Amanda Scott Read Online Free PDF

Manningford strode through the archway ahead of him.
    “Saloon to the right and dining room to the left,” he said. “If anyone is here, they will be upstairs. Come on.”
    But Mr. Lasenby hesitated. “Look here, Bran, what do you mean we needn’t see your father? I’ve heard tales about the man but discounted most of them.”
    “You’d have done better to believe them, Sep.”
    “What, that he don’t see anyone? That he ain’t set foot out of this house in thirty years?”
    “Not thirty, only twenty-five. You should feel honored, Sep. You are the first guest I’ve ever brought to stay here.”
    “But surely, you see him!”
    “I wouldn’t recognize him if I were to meet him coming down these stairs,” Manningford said grimly.
    “You’re bamming me.”
    “No. He sees only one man, his personal manservant, and how Borland has put up with him all these years, I’ll never know.”
    Mr. Lasenby chuckled. “Perhaps this Borland murdered him years ago and has merely been having you on ever since.”
    Manningford glanced back over his shoulder. “Don’t think that hasn’t been suggested by others before you, Sep, but I exaggerated the case. My sister Sybilla—the one married to the Marquess of Axbridge—has pushed her way in to see him once or twice, counting the cost afterward, and my brother, Charlie, sees him once a year. I don’t see him at all.”
    “But did you never try? I should have thought—”
    “Only once, when I was nine, but I got no farther than the door to his study. He ordered Borland to thrash me for daring to disturb him, and though the punishment was light, I never made another attempt.” At the top of the stair he crossed the landing to throw open a pair of double doors, revealing a spacious, book-lined room decorated in shades of peach with white-molding trim. “The library, Sep, and Madeira or some such thing in the decanter over there. Help yourself while I see what I can discover.”
    Waiting only until Mr. Lasenby had removed the stopper, sniffed, and begun to pour wine into one of the glasses set beside the decanter, Manningford shut the doors and turned to a second flight of stairs, narrower than the first, leading to the top floor. In most houses in the crescent, the top-floor rooms were allotted to servants. Here, the entire floor had been taken over by Sir Mortimer and his man.
    Manningford paused on the upper landing to run a finger inside his neckcloth, rubbing the area that had been chafed in the carriage. Then, absently smoothing a crease, he stood for a moment longer, regarding the closed door opposite the head of the stairs. A narrow corridor led away from the landing on each side, but he felt no inclination to explore either passage. His attention was riveted on the room directly before him, but he felt no fear and little curiosity. Whatever feelings he had had as a child had long since faded, and the man who spent most of his hours in that room stirred interest in him now only as the chief source of the funds he required to live as a gentleman.
    He drew a deep breath, stepped forward, and raised his hand to knock, but before he could do so, a door in the right-hand corridor opened and a barrel-shaped man in his late fifties, wearing a dark coat and breeches, emerged quickly from the room, his right index finger pressed firmly to his lips. Shutting the door behind him, he stepped quickly to the landing and murmured in a tone so low that Manningford had to strain to hear him, “Come back downstairs with me, sir, if you please.”
    Turning to follow him, Manningford muttered back, “I’ve put a friend in the library, Borland. Where are the other servants?”
    “Gone, sir, most of them. We’d best use the drawing room if you’ve put him in the library. Saw you from the window, I did, but couldn’t get away till now without him getting suspicious, and fair popped my ears, trying to hear you come up them stairs so’s I could tell you what’s happened before