A Lady Never Lies by Juliana Gray Page B

found herself interrupted by a goat.
    “Oh, I’m awfully sorry!” exclaimed Abigail, jumping from her chair to snatch at the scruffy beast’s leather collar. “No, no, dear. Not the
curtain
, if you please.”
    “Most unappetizing,” sighed Alexandra.
    Abigail looked up with an apologetic expression. “It’s milking time, you see. You’ve come to find me, haven’t you, you clever thing? Ouch,” she added, as the goat butted its granite head against her chin.
    “Abigail, my dear.” Alexandra placed her finger in the crease of her book and closed the pages together. “I don’t mean to dampen your enthusiasm, but we did
not
travel a thousand miles to this . . . to this delightfully rustic outpost in order for you to milk goats. We came to study, to elevate our minds.”
    “But the poor thing needs milking. Don’t you, darling? Yes? Oh, look, I say, that’s my
petticoat . . .”
    “I’m sure there are any number of . . . of goat . . . people . . . to perform the task. Or at least one or two.” Alexandra frowned at her sister, who circled about the goat in an awkward pas de deux, attempting to recover her petticoat from the creature’s surly jaws.
    “But there aren’t, really. The men are all out sowing the vegetable fields, and poor Morini’s got her hands full with the cheese-making, and Maria and Francesca are turning the rooms out before the priest arrives tomorrow for the Easter blessing . . .”
    Alexandra held up her hand. “Enough! I fail to see why . . .”
    “Besides,” Abigail went on, freeing her petticoat at last and grasping the goat’s collar with authority, “I like milking goats.”
    “But Aristophanes . . .”
    “I’ve read the man already. Twice,” Abigail said, over her shoulder. “In the original Greek.”
    Alexandra rose to her feet and called after her. “In which case you can perhaps lead our discussion . . .”
    But Abigail was already gone, through the gap in the plastered wall by which the goat had exited a moment ago. A fresh gust of breeze filled the room in her wake, smelling of damp new grass and tilled earth, and Alexandra dropped to her seat with a sigh. “
You
weren’t much help,” she said, turning to where Lady Somerton occupied a rush-seated chair, her book lying open and forgotten in her lap.
    “What’s that?” Her cousin raised her dark head.
    Alexandra’s eyes rolled upward. “Exactly. Why is it,” she asked nobody in particular, “I’m the only one of us who takes this endeavor at all seriously?”
    “I beg your pardon,” Lilibet said, rearranging her book. “I take it all very seriously. Where were we? Why, where’s Abigail gone?”
    “Abigail’s busy with her damned goats and cheeses and whatnot, and
you’re
mooning over Penhallow, and . . .”
    “Mooning! Over Penhallow!”
    “. . . and we’re reduced to this . . . this ramshackle little room for our discussions . . .” Alexandra waved her hand to encompass the groaning wooden beams, the yellowed plaster crumbling from the walls, the tendril of wisteria curling luxuriously downward from a wide crack in the ceiling.
    “It’s a lovely room,” said Lilibet. “It catches all the daytime sun.”
    “That’s because there are
holes
in the roof!” Alexandra thrust a finger in the direction of one particularly offensive example. “And the walls!”
    “The holes hardly matter, now that the weather’s turned.”
    “That’s not the point!”
    Lilibet shrugged her white cotton shoulders. “Would you rather we meet in the hall? Or the dining room?”
    Alexandra tossed her book atop the small wooden table next to her chair. “I don’t see why the men were allowed the library. There are no holes in the library walls.”
    “But it’s dark and faces north. And it’s in their wing.” Lilibet closed her book, with a little too much eagerness. “That was your idea, don’t you recall? Separate wings.”
    “I thought they’d be gone in a