Jennie Kissed Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

harped quite a while on the parks and gardens, done by Capability Brown in the last century.
    “You might as well save your breath to cool your porridge, my lord,” Mrs. Irvine said. “You will never get Jennie to change her plans. It comes from being a school teacher, I suppose. She is all for keeping to our schedule. I wanted to stop over a day at Devizes. There was a fellow putting on a raree-show, but she wouldn’t hear of messing up our schedule.” Lord Marndale’s jaw fell open in astonishment.
    “You make me sound a Tartar, Mrs. Irvine,” I objected, casting a menacing eye on her. “What will Lord Marndale think to hear his estate compared to a raree-show? I should like of all things to see Wycherly Park. We accept your invitation, sir.”
    He expressed his pleasure, then said, “So you were a schoolmistress, Miss Robsjohn?” in a way that asked for elucidation.
    I gave him the bare facts of my residence at the Bath Seminary, beginning as a junior assistant at the same school I had attended when my father was alive. The actual number of years spent there was not pinpointed. He said he had relatives who sent their daughters there, and we discussed the young ladies in question till breakfast was over. He was too polite to inquire how I had suddenly become wealthy enough to desert my career, and I did not volunteer the information. A touch of mystery, I felt, might make me an object of some interest. Before leaving it was arranged that our driver should follow Lord Marndale’s carriage to Wycherly.
    I had a hasty word with my John Groom, advising him to hire the fastest team possible, for I did not wish to look a complete flat in front of Lord Marndale . I could not but feel the disparity in our rigs, however, when he and Lady Victoria went out to their sleek chariot with the lozenge on the door, pulled by four matched bays. My poor old secondhand cart looked like the relic it was, and I had not thought to tell John Groom to hire four nags.
    “I’ll set a slow pace so you can keep up with us,” I heard Marndale tell my groom.
    Lady Victoria showed no pleasure or interest that we were going to Wycherly. I assumed her father had chastised her, for she was subdued and polite.
    The detour south to Wycherly occurred just west of Woking. We drove for a little over an hour with Mrs. Irvine telling me every five minutes that we would never make London by nightfall but we would have to pay for our room all the same since we had asked them at Rendall’s to hold it.
    “What if we do?” I asked. “The price of one night’s lodging won’t break us. You must realize, Mrs. Irvine, that Lord Marndale could be a very helpful social ally in London, if he chose to take us up.”
    “You’re flying too high, Jennie. He is just being polite. Very likely he is treating us today so he won’t have to have anything to do with us in London. Gentlemen like to pay off their debts.”
    “That is news to me.” I felt she had hit it on the head and was furious with the bearer of bad tidings. “You are becoming cynical in your old age. I think I prefer your naval mode. I am surprised you haven’t claimed he is trying to seduce me.”
    “I wouldn’t put it past him, but he wouldn’t do it with his daughter in tow. He thinks too much of her. For ravishing women, men use an inn, usually in the country.”
    We were certainly in the deep country here. We drove through hill and hollow, with carefully tended fields where varying shades of green suggested the market and nursery crops under cultivation in the fertile brick-earth of the Thames valley. It was an ever-changing landscape. We passed through areas where tree followed tree, catching glimpses of cattle grazing beyond. Clouds of flowering wild bushes bosomed the hillsides, lending an air of enchantment. I knew from my teaching books that the North Downs must be close by. Before we reached them Lord Marndale’s carriage turned in at a pair of wrought-iron gates and continued