The House of Hardie Read Online Free PDF Page A

the mirrored side panels of the window recess.
    The marquess had arrived at the same conclusion. ‘I’ll send you down a load of stuff,’ he said. ‘Don’t go buying anything till then. As for you, Miss, what’s put this flush in your cheeks? What have you been doing all morning?’
    â€˜Going round Oxford with Miss Jarrold, just as you said.’
    â€˜Which colleges did you see?’
    â€˜I don’t remember. Except for New College, because it had such a lovely garden.’
    â€˜If you can’t remember, then you’ve wasted the morning.’
    â€˜I’ve made notes for my diary,’ Lucy assured him. ‘And it wasn’t
what
I saw that was exciting. It was the seeing.’ Was it possible, she wondered, to explain what she meantto her grandfather without being rude. The marquess was an old man. He had travelled in his youth, but now left Castlemere only rarely, to visit his house in London or shoot on his son’s grouse moor in Scotland. It had probably never occurred to him that Lucy might like to have a holiday, to go somewhere – anywhere. To be honest, it had not occurred to Lucy herself until today. But as though she were a different person from yesterday’s child in Miss Jarrold’s schoolroom, she had suddenly become aware of a world outside, waiting to be explored. Exploring – that was the right word. Moving on without knowing what was coming next. That, in a sense, was what Archie was doing today.
    There was a knock at the door. A young man appeared without waiting for any call, hesitated briefly when he saw the family group, but stayed long enough to introduce himself as another freshman on the same staircase and to offer Archie tea later in the day. A second caller, before the first had left, looked hopefully at Archie’s wide shoulders and tall, strong body and enquired whether he was interested in college rugger. Yet another unknown visitor, less tentative than the first two, announced that he had Yates, A. down on his list as a wetbob. College tubs, he said, would start at two o’clock on Friday; university rowing trials were on Saturday.
    Lucy sighed with envy. All these young men, and the hundreds more who were still settling into their rooms, were waiting to become Archie’s friends, if he wanted them. A whole new life, full of new activities, lay before him, while she would have to return to Castlemere with no one to talk to but Miss Jarrold. How lucky Archie was!
    It was not in her brother’s nature to show excitement. He liked to appear calm and in control of a situation, as though everything that happened was exactly what he hadexpected. Lucy herself would have been jumping up and down by now with pleasure at the prospect of so many new experiences. Miss Jarrold was continually telling her that she could not be considered a well-brought-up young lady until she had learned to control her emotions and the expression on her face. But Lucy had no intention of spending the rest of her life looking bored. The whole point of growing up would be to get away from Castlemere, which was beautiful and spacious and comfortingly well-ordered but – well, unexciting.
    If all went well, her own escape would come in two years’ time, when her grandfather had promised to open up his Mayfair house for the whole of the London Season. Her aunt would present her at Court, and for two months she would dance and dine and ride in the park and leave and receive calling cards and change her clothes six times a day.
    There was a sense in which all that would be exciting. But although Lucy was not sophisticated enough to be cynical, she knew perfectly well that the whole point of her Season would be to show her off as a marriageable girl. The mothers of various eligible bachelors would weigh her in the social balance, noting her lack of a title and trying to calculate how generous the Marquess of Ross was likely to be to his