The Secret Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

old,” I replied. “Seven years older than I am.”
    â€œCall that old!” laughed Ellen. “Besides, how did you know?”
    â€œHe told me.”
    She looked at me suspiciously so I decided to come straight to the point before she accused me of doing what she called “playing the light fantastic.” She used to say: “The trouble with you, miss, is I never know whether you’ve dreamed half you tell me.”
    â€œThis man was in the hall and saw me looking at the tapestry. He told me his name was Redvers Stretton.”
    â€œOh him,” said Ellen.
    â€œWhy do you say it like that?”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œScornfully. I thought everyone in that place was a sort of god to you. Who is Redvers Stretton and what’s he doing there?”
    Ellen looked at me obliquely. “I don’t think I ought to tell you,” she said.
    â€œWhyever not?”
    â€œI’m sure it’s something Miss Brett wouldn’t want you to know.”
    â€œI’m fully aware it’s not connected with Boulle cabinets and Louis Quinze commodes—and that’s the only thing Aunt Charlotte thinks I should concern myself with. What is it about that man that mustn’t be talked of?”
    Ellen looked over her shoulder in that now familiar fearful way, as though she believed the heavens would open and dead Creditons would appear to wreak vengeance on us for having committed the sin of lese majesty—or whatever one would call showing lack of respect to the Creditons.
    â€œOh come on, Ellen,” I cried. “Don’t be silly. Tell.”
    Ellen pressed her lips tightly together. I knew this mood and had never so far failed to wheedle from her what I wanted to know. I cajoled and threatened. I would betray her interest in the man who came with the firm of furniture movers and who often conveyed pieces to and from the Queen’s House; I would tell her sister that she had betrayed certain Crediton secrets to me already.
    But she was firm. With the expression of a martyr about to be burned at the stake for her faith she refused to talk of Redvers Stretton.
    If she had it would have been easier perhaps to forget him. But I had to have something to stop my brooding on my mother’s death. Redvers Stretton supplied that need; and the fact that his presence at Castle Crediton was a mystery helped in those weeks to lighten the melancholy caused by my mother’s death.
    The escritoire was put in the large room at the top of the house which was even more overflowing than the rest. This room had always fascinated me because the staircase leading to it was one of those which opened into the middle of it; the roof sloped at each end so that the ceiling was only a few inches from the floor. I thought it was the most interesting room in the house and tried to imagine what it had looked like before Aunt Charlotte had turned it into a store room. Mrs. Buckle always complained about it. How she was expected to keep that lot free from dust, she did not know. When I had come home from school last holidays Aunt Charlotte told me that I should have to sleep in the room which led off this top room because she had bought a new tallboy and two very special armchairs which had to be kept in my old room, so that I would not very easily be able to reach my bed. At first I had felt it rather eerie up there, but later I had begun to like it.
    The escritoire was put between a cabinet full of Wedgwood china and a grandfather clock. When a piece came it was always thoroughly cleaned and I asked Aunt Charlotte if I could do this. She gruffly said I might and although it was against her principles to show pleasure she could not hide that this was how she felt about my interest. Mrs. Buckle showed me how to mix the beeswax and turpentine which we always used and I set to work. I polished that wood with extra loving care and I was thinking about Castle Crediton and chiefly Redvers Stretton