The Prince of Eden Read Online Free PDF Page A

the door.
    A scant moment later, a young man appeared with rosy cheeks and furrowed brow, his plain black coat still damp from the early morning rain. "Sir?" He stood poised in the doorway, like a grasshopper, ready to leap.
    "A clean linen," Sir Claudius muttered, "and clear away this debris."
    The young man bobbed his head. Wordlessly he took a clean napkin from the sideboard, handed it to Sir Claudius, and hastily gathered up the silver coffee tray.
    Sir Claudius held his position behind the desk until the man was done. Then he rose and went to the water pitcher. Carefully he dabbed the corner of white linen into the water and applied gentle pressure to the coffee spot on his neck scarf.
    From the doorway, his clerk inquired, "Anything else, sir?"
    Sir Claudius eyed the spot, less visible now. He hurled the linen onto the washstand and returned to his desk. "Tell me again the events of the morning, if you will," he inquired wearily. "Where the Eden family is concerned, one needs all the facts one can get."
    Johnson lowered his head and shifted the silver tray awkwardly in his hands. "As I told you, sir, I was summoned from my lodgings around five-thirty by a watchman from Newgate. He said that Mr. Edward Eden had been incarcerated in the Common Cell the night before. I signed the release papers and was given a note in the handwriting of Mr. Edward Eden. It said that you were to meet him here at eight o'clock this morning." The man fell silent.
    "And that's all?" Sir Claudius demanded.
    "All, sir."
    "Did you see the man himself?"
    "Oh no, sir. There was quite a rush in the warden's office, all sorts

    getting their release papers. A horrible crowd, sir, if you know what I mean."
    Sir Claudius knew. With mild sympathy he looked up at his harassed clerk. "Thank you, Johnson. You did well. Show the man in when he comes. If he ain't here by nine, we shall close up and go home and recapture the sleep we lost on his behalf."
    "Very good, sir, thank you, sir." Again the young man bobbed his head and left the room.
    In a surge of petty annoyance Sir Claudius stood and walked to the mantel mirror for a self-consolatory moment of preening. At fifty-six, he still was a pleasing figure of a man, perhaps too short of stature to be called elegant. But his hair, gray and wavy, was still good, his elevated forehead perhaps his best feature, his wide-set eyes, deep blue, his second best. The patrician nose was marred by a slight crook, but a man could live with that.
    The self-assessment over, he abandoned the mirror, his eye falling again on the clock. A quarter to eight. Now he paced restlessly, stopping by the broad windows which gave a view into the courtyard below. It was a May morning, sparkling and green after the pre-dawn rain. He planned to ride in Hyde Park this afternoon, a pleasant and well-earned diversion, contemplating the horsemen and horsewomen cantering along the spongy road of Rotten Row. He always enjoyed particularly the ladies, whose looks beamed forth with conscious pride at their superlative grooming. With a keen bachelor's eye, Sir Claudius loved to watch them fly or float past in their ravishing riding habits and intoxicatingly delightful hats.
    He stared fixedly down into the courtyard, momentarily rendered breathless by his visions of joy to come. It had been under such circumstances, right here in London, on Rotten Row, that he'd first seen the Countless Dowager of Eden Point, the dazzlingly beautiful Marianne. Of course she'd been inconveniently wed at the time to Lord Thomas Eden, certainly well beyond any man's reach, including Sir Claudius's. Still, it had done no harm to look, and admire, and dream.
    From that moment on he had courted Lord Eden as a client, secure in the knowledge that a professional relationship would bring him in close and constant contact with the beautiful woman who, many years earlier, had left the entire nation gasping at her daring.
    On that note of resolve, he was in the process of