Status Updates From Drake Hall (The Secrets of ...

Her ideas about Simon were wrong in the last book, and I think they are wrong in this book. I now get the altar guild imagery, and I wonder if it connects to the red satin in her readings about Arthur.

Edith asks about the ancestor with the monkey (Amelia). Her son Barnaby built the greenhouse and spent a lot of money heating it. Helena knew him when he was an old man. The ancestral details are so gorhic! My accounting was correct. Two months have passed. She now knows more about her family's heritage and is making friends for the first time in her life. Ideas of what she could be are energing.

She reads about King Arthur and what she once thought was dragon lore is more real. It is Pentecost which means her parents left not long ago. The timing is related to Easter. I am wondering if the journey of the soul has to do with a deeper spiritual reality than she and her father had known. After Pentecost is a season of growing. She seems to be growing in what is her new calling.

She states that perhaps Simon should meet more women before settling for her but Helena likes the two as a match. A mil that likes you? Clearly that can’t work. Ha, ha! Simon is head over heels for Edith. Simon’s ancestor was Sir Francis Drake’s brother. He acquired a Spanish galleon with a lot of money and a dragon from the New World. They were sent to give it to Edith’s ancestors.

QE I has been to the hall. Helena knows the story as well as the bed in which she slept. She has a dragon named Darcy who was a bit feisty to their servant who was afraid to tell her of his small bites. Before she explains about Bess, she asks Edith about her intentions toward Simon (visions of Lady Catherine de Bourgh -- except she seems nicer). Edith is flabbergasted for she isn’t sure she’ll marry anyone (Lizzie).

Ch. 1 The book's epigraph makes me want to read The Mabignogion. Edith often visits Simon's mother, an invalid, at Drake Hall. Helena says the most interesting things and acts like a queen, ruling her throne. Edith says she is late because she is watching a river dragon lay eggs. She sketched it in her nature notebook, which she promised George she would keep. The spot is called Bess's Foss (Falls) named for QE I.