A Place Called Freedom Read Online Free PDF

seeing his brother worried. “What are you afraid of?” he said.
    “You know damn well what I mean. You’ve been stealing my things since we were boys—my toys, my clothes, everything.”
    An old familiar resentment goaded Jay into saying: “Because you always got whatever you wanted, and I got nothing.”
    “Nonsense.”
    “Anyway, Miss Hallim is a guest at our house,” Jay said in a more reasonable tone. “I can’t ignore her, can I?”
    Robert’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “Do you want me to speak to Father about it?”
    Those were the magic words that had ended so many childhood disputes. Both brothers knew that their father would always rule in favor of Robert. A long-familiar bitterness rose in Jay’s throat. “All right, Robert,” he conceded. “I’ll try not to interfere with your courting.”
    He swung onto his horse and trotted away, leaving Robert to escort Lizzie to the castle.
    Castle Jamisson was a dark gray stone fortress with turrets and a battlemented roofline, and it had the tall, overbearing look of so many Scottish country houses. It had been built seventy years ago, after the first coal pit in the glen began to bring wealth to the laird.
    Sir George inherited the estate through a cousin of his first wife’s. Throughout Jay’s childhood his father had been obsessed with coal. He had spent all his time and money opening new pits, and no improvements had been made to the castle.
    Although it was Jay’s childhood home he did not like the place. The huge, drafty rooms on the ground floor—hall, dining room, drawing room, kitchen and servants’ hall—were arranged around a central courtyard with a fountain that was frozen from October to May. The place was impossible to heat. Fires in every bedroom, burning the plentiful coal from the Jamisson pits, made little impression on the chill air of the big flagstoned chambers, and the corridors were so cold that you had to put on a cloak to go from one room to another.
    Ten years ago the family had moved to London, leaving a skeleton staff to maintain the house and protect the game. For a while they would come back every year, bringing guests and servants with them, renting horses and a carriage from Edinburgh, hiring crofters’ wives to mop the stone floors and keep the fires alight and empty the chamberpots. But Father became more and more reluctant to leave his business, and the visits petered out. This year’s revival of the old custom did not please Jay. However, the grown-up Lizzie Hallim was a pleasant surprise, and not merely because she gave him a means of tormenting his favored older brother.
    He rode around to the stables and dismounted. He patted the gelding’s neck. “He’s no steeplechaser, but he’s a well-behaved mount,” he said to the groom, handing over the reins. “I’d be glad to have him in my regiment.”
    The groom looked pleased. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
    Jay went into the great hall. It was a big, gloomy chamber with dim shadowy corners into which the candlelight hardly penetrated. A sullen deerhound lay on an old fur rug in front of the coal fire. Jay gave it a nudge with the toe of his boot and made it get out of the way so that he could warm his hands.
    Over the fireplace was the portrait of his father’s first wife, Robert’s mother, Olive. Jay hated that painting. There she was, solemn and saintly, looking down her long nose at all who came after her. When she caught a fever and died suddenly at the age of twenty-nine his father had remarried, but he never forgot his first love. He treated Jay’s mother, Alicia, like a mistress, a plaything with no status and no rights; and he made Jay feel almost like an illegitimate son. Robert was the firstborn, the heir, the special one. Jay sometimes wanted to ask whether it had been an immaculate conception and a virgin birth.
    He turned his back on the picture. A footman brought him a goblet of hot mulled wine and he sipped it gratefully. Perhaps it