A Man of Some Repute (A Very English Mystery Book 1) by Edmondson Elizabeth

Author:Edmondson, Elizabeth [Edmondson, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2015-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Scene 1

Freya sat on a bench at Oxford Station, waiting for the local train that would take her on the first part of the complicated journey back to Selchester. She didn’t mind; she liked train journeys, although she hoped that it wouldn’t be one of those ones where delays led to missed connections, and you arrived hours later than planned.

She’d said her goodbyes to her parents, who had steamed away on the London train. Thank goodness it was all over, both the family reunion and her uncle’s obsequies.

Not that she hadn’t been glad to spend some time with her parents, but her mother had been at her sharpest, teaming up with Lady Priscilla after the burial to try to organise Freya’s life.

‘You’ve been vegetating. Now that you’ll have to leave the Castle, it’s time to make some plans,’ her mother said. ‘It was never a good idea to shut yourself up in that tower with the family archives; that’s no way for a young woman to spend her time. It’s not even as though you’re any kind of a scholar. Who is ever going to be remotely interested in a collection of facts about the family? The Castle has been convenient for you, I appreciate that, but now you’ll have to find somewhere else to live. You won’t be able to manage on your private income; with tax the way it is, it will hardly keep you in stockings. It’s time to go back to London and get yourself a job. Your father will give you an allowance so you can pay the rent and so forth while you find something to do, meet new people, rejoin the world.’

‘What would I do with Last Hurrah if I went to London?’ Freya said, side-stepping the main thrust of their argument.

‘You can’t allow your life to revolve around a horse,’ Aunt Priscilla said. ‘I’ll stable him, and you can ride him at weekends.’

‘This whole business of the Selchester papers is absurd, and I can’t think why you ever got into it,’ her mother said.

‘It’s a way of shutting out the world,’ Aunt Priscilla said decisively and brutally. ‘An escape from reality.’

‘I can recommend a good psychoanalyst,’ her mother put in. ‘That might be the best thing for you, darling. Sort yourself out.’

Lady Priscilla had no time for psychoanalysts. ‘Priests for people who aren’t Catholic and can’t go to confession. At least priests are free; who’s going to pay for Freya to go to some Freudian quack to learn about her phobias?’

‘I will,’ Lady Veronica said.

Freya lost her temper. ‘It’s my life, and I plan to live it to suit myself. I don’t need a psychoanalyst, and I don’t need any help from you or Daddy, thank you. And I’m not moving to London.’

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.