The House of Hardie Read Online Free PDF

favourite grandchild when it came to settling a dowry. The marquess, meanwhile, would be making his own stipulations to ensure that Lucy’s future station in life would be worthy of her. Only when all these negotiations had been satisfactorily concluded would some young man be allowed to fall in love with her, and Lucy would be told that she might love him back. She would be chaperoned for every moment of the day, and throughout the whole of this period – even if she were enjoying herself – she would be expected to appearcool and calm and hardly interested in what was happening. That could not be thought of as any kind of exploration.
    If only she too could come to Oxford and make free-and-easy new friends and learn about subjects which she could not even imagine in her mind, because she had never heard of them. Lucy sighed longingly to herself. But she knew that she was not well enough educated.
    Archie himself was not particularly clever. He had come to Oxford because it was the thing to do, and Lucy guessed that he would not spend too much of his time working. But at least he had been well taught at school: he could write verses in Latin and Greek. At the end of his time here he would get a degree of some kind. Lucy, in contrast, had never taken any kind of examination and certainly would not pass one if she tried. She could speak German and French fluently, play the piano adequately and paint watercolours extremely well. But when it came to facts, Miss Jarrold was too often vague, and Lucy lacked any interest in remembering. It was only for a fleeting second that she wondered whether, if she had been someone quite different – someone brilliantly intelligent but still a girl – she would have been allowed to come to Oxford like Archie.
    â€˜Are there,’ she asked, ‘any young women studying here?’
    It was an innocent enough question, so the loudness of her brother’s reaction startled her. The marquess merely smiled indulgently at her foolishness, but Archie could not control his mirth, laughing as though he would never be able to stop.
    â€˜Really, Lucy!’ he exclaimed, when at last he could speak. ‘What an extraordinary idea! Women at Oxford, indeed!’

Chapter Three
    Archie Yates had been right to guess that the young woman he glimpsed in The House of Hardie was related to its owner. John Hardie, brushing aside his wife’s objection that no one would ever spell or pronounce the name correctly, had christened his only daughter Margaux out of enthusiasm for the magnificent vintage produced at Château Margaux in the year of her birth. But five-year-old Gordon, gazing down for the first time at his baby sister, had exclaimed at her tininess and rechristened her Midge. She had been known by Gordon’s choice of name ever since.
    At the age of twenty, Midge Hardie supposed that she was as tall as she was ever likely to be: five foot one in her shoes. She would never appear stately. The low-necked velveteen dresses which were the fashion in Oxford in the autumn of 1885, with their sweeping skirts, looked ridiculous on her. But her waist was tiny. Wearing a skirt of a plain, unfussy material and a nipped-in jacket she looked not merely businesslike but smart.
    The smartness did not usually extend to her long black hair. However tightly she might strain it off her face and imprison it in the two long plaits which crossed over the top of her head to provide an extra inch of height, one or two curly strands invariably succeeded in escaping, to bounce against her cheeks. So frequently did she use her fingers to comb them back into place that she had ceased to be conscious of the gesture.
    Like her brother, Midge was an enthusiast, althoughher passion was not, like Gordon’s, for the exploration of new territories, but for the exploration of the past. Often it seemed that her slight body, like a bottle of champagne awaiting disgorgement, housed an excess of energy