Amanda Scott Read Online Free PDF Page B

you see the master.”
    “See him?”
    “Yes, sir. I didn’t know where to send word to you, and what with Lady Axbridge and the marquess visiting in France, and Lady Symonds being in Scotland with Sir Harry and the children, and what with him saying he don’t want to be plagued by Mr. Charles telling him what Mrs. Charles thinks he ought to be doing about everything, well I—”
    “Never mind all that,” Manningford said in a normal tone as he reached the lower landing and turned to the right. “What can my brother or my sisters, let alone their respective spouses—or myself, for that matter—have to do with anything here?”
    “Sir Mortimer’s ill, Mr. Brandon.” His voice, now that he, too, spoke normally, was harsh, but his manner was gentle.
    “How ill?” Opening the door to the drawing room, Manningford stepped inside, and when Borland did not answer at once, he turned and said curtly, “Is he going to die?”
    The manservant gave him a direct look. “Would it distress you if he did, sir?”
    “I don’t know him. How could it distress me?” On the chimneypiece in the center of the west wall hung a painting of his mother, and he glanced at it now. “My father left us when she died,” he said, allowing his gaze to linger on the pretty woman in wide red skirts and narrow waist, her hair powdered and piled atop her head, her right hand emerging from a flow of frothy lace to caress the slender black and white dog curled in her lap. “He never left the house, Borland, but he left my brother and sisters and me when I had scarcely turned three. I wish I could believe he did so out of grief at her loss, but I have never had reason to believe he cared for anyone.”
    Borland nodded. “I know that, sir. A hard man to know, is the master, and a harder man to love. I, who have served him these thirty-five years and more, can say so without hesitation. Still, he needs you now.”
    “Me? I think not. I am here only because I’ve let boredom, generosity, and my old devil, impulse, carry me to a point I swore seven years ago I’d never reach again. The loans are still out, the luck’s still against me, and though I’d hoped to recoup my losses last night, I only made things worse. So, since it’s little more than a fortnight to quarter-day, and since I haven’t come a-begging in all those seven years, I thought—”
    “He won’t do it, sir,” the manservant said grimly, “and ’tis sorry I am to hear you’re in straits, for ’twill give him the sort of edge he best likes to have over his opponents.”
    “Edge? Opponents?” Manningford glared at him. “What the devil are you talking about?”
    “He needs help, Mr. Brandon. He has asked to see you.”
    “Then he knows I’m here?”
    “No, but I promised to send for you just as soon as I got word of where to send, and he’s been that impatient. Every morning he wants to know did I find you yet? I’d have taken you into his study to talk, but he’d be bound to hear us there, and then the fat would be in the fire.”
    “How so?”
    “Shout for me to bring you to him straightaway, he would, and if you refused, the good Lord only knows what would come of it, for it won’t do for the master to be losing his temper.”
    “You afraid he’d turn you off with the rest?”
    “I wouldn’t go, sir, but I don’t deny I fear his rages right enough. ’Twas one of them put him where he is now, which is to say flat on his back in his bed. Another such could carry him right off and aloft, the doctor did say.”
    “He’s seen a doctor? You astonish me.”
    “Found unconscious on the floor, he was, sir, three days ago. I had been to the receiving office and back, and had to go out again almost directly, and while I was gone, one of the maids heard a terrible crash and rushed into the study to find him lying on the floor, unconscious and looking ever so queer, she said. She set up a screech, of course, and Mrs. Hammersmyth sent for the doctor, not