Shadows & Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

Afghan shawl. This room, and the gun room which led off it, comprised the heart of his own little kingdom. Now, while the dogs, after their walk, snored and steamed damply on the moth-eaten zebra skin spread in front of the fire, Sir Henry sat in his fat brown leather chair which had, over the years, sagged in the seat, split on the arms, and accommodated itself comfortably to his form, while his land agent sat opposite.
    â€œWell, now, Seton,” he began, forcing his attention on to the serious business of replenishing the yew hedges along the park boundary, by the Seven Oak Field, which had caught some sort of disease and were apparently dying off.
    â€œMust come out, all of them.”
    Although the fifth baronet had every last detail of the management of the estate at his fingertips, he was undoubtedly helped by having such a competent agent as Alexander Seton, a cultivated and amiable man with whom Henry had been at school. He had taken up estate management after suffering a severe reversal of his fortunes when his father died, leaving him with a mountain of debts to pay off and no alternative but to sell his family home in Northumberland. That this, a situation similar to, but so much worse than Henry’s own, could happen to Seton (whose wife had been a Percy) had so shocked Henry that he’d agreed to employ his friend as his agent. He was cautious, however, about letting him have his head, and Seton might have resented this had he been temperamentally less amiable, but as it was, Henry’s controlling and overriding need to be in on every last detail suited them both, and had ultimately resulted in a long and mutually rewarding partnership.
    Henry pushed back his chair, walked restlessly over to the fire and stirred it with the brass poker, then added another large lump of coal from the scuttle with the tongs. “By the way, you were right, Seton. Had a look at Jordan’s cottage when I was up there with the dogs this afternoon – time we did it up and let him move back. Suit us better, of course, for him to live permanently
in the lodge if he had a wife to see to the gates during the day, but since he hasn’t …bad policy to leave them unattended, with all these malcontents around. Tell him he can move back to the cottage as soon as we’ve had the roof seen to and found another lodge-keeper, will you? Married, this time.”
    â€œHe’ll be over the moon. He hates living in the lodge – can’t bear to be more than a few yards from his pheasant chicks.”
    Seton tactfully forbore to remind Henry that he’d been told this situation might arise – in fact, he’d warned him only last week that he was in danger of losing one of the best and most experienced keepers he would ever have. Jordan was seething with resentment at having had to move into the vacant lodge when his original cottage further in the woods had been judged unfit to live in and too expensive to repair. It was one of the niggling, sometimes counter-productive, economies that Henry was introducing all the time – but at least he’d been man enough to acknowledge his mistake this time. The amount of money needed to make the keeper’s cottage sound was relatively small, and the repairs would be little trouble compared with losing Jordan. He wondered what had made Henry change his mind and see sense – though on second thoughts it was fairly obvious: up there in the woods today with the dogs, in this weather, he must have seen how quickly the cottage was disintegrating, left entirely as it was to the elements.
    â€œAnd there’s also the question of Ensor’s farm,” Seton added, pressing the advantage. “No doubt you’ll wish to discuss that with Sebastian, if you’re going to sell?”
    â€œWhen he condescends to come down.” Henry’s black brows came together.
    â€œHe’s here. Arrived about an half an hour