Amanda Scott Read Online Free PDF Page A

away from the dog’s pressing weight. “Makes one feel some sympathy for the horses.”
    “Save it for the chairmen we’ll hire if ever we come up on a rainy day,” Manningford told him. “One rarely employs a carriage in Bath, and chairmen charge extra to carry one up this hill. But only wait until you see the view from up top.”
    A few minutes later, when the chaise drew to a halt before the Royal Crescent, crowning the hilltop, Mr. Lasenby agreed that the view was all that had been promised. The city lay behind and below them to the east, while away to the south, under billowing clouds, beyond well-tended grassland, all the way to the horizon, lay green fields dotted with sheep and parkland lush with trees.
    Mr. Lasenby raised his quizzing glass. “Sheep?”
    “A ha-ha runs across the grassland there to prevent them from straying this far,” Manningford said. He glanced at the door in front of which the chaise had halted. “Doesn’t appear that our arrival has been noticed. I hope Father hasn’t turned off all the servants again.”
    “What?” Mr. Lasenby looked dismayed. “Turned them off! Why would he do a fool thing like that?”
    Manningford, pushing open the door of the chaise, looked back and shrugged. “He does that sort of thing. No, dog, you wait until I see what’s what.” He stepped down and said to the postboy, “Someone will come out to get our things and the dog. Then you can take the chaise ’round back to the stables, where you’ll find a bite to eat and a place to spend the night if you don’t have to get the horses back today.”
    Shaking beads of water from his yellow oilskins, the postboy, who was in fact a small, weather-beaten, middle-aged man, nodded and reached to take the money Manningford held out to him. “Right you are, sir. I’ll have my sup and be getting straight back, if it’s all the same to you.”
    Mr. Lasenby, having followed Manningford to the flagway after carefully shutting the protesting hound inside the chaise, paused now to savor the full impact of the semi-elliptical, five-hundred-foot sweep of thirty houses joined in a single facade designed simply at ground level, elaborately above. “I say, Bran, are these houses all the same inside, too?”
    “Not at all. In point of fact, if you were to step ’round to the far end there, by the Marlborough Buildings, and have a look at the backside, you’d see what a sham all this frontage is. From behind it looks like any street of houses in London, growing together cheek by jowl but all different sizes and all in a scramble.” Noting that the dog had continued to voice its disapproval of being left in the chaise, he glanced at it and said, “Silence, dog. I wonder what I shall do with you. Here, Sep, stop gaping about and come inside. I must find someone to deal with all this.” Extracting a key from his waistcoat pocket, he strode up the stone steps to the white-painted front door.
    “Look here,” Mr. Lasenby said behind him. “Perhaps we ought to put up at an inn instead. If your father has no servants, we’ll be a dashed nuisance to him.”
    “No, we won’t. We needn’t even see him.” Manningford pushed the door open, revealing a small, high-ceilinged entrance hall and, beyond an elaborately framed white arch, a curved stair with a dark wood railing. Two doors stood at right angles to the archway, both white and framed to match. Both doors were closed.
    “Porter’s chair, but no porter,” Mr. Lasenby observed in disapproval, looking around. “Marble walls?”
    Manningford shut the front door. “Painted with feathers and twigs to look like marble,” he said. “Fashionable forty or fifty years ago and probably not painted since. That stairway is not stone, either. Only looks like it, and the floor here is wood, not flagstone. Come up to the library, Sep. You’ll be more comfortable there while I see if anyone is about.”
    “What’s behind those two doors?” Mr. Lasenby asked as