The Fever Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

bird in borrowed plumage, yet confident, as if he hoped to extract something from the situation.
    “All anyone can talk about this evening is the collapse of railway stock.”
    “I thought your father was an investor?”
    This came as a small shock, that he knew when she hadn’t. “What if he is? My father is a careful man.”
    The doctor tapped a cigarette against the back of a silver cigarette case. “Do you mind?”
    She nodded her assent, and watched him lift a match from a small glass globe that stood on the mantelpiece. He struck it firmly against its ribbed edge, dipping his head to bring the cigarette to the blue flame. Despite herself, she was curious. Would a doctor from the colonies really be presumptuous enough to flirt with her? She didn’t imagine he had found himself here by mistake. He didn’t look like the kind of man who did things carelessly or arrived at places by chance. For a moment his features were hidden by a cloud of smoke. When it cleared, he motioned to the chessboard. “Do you care for a game?”
    She hesitated. It could be compromising if someone walked in and found them alone together, but in the end curiosity got the better of her. She wanted him to reveal himself, so she agreed to play.
    He picked up an ashtray and placed it on the card table. There was a cigar ground down in the bottom of it. She could smell the rich, sweet tobacco. He pulled out a chair for her, and as she sat his knuckles brushed against the back of her dress. He began setting out the pieces. She remembered his tendency towards silence. “Is it true,” she asked, prompting him into conversation, “that if all the diamonds at the Cape were sold at once, a diamond wouldn’t be worth more than a pebble?”
    “Perhaps,” he said, straightening up the pawns so that their rectangular bases ran parallel with the squares. “If they could all be sold at once. But most of them are still in the ground.” He glanced up at her. “To be honest, I am more concerned with the people who mine the diamonds than the stones themselves.”
    “The magnates?”
    “And the natives who work for them.”
    “Are they very savage?” she asked with a dramatic flourish.
    He glanced at her but didn’t answer, and irritated by his disapproval, she turned her attention to the board. The chess pieces were intricate imitations of the Battle of Waterloo, the upper torsos of the soldiers flattened into ivory, blue uniforms against red. He took up a pawn and put his arms behind his back, then brought them forward in front of him for her to choose. His hands were white and hairless, and when Frances touched one lightly it turned and unfolded like a flower, revealing long fingers with the ivory piece resting on a creased palm.
    Frances didn’t concentrate on the game. Instead she watched the doctor play. There was a contained satisfaction in his body, an accuracy of expression in the way he moved his pieces around the board that frustrated her. She was ashamed to find herself wanting him to acknowledge her position, and she regretted agreeing to play. Occasionally there was a swell of noise as the door to the ballroom was opened, and they heard low voices and the steady footsteps of men going out into the night to smoke.
    When the opening moves had been played out, Frances deliberately moved her bishop so that he could take her, but he avoided her and instead slid his knight neatly around it. She countered quickly, opening up her board, exposing herself over a series of moves, but still he wouldn’t take her, not even when her queen was open to his bishop. She became more reckless, but still he held back. Finally he executed a perfect checkmate, removing just one of her pawns from the board in order to bring his queen into attack. When it was over he leant back in his chair and studied her.
    “I don’t interest you, Miss Irvine?”
    He was looking straight at her, and she met his gaze. “Quite the opposite. You convincingly proved