Talk of the Town Read Online Free PDF

say I do, and they are not at all like that, Daphne, so pray banish the thought.”
    “It is banished,” Daphne told her, not quite truthfully. “And what do those intriguing feelings of yours inform you we have in store for this afternoon?”
    Effie shivered. “How strange,” she said. “A chill just ran over me. I got the feeling someone..."
    “An evil person?” Daphne asked quizzingly.
    “No, not evil precisely. More troublesome,” Effie said.
    “It will be interesting to see who else has read the Observer,” Daphne answered, and ate her omelette without paying the least heed to Effie’s warning, which was rather a pity. But then the six feet-and-two-inches of trouble that was on its way would not have been turned aside in any case, for when the Duke of St. Felix undertook to do a thing, he did it thoroughly.
     

Chapter 4
     
    The day after receiving his sister’s summons to Charles Street, St. Felix stopped by to see what old Bess was in a pucker about now. The late Duke of St. Felix had fathered four children, each spaced five years apart. He had not hurried his breeding. The eldest, Elizabeth, was forty-five; the other two daughters forty and thirty-five; with Richard, the precious son and heir, a mere stripling of thirty in this family of aging women.
    Despite his youth, he ruled the family as firmly as ever his father had done. From his sire he had come to appreciate the value of the perquisites that were his to bestow, and none were bestowed on those who failed to live up to his high standards. He was generous to the brink of fault with relatives whose sons did well at Oxford and distinguished themselves in those jobs he found for them; but let a daughter make a poor match or behave in any unseemly manner and she was called severely to account. He did not despise liveliness or spirit in the extended family over which he held sway, but the semblance of propriety was always to be maintained. He spoke a good deal of the family’s name and reputation, as though they were living things, subject to physical deterioration.
    Elizabeth was awaiting her brother in her Gold Saloon, hoping to soften him with a glass of Larry’s very best burgundy.
    “Good afternoon, Bess,” he said with a smile. It cheered him to see his sisters living in good, respectable homes surrounded by luxury and tokens of success. He was particularly close to Lady Thyrwite, as she was the only one of his sisters to reside in London, like himself. The others were well married into influential county families and received semi-annual visits from their brother to see that they were not slipping into obscurity or any other bad habits.
    “Dickie!” Bess began, and at the one word his genial smile faded.
    “I have been asking you for twenty years to call me Richard,” he said. It seemed a reasonable request from a very tall gentleman in his thirty-first year.
    “Sorry, Richard, but it slipped out. I still think of you as my dear little brother.”
    “What can I do for you?”
    She indicated a chair and poured him a glass of wine. She was tempted to invite him to have a cheroot, for she wished him to be in a good mood, but then the stench lingered so, like burning garbage. “I want to ask you to do a little favour for me, Richard.”
    “So I assumed. What is it?”
    She cleared her throat. “I wonder if you would be kind enough to drop by Mrs. Pealing’s place for me, and...”
    “Who the devil is Mrs. Pealing?”
    “You can’t mean you don’t know of Mrs. Pealing, the ex-Countess Standington!”
    “Oh—also ex-Mrs. something else, isn’t she? I heard some mention of her yesterday. Writing a book of reminiscences, I believe. Is that the one?” Bess nodded. “She seems to have the whole town in a twitter with this book of hers.”
    “Yes,” she said grimly.
    “Now why in the world should I call on her? She is exactly the sort of person I abhor. To live a life of debauchery and then, in her old age, to make public her