Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

Anne said: "Don't speak with your mouth full, Bertie." Anne Kingsbridge was a superior seven-year-old and she lorded it over Bertie and her five-year-old brother Freddy.

"It's delicious," said Maisie.

Another maid said: "Would you like some buttered toast, children?" and they all said yes in a chorus.

Maisie had at first felt it was unnatural for a child to grow up surrounded by servants, and she feared that Bertie would be overprotected; but she had learned that rich children played in the dirt and climbed walls and got into fights just as much as the poor, and the main difference was that the people who cleaned up after them got paid.

She would have liked to have more children--Solly's children--but something had gone wrong inside her when Bertie was born and the Swiss doctors had said she would not conceive again. They had been proved right, for she had been sleeping with Solly for five years without once missing the monthly curse. Bertie was the only child she would ever have. She was bitterly sorry for Solly, who would never have children of his own; although he said he already had more happiness than any man deserved.

Kingo's wife the duchess, known to her friends as Liz, joined the nursery breakfast party soon after Maisie. As they were washing their children's hands and faces, Liz said: "You know, my mother would never have done this. She only saw us when we were scrubbed clean and dressed up. So unnatural." Maisie smiled. Liz thought herself very down-to-earth because she washed her own children's faces.

They stayed in the nursery until ten o'clock, when the governess arrived and set the children to work drawing and painting. Maisie and Liz returned to their rooms. Today was a quiet day, with no hunting. Some of the men were going fishing and others would stroll in the woods with a dog or two, shooting rabbits. The ladies, and the men who liked ladies better than dogs, would walk around the park before lunch.

Solly had eaten breakfast and was getting ready to go out. He was dressed in a brown tweed lounge suit with a short jacket. Maisie kissed him and helped him put on his ankle boots: if she had not been there he would have called his valet, for he could not bend down far enough to tie the laces himself. She put on a fur coat and hat and Solly donned a heavy plaid Inverness coat with a cape and matching bowler hat, then they went down to the hall to meet the others.