How little she knew about them, she thought, except what she had read. She loved reading in French to Cicely and she had searched the big library at The Castle for books that she knew would amuse her.
They had seemed a dull lot until one day Atalanta had entered William’s sitting room, which adjoined his bedroom in the West wing.
It was always kept ready for his return and contained trophies that he had won at school, photographs taken of himself and his friends at Oxford and to her delight a large number of books far more up to date than those in the library downstairs.
She had quite shamelessly taken a number of them and hidden them in a locked cupboard in Cicely’s bedroom.
The Countess, who seldom read, would not perhaps have realised the implications of Atalanta reading aloud Madam
