Elaine Coffman - [Mackinnons 03] by Somewhere Along the Way

Author:Somewhere Along the Way [Way, Somewhere Along the]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“Where is everybody?” asked Annabella.

It was half-past eight the next morning when Annabella paused at the door of the dining room and saw her mother sitting alone at the long, mahogany table. The duchess glanced up as Annabella entered the cheerful room.

Actually, cheerful wasn’t really Annabella’s choice of a word to describe the dining room, but her mother’s. Annabella’s choice was optimistic. Now, some people might think a room could not be perceived as being optimistic, but that didn’t bother Annabella, for there were times when she was blissfully unconscious of convention—at least mental convention.

It was a way she had of escaping the rigid expectations she had lived with all her life, a way to elude for a time the dictates of such matters as decorum, propriety, and etiquette. Her life might be crammed with restrictions, but there were no such restrictions in her head. There, she was blessedly free to think at will. And one of the results of all this freethinking was her tendency to characterize rooms—and the Dunford dining room, with its half-circle bay and floor-to-ceiling sash windows was, in her opinion, optimistic. Perhaps that was due in part to the brocade drapes of the brightest shade of deep gold, which were always tied back in the morning to let in the most mellow shafts of amber sunlight.

Annabella’s gaze lingered on the lovely room as her shoes tapped out a solitary message across the glossy wooden floors, the staccato tones disappearing the moment she reached the Persian rug. “This place is as deserted as a tomb. I never knew a house could be so quiet.”

“And much more pleasant because of it,” said her mother. The dining room was a collage of distractions that Annabella would have delighted in at any time less fraught with destiny. But this morning she paused at the sideboard and gave the hand-painted Chinese paper—bird and flower pattern—a glance. The glance was a hasty one, but long enough to form an opinion. The birds, she decided, she did not like, and without further thought on the subject, she removed the lid of the first silver serving dish, stepping back when a column of cloying steam rose from the traditional Scottish dish of herring in oatmeal.

She stared at the herring, deciding it didn’t look any better than it smelled, and clapped down the lid. Remembering the words of Samuel Johnson, “Oats and grain, which in England is generally given to horses…in Scotland supports the people,” she found yet another English way she preferred to that of the Scots. She wasn’t sure she would ever become accustomed to some of these favored Scottish dishes.

With much less enthusiasm, she removed the next lid and found Aberdeen butteries, which faintly resembled her own English scones but were not as tasty by half. But she was hungry, so she took one.

“Your father and Gavin have gone to Edinburgh.”

She dropped the butterie and turned to stare at her mother. “To Edinburgh? I thought we were all going to Edinburgh.

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.