My Sweet Folly Read Online Free PDF

“Almost there!” she said cheerfully. “The boy says this wall belongs to Solinger Abbey. It goes all the way about the estate.”
    The postboy, mounted upon the bay wheeler, rose in time to the horse’s trot. Bare trees hung out over the brick, scraping over the carriage roof, scattering droplets against the glass. Though neat hedgerows and pasture bordered the lane on the open side, there appeared to be an extensive forest inside the wall. Black staghorn branches, leafless and dark with rain, seemed to reach blindly for the rainbow-hued clouds drifting past above.
    “Most forbidding,” Folie murmured. “I like it.”
    “Perhaps you will write a novel,” Melinda said, and lowered her voice portentously. “‘The ancient dreadful oaks beckoned her to her doom…’“
    “Of course,” Folie said. “They always do.” The chaise was slowing, approaching a perfectly mundane gatehouse of neat brick. A porter grinned, already stepping outside as the postboy hailed him.
    “The Misses Hamilton arrive!” the postboy called.
    The porter waved in friendly acknowledgment and unlocked the wrought-iron gate. The team swung around, sidestepping into the opening, blowing a little from their work. The chaise wheeled in place, then jerked forward and swept through as the horses resumed their trot.
    Both Folie and Melinda leaned forward, looking for the house. There was nothing to be seen but the aged trees, a tangle of uncut brush swarming beneath their low branches. Ruts in the drive had been newly patched with gravel, so the ride was tolerably smooth, dipping and curving through the forest.
    The house burst into view with a suddenness that made them all gasp like light-headed debutantes. Red brick glowed in the sunset, a Tudor fantasy of towers and twisting chimneys, the round turrets crowned by oriental domes and delicate spires of lead. It seemed to grow as they neared, revealing wings and windows, gabled fronts carved with the heraldic outlines of medieval creatures. The chaise bumped across a low bridge and moat.
    “Oh, Mama, you must write a novel now,” Melinda said, laughing.
    “Very tempting, I admit!” Folie hid her tight fists beneath the cloak folded on her lap. It was just what he would like, this house. This whole estate, a quaint romance. One expected a knight to come thundering down one of the wooded rides at any moment, his banner flying and his armor glinting in the last misted rays of sun.
    It would not be out of character, she thought wryly, for Robert Cambourne to arrange just such a fanciful greeting. It would not be beyond him to assume the guise of a medieval warrior himself; he would delight in it, adding some unexpected touch to make a joke of it all.
    But their chaise was met by no such mythical figure. A bewigged footman opened the door as the vehicle rolled to a halt. Folie and Melinda crept out, surreptitiously stretching arms and legs and backs abused by a long day of travel. Sally scrambled to collect the scarves and combs they had managed to scatter about the vehicle.
    Folie looked up at the leaded glass windows. A thousand diamond lights winked back at her from pointed lancet arches, reflections of the red sun. The air smelled of boxwood hedges and rain.
    “Madam,” the butler said, waiting beside the low steps. He was dressed in a suit of black velvet and white stockings, a square-jawed young man with his long sandy hair in a queue, barely old enough to have charge of such a large house, Folie thought.
    They followed him under the heavy vault of the doorway. Just inside the entry, it was too dim to see much beyond some dark paneling. Folie’s heart was in her throat. At any moment they would meet him, or even worse his wife, and no matter how she tried to compose herself, the anxiety had her in its sick clutches.
    “Mrs. Hamilton.” A masculine voice startled her so that she spun about. He stood in a side doorway into the buttery, a tall man who kept his eyes down deferentially. For