The Magnificent Masquerade Read Online Free

The Magnificent Masquerade
Book: The Magnificent Masquerade Read Online Free
Author: Elizabeth Mansfield
Pages:
Go to
could find
no means of transportation to convey one to the more exciting sections of
London. With such limited opportunities for naughtiness, what else could one be
at Miss Marchmont's Academy but a good-well, almost good girl?
    So why on earth had she been sent for? Kitty
wondered. The dyed hair episode (when she'd persuaded all five uppe rschool
girls to wash their hair with henna dye, and all six had appeared at morning
prayers with identical red heads) had already been atoned. (She'd been forced
to spend the weekend writing the history of the War of the Roses in original
blank verse, while the others were made to wash their hair every morning and
evening for ten days. And Miss Marchmont couldn't possibly have discovered the
little puppy she'd hidden away in the tool shed at the back of the rose garden.
Had someone shown the headmistress the manuscript for the play Kitty had
written, which mocked the mannerism of all the teachers-including Miss Marchmont
herself-quite unmercifully? It wasn't very likely; it was not yet in rehearsal,
and very few people knew of its existence. Besides, there was only one copy,
and that, she was sure, was safely locked in her bed-chest. "I can't
imagine what I've done that she could've discovered," she said as they
approached Miss Marchmont's office door, "but I'm certainly in the
suds." She glanced over her shoulder at Emily in unaccustomed humility.
"Are you sure I look presentable?"
    "Neat as wax, miss, on my honor," Emily
assured her. "Thank you." Kitty stared nervously at the gold letters
on the door which read MISS MARCHMONT, HEAD MISTRESS. "You're not
frightened, are you, miss?" Emily asked. "You needn't be, you know.
Miss Marchmont isn't nearly as forbidding as she looks."
    "Me, frightened? Not on your life! Kitty
Jessup doesn't frighten so easily." To prove her point, she raised her
hand to the opaque glass inset in the door and rapped smartly.
    "Come in," came a voice from within
the office. "Shall I wait for you?" Emily offered.
    "I should say not! I'm not a baby. Thanks,
Emily, for doing my hair. Now run along!" And she squared her shoulders,
took a deep breath, and marched forward to meet her doom.
    Chapter Two
    Lord Birkinshaw did not expect his wife to fall
into paroxysms of delight when he informed her of his intention to wed their
daughter to Lord Edgerton's younger brother, but neither did he anticipate an
enraged opposition. The violence of her reaction took him by surprise. Hermione
Jessup, Lady Birkinshaw, had already retired for the night when he burst in on
her with the news, and the fact that he'd awakened her just as she was drifting
off into sleep only exacerbated her fury. "Toby Wishart? You intend to
shackle our daughter to Toby Wishart?" she all but shrieked, sitting up so
abruptly that wispy tendrils of her hair, which had escaped from beneath her
nightcap, trembled. "How did you ever come by such an addle-brained
scheme? Not only is the fellow completely lacking in prospects, being a younger
son, but he's known far and wide as a ramshackle scapegrace!"
    His lordship opened his mouth to respond, but
his lady would not be silenced. Now. wide awake, she launched on an impassioned
diatribe, her plump cheeks shaking like blancmange and her still-beautiful eyes
flashing fire. It was typical of her husband, she declared vehemently, to come,
without taking a moment for consultation with his wife, to such a thoughtless,
hasty decision. "In our twenty-odd years of marriage you've made more than
a thousand impulsive decisions -most of which, I might point out, proved to be
completely foolish!-but for sheer idiocy this one outdoes them all!"
    "Oh, is that so?". was his lordship's
brilliant response. "So you say!"
    "Of course so I say! What else can I say
when my green headed husband plans to shackle my only daughter to a penniless
loose screw!"
    "Penniless?" Lord Birkinshaw demanded
gleefully, pouncing upon the cue she'd provided for him to play his trump card.
"You consider
Go to

Readers choose

Tahereh Mafi

Carolyn Parkhurst

Charles Todd

Paul Greenberg

Rosemary Stevens

Bridget Brennan

Hellmut G. Haasis

Steven F. Havill