Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl

Author:Patrice Kindl
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780670014385
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Published: 2012-06-14T07:00:00+00:00

And call she did. Evidently Mrs. Westing had no objection to the Baron visiting us, so long as he had the protection of Miss Vincy’s presence. Instead of the inevitable Mr. Fredericks accompanying Lord Boring and the Marquis, we now had the inevitable Miss Vincy, which in my opinion was a vast improvement.

She began my portrait, for which I sat under the pear tree in the courtyard with Fido on my lap and my embroidery at hand. I had proposed this arrangement, as I needed to be getting on with my work on the Great Hall tapestry and sitting for a portrait otherwise involved a great many hours of doing nothing in the same position every day. However, she complained that the frame was so massive that it quite hid me from view, so it had to be set to one side and I could only accomplish my mending by fits and starts.

Prudence and Charity were at first annoyed at Miss Vincy painting my portrait, but after the first visit they ceased their complaints, discovering that they could propose a short stroll around the gardens, which Miss Vincy and I were unable to join, occupied as we were with painting and posing. Being an uncommonly determined young woman, Charity often convinced the Baron to accompany them on these strolls, from which she returned smiling and complacent.

I hoped that she was not getting her hopes raised too high. Miss Vincy, on the other hand, seemed to think that something might happen in that quarter.

“Miss Charity Winthrop enjoys the Baron’s company, I believe,” she said one day as we sat in dappled shade, she hard at work dabbing her brush on the canvas, I hard at work sitting still.

“Ye-es,” I agreed. Certainly she enjoyed monopolizing his attention. I wasn’t sure she listened to anything he said.

“She is a young lady of some fortune,” Miss Vincy said.

“Yes,” I agreed again.

She paused and laid down her brush for a moment, watching them as they strolled at a distance. “Who knows what may happen there?” she said, and her expression was both thoughtful and serious. I was beginning to think I was quite wrong about her tutor—even direct questioning about him and his current circumstances did not produce his name or description from the lady.

“Nothing at all, I should think,” I said, rather stiffly.

Because really, it was perilously close to an insult. If Miss Vincy was going to suffer pangs of jealousy for the Baron’s sake, how dare she feel them on Charity’s account, with me sitting right in front of her?

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