Lady of Lincoln Read Online Free PDF

various characters that she would put in any novel that she might write.
    Her heroine would definitely not be young and beautiful, she decided. Why should such people have all the fun? Instead, she would be an older lady, possibly a companion to someone young and beautiful, who would, for a change, be a minor character in her story. This older lady would be sensible, respectable, and pleasant looking if not precisely pretty. She would give her heroine a sensible name, too; something like Susan, or Margaret, not one of the fanciful names that novelists seemed prone to use.
    She would be a thirty-year-old spinster, the daughter of aclergyman, in comfortable circumstances, and living a life that was comfortable and happy in a way, but rather dull. She smiled wryly as she thought again about this description. It could be herself.
    The story would begin on a dark and stormy night. Her heroine would be returning home from laying someone out, and would be obliged to walk past the Minster, which loured threateningly through the mist.
    She frowned. No, that wasn’t right at all. To others, the cathedral might appear to lour, but for her it was an old friend whose demeanour was welcoming, never threatening. But that would not fit with the dark and stormy night. It would just have to lour and that was all. Then, as her heroine hurried through the gloom, she would suddenly encounter a tall, dark man, powerful and muscular, with strong features and swathed in a long cloak, who would exclaim at her clumsiness, and seize her in a vice-like grip.
    A sudden crash of a breaking wave brought Emily back to the present with a start. Good heavens, where upon earth had he come from, she wondered? The hero of The Fateful Bells had been fair-haired and slender. The leading male character in The Haunted Forest which they were to read next, and at which she had already glanced, looked to be much the same, and, if truth were told, promised to be rather dull. It was the villain who was always dark and muscular, who seized hold of the heroine and swore at her.
    If the heroine was unlike other heroines, of course, the hero could be unlike other heroes too. Whoever this character might be, hero or villain, he would certainly give sparkle to the whole narrative. And there the similarity to her own life ended, she sighed, as she turned back towards their lodgings. There was nothing in her life that sparkled. The nearest thing in her life to a hero was Dr Boyle, and whoever would want to read about a hero named Boyle who looked like a weasel?
    *
    Whilst they were in Mablethorpe, both ladies were diligent as regards their correspondence, and Emily wrote to her father every week. Nathalie wrote to her husband rather more frequently and seemed to receive a missive from him almost every day. In addition, he wrote to Emily, enquiring as to his wife’s health, and Emily made sure that she sent him cheerful replies. She could only hope that with all this letter writing to occupy him, he was spending as much time on his sermons as he should.
    He often asked about the skill of the local doctor, and Emily was able to say truthfully that she had formed a very good opinion of Dr Saddler. Certainly Nathalie had every confidence in him. ‘I like him so much better than Dr Boyle, who I always think looks like a weasel,’ she remarked one day when they were enjoying a cup of tea after the doctor had gone.
    ‘Oh do you think so?’ Emily said, trying to sound surprised, but guiltily aware that she had always thought the same.
    Nathalie looked mortified. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ she whispered. ‘I had forgotten that you had an understanding, and I do assure you, Miss Whittaker, that I meant a particularly handsome weasel.’
    ‘Is there such a thing?’ Emily asked quizzically. ‘No, my dear, I do not have an understanding with him. Although I have wondered….’
    ‘Oh no, surely not,’ Nathalie exclaimed.
    ‘Well, it is not as if I am falling over offers of