the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (best detective novels of all time .TXT) 📖

came out of her mouth and rested on her dress. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “But I love you. And I have never ever slept with anyone else since the day we fell in love. Sweetheart, that was a long time ago.” He looked away and sighed. “I just wish that you could believe me.”
”You take the initiative to kiss Morgana, not the other way around.”
“I’m an emotional man. I kiss girls hello. I don’t sleep with them.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I think we should. I kiss your father hello. I am not going to sleep with him.”
Belinda giggled, but grew serious again. “I just wish, Steve,” she said and put her hand in his lap. “That you would keep the promise you vowed me in April.”
”I haven’t encouraged her one bit, Lindy. I keep my promise whether you believe me or not.”
”Every day you kiss her cheek. You make no amends to keep your distance. Why?”
”Then I will.”
”I don’t know if you will, Sweetheart.”
”I will.”
She sighed. “Steve, darling. She was listening to our conversation in April. She heard us talk about her before the meeting. Most probably, this was the reason for her fast change in excusing herself in front of father.”
”I know it.” He corrected himself. “At least I always did suspect her of being so foul even before I knew that.” Steven shook his head. “Could’ve thought it. Doesn’t surprise me. We’ve been through all of this.” He looked at Belinda. “I love you, Belinda.”
An inquiring look was answered by a nod and she raised her forefinger and caressed his cheek. They kissed.
“Belinda,” a deep voice echoed from the mahogany throne. She looked away from Steve and saw her father holding up a lute. Bantrard was standing next to him and Zedrick was giving Belinda his old familiar double whammy. “We are a group of gents here that feel that a song would be due. A song from your lips accompanied by your fast fingers for the amusement of our fellows and lasses wouldst be task close to the divine intervention.”
She shook her head, tossing her hair around, girlishly. “I have not played lute for so long.”
There was a largely descending and disappointed “Awww,” from the crowd, followed by a laugh.
Alex held up the lute and looked away whistling. “I am counting to ten, and then I am playing.”
She looked at Steven. “They want you.”
“God knows why.”
”Your father is funny.”
“My father is funny in more ways than one.”
“Smart, too.”
“One, two, ” Alex started.
She smiled. “I want to believe you, Steven. Forgive me for my jealousy.”
“Three, four,” “I love you, Belinda. Don’t be tempted to distrust me because of my emotional nature.”
“Five, -six,”
“You are faithful, aren’t you, Steve?”
“Seven, -eight,” He nodded.
“There is only you. Believe me. Play, please. I don’t want to hear your father play.”
“Nine, -ten,”
“Now go, your father will play and everyone will leave.” Belinda laughed and kissed Steven.
“I am playing the lute, Belinda.” He picked it up and struck a chord. “Pling-plong, plingity-plong.”
He sat up, eyebrows raised, ever the jester. The children started to shriek with laughter. He looked at them. “I am a lute player, children, this is serious business. Don’t mind me.” He pouted with his mouth and made a funny face. “Pling-plong. Plingity-plong.”
Belinda stood up just as Alex sang profoundly with his bass voice,
”There once was a king of Thule. As handsome as the sun…”
“I’ll play, I’ll play, I’ll play.” Belinda ran up to Alexander, equally the joker.
“That got her up in an awful hurry.” Alex mused as she took the lute. “What are you doing with my lute?” Alexander looked at it worried, then, coquette as ever, turned a cheek to her. Belinda kissed it.
They had played that game when she had been small. That game and the other one, where her father smelled her foot and called it ‘The rose, the queen of all flowers’ and pretended to faint, were her all time favourites. Alex stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, conjectures of scenery.” Alex looked down at the Cocker Spaniel scratching his ear, “You, Sir Dog,” he looked up again, “I present to you, my lute playing daughter Belinda, future sovereign of our realm!”
There was a play acted Oooh across the field.
The crowd began applauding and cheering as she took the lute and hung it around her neck. The crowds that were further away began looking her way and the people still talking were told to be quiet. “Now, my friends, I have not played this for a bit, so bear with me.” She plucked a few notes of a song and turned to her father. “What shall I play, you persistent gentleman?”
”The jig.” Belinda looked at her father and shook her head.
“The what?” ”Your… jig! You sang it on the walk the other day.”
“Do I still remember the text?”
”You did the previous morning. Nay?”
“Not the entire thing. Do I remember everything?”
“Why not try to find out?”
She shrugged and looked at Steven. He shook his head and smiled. “You still know it, Sweetheart?”
Steven looked at her, baffled. “What?” ”Oh, you know, the one.”
“The old ditty from Naples?” Belinda nodded.
“Bedroom roses? The one with the silly title?”
She nodded again. “Oh. You sing that here? In front of Alex?”
“He wants it. It’'s funny.” Belinda smiled and calmed Steven down. “I’ve sung it before.”
Zedrick laughed and gave Alex a familiar clap on the shoulder. He took his hand and squeezed it. Belinda turned to the crowd and suddenly the depression from before was cast aside.
“All right. This is a very old song that Bantrard wrote when I was twelve. Steven and I always say it is a song from Naples because, oh, well. I can’t tell that in public.” She giggled and turned red. “I was depressed at the time and he wanted to cheer me up.”
She looked at Bantrard who shook his head and waved it away.
“It became one of my favourites and I always wanted to sing it at festivities, all the time. He almost wished he never had written it. This is the first time in years.”
Alex hollered: “Sing, woman. Don’t talk so much.” Belinda yelled back. “Shut up, your majesty, or you’ll get a lute in your face.” The crowd chuckled, most of them knowing the love that lay behind those words.
“She loves me!”
“All right, here we go.”
“We are waiting.” Alexander mused.
Belinda tried to conceal her mirth. “Stop it.” She giggled. “I am concentrating.”
”Oh, I see.”
Belinda began plucking at a C-major chord, which went into a plucky F and then into D-minor and a diminished chord before ending up in a C again. All the time whilst singing this song, she wandered amongst the people, bent down to sing to them and gave each one a little happy twinkle. Once or twice she bent down to give someone a tongue in cheek-look and the one that enjoyed it the least was Morgana. Patrick at least tried to enjoy it.
It was a Gigue Estampie for quill plucked lute in C - major.


