The Fever Tree Read Online Free PDF

yourself the better player.” She felt a small satisfaction in refusing to engage. She stood up to go, but he motioned for her to sit.
    “I have to return to the Cape before the end of the year.” He was looking steadily at her, eyes calm, but a blue vein pulsed across the surface of his forehead.
    Voices and rapid steps came down the corridor. They paused outside the library door and then moved on. “The Cape, Miss Irvine, would interest you.” He moistened his lips. “I hope, in time, that I could interest you.” For a brief moment the music had stopped, and all Frances could hear was the slow ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
    “Interest me in what, exactly?”
    “In marriage. I am asking for your hand in marriage.”
    Frances blinked back at him in surprise. She had expected an artful declaration of passion, perhaps, but no more than that.
    “There’s a chance I’ll make some money.” He leant forward, his eyes flickering over her face. “Others have done it . . . if I can establish myself in certain circles . . .” He paused, lowering his voice. “You could help me. Introduce me to the right people.”
    “Introduce you to the right people?” she asked in disbelief. “What do you think my father would say if he were here now? Don’t you think you are rather taking advantage of his charity?”
    “Are you happy living in London?”
    The question threw her, and it took her a moment to say, “I can assure you my happiness is no concern of yours.”
    She drew back her chair and stood up. It was possible she had encouraged him, certainly she had played his game, but now that he had delivered his lines, she realized their situation was completely inappropriate.
    He stood up and walked with her over to the door. “If you change your mind . . .”
    He was too confident, and she suddenly disliked him. “You play a good game of chess, Dr. Matthews, but I’m quite sure it will have been our last.”
    She left him standing by the door and walked quickly out of the room.

Four
    F rances waited for her uncle in the drawing room on the first floor of his Mayfair villa. Lucille and Victoria hadn’t appeared, and though manners dictated they should greet her if they were at home, she suspected, from the occasional squeals of girlish laughter and thrum of feet upstairs, that they had simply decided not to come down. She was nervous and would rather be standing, but had instead chosen to position herself in the corner of a deep, rust-brown velvet sofa. She didn’t want to seem confrontational, a criticism that her uncle might have applied to her father, and which she supposed could be extended to herself. Her father had been dead two weeks, and her uncle had called her here, she hoped, to offer her a place in his household.
    The drawing room was an impressive space, with high, corniced ceilings and an excess of dark, claw-footed furniture. Varnished mahogany tables with curving, white marble tops and gilt lamps stopped up every gap in the sea of velvet. Her aunt collected De Morgan vases, and the luster-glazed, ocher-red images of dogs chasing a variety of beasts gleamed from the corners of the room. The easy grandeur of this house had enthralled her as a child. It had been in the family for over sixty years, and Frances wasn’t sure whether it was this fact, or the convincing size of her uncle’s family, which lent it an air of invulnerability. How flimsy the trappings of her father’s life had proved in the wake of his death. There was none of the stability that Frances saw here. More than half a century after the family had moved in, this house seemed as resistant as ever to calamity.
    The pattern of green and maroon stained glass on the windows facing her cast a gloomy light over the room, keeping out the brightness of the August day outside. There was no fire burning in the grate and the lamps hadn’t been lit. Her uncle admired what he called
quality
, but he had a distaste for excess,