The Keeper of Secrets Read Online Free Page A

Jem rode alongside me, as he’d done from the days he taught me to ride. It was the only time he permitted me to treat him as my friend.
    ‘And what sort of place are we looking for?’ he asked.
    ‘Do you know, I’ve no idea.’ I scanned the scattering of cottages we passed, greeting the shirt-sleeved men toiling in gardens crammed from corner to corner with bright flowers and anomalous vegetables. ‘Surely they cannot feed a family from so small a plot,’ I exclaimed. ‘My father’s estate workers have allotments three or four times this size.’
    ‘Not all farmers are as generous as his lordship,’ Jem replied, eyeing the half-naked children as if they were savages. Their filthy hands shot out as we passed. I scattered a handful of pennies and resolved to do something of more long-term benefit, God willing.
    At last we had fairly left the cottages behind. A high stone wall ran parallel with the road. After half a mile or so, it was broken by a handsome pair of gates, and a gravelled driveway led up to a house some thirty or forty years old, elegant in its proportions.
    ‘Can this be it?’ Jem asked. ‘’Tis a mighty fine place for a country doctor.’
    And so it was. The rosy brick-built house glowed in welcome. Three storeys high, its symmetry was more than agreeable to the eye. Perhaps it reminded me of the doll’s house my sister once cherished.
    Two lads dawdling home assured us, when prompted by a penny from me and a scowl from Jem with an adjuration to watch their manners when the parson was speaking to them, elicited the information that this was indeed Dr Hansard’s home. Exchanging amused and rueful grins, we set our mounts in motion once again, to be greeted by our host himself on the front steps, deep in conversation with his groom.
    As he glimpsed us, he broke into a broad smile. ‘Welcome to Langley House,’ he said.
     
    The evening went with enormous speed. At some point, perhaps as we supped in leisurely fashion, perhaps as we sipped our port afterwards, Edmund Hansard and I progressed from being sympathetic acquaintances to men likely to become friends. It may have been when he showed me his experiment room, where he explained his aspiration to grow pink hyacinths from blue stock, or his curiosities collection, or even his library, where he had had a small fire lit, to take off the chill of the evening. Without exchanging the sort of personal confidence my sisters pressed on their bosom bows, it was clear we saw the world from a similar position, though I would have been hard pressed to recall a single instance where we had formally exchanged opinions.
    He pressed a final glass of brandy upon me.
    ‘So you see,’ he said expansively, ‘the neighbourhood doesnot know what to make of me. They see this fine house, and from it emerges an old country doctor. Should they admit me through their grand front doors – which, to be fair, Lord and Lady Elham have come to do – or send me, tail between my legs, to the servants’ entrance?’
    ‘A man of your learning—’ I began.
    ‘Is less respected for what lies between his ears than for his land, just as any other country gentleman is. Do you think I would have been appointed as a justice of the peace had it not been for my acres? Would my library, my travels, my learning, as you put it, have entitled me to such a responsibility? I think not, my friend. And indeed, if they knew how I had acquired my land and my house, I might not have—’ He broke off as a peal from his doorbell, veritably loud enough to waken the dead, rang throughout the house. He was on his feet in an instant. ‘At this time of night that can mean only one thing – a hatch or a despatch,’ he said with a rueful grin. ‘My young Tobias, I am sorry to bid you such an unceremonious farewell. But I have a feeling we shall deal well together.’
    With that he bustled me out, grabbing his hat and his bag from a servant already holding the front door ajar. A man was