BEDROOM ROSES
Jig or Gigue Estampie Real for Quill Plucked Lute
by Bantrard Silvermoon in the key of C-Major

In the chambers of a nuptial abode
There stood some bedroom roses,
Red as cherries
Or boysenberries
Or red as two virginal maid’s noses.

In these chambers a girl she lived
A maid of two-and twenty,
She lived a dream,
So it would seem,
With a man of assets a-plenty.

In these chambers a girl she lived,
Courted by not only her true love,
Whilst her man was away,
O horrid hooray,
She found each bright day a new love.

In these chambers the roses of magic,
That had blossomed for years, so tragic,
They faded away,
Until the bright day
When someone restored their magic.

In these chambers a wizard of grace,
Came to look at the aura of the space,
He said: “My maiden”
On the sheets you have laid him
The Fleur-de-Mal rose of disgrace.

In these chambers the maiden denied here,
“I have never been unfaithful inside, dear,
The room is clear
Of wickedness sheer,
On my bible, I sleep here with no fear.


In these chambers the wizard he knew that
The maiden was lying like a lewd cat,
Sent by her man
The wizard he ran,
And the husband he put on his high hat.

To these chambers he came home to find her,
In sheets with another high blinder,
The woman she cried,
Screamed and she sighed,
Ran out and the man said: Come, find her!”

To these chambers she never returned,
Until the day when her new castle burned,
Three years then hence,
She built a new fence,
Came back to her man, wise and learned.

In these chambers she swore him her new love,
And he swore her his homely and true love,
When together they merged
Floral magic it surged
“Bedroom roses bloom only when but two love.”

The cheers rose echoing to the skies and ricocheting across the plains, bouncing off the mountain walls above and sliding down the valley down to the palace as Belinda waltzed, sweaty and giggling, over to a laughing Alexander, embracing Sieglinde who was applauding her daughter. The Cocker Spaniel, which had travelled with Maria to Iuventus for two days to be at this party, jumped up on her lap and licked her hand.
Alexander stood up and silenced the crowd gratefully for having such a maiden as a child.
“Ladies and gents, my daughter, the future queen, Belinda.”
His majesty held his daughter around the shoulder and she leant against his as he held her tight, his bear like hug almost too tight now but comfortable and strong, waving his other hand around to get everyone's eyes and ears on directed toward him and his young Belinda.
"My friends!" Alexander started as most people now were within hearing-distance and the one furthest away was Morgana, who looked at her father with a mixture of admiration and disgust. "When I asked her how she would want her actual birthday to look like, she said: 'a picnic on the eastern hill after the handing out of the presents in the palace’. I asked her: 'Nothing more?' She said: 'We’ll have a party in the Grand Hall in the evening with plenty of fun, but the picnic will be fine with me!’. My daughter could've had an orchestra, three choirs and five hundred cooks bringing her food all day."
"God forbid or I'd get fat!"
Belinda laughed and the crowd joined in.
"But she wanted this one summer picnic. I think that shows us that this future queen is humble enough to stay sane throughout her prospective reign. We’re not all here. Some of the guests drank a little too much yesterday and chose to sleep." The crowd laughed again. "I shall not be tedious, don't I always say this when this is exactly what I am, but I need only say that I am happy to congratulate my daughter on her 21st birthday and her future husband for the nuptial selection." Steven walked up to her and they embraced and kissed.
“Let us all join in to sing for our own Belinda!"
Bantrard walked round the crowd getting everyone going in birthday-song everyone had heard a dozen times throughout the weeks of this celebration.
The spring sun shone down on the royal singing picnic-crowd that day, making the light