The Reckoning by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page A

weavers and orators, of the savage drunken fédérés from Marseilles and cold-eyed 'lawyer' Robespierre, of her first dog Bluette and her last dog Castor, of her darling child Sophie and poor dead Fanny. Troubled times indeed – and yet when in her life had the times not been troubled? What an age she had lived through! From the Revolution through twenty years of war to a Peace filled with the threat of upheaval and change ... She was not yet forty, but she had been married for the first time at fourteen, and the cloistered calm of her short childhood seemed many ages away.
    And now there was one other image in her mind, as disturbing in its way as any of the others – the image of a face, dark, handsome and male. Miss Rosedale, in her last letter, had told her about Fitzherbert Hawker's sudden appearance, and her conviction that he had been misjudged, at least in relation to his sentiments for Fanny. But that was not, of course, something that she would be able to speak of to Edward.
    She sighed and picked up her pen again. Meanwhile, there were still the accounts to be done, and she hadn't even finished entering the heap of crumpled bills and receipts. Now where would Father Aislaby have put the income from selling surplus cheese made in the Morland Place dairy? Was that household income or estate income? The cows were estate property, but the dairy-maid was a household servant, and the cheese was made originally for consumption in the house. On the whole, she thought it was probably household income. And what about the piano-tuner? Did that come under servants' wages? He wasn't, of course, a servant, but he was r egular item in the budget. But then again ... After some deliberation, and in her careful, curly, convent-taught hand, she put the piano-tuner in under sundries.
    Miss Rosedale had succumbed to one of the tremendous colds in the head which afflicted her from time to time, and since she plainly couldn't keep the young ladies within doors for its duration, she had been obliged to let them go out with only Moss in attendance.
    ‘ Don't you worry, miss,' Judy Moss had said, torn between offence and determination, 'I can keep an eye on 'em. They won't get up to any larks with me on their heels, I can tell you.’
    Miss Rosedale emerged muzzily from a handkerchief for long enough to say, 'The gentlemen –'
    ‘ Yes, miss,' Moss said stiffly. ‘If I can mind Lady Rosa mund and Miss Sophie in a city full of officers like Brussels, I'm sure I can take care of them in Scarborough.’
    Miss Rosedale was feeling too awful to have the energy to point out that two prowling wolves were far more dangerous than a pack of noisy, frisking hounds. She must trust to her charges' instincts of self-preservation.
    The wolves in question must have been on the watch, for hardly had Rosamund and Sophie set foot on the flagway than Mr Hawker and Mr Farraline appeared, exquisite from the crown of their tall hats to the tip of their glossy Hessians. Mr Hawker wore a green coat with handsome brass buttons, a wonderful foil to his dark colouring; while Mr Farraline was resplendent in saxe blue, with a red-and-white striped waist coat which tiptoed with catlike surefootedness along the dividing line between the killingly smart and the vulgarly ostentatious.
    ‘ May we have the honour of escorting you, ladies? Where do you go this morning?' Farraline asked when they had replaced their hats.
    Moss coughed slightly, and nudged Rosamund in the back with the handle of her own umbrella, an indignity which roused the devil in her ladyship.
    ‘ We thought of walking up to look at the castle,' she said airily. 'We should be glad of your company. I'm a good walker, but on such a steep road a gentleman's arm would be welcome even to me; and Sophie could hardly contemplate it without.’
    Moss's gasp was audible only to the young ladies, but it was enough to make Sophie demur, though mildly. 'I think it may be too windy up there today, Ros,' she