The Homecoming Read Online Free PDF Page A

house party had been sent out.
    “Yes, Your Grace.”
    “Good. That will be all. No, stay. Did you find a young man suitable for Miss Lizzie Beverley?”
    “Yes, Your Grace, a certain Mr. Gerald Parkes. Aged twenty and of good family. If you do but remember, we met the young man and his family at Dover last year. Mr. Parkes was returning from the Grand Tour. He was all that was amiable and you played backgammon with his father, Colonel Parkes, and thought very highly of him. I took the liberty therefore of inviting Mr. Gerald and his parents.”
    “That will be all.”
    “Very good, Your Grace.”
    Peter bowed his way to the door.
    “A moment.”
    “Yes, Your Grace.”
    “You may take tomorrow off. I will not have need of you.”
    “Thank you, Your Grace.”
    “And if you wish to ride to Hedgefield, say, you may ask the groom to find you a mount.”
    “You are very kind, Your Grace.”
    “Now you may go.”
    Peter closed the double doors of the drawing-room and did a little jig on the landing. He was beginning to detest Mannerling, to find the atmosphere of the great house depressing.
    It was indeed a beautiful house, from its painted ceilings to its Persian-carpeted floors. The rooms were gracious and elegantly proportioned. He suddenly thought of Lizzie’s invitation and his heart lifted. He would call and pray that Lady Beverley might not find his visit presumptuous.
    For some reason, the duke found the memory of Lizzie rankling. She had crossed swords with him and he felt he had somehow lost that first engagement. He had come into his dukedom at an early age. His parents were both dead. Although they had not spent much time with him, they had seen that he had the best of tutors, by which they meant an elderly Scotsman who had toadied to the duke quite dreadfully and the duke had taken that toadying as being exactly what was due to his consequence.
    He had attended several Seasons in London in his early twenties, but had not found any female to engage his interest. He had turned his mind to his estates and then in his late twenties to the interests of foreign travel.
    He had several people he considered as friends, people that the more ordinary ranks might consider acquaintances, for the duke could not bring himself to confide in anyone. Nor did he feel the need for affection. He had kept several clever and amusing mistresses and when he had tired of them had seen to it that his lawyers had seen each on her way with a generous settlement. When servants became too old to work, they were housed and pensioned.
    It was only lately that he had begun to feel a black void in his life. He had justified the purchase of Mannerling to himself by considering it suitable property for an heir, and yet the truth was he had simply felt that this temporary move from his ancestral home might allay his growing ennui.
    He felt Lizzie Beverley, she who was supposed to be consumed with ambition to regain Mannerling, had gaily dismissed him as old and boring.
    On the following day, as he was walking back to the house after surveying some improvements to the gardens, he saw his secretary ride off down the long drive between the row of lime trees, and knew he was probably going to call at Brookfield House.
    He shrugged and turned indoors. It would serve his aunt right if her precious charge became enamoured of a mere secretary.
    He decided to get out the carriage and drive over to see old Lady Evans, whom he had once met in London several years before.
    His valet laid out his morning coat and breeches and cravat and clean cambric shirt. Once he was dressed, he dismissed his valet and stood in front of the mirror in his room, drawing on his York tan driving gloves.
    And suddenly an old man stared back at him from the mirror. It was himself, but horribly aged and stooped. He gasped and covered his face and looked again. But this time only his own well-groomed reflection looked back at him.
    Some disorder of the spleen, he thought. The