The Last to Know Read Online Free Page B

places, Lady Mary that night was the epitome and embodiment of that quality my mother prized above all others. Graceful restraint. I did not know that then.
    As her gaze passed from mine to Kit’s, Lady Mary’s joyous expression did not alter. “And Kit! So delightful. An unexpected pleasure for us all. Now come, children, Henry impatiently awaits. He has been looking forward, so much, to this meeting.”
    Smiling and pressing my hand, Lady Mary swept us along in a whirl of happy half sentences and laughter. Through candlelight, past sideboards burdened with silver plate and bowls heaped with late roses, down a long gallery—from the wall of which stared down uncounted generations of Carsholts—we reached Sir Henry’s library at last.
    In this tall and noble room, a fire burned, and its heat was kind in that vast space. Ruddy light, caught from its flames, glowed on the cut crystal of decanters and silken Turkey carpets, and I breathed a happy sigh; the fugitive aroma of old Morocco-leather binding and the finest of rag linen papers was amongst my earliest, happiest memories, for I had always loved books. I still do.
    Do you recall, Cousin, how often I was chided for my love of the printed word? My mother was worried that I should become bookish, but my father stood firm against her in this—one of the very rare disagreements I remember between them. Thus, as a child, after my dancing classes and music lessons, after my dress fittings, my drawing master, my French mademoiselle’s conversation, and, finally, after deportment instruction, I came to be allowed free range of his book room. Library was rather too grand a term, though it was the one we used.
    Yet such an appellation was not grand enough for the space we had now entered. Here was a library indeed, a great and lovingly assembled collection of books, which, I thought at the time, one hundred years would scarce suffice to read.
    “Here she is at last, Henry. Here is our guest, Miss Elinor Fairfax, the eldest daughter of my old and dear friend.” Sir Henry Carsholt rose from his place by the fire, a copy of The Times in one hand. As Lady Mary had, he welcomed me with genuine warmth, but in this there was one signal difference: he did not look at his son, did not address him by name or acknowledge him in any way. And the fingers of his left hand convulsed on the pages of the newspaper with an audible crackle.
    He beckoned me. “Come here, come to the fire, where it is warm, sweet child. These nights, these nights you know, are treacherous!” A glance passed between father and son as Lady Mary clasped my hand and bustled me toward a deep and comfortable chair. Kit was left behind: left standing outside the circle of warm light.
    And in all the happy flurry, it took a little time for me to register the odd nature of the three-sided conversation which then took place. I began to be made uneasy by the strange silence that hung like a curtain between father and son. But after I had been offered delicate viands and delicious things to drink, it came to me in a rush that I felt both hazy with exhaustion and not a little faint.
    Corsets, dear Cousin, and strong emotion. An uncomfortable combination—and so they proved here.
    I believe that Lady Mary observed my discomfort and, excellent hostess that she was, rang the bell for my maid and hers to take me up to bed. Both arrived promptly, and under the supervision of Harriet—Lady Mary’s femme de chambre —Jane was permitted to escort me from the library. I curtsied to my host and hostess, and to their son, and expressed a wish that all in the house would sleep well that night.
    My final memory as the door closed behind me was the grim profile of Sir Henry as, from the shadows behind the chairs, his son drew near to the fire at last.
    And this I shall never forget. Kit Carsholt’s face bore the expression of a dog that had been cruelly beaten.
    ****
    I did not sleep well that first night at Carsholt Hall, though