Cardington Crescent Read Online Free Page B

on the landing when she heard the conversation resume, the laughter peal again, the gay lilt of people who are still in the spell of totally carefree pleasure.
    She woke to find herself alone and the sunlight streaming in through a crack in the imperfectly drawn curtains. George was not there, nor had he been. His side of the enormous bed was immaculate, the linen crisp. She had intended to have her breakfast sent up, but now her own company was worse than anyone else’s, and she rang sharply for her maid, refusing morning tea and sending her off to draw a bath and set out Emily’s clothes for the morning.
    She put a wrap round her shoulders and knocked sharply on the dressing room door. After several moments it was opened by George, looking sleepy and rumpled, his thick hair falling loosely, his eyes wide and dark.
    “Oh,” he said, blinking at her. “Since you weren’t well I thought I’d not disturb you, so I had them make up the bed in here.” He did not ask if she was better. He merely looked at her, at her milky skin with its faint blush and her coil of pale honey hair, came to his own conclusion, and retreated back to prepare himself for the day.
    Breakfast was grim. Eustace, as always, had thrown all the dining room windows open. He was a great believer in “muscular Christianity” and all the aggressive good health that went with it. He ate pigeons in jelly with ostentatious relish, and piles of hot buttered toast and marmalade, and barricaded himself behind the Times, ironed and given him by the footman, which he did not offer to share with anyone. Not, of course, that any man offered his newspaper to women, but Eustace also ignored William, George, and Jack Radley.
    Vespasia, to Eustace’s eternal disapproval, had her own newspaper.
    “There has been a murder in Bloomsbury,” she observed over the raspberries.
    “What has that to do with us?” Eustace did not look up; the remark was intended as a criticism. Women should not have newspapers, let alone discuss them at breakfast.
    “About as much as anything else that is in here,” Vespasia replied. “It is to do with people, and tragedy.”
    “Nonsense!” old Mrs. March snapped. “Probably some person of the criminal classes who thoroughly deserved it. Eustace, would you be good enough to pass me the Court Circular? I wish to know what is happening that is of some importance.” She shot a look of distaste at Vespasia. “I trust no one has forgotten we have a luncheon party at the Withingtons’, and that we are playing croquet at Lady Lucy Armstrong’s in the afternoon?” she went on, glancing at Sybilla with a frown and a faint curl of her lip. “Lady Lucy will be full of the Eton and Harrow cricket match, of course, and we shall be obliged to listen to her boasting endlessly about her sons. And we shall have nothing to say at all.”
    Sybilla colored, a stiff, painful red. Her eyes were bright. She stared straight back at her grandmother-in-law with an expression which might have been any of a dozen things.
    “We shall have to see whether it is a boy or a girl before we consider a school,” she said very clearly.
    William stopped, his fork halfway to his mouth, incredulous. George drew in his breath in a little hiss of surprise. Eustace lowered his paper for the first time since he had sat down, and stared at her with amazement, then slow dawning jubilation.
    “Sybilla! My dear girl! Do you mean that you are ... er ... ?”
    “Yes!” she said boldly. “I would not have told you so soon, but I am tired of Grandmother-in-law making such remarks.”
    “You cannot blame me!” Mrs. March defended herself sharply. “You’ve been twelve years about it. It is not surprising I despaired of the March name continuing. Heaven knows, poor William has had his patience strained to breaking point waiting for you to give him an heir.”
    William’s head came round to glare at his grandmother, his cheeks burning, his eyes hot blue.
    “That is