Copper Kingdom Read Online Free PDF Page A

velvet was silent now and she stared at its ornate face as though she would find an answer to her problem in the gleaming gold numerals and the slender, motionless hands.
    She pushed the large handkerchiefs back into place; her search was fruitless, the letter was not here. She stood in the silence battling with an unfamiliar feeling of fear and tried to be rational: who could have taken the letter and why?
    She returned to her own room just as there was a knock on the door. Sterling looked in at her, his smile changing to an expression of concern.
    â€˜Mother.’ He quickly crossed the carpet and drew her into his arms. ‘You are such a stoic always that I forget you must be grieving for Father.’
    Victoria’s heart went out to her son. She had always loved him the best, his welfare had come before his brother Rickie’s and Arthur’s, though she prided herself on her ability to hide her feelings.
    â€˜I’ve just got a tiny headache.’ She patted his cheek reassuringly. ‘Nothing that won’t pass.’
    â€˜Can’t I get you anything?’ he asked, moving away from her, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. He was so handsome, she thought, so like his father.
    â€˜No, I’m all right, Sterling.’ She forced herself to smile though her mind was still on the letter. Why had she not destroyed it all those years ago, what perverse vanity had caused her to keep it locked away?
    â€˜Well, you don’t look all right to me,’ Sterling said abruptly. ‘Father’s sickness was harder on you than on any of us.’
    Victoria sank into a chair. Her son was right, she had sat with Arthur day and night, knowing instinctively that this last bout of fever would prove too much for him. He had aged rapidly over the past months, had taken to drinking a little more wine than was good for him and yet, ironically, she had not been with him when he had breathed his last.
    She was aware of Sterling poking the fire with quick, restless movements, and her eyes softened. He was so tall, but thin yet. Soon he would become broad of shoulder and thigh, just like James. She almost wished he was a child again so that she could feel his arms warm around her neck and know that she was the centre of his universe. But those days had vanished for ever.
    She wondered if her son had known yet the joy of a woman’s love. Passion he had surely experienced for there was a pent-up sensuality in his nature that showed in the strong lines of his mouth. In that too he was following his father. And yet there had always been a strange antagonism between them; even as a small boy, Sterling had pulled away whenever James had attempted to make friends with him.
    â€˜I’m thinking of moving in to an establishment of my own.’ Sterling spoke casually and Victoria’s heart plummeted like a stone. ‘It’s high time, Mother.’
    â€˜I expect you are right.’ Her tone was even but she longed to cry out to him to stay with her for just a while longer, she did not want to be alone.
    â€˜You’ll still have Rickie.’ Sterling must have guessed something of her thoughts. ‘He’s finished with college for good now and I can’t see him wishing to come into the business, he’s always hated it, so he claims.’
    Victoria had an overwhelming desire to be alone. How could Rickie ever take Sterling’s place? The boy was a stranger to her, always had been from the moment she had looked into his tiny, red, newborn face and wondered if she had been presented with a changeling.
    She had felt nothing but relief when a few years later Arthur had suggested that the boy attend boarding school back in Cornwall, so that her second son had been more out of her life than in it. She rose to her feet.
    â€˜Go on out with you, I must prepare myself for dinner,’ she said to Sterling in mock reproof. ‘You’ll keep me talking here all night, go