The Sleeping Sword Read Online Free PDF

elaborately draped skirts behind her with a regal disregard for the frailty or the cost of apple green satin and Brussels lace. Her hair, which had the same auburn sheen as Venetia’s, was fashionably curled, her fine-etched, pointed face fashionably gay, a quick smile flitting on and off her lips in automatic greeting, her green eyes unwavering, nothing in her manner to indicate how much she had dreaded coming here, except that everyone knew it and many were hoping she would finally reach the end of her aristocratic tether and let it show.
    But there was an added flavour to the spectacle today since Mr. Nicholas Barforth was not merely parading his wife to a hostile public but was on uncertain ground himself, having last entered this house over ten years ago with a legal document in his hand terminating his association with Blaize Barforth, his brother. And I heard, behind me, a collective sigh of anticipation as these two powerful men at last came face to face.
    Cullingford, quite naturally had hoped for emotion. But such hopes were instantly dashed.
    â€˜Nicholas,’ said Blaize Barforth with a crisp, quite impersonal nod.
    â€˜Blaize,’ Nicholas Barforth replied in kind.
    Clearly there was no more that could be usefully said.
    We took our places at table soon afterwards, partook of rich food and old wines laughed and applauded the witty, easy speech of the bride’s father, admired the few well-chosen words of the groom—chosen, one could not doubt, by his mother Aunt Caroline. We drank toasts as we were bid, grew sentimental, or languid, or even a trifle bored. And when Blanche had floated away upstairs to change into the travelling dress Monsieur Worth had made for her in Paris, I watched my father’s wife, Mrs. Agbrigg, rise from her place and skilfully reclaim her bishop, saw my father join the group of serious gentlemen who, on the paved terrace, were discussing wool prices, share prices, wondering when trade with France would be likely to pick up again now that so free-spending an emperor as the third Napoleon had been chased off his throne. I saw Mrs. Georgiana Barforth get up too and launch herself into the crowd like a blind swimmer, her progress impeded at every step by an ingratiating Cullingford smile, an inquisitive Cullingford eye, her own eyes constantly darting to her husband seeking his reassurance that she was saying the things he had brought her here to say, playing the part he had designed for her in the manner he had intended. I saw Aunt Caroline—the Dowager Lady Chard now—grimace in an unguarded moment with visible pain, her eyes on the chair Blanche had just vacated, her mind certainly dwelling on the beauty and prosperity of Listonby which she, who had created it, must now relinquish to a careless seventeen-year-old girl.
    But the weather-beaten little Duke of South Erin moved quickly to Aunt Caroline’s side. Venetia’s brother, Gervase, came strolling around the corner of the house, glass in hand, to join the mother he so resembled, a wild young man who was far more at home, one heard, among the aristocratic pleasures of the hunting field and the gaming table than in his father’s counting-house. The day was almost over. The Blaize Barforths had creditably married their daughter. Lady Caroline Chard had lost her life’s work at Listonby as well as her son. The Nicholas Barforths had demonstrated that they were, in a manner of speaking, sufficiently united to stifle the worst of the rumours which might wreck the matrimonial prospects of their daughter, Venetia. Mrs. Agbrigg, my father’s wife, had made the acquaintance of a bishop.
    I had gained nothing, lost nothing. But remembering that tomorrow morning and the morning after I would be obliged to sit in Mrs. Agbrigg’s drawing-room and dine at her table, I got up too and began to move aimlessly through the throng, recognizing myself to be as complete a captive as Mrs. Georgiana Barforth