Death Among the Ruins Read Online Free PDF

a block of ice.”
    “But we cannot just leave him! After all, he is the only brother we have.”
    “That is a circumstance,” said Arabella, “for which I daily thank Providence.”
    Charles has been mentioned at length, and rather pointedly, too, in a previous volume of Arabella’s adventures, but the reader has not actually met him. Therefore, picture if you will a tall, dark, attractive man, almost pretty, a few years older than Arabella. Although he shared her forthright self-assurance, and had dark hair, like Belinda, Charles possessed a certain want of character, an absence of inner resolve, and a weakness about the mouth that were entirely his own. In fact, there was no very striking family resemblance amongst the siblings, and Arabella had sometimes reflected that the three of them might, in actuality, only be half siblings. (Their mother, as Charles had said, had been much given to vice.) Still, he was the only brother they had.
    “Oh, all right!” cried Arabella, disgusted by the others’ facial expressions of mute appeal. “Though I am quite certain that I shall have cause to regret it, you had better come along to Italy with Bunny and me, Charles. Perhaps a month or two with all of us out of the public eye will give things here a chance to settle down.”
    “You know I shall be of no help at all, either physically, financially, or emotionally,” he said, plucking a bit of fluff from his sleeve.
    “That is not entirely true,” Arabella replied. “The presence of a male family member will lend a certain outward respectability to our party, which may well prove useful abroad. The Italians, you know, are rather old-fashioned in their attitudes, and apt to take a dim view of females roaming about on their own.”
    After Charles had gone, Belinda allowed herself the luxury of sniffling into her hanky.
    “You’re well out of that, Bunny,” said Arabella, patting her shoulder. “Just think what would have happened if you had married Carrington! An insufferable bore is bearable, if not actually charming, when he is also rich. But an insufferably boring pauper might tempt one to murder!”
    “Yes, you are right,” Belinda agreed, wiping away a tear. “When it comes to gambling, Carrington is as bad as Charles. And ending up with someone like Charles is the last thing I should want!”
    “Well,” said Arabella, with a rueful smile. “Not according to gossip.”
     
    Rudolph Ackermann kept a print shop on the Strand, in whose front window he was wont to display the latest social and political commentary, translated into captioned cartoons by artists like George Cruikshank, James Gillray, and Thomas Rowlandson. The plethora of London newspapers and magazines notwithstanding, Ackermann’s window was where one went for a quick overview of the burning topics of the day.
    Shortly after Charles Beaumont had made his famous remark to Lord Carrington, Arabella discovered a print in the famous window, depicting her siblings and herself in bed together, and bearing the caption: “Brotherly Love.”
    “So much for befriending ‘the most dangerous man in London,’” said Belinda, when Arabella told her. She was sitting in the library, having attempted to create a scrimshaw scene on a walrus tusk that Glen deen had once given Arabella. But Belinda had botched it, and was now carving it into a dildo, instead.
    “The work was Cruikshank’s,” said Arabella, untying the ribbons that secured her bonnet beneath her chin, “not Rowlandson’s. Tom would never do such a thing to an old friend.”
    “No? Last year, if you recall, he made that humiliating sketch of me!”
    “That was different, Bunny. Anyone may fall down and have her frock fly up, although you would not risk exposure quite so often if your skirts were not quite so full. Besides, a narrower skirt shews off the figure to greater advantage.”
    “You are free to attract attention in any way you see fit,” said Belinda. “However, I am