To the Hilt Read Online Free PDF Page B

presence.
    “Vivienne said you were coming,” he said neutrally. Vivienne was Mother.
    “How are you feeling?” I asked, sitting in a chair opposite him and realizing with misgiving that he looked older, grayer and a good deal thinner than he had been on my last visit in the spring. Then, I’d been on my way to America with my mind full of the commercial part of my life. He had made, I now remembered, an unexpected invitation for my advice, and I had been too preoccupied, too impatient and too full of doubt of his sincerity to listen properly to what he’d wanted. It had been something to do with his horses, his steeplechasers in training at Lambourn, and I’d had other reasons than press of business to avoid going there.
    I repeated my question, “How are you feeling?”
    He asked merely, “Why don’t you cut your hair?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Curls are girlish.”
    He himself had the short-cut shape that went with the businessman personality: with the baronetcy and membership of the Jockey Club. I knew him to be fair-minded and well respected, a middling man who had inherited a modest title and a large brewery and had done his best by both.
    I’d often flippantly asked him, “How’s the beer, then?” but on that morning it seemed inappropriate. I said instead, “Is there anything I can do for you?” and regretted it before the last words were out of my mouth. Not Lamboum, I thought. Anything else.
    But “Look after your mother,” was what he said first.
    “Yes, of course.”
    “I mean... after I’ve gone.” His voice was quiet and accepting.
    “You’re going to live.”
    He surveyed me with the usual lack of enthusiasm and said dryly, “You’ve had a word with God, have you?”
    “Not yet.”
    “You wouldn’t be so bad, Alexander, if you would come down off your mountain and rejoin the human race.”
    He had offered, when he’d married my mother, to take me into the brewery and teach me the business, and at eighteen, with chaotic visions of riotous colors intoxicating my inner eye, I’d learned the first great lesson of harmonious stepson-ship, how to say no without giving offense.
    I wasn’t ungrateful and I didn’t dislike him: we were just entirely different. As far as one could see, he and my mother were quietly happy together and there was nothing wrong with his care of her.
    He said, “Have you seen your uncle Robert during the last few days?”
    “No.”
    My uncle Robert was the earl—“Himself.” He came to Scotland every year in August and stayed north for the shooting and fishing and the Highland Games. He sent for me every year to visit him, but although I knew from Jed that he was now in residence, I hadn’t so far been summoned.
    Ivan pursed his lips. “I thought he might have wanted to see you.”
    “Anytime soon, I expect.”
    “I’ve asked him ...” He broke off, then continued, “He’ll tell you himself.”
    I felt no curiosity. Himself and Ivan had known each other for upwards of twenty years, drawn together by a fondness for owning racehorses. They still had their steeplechasers trained in the same yard in Lamboum.
    Himself had approved of the match between Ivan and the widow of his much-loved youngest brother. He’d stood beside me at the wedding ceremony and told me to go to him if I ever needed help; and considering that he had five children of his own and half a clan of other nephews and nieces, I’d felt comforted in the loss of my father and in a deep way secure.
    I had managed on my own, but I’d known that he was there.
    I said to Ivan, “Mother thinks you may be worried about the Cup.”
    He hesitated over an answer, then asked, “What about it.
    “She doesn’t know if it’s troubling you and making you feel worse.”
    “Your dear mother!” He deeply sighed.
    I said, “Is there something wrong with this year’s race? Not enough entries, or something?”
    “Look after her.”
    She’d been right, I thought, about his depression. A