Wiles of a Stranger Read Online Free PDF

charming effect. In a different mood, the oddness of the house itself might have been found interesting, rather than forbidding.
    There was no Mrs. Beaudel on hand to greet us. I assumed that her migraine kept her in bed, or provided an excuse to keep her away from her husband in any case. Odd how I had already taken her in dislike, without ever meeting her.
    Lucien was accorded the honor of showing me to the nursery and to our rooms. He was a thoroughly competent guide. A fully grown servant could not have been more so, and would in all likelihood not have been half as informative.
    “This oak stairway we are mounting, Miss Stacey, was built in the sixteenth century from timber taken off the forests of Glanbury Park. The flowers above us are said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons. There is some more of his work below. Are you interested in architecture?”
    “Very much. I see you are too.”
    “Not really, but our house is one of the places shown in the guide books, and Lady Schaeffer takes people through it every year, to make money for her charity. I followed her on her tour, and heard her tell people about the staircase. I followed her fourteen times.”
    “How very patient you are!”
    “Not really. She is remarkably pretty, and when I walked behind her, I had an excellent view of her ankles.”
    “Perhaps you would just step up ahead of me, Lucien,” I said, biting back a smile at this youthful lecher.
    “I have already seen them, Miss Stacey. Very trim, I might add,” he said solemnly. “Our quarters are here to the left,” he ran on, as we topped the stairway. “Uncle and Aunt’s rooms are over there, to the right. Here is your room. I hope you like blue. Miss Little didn’t like it. She found the color cold. Do you like it?”
    “Very nice,” I said, glancing around at a comfortable, though by no means luxurious, chamber, hung in blue cotton, with a patterned rug and uncurtained bed.
    “Your trunk will be sent up here. We shall have to send to the inn for your trunk.”
    “It—it will be arriving at the inn a little later,” I said hastily, although of course it would not arrive until I wrote to Mrs. Farell to pack and forward it. “Where is our schoolroom?”
    “It is this way.”
    We went along to the schoolroom, which was a graceless chamber paneled in dark wood, its only beauty a view from the large windows of the park and winding drive below. Through the branches of swaying beeches, the gate and road beyond were visible. There was a large desk, the one lately used by Miss Little. Various books and schoolwork were spread out on it. There was an open reader, face down at a story about a fox, and there was a sheet on which numbers were written for addition. Lucien was a bright child, I concluded, if he was already adding double digits at six years of age, and reading the book of stories here. I had no notion of puffing him off to his own face.
    “This is what you were doing when Miss Little left, is it?” I asked.
    He confirmed this with an unenthusiastic nod, but had soon hopped off to hang out the window, trying vainly to reach a bird’s nest perched on a ledge below, to the consternation of the mother bird and his new governess. I took a closer look at the books, to notice that Miss Little had been correcting the arithmetic. I could not believe she had had any thought of leaving so suddenly, when she was in the middle of all this work. Surely a governess would wind things up more neatly. She would not leave half an exercise unmarked. She would have finished it, or not bothered to begin.
    “Do you want to see my room?” Lucien asked, becoming bored with pestering the birds.
    “Yes, please.”
    “It’s next to yours.”
    We went along to it. Lucien was still sleeping in a child’s room. There was no hint of the elegance I was sure must be harbored on the other side of the house. There were well-battered chests and night tables, an open-faced row of shelves holding toy soldiers,