Shadows & Lies Read Online Free PDF

position. Harry had had his faults, of course, but they had been forgotten; he was remembered – and perhaps should be – for his quickness of spirit, the smiles that could charm the birds off the trees, and his jokes. But Gus suspected that his brother’s elevation to sainthood since his death must be an added burden for Sebastian to bear.
    Well, no doubt everything would take care of itself, given time. Every family coped with grief in its own way. What worried him more was the growing intimacy between this, his dearest girl, and Sebastian. Louisa was well able to take care of herself, of that he had no doubts, but the two young people had been thrown together in London, and from what he could gather, they were now very thick and spent more time together than he would have thought mere friendship dictated, when of course anything closer than that was doomed. Gus was extremely fond of the young man, but …Louisa and Sebastian, no, it simply wouldn’t do. Their upbringing, their destinies, were too far apart. Marriage between them wasn’t to be thought of. It wasn’t only their different stations in life, or that Gus was afraid his dearest daughter wouldn’t acquit herself properly among these people (he was proud that Louisa could hold her own anywhere) but that the aimless, pleasure-loving existence of Sebastian and his acquaintances would very soon get on her nerves. Work, to her, and a
purpose in life, was the very backbone of existence, it made you what you were, a principle she had inherited from him.

Chapter Three
    Sebastian’s arrival at Belmonde had made no difference to his father’s routine. Sir Henry took his tea in his business room, as he invariably did, excusing himself from joining Adele on the grounds that he had no time to waste. In fact, he was addicted to tea, which he had brought in to him in a giant teapot at intervals throughout the day, and which it pleased him to drink from a workman’s pint mug, an eccentricity which would not have been appreciated in his wife’s drawing room. The truth was he felt out of place there: the potted palms and the heavy scent of the tuberoses, gardenias and other exotic flowers she loved, and ordered to be brought in from the hot-houses in opulent profusion, made him feel claustrophobic. The room’s delicate colours, the watercolours in gilt frames, the draped ivory silk shades over the lamps, the white fur rugs, made him uneasy, as though he might have brought something in on the sole of his shoe – a not improbable supposition, given the amount of time he spent in the stables and on his farms.
    He would, in fact, have liked nothing better than to spend every day of his life at Belmonde, and signified this by donning Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers immediately he came down, only changing into anything else under protest. Begrudging any time spent elsewhere, he kept up with the demands of the social season only when necessary, to appease his wife, for he did not, like the rest of his family, or so he repeatedly said, need the constant stimulus of the outside world.
    So, on this miserable, wet afternoon, following an unprecedented series of events which had shaken him to the core of his being, he lit one of the Egyptian cigarettes he always smoked, and took a welcome swig of the extra-strong Indian tea he preferred. A naturally dark and gloomy place, the business room was made even darker by oak panelling and high bookshelves in the fireplace alcoves which contained mouldering, leather-bound volumes rarely, if ever, taken down. The light from the single, green-shaded lamp on the desk threw the corners of the room into deep shadow and glanced off a series of steel engravings
over the mantelpiece. A rubbed and buttoned velveteen sofa, once a fine Victorian peacock colour but now faded to a patchy and indeterminate greyish green, provided a repository for half a dozen amorphous cushions and a crotcheted and fringed