Miss Granby's Secret: Or The Bastard Of Pinsk by Eleanor Farjeon

Author:Eleanor Farjeon [Farjeon, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Maraya21, Historical
Publisher: Dean Street Press Limited
Published: 2024-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Brother and Sister

For some reason best known to themselves, the three sportsmen loitered about next morning without attempting to make themselves scarce in their usual hasty fashion. What had mitigated their appetite for sport? At least it had not been impaired for food; they fell heartily on the toasted muffins, the broiled ham and eggs, the bloated herrings, bread-crumbed kidneys and black puddings, with which Braddon always supplied its morning guests; and with the puddings (fare for epicures without delicate stomachs) they partook, French fashion, of quantities of white wine. The young ladies trifled with their poached eggs and whiting, and sipped a little cacao, while the governess consumed a dish of devilled bones washed down with black coffee. Neither Esmeralda nor Stanislaw had appeared at the breakfast-table. It was made known by Madame Leroy, that though the Count could be pronounced on the highway to recovery, he had begged to be allowed to share his sister’s tray in her room, she now having the role of honour as invalid.

“What’s wrong with her leddyship?” asked James Dumbarton, lowering as though whatever was wrong with her was the fault of Madame Leroy.

“Has she taken a fever after her last night’s exposure?” asked Percy; while Terence in the same breath suggested that the shock of her overthrow had probably prostrated her.

Madame Leroy buttered a piece of toast before easing their anxiety. “The Archduchess,” she then assured them, “appears to me to be a lady of inexhaustible vitality, and is suffering from nothing worse than a sprained foot. I have bandaged it very tightly, and later will assist her to dress. To-morrow I hope she will be fit to put her foot to the ground and resume her journey.”

“’Twould be a peety to hurry her,” muttered James.

“More haste less speed,” agreed Percy.

“All the more so,” ventured Caroline, timidly, “since her unexpected reunion with her brother. They must have much to say to each other.”

“So it appears,” said Madame Leroy, munching her toast, which crackled between her teeth.

In the handsome chamber allotted to Esmeralda, the brother and sister had been busy for an hour recounting their past experiences and expatiating on their present aspirations. To see them now, she reclining on her pillows nursing her infant, he seated by the bed, an interested onlooker, would have been to see two people who, whatever the agitations of their last parting, were now in a state of complete understanding with one another.

“Last night,” Stanislaw was saying, helping himself to sautéed Cambridge sausages, “I dreamed you were attending at my wedding, in the capacity of bridesmaid.”

“Hardly possible,” smiled Esmeralda, “for a widow like myself.” She laid aside the infant for a moment and, finishing her slip soles dressed with cream, she asked: “Who was the bride?”

“The Tarletan Triplets.”

She laughed low and musically, resuming the infant. “A very improper dream! Yet who am I to say so? I dreamed of myself in the arms of our three cavaliers.”

“Which of them do you fancy?”

“I cannot say until I know more of their positions and bank accounts.

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