Those Endearing Young Charms by M. C. Beaton

Author:M. C. Beaton [Beaton, M. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, General
ISBN: 9781472101587
Google: lYkeAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00CMASOAE
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2014-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

During the next few weeks, Emily was kept very busy. She had not yet learned the gentle art of saying she was not at home to callers, and so the drawing room at Maxton Court often had as many as ten people at a time.

As news got about of the pretty little countess’s hospitality, more people began to call, people who had never set foot in Maxton Court before, but Emily was not to know that.

She carefully kept a log of all her callers, together with their cards, so that she would have something to talk to her husband about in the evenings.

But the earl was absent. He spent most of the day about the estates. He went to a boxing match in the next county. He went to London for two weeks. On his fleeting appearances at home, he had his supper on a tray in the library.

The weather was cold and still, the whole countryside frozen under a thick coating of frost, which burned and glittered under a red winter sun.

Bored and restless, Emily ordered out the carriage and began to make calls herself.

There was the vicar, Mr. Graham, and his wife Martha, and their brood of children in the shabby vicarage. A dull but pleasant visit.

Then there were the Misses Parsons, two spinster ladies who lived in genteel poverty in a damp cottage under the shadow of the church. A most enjoyable visit.

The squire, Sir Basil Leech, and his two fat and jolly daughters came next on the list. After them, Lord and Lady Nightingale, chilly and grand and condescending. They had heard of the new countess’s lowly origins. Emily decided not to call again.

Mindful of her new duties, she turned her attention to the tenant farmers and farm laborers. It was about this time that Emily began to enjoy herself. She was a good listener and had been starved for company. She like helping people and was amazed at how grateful they could be for the smallest attention. She started to set out with saddlebags full of medicine from the still room, cakes, biscuits, and sweetmeats from the kitchen, and wine from the cellars.

She gave only to the needy, not wanting to be accused of giving away her husband’s provender to people who did not need it.

Her fussy, dainty clothes began to irk her, and so she mostly wore riding dress of a mannish cut, with a little hard hat with a veil on her head.

She sometimes thought uneasily that her husband would not approve of all this socializing with the farm laborers, and cringed when he appeared back from town one day, obviously having come in search of her, to find her on the floor of a laborer’s cottage, playing with the baby.

But he only said mildly that he had come to escort her home.

Nonetheless, he looked so grim and forbidding that Emily’s heart plumped right down to her serviceable boots. She would not admit to herself that the memory of that one and only

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