“If I’d had my way,” said Pendragon, “it would be still running. But the Queen wandered out of the parlour and into the counting-house.”
“A most undignified act,” said Audrey de Lisle. “If she’d stuck to her bread and honey, all would have been well.”
“It wasn’t undignified at all,” said the Lord of the Manor. “It was purely feminine.”
“The truth is,” said Audrey, “you can take a maiden all forlorn and put a crown on her head: but that doesn’t make her a Queen.”
“And a Queen,” said Christopher John, “can put off her crown and call herself over the coals and say the fairy-tale’s over and get into her car and drive out of the nursery rhyme: but that doesn’t alter the fact that she’s a fine lady. ‘She shall have music wherever she goes.’ ”
Perched upon the broad balustrade, her little hands folded in her lap, Audrey stared upon the flags.
“Why,” she said, “did the Lord of the Manor make the proposal he did? Surely he never thought that I should accept it.”
“There was no reason why you shouldn’t. Sundial means everything to you. I didn’t imagine you’d wire back ‘Every time,’ but I thought you’d negotiate.”
“Christopher!”
“Why not? The offer was honourable—the sort of offer that’s made by a King to a Queen.”