Hero is a Four Letter Word Read Online Free Page B

revisit the idea of turning the east wing into a bed and breakfast?
    They could hire a part-time maid from the village to take care of the bedrooms, Mrs. MacDonald could do the cooking, Mr. Coldwell could pick up visitors from the train station in the old Model T that he has meticulously restored, and Jennet could play hostess? The only down side is, of course, that Jennet isn’t sure she could smile that much around strangers. She wouldn’t mind it so much if she could just avoid that part of the house, but of course part of the draw is going to be getting to interact with the Lady Carterhaugh herself. To take brandy in the sitting room, tour the ornamental and kitchen gardens, perhaps go for a horseback ride around the boundaries of the forest.
    “And,” Mr. Coldwell says gently, “We’d have to rent out your father’s apartments.”
    Jen’s fingers go tight on her teacup and she bites her lip hard to keep in the instinctual No!
    “It would make a lovely honeymoon suite,” Mrs. MacDonald agrees, voice low and deferential. It’s a conversation that has to be had, Jennet knows. But that doesn’t mean any of them like having it. “If we made it a bit less …”
    “Like Da’s,” Jennet finishes.
    Mrs. MacDonald quaffs her tea in a single, wincing gulp. “Yes.” She pours more for everyone, warming up what’s left in their cups, and they drink in silence for a moment. “Fresh coat of paint? Something lighter. Get the pipe smoke smell out, and some nice landscapes on the walls. Maybe leave up the family portraits?”
    “No,” Jennet says. “I mean, the rest, I … okay. But the portraits, I want them moved to my sitting room.”
    “I’ll arrange for —” Mr. Coldwell begins, but Jennet shakes her head.
    “I’ll do it.” She lets go of her teacup and balls her fists against her eyes, pushing hard to keep the tears at bay. She’s so damn sick of crying. “It’s my family. I don’t want some workman I don’t know to touch … no, I w-want to do it.”
    “Okay, dear,” Mrs. MacDonald says, a gentle, dry hand cupping the back of Jennet’s head. “Okay. We’ll help you.”

    Over the course of the weekend, they remove all the paintings from the wall that surrounds Jennet’s sitting room fireplace. They patch and paint it with a fresh coat of butter-cream colour that will offset the gilt frames of the portraits nicely. It’s the longest wall in her apartments, the only one not interrupted by windows or doors. The sitting room itself is divided by décor into a library and study corner, the comfy visiting area around the fireplace, and a small private breakfast nook. The main entrance to the apartment is beside the stuffed bookshelves with the squashy reading chair, two tall windows to the right, the fireplace and its wingbacks to the left, the small mahogany dining set ahead, and beyond that the door into Jennet’s bedroom and en suite.
    Jen lines the portraits up in order of age against the wall, trying to determine the best hanging arrangement. The first is an oil painting of a wide, barrel-shaped man with startlingly ginger hair. He is swathed in Selkirk plaid, an almost eye-bleedingly tight pattern of blue and red. He stands behind a solid looking lady-wife, and a dour daughter of about twelve who looks remarkably like Jennet at that age. It’s a large painting of the Laird, Master of Carterhaugh, and family, and it is easily as tall as Jennet. Next to it is a painting in which the young woman, Margaret, all grown. Jennet turns her attention to Margaret’s husband, a puckish young man painted with vividly green eyes and a bit of a cheeky grin. He wears no plaid, only the trousers and jacket of a well-off young man in the late 15 th century.
    He has one arm wrapped tight around Margaret’s shoulders, possessive and nearly inappropriate for a formal portrait of the Lady, but Margaret is leaning into his touch, clearly enamored. A small baby boy grins out of the canvas from a froth of white