A Love for All Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

opportunity to serve the queen, and better ourselves. We all expect to find husbands while we’re here. Do ye?”
    “I am a royal ward,” said Aidan, “and the queen promised my father that she would marry me off to a good man so I suppose I, too, expect to find a husband at court like the rest of ye.”
    “Yer older than we are,” remarked Linnet.
    “I’m twenty-three,” Aidan answered the girl honestly.
    “Twenty-three!” Linnet said the word as if Aidan had said one hundred and twenty-three. “We’re all sixteen but for Cathy. She is fourteen. Why are ye not already wed? Did yer betrothed die? Have ye no respectable dowry?”
    Aidan reached for the loaf of bread upon the table, and tore off a chunk. “My mother died when I was ten. I had been born to my father when he was virtually an old man, and he needed me particularly after mama was gone. I am, ye see, his only living child. How could I marry, and leave my father to suffer loneliness?” She helped herself to a wing of capon as a servant offered a platter with the neatly carved bird upon it.
    The other girls nodded their agreement, and their sympathy of her plight. They fully understood the obligations of family. No decent girl would leave an aged parent. Curiosity satisfied they settled down to eat, much to Aidan’s relief. What a bunch of cackling little hens, she thought amused, and then turned her attention to her own meal. She hadn’t eaten since morning, and she was starving. She wondered if poor Mag knew where to eat, and decided to take her a capon leg, and some bread, and a pear in her napkin afterwards. Then conscience quieted she filled her own plate high with prawns broiled with herbs; a small individual game pie which was still hot, steam coming through the vents in its crust; a slab of juicy beef; and an artichoke that had been braised in white wine. Her first pangs relieved she refilled her now empty plate with a piece of Dover sole, a slice of pink ham, more bread, and a wedge of sharp cheddar cheese. Amazingly she yet had room for a large slice of apple tart that was served up with thick clotted Devon cream. She drank sparingly, however, as she had never had much of a head for wines.
    Her young companions had watched as she had devoured the three platefuls of food without so much as a belch. Their eyes were wide with amazement at her appetite for they had been taught that a lady takes a little, and then eats only sparingly of her portion.
    “Ye don’t get fat?” Cathy Baldwin finally asked, unable to contain herself.
    “Nay,” said Aidan. “I’m a big girl, and I need my food. Yer but a little bit of a thing. Ye all are.”
    They nodded. It was perfectly true. They were all just over five feet in height, Dorothy being the tallest at five feet three inches. Aidan St. Michael had to stand at least five feet ten inches in her stockinged feet. She was fully as tall as many a man. Each had the same thought in her head. Poor Mistress St. Michael. What man would wed with such a big lummox of a woman? Her family was unimportant, and obviously she had no decent fortune else her father would not have commended her care to the queen. At least she would not be competition.
    “We must all be friends,” said Linnet Talbot speaking for the five of them, and feeling in her heart that she was doing the charitable thing.
    “How kind ye are,” replied Aidan. “I should indeed appreciate yer friendship for I am woefully ignorant of the court, and all its customs. I would not want to bring shame upon my family by being socially inept.”
    The five younger girls murmured sympathetically. “Do not fear,” Linnet said. “We will guide ye through the maze of customs, and in just a few weeks ye will feel as if ye had been here all yer life. Everything else will pale in comparison to the life here at court. This is probably the most exciting place in the entire world to live! We are all so very, very lucky, aren’t we?” She looked to the others