Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 51

Ulick and Rory are home. Doopie has been flapping around all morning, unpacking trunks and examining socks for holes and shirt collars for turning. After the summer, Ulick will be going to Melhuish’s old school, Eton College, and so has to have his name stitched into dozens of new garments. A simple, repetitive task that would drive a normal person insane, but Doopie is clearly in her element.

Violet says the entertainments at Drumcanna will be simple, outdoor pursuits. Fishing, deerstalking, shooting. She says they don’t keep late nights, because of making an early start, but they do play parlor games after dinner and they always give a ball, where the help and the guests mingle and dance. I told her I didn’t think it was for me.

“Nonsense,” she said. “You’ll have a wonderful time. The mountain air will do you good, and you’ll strike up new friendships. Jane Habberley is coming, and Penelope Blythe. Anyway, you can’t stay here. Smith and the maids go to their families for August.”

The butler and the driver go north with them, apparently, but Drumcanna is otherwise run by a staff of locals, even more wayward than the London tribe, no doubt, left to their own Scottish devices for months at a time.

I said, “Then I’ll go to a hotel.”

“You’ll come to Drumcanna, Maybell!” she said, “and do what normal people do.”

A note under my door at bedtime.

Dear Aunt Maybell,

Please come to Scotland. Flora and I will be very sad if you do not.

Yours truly,

Rory Melhuish.