Beware Of Virtuous Women
1813
ELEANOR BECKET SAT in her usual chair near the fire, bent over her embroidery frame.
Her sisters Fanny and Cassandra, the latter still downstairs only because their papa had retreated to his study and didn't know she'd left her bedchamber, were playing a card game they'd invented together, and neither of them quite knew the rules.
Morgan Tanner, Countess of Aylesford, sister to the three and quite happily pregnant, sat with her legs up on a Chinese hassock, wiggling her slipper-clad toes in delight, for the slippers were new, and she rarely saw them. At least not while standing up and attempting to peer straight down.
A log fell in the large fireplace in the drawing room where they sat, and all four women momentarily looked up from what they were doing, then settled back to passing the time as best they could.
"They're fine," Eleanor said a few minutes later in answer to the unspoken question that had been hanging in the room all evening, and Fanny agreed that of course they were.
"Just enough mist over the water to hide the Respite, not enough to hamper them. And the moon couldn't be mo ... read full excerpt from: Beware Of Virtuous Women ebook
