The Temptation of Torilla Read Online Free PDF

only of paramount Social importance, but he was known as a racehorse owner over the length and breadth of the country.
    This made him decide, when he stayed in inns, to use one of his minor titles.
    He knew now that Harris would have booked him in at The Pelican Inn as Sir Alexander Abdy.
    He would not therefore be disturbed by the ‘hangers on’ who always surrounded him on Racecourses, or who besieged him in London with pleas for help or, more difficult, pretensions to friendships forged during the war.
    He walked in through the side door of The Pelican Inn that opened onto the courtyard and found, as he had expected, that Harris was waiting.
    Beside him was his senior groom, who he had also sent ahead in charge of his horses.
    “Good evening, my Lord,” both men said simultaneously.
    “An excellent run, Ben,” the Marquis said to the groom. “‘Those new chestnuts are worth every penny I paid for them.”
    “I’m glad to hear that, my Lord.”
    “I pushed them hard today,” the Marquis said, “so you will have to take them easily tomorrow. Watch that new groom, he is a thruster.”
    “I will, my Lord.”
    The Marquis followed Harris along a narrow passage and up an ancient oak staircase.
    As he went, he could hear the noise in the coffee room and knew that the race-goers were already celebrating or drowning their sorrows after a day on the Racecourse.
    As Harris showed him into a pleasant bedroom with a bow window and a four-poster bed that looked as if it might be passably comfortable, the Marquis said,
    “I had forgotten that the races were taking place at Doncaster this week.”
    “I thinks your Lordship might have done that,” Harris replied, “but as we never enters our animals for the Spring Meeting, I’m afraid, my Lord, it also slipped my memory.”
    The Marquis was used to his senior servants identifying themselves with him and his possessions and he merely commented,
    “I suppose the place is damned crowded, as might be expected.”
    “I regret to say it is, my Lord, but a private room’s been engaged and I doubt if your Lordship’ll be very inconvenienced.”
    He paused before he added tentatively,
    “I regret, however, to tell you, my Lord, that I was unable to also engage the bedroom next to this.”
    The Marquis said nothing and Harris, helping him off with his coat, continued,
    “It’s only a slip of a room, my Lord, and I persuaded the innkeeper not to let it to one of the gentlemen who I thought might be noisy, but to a lady who’d not be likely to disturb your Lordship.”
    Again the Marquis did not reply, but it irritated him to think that if anyone was banging about next door he would be unable to sleep.
    Owing to a very active brain, he supposed, he liked complete quiet when he retired to bed and made every effort to secure it.
    It was therefore on his explicit instructions that his servants always engaged the adjoining bedroom to his own and if necessary one on either side.
    He was well aware it was his own fault that on this occasion such an arrangement had not been possible. In fact, he told himself philosophically, he was lucky to obtain accommodation at all during race week.
    He was quite certain, although he did not ask, that Harris had overbid some unfortunate, who employed less generous-handed servants.
    This did not perturb him in the slightest. He would also have tipped the staff so handsomely that whoever else was neglected or overlooked in The Pelican Inn it would not be he.
    The Marquis had a bath in front of the fire and afterwards, dressed in his evening clothes, he went downstairs to a small but pleasant private sitting room.
    There was a fire to keep him warm, the dinner was excellent and, as he had expected, the service impeccable.
    When the meal was finished, he sat by the fireside to sip a glass of brandy and peruse the newspapers with which Harris had provided him.
    He noted with satisfaction that the horses running in the races were not up to his standard