"Friesner, Esther M - ss - A Beltaine and Suspenders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

and fell down an abandoned well shaft or something while trying to find his way
to the London coaching station in the dark."

Telemachus sniveled just a bit before daring to ask whether Olivia really
thought that might be the case. She assured him it must be, and further
comforted him by promising to keep him safe from any wandering well shafts in
the vicinity when they took off after the fierce, fructiferous citizens of
Greater Ambrose Surlesard.

"Besides, as you yourself said, we must investigate. We owe it to posterity,"
she wheedled, and by this and comparable appeals to the Battle-Purfitt sense of
duty she brought him around.

They traveled down to Sussex the next morning. Olivia, in a fit of whimsy, had
chosen to do her holiday shopping while in Staddle, with an eye to returning to
London in time for Christmas. As a result of the Dickensian excess the Yuletide
always evoked in her soul, her baggage had evolved from a simple rucksack for
easy cross-country hiking to a swarm of bulging valises and portmanteaus bought
in Staddle High Street to contain her acquired freight of gifts. She had thought
it was a fine idea to take the whole jumble of luggage along with her on the
expedition, intending to be most efficient by returning directly home from
Sussex. After many qualms, she even went so far as to purchase herself an
evening gown, so as not to appear at Lady Battle-Purfitt's table inappropriately
dressed. She assumed that Tilly and the vicar would be likewise burdened with at
least a steamer trunk between them. To her chagrin, she found them awaiting her
on the railway platform bearing a rucksack apiece, no more, and those far
smaller than her own.

Fortunately, Lady Battle-Purfitt had a car waiting to pick them up on arrival.
The family manor of Earl's Benefice, much diminished by the family fortunes and
the late war, was still a picturesque locale enhanced by an Adam house of
considerable taste and beauty. Her ladyship was constructed along similar lines,
being an attractive if formidable woman whose whole demeanor was one of tenacity
and purposefulness. When she informed her guests at the dinner table that they
were to keep the windows of their bedrooms open throughout the night, so as to
benefit from the bracing nature of the country air, even the normally headstrong
Olivia heard herself chirping rhapsodic agreement over her ladyship's mandate
that all beneath the manor roof freeze to death in their sleep. Ill-at-ease in
her new gown, which showed off a far more spectacular wealth of rose-petal bosom
than her quotidian tweeds ever dared imply, she was already feeling the first
frissons of impending frostbite in the most inconvenient places.

Perhaps it was the vicar's desire to stave off so chilly a demise that brought
him tiptoe to the door of Olivia's room just as the buhl clock on the
mantelpiece struck one. The door did not creak as he gently pushed it open, then
drew it softly closed behind him. The bare parquet floor exhaled no more than a
whisper as his stockinged feet glided over its polished surface. Even the great
canopied featherbed with its antique velvet curtains uttered not a groan of
protest as he insinuated himself beneath the eiderdown, putting an additional
strain on the roped underpinnings.