep in the