The Sleeping Sword by Brenda Jagger

Author:Brenda Jagger [Jagger, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Seventeen

It was not really Venetia who came back to us, but I had great faith in the healing processes of time, in letting nature take its course, and did not despair.

I had played no further part in her restoration to the family fold and had been acquainted with only a bare outline of how it had taken place. The gentlemen, in fact, had assumed control and I had been sent, as so often before, into the drawing-room to wait. Gideon had spoken to his father-in-law. Mr. Barforth had then driven over to Galton and had returned very late that night. The following morning—a Sunday—he had called Gideon, and then Gervase, then Gideon once again, into his study where he had spoken to them at length, both separately and together. Mr. Barforth had next made his second journey to Galton Abbey, and Gideon, an hour later, had set out to join him. Gervase rode off, one knew better than to ask where. Mr. Barforth and Gideon returned for more discussions. Gideon rode off, not to Galton, I thought, but to Listonby to make his explanations to his mother, and a few minutes later my father-in-law sent for me.

‘Grace—if you would see to the domestic arrangements. The room adjoining Gideon’s might serve for the time being. And you might drop a hint to the servants that there’s been a reconciliation in the offing these past three months and more, and they’ve been together a time or two to discuss it. You understand my meaning? Good girl—then you’ll realize the importance of stressing that they have been together—secret meetings in hotels and the like, you’ll know the score. She’s been in the South of France, by the way, with my mother. People may not believe it, but if I say so, and you say so, and my mother says so, then I reckon it will suffice.’

Gideon came back looking grim, having endured a gruelling interview with Aunt Caroline, who had never liked Venetia in the first place and would certainly never abide her now. We had dinner, and soon afterwards Venetia arrived with her mother, drank her coffee in the drawing-room and went up to bed, her luggage having been delayed, I told my housekeeper, by the vagaries of Continental trains.

‘What a nuisance!’ said Mrs. Winch, who did not believe a word of it. ‘Might it not be wise to wash and press some of her old things, since really, with foreign travel, one never knows?’

‘Please see to it, Mrs. Winch.’

The separate room, a lovely bay-windowed apartment adjoining Gideon’s dressing-room, I did not attempt to explain and was thankful, when Mrs. Rawnsley and Miss Mandelbaum came to call, that if they had heard of it from their maids, who assuredly gossiped with ours, they would consider it a subject too delicate to mention. Nor did I try to conceal the fact that Venetia was a prodigal returned. Certainly—and in the strictest confidence—I was now ready to admit that she had absconded from her husband and her home.

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