The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,22

her, trapped in this silly old nursery with a fat nurse that was stupid enough to let coarse black hairs grow out of her chin.

Cordaella leaned forward against the window, still amazed at the cool slick glass surface. They didn’t have glass in their windows in the Highlands, or hearths with thick chimneys and broad mantles either. She breathed on the glass just to see it cloud, tiny little puffs that spread along the window pane. She smiled at the clouds, pretending they were in the sky and not on a leaded window pane in an English nursery.

“Get away from there,” Mrs. Penny said from the corner. “You’re always dirtying the window.” Cordaella ran her fingers through the clouds, smearing them until nothing was left but streaky fingerprints. It hurt to smear them but she didn’t want anyone else to take them from her. She had so little for herself.

“Go on with you,” Mrs. Penny said irritably. “You should be in the kitchen learning something. There is plenty for you to do downstairs. Lady Eton always needs the help.”

“Then why don’t you go,” Cordaella said, her brow furrowed as she jammed her hands into the yellow and brown sleeves of her gown. She hated these colors. Hated this dress. Of course it had been one of Elisabeth’s. Almost all of her clothes had come from Elisabeth’s wardrobe.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” She left the window and walked through the door and down the three flights of stairs to the great hall. She could hear her uncle’s voice coming from the solar.

Pressing her ear to the solar door, she tried to hear with whom he was speaking.

Since it seemed like she would have to stay here, at least for a few years, she had given up pretending that she would be able to return to Scotland soon. There was no one in Scotland to take her. She had no other family but this, not that the Earl was her family. He was only an uncle by marriage, married to Cordaella’s Aunt Charlotte, the eldest of the three Macleod sisters. But everything was so different here. Peculiar. Like the way the Earl spoke to his children, and the indifference he showed Elisabeth. Cordaella couldn’t help comparing the Earl with her father. She couldn’t imagine her father ignoring her simply because she was a girl.

And being a girl meant that she couldn’t take fencing lessons with the boys. Instead, she must learn to sew, or stitch, whichever it was with the needle and spool of silk thread. Even the clothes seemed designed to keep her from moving quickly, the layers, sometimes three of them, weighting her down, making it hard to lift her arms or pull up the skirts to climb. It was nearly impossible to run now, the endless folds of fabric catching between her legs, trailing behind her in the dirt. Lady Eton said she musn’t run anyway, explaining that Cordaella was too old—marriage being but five or six years away—and Cordaella wrinkled her nose. Marriage? How strange the English were. Why should she care about marriage? She was only nine.

She pressed her ear closer to the door, listening to the discussion—it was still the Earl talking, more about his business with merchants overseas, something that the Earl called exporting and importing.

Her uncle was awfully long-winded. He could go on for hours and she guessed it was Philip inside, enduring another of the Earl’s lectures on improving trade. She had learned enough by standing outside doors to know that the Earl owned three ships and had arranged trade agreements with a port called Lisbon and another called Barcelona. She was intrigued by the idea of ships carrying goods from one country to the next. Although she had never seen a ship, she knew that they looked like long houses with sails and decks and chambers below for the sailors. And better yet, ships sailed on the ocean, and ever since she was a wee mite of a child she wanted to see the ocean, to see water so big that it stretched as far at the eye could see, blue waves with white crests breaking against the shore.

Inside the solar, the Earl was still announcing his plans, something about visiting Italy in the spring. He was talking about being competitive, and needing to carry more goods at a cheaper price. Money, he said, could be made that way. She didn’t hear Philip’s question but heard Eton answer, “Yes, in theory, but in practice