Time's Echo by Pamela Hartshorne

Author:Pamela Hartshorne [Hartshorne, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Romance, Fiction, General, cookie429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780330544252
Google: gvZjVctpT_MC
Amazon: 033054425X
Publisher: Pan Books
Published: 2012-08-29T23:00:00+00:00

All week the servants have been busy preparing a lavish wedding feast for Agnes and Francis. Margery is torn. She doesn’t want to be helpful, but her pride is at stake, and in the end she enjoys showing off her skills as a cook, while Isobel and Alison have swept and polished and scrubbed. There are fresh rushes on the floor of the hall and the waits are tuning up in the corner, ready to play after the meal. No one will be able to say that I did not honour my sister with the best of everything.

It is late January, and the markets are thin, but I have set a feast fit for a queen before my sister. There are boiled capons and stewed mutton steaks, a roast calf and baked fish. There are tarts and pies, jellies and custards, sugar comfits and the best manchet bread. And, best of all, a grand centrepiece: a goose stuffed with a pheasant, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed in its turn with a pigeon, which I have made myself to make up for my ungraciousness when I first heard of her betrothal.

It is the least I can do for my sister, I think guiltily. I am terribly afraid for her, but Agnes herself is ecstatic. She is besotted with Francis and watches him hungrily. I watch him too, waiting for him to show himself, but he is unctuous in his dealings with her and never less than courteous, I have to admit. So I try to tell myself that I am wrong about the way he looks at me. I tell myself that I am imagining it and that his obsession with me is over.

I want to believe that it will be all right.

Agnes and Francis sit together in triumph on high table, presiding over the feast. Afterwards there is dancing. I supervise the clearing away of the tables, while Ned moves among the guests, making sure everyone has had enough to eat, clapping one on the shoulder, beckoning for more wine for another.

I watch him under my lashes. He is so solid, so steady, the calm centre around which the rest of the room swings giddily, and I feel the heat spilling along my veins and pooling in the pit of my belly. I want to go to him, to my cool, contained husband, wrap my arms around his waist and press my face into his throat. I am not the enchantress, whatever the neighbours think. It is Ned who has enchanted me, with the touch of his hands and the feel of his mouth.

Across the hall Ned glances up and sees me watching him. My hunger must show in my face, because he smiles slightly. I smile back. A promise. Later, his eyes say, and I smile again and nod, suddenly giddy with happiness. Later. Later we will lie together between the curtains, and I will forget Agnes and Francis and the distrustful servants and the neighbours who take Ned for a fool.

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