Seeking Celeste Read Online Free PDF Page A

gave you a name?”
    Was it her imagination, or was the rustling becoming more distinct? Back turned she could only surmise by the briefest of scuffles and the most decided of kicks that some youthful debate was wordlessly ensuing behind her.
    Presently, the damask moved with decision, and she could sense, rather than see, two—no, was it four?—eyes upon her person.
    â€œPardon me if I am not quite presentable. You see, I was not expecting company.”
    â€œMiss Derringer?”
    She turned around to see two vivid eyes confront her. How familiar was the stubborn tilt of the chin, though the curls were feminine and the youthful expression harboured none of the sensuous lines of the older, more intoxicating male version.
    â€œThe same.”
    â€œI am Kitty. Tom, come out from there at once. She won’t eat you!”
    â€œIndeed, I won’t. Though I am inclined to wonder whether our little friend, here, has eaten.”
    â€œNot since noon, when we discovered it. Dreadfully sorry about him, ma’am! Robert usually finds us such ... such deathly governesses.”
    â€œI infer, then, that you do not immediately consign me to that appalling category?” Ann’s tone was dry, but irrepressible humour lurked at the corner of her rather handsome lips.
    â€œGracious, no! You look to be a great good gun!” Tom stepped confidently out of hiding and dusted himself off with the air of a gentleman grown. A quick calculation had Miss Derringer judge him to be around nine, with his older, more worldly wise sister eleven at the least.
    â€œI am relieved! Kitty, may I have your slipper? It looks delightfully soft.”
    â€œMy slipper?”
    Anne nodded. “I am not sure how much longer our little creature, here, is going to stand for being held. Since I am not, myself, over partial to prickles, I should like to set it down somewhere comfortably. Your shoe will make an excellent nest until we can return it to ... where did it come from?”
    â€œThe herbarium.”
    â€œVery good. The herbarium, then. Ah, excellent.”
    Anne took the offered footwear and gently released her charge into the base. Tom and Kitty exchanged guilty glances.
    â€œIt did not hurt you overmuch, did it?”
    â€œNo, but I am a hopelessly dull sort of person that way. Dreadfully cautious, you understand.”
    Miss Derringer could have laughed out loud at the baffled faces that digested this piece of very disappointing news.
    Kitty snorted, but Tom proved an unexpected ally, announcing that Miss Derringer must be overstating the case, for she did not look cautious. A quick glance at the cheval mirror confirmed Anne in her worst fears. The child was right.
    Her hair was spilling from her pins in coils, her dress was smeared with mud, her elegant kidskin boot was slit and there was a high and unmaidenly colour upon her cheeks. Worlds away from the proper, calm, self-controlled young woman who had set out that morning.
    That young lady had been resigned to the fact that she had come down in the world and was now relegated to a rank only slightly above that of maid servant. True, companions were expected to be genteel, but that was where their similarity with the high ton ended. Companions were not expected to be excited, unnerved, curious or in any way out of the ordinary. They were like pieces of furniture. Elegant, but curiously inanimate. Most of all, they were wholly ineligible for anything but a lifetime of solicitous fetching and carrying, curtsying and withdrawing, needlework and other appropriate but rather unfortunate activities.
    Miss Derringer, redoubtable, stubborn, intelligent beyond her four and twenty years and, regrettably, still single, had little option but to view this destiny with equanimity. True, she had wrestled, at times with tears, with wild defiance, even once, with a priceless Sevres vase that had come to a sudden and rather sorry end upon Lady Somerford’s hearth. But