Old Sins Read Online Free PDF

again in her mind, Roz could only remember nightmarish oddly inconsequential fragments: of C. J. and Henry helping Phaedria into another room; of her own loud and inappropriate demand for a stiff drink; of Letitia suggesting to her that they should go outside together and get some fresh air, and her irritable wretched refusal; of her mother asking inane questions of Peveril, of Letitia, of Susan, of C. J., if any of them had ever met or heard of a Miles Wilburn, and even more inane suggestions that he might be the son, cousin, brother, uncle of various men she had known or that Julian had known; of Camilla, become suddenly part of the previously hostile gathering, offering to go through her old address books and diaries (all predictably stored and filed in date order) in search of some kind of clue; of Henry, fussily important, returning to the room and professing as much ignorance of Miles as the rest of them, while volunteering the strangely relevant and unexpected information that he had not drawn up the will, or even set eyes on it until Julian had died and Phaedria had found it in the safe andsent it over to him; of her own savagely swift personal revelation as to the cause of Phaedria’s faintness; of Henry’s insistence, largely she felt for her mother’s benefit, that no whisper of the will must reach the outside world, and particularly that part of it centred in Fleet Street; of the departure of the family, in small, disparate groups, oddly subdued (with the exception of Phaedria, glassily pale, but possessed of a strange almost feverish excitement); and lastly the sound of her own voice, the panic and despair she was feeling disguised in a harsh brightness, declaring that she knew that whoever and wherever Mr Wilburn might be, she would personally hate him unreservedly for the whole of the rest of her life.
    ‘Miles,’ said the girl from the depths of the bed. ‘Miles, you just have to get up. It’s almost seven, and you have that meeting with your uncle this morning. And you know how important it is. Miles, please wake up.’
    Miles put out his hand, his eyes still closed, and traced the outline of her breasts, moved down over her abdomen, rested tenderly for a moment on the mound of pubic hair; then moved on, gently, relentlessly probing her secret places, feeling her soft moistness, parting her; she could feel his penis hardening, rising against her, and her own juices obediently, delightfully, start to flow.
    ‘Miles,’ she said, in a last desperate effort to divert him. ‘Miles, please.’
    ‘You don’t have to ask,’ he said, smiling into her eyes, deliberately misunderstanding; and for a while everything was forgotten, the debts, the lawsuit, the trap closing in on him, all lost in a tangle of hair and skin and pleasure and desire.

Chapter One
    Wiltshire, France, London, 1939–1948
    JULIAN MORELL ’ S ENEMIES often said he could never quite make up his mind who he loved more, his mother or himself.
    This judgement, pronounced as frequently in company boardrooms as at dinner parties, might well have been considered just a little harsh; but there was certainly sufficient truth in it to ensure its frequent repetition. And certainly anyone observing the two of them dining together at the Ritz one evening in the autumn of 1952 would have been irresistibly reminded of it – watching Julian looking alternately fondly at his mother, and almost as fondly into the mirror behind her.
    They looked alike to a degree; they were both dark-haired, both tall and slim, but Julian’s eyes were brown and his face was long and already threatening to be gaunt. Letitia had deep, almost purple, blue eyes and the kind of bone structure that would look good for another fifty years: high cheekbones, and a very slight squarishness to the jaw. She had the sort of mouth possessed by all great beauties of the twenties and thirties: a perfect bow, neither full nor thin; and a nose of classical straightness. But the most