Maggie MacKeever Read Online Free PDF Page B

cream ground covered the floor. Ermyntrude paused by a circular convex mirror hung in the hallway. Her features, she decided, were perfect enough to grace a cameo, her hair was a lovely shade of red-gold, and her eyes as blue as the sky outside the window through which she had recently stared.
    How flattering this new gown was, fashioned of clinging white muslin, with a plain, brief bodice and a narrow skirt that fell straight and close to the figure from its high waistline. A pity St. Erth was not about to see her looking so fine. What accounted for this omission? Why could not the viscount appreciate just how very near perfection Ermyntrude was? How could such a paragon be so deficient in good taste? Ermyntrude twisted a curl thoughtfully around her finger. Perhaps he would prove more attentive if she tried a new hairstyle.
    Consequently, it was Drusilla who opened the door, the problem of Asia Minor having been solved by Lambchop, who had decided that the puzzle piece upon which his mistress lavished such attention could only be a tasty morsel for him to eat. “You’d better come in,” Drusilla said ungraciously to their visitor. “You might have come in sooner, but Ermy fell to studying her postures before the looking glass.”
    “I did no such thing!” protested Ermyntrude, as she hastily stepped away from the mirror and joined her sister at the door. Frankly, she inspected their visitor. Crushed bonnet, battered portmanteau—her gaze moved to Tabby’s face. “Good gracious!” said Ermyntrude. “We thought you’d be quite old.”
    Drusilla, too, inspected the newcomer. “Yes,” she said frankly. “As well as prune faced. You ain’t either and for my part, I’m just as glad. If I must be told how to be a lady, at least it won’t be by someone with an ugly phiz.”
    Teach this hoyden to be a lady? Tabby wondered if she was equal to the task. For her part, she had expected her charges to be considerably younger. She had also not expected to be met by them at the doorway. “This is the household of Sir Geoffrey Elphinstone?” she asked.
    “She’s as surprised as we are,” observed Drusilla to her sister. Ermyntrude’s attention had again wandered—she was craning her neck for a glimpse of a more elegant carriage—but Lambchop waved his great plumed tail.
    Drusilla pushed the dog out of the way. “Come in,” she said again. “We don’t know where he’s got to, but Pa’s around somewhere. He had the notion you was supposed to be here yesterday, but I suppose it was a mistake.”
    Tabby suspected that there had indeed been some mistake made, on her part. She was forming a very unusual picture of life in the Elphinstone household. Indeed, she was suffering an attack of craven-heartedness so severe that, had not Drusilla taken away her portmanteau, she might have turned tail and fled.
    She had nowhere to go, Tabby reminded herself. Perhaps she was merely shaken from the carriage ride—the job-coachman had attempted to make up for the delay by driving the remainder of the journey as if the hounds of hell were in hot pursuit—and matters in this household were not in so bad a case as they seemed. And perhaps Tabby was whistling in the dark, as she followed Drusilla and Lambchop and her portmanteau down the hallway and into the drawing room.
    Ermyntrude trailed after them. “I’m hungry,” she said plaintively. “We should have some tea. I’ll just go and fetch it, shall I?”
    “No!” Drusilla set down the portmanteau. “If you go fetch it, we’ll see neither you nor the tea for upward of an hour. I’ll go. You stay here and keep Miss Whatever-Her-Name-Is company.”
    The younger of Tabby’s charges, at least, possessed a lively intelligence, Tabby decided, even if her manners were appalling. “Why not have one of the servants fetch the tea?” she asked, not unreasonably.
    “The servants?” scoffed Drusilla. “If we left the servants to do it, we’d wait longer than an hour. I’ll