Damsel in Distress Read Online Free PDF

warn Geraldine to expect a guest.”
    â€œI don’t want to impose on Lady Dalrymple.”
    â€œNonsense! Fate has put me in Gervaise’s place, and the least I can do is welcome his friends as if he were still with us. Carlin will be with you in a trice. I’ll leave Pepper to keep you company.”
    The spaniel, having drawn his master’s notice to his find, had gone off after rabbits, but he rushed back when called. Told to stay, he sighed and lay down with his head on Phillip’s ankle.
    Phillip watched Dalrymple tramp off, noting that what he had taken for a cane was actually a butterfly net. He blessed the man’s apparent lack of curiosity. Before he told anyone at all about the kidnapping, he had to try to get in touch with Gloria’s father. The poor fellow must be quite frantic.
    How Gloria was feeling, Phillip didn’t want to think.
    The few minutes before Carlin arrived did much to restore his strength. As the stalwart, grizzled gamekeeper approached, Phillip stood up with only a touch of giddiness. With a growl, his stomach reminded him he had not eaten since lunch yesterday, and then no more than a slice of cold pork pie in a pub on the drive down from London.
    He had been saving every shilling to buy Gloria chocolates and take her dancing. The hollow in his stomach was nothing to the hollow in his heart.

    â€œWell now, Master Phillip,” Carlin greeted him, “what have ’e bin up to now?”
    He spoke in just the tone of patient reproach he had used when Phillip and Gervaise got stuck up trees, or fell out of them or into streams, in early youth. Later he had taught the boys to shoot—and dug the shot out of Phillip’s retriever pup when she rushed ahead and Gervaise accidentally peppered her.
    â€œDoes Lord Dalrymple shoot?” Phillip asked with curiosity as they set off.
    â€œNay, sir, not he. Nor hunt, leastways nowt but butterflies. He don’t properly understand country life, if ’e’ll excuse my boldness. He don’t have much need for the likes of I, but he knows better than to turn off them as’ve served the Dalrymples time out o’ mind.”
    â€œI’m glad you’re still here.” If Phillip had to be ignominiously helped up to the house, he’d as soon it was by Carlin as anyone.
    All the same, he was pleased to find he needed little help. The combined effects of the blow to the head and the chloroform were wearing off, and his hunger would soon be satisfied, he trusted. Climbing a stile was an effort; he accepted Carlin’s hand to steady him. Otherwise he walked slowly but under his own steam, across a hayfield, already cut, through a plum orchard (scene of many a raid in the old days), and into the park.
    The rear façade of the house rose above gardens and a balustraded terrace. Fairacres, though too large to be called a manor, was no vast ducal mansion. The formality of its classical symmetry was offset by the patchwork appearance found in many local buildings. Pinkish sandstone, amber Cotswold limestone, pale grey stone from who knew where, placed at random blended into an attractive whole.
    It was once Phillip’s home from home. The War had kept him away for four years. Since the death of Daisy and Gervaise’s
father four years ago, in the great ’flu epidemic of ’19, he had called only two or three times, for politeness’ sake. He still thought of Edgar Dalrymple, ex-schoolmaster, and his wife Geraldine as intruders.
    He could not blame Daisy or her mother for not accepting their offer of a home.
    Dash it all, he had promised Daisy to drop in and see the Dowager Lady Dalrymple at the Dower House. Not a chance, not for the foreseeable future, not while Gloria suffered in the hands of those vile brutes.
    The swine had added insult to injury by pinching his wallet and all his change, as he discovered when he felt for a shilling for Carlin. Thank heaven they had not dumped