The Shadowcutter Read Online Free

envy you.”
    “He wouldn’t call on me without some good reason, I think,” Major Vernon said. “How was Martinez?”
    “More comfortable. The nurse is a competent creature, but she was forthright about her charges. Nurses are expensive here, it seems.”
    “I had better give you some money,” said Major Vernon, reaching into his pocket. “Shillings or guineas?”
    “Shillings,” said Felix, “mercifully. Ten will cover it all.”
    “Here’s twenty,” said Vernon. “See if you cannot get that landlady into being more useful with it.”
    He took the money and saw the carriage off, and then went back into the house.
    Mrs Vernon was playing the piano in the upstairs drawing room, playing scales diligently, as he climbed the stairs, but then breaking into a slow melancholy melody, full of yearning. He had encouraged her to take up the piano again as a way of giving her some serious occupation and focusing her passions. Sometimes it felt that the focus was too intense, as a magnifying glass left in sunlight was in danger of starting a fire.
    He hesitated at the drawing room door, wondering if he should go in, or continue upstairs to his room.
    “Will you be wanting luncheon, sir?” It was Sukey Connolly, coming upstairs with a tray. “I have something for Mrs Vernon here.”
    “What did she have for breakfast?”
    “Only a piece of toast. I did try.” She shrugged. It was an old struggle.
    “Then I will eat with her, yes. She will eat properly then.” He was famished himself and wanted nothing more than a pint or two of dark Edinburgh beer and a greasy pie, the fodder of his student days, and to eat it in the casual anonymity of a smoky howff. “Tell her I will be down in a minute,” he said, starting upstairs. The music followed him, inexorably, almost as if she meant him to hear every plangent note.
    He closed the door on it, and pulled off his coat, waistcoat, cravat and shirt. He sponged himself down with cool water, trying to cool his own anxiety.
    As he dried himself, he could not avoid looking at the little posy of flowers in a water glass, which decorated the washstand. They were obviously her handiwork, gathered from the little flower garden behind the house. Usually this would have meant nothing more than the action of a thoughtful hostess seeing to the comfort of a guest. It was exactly the sort of normal behaviour that they had been working to encourage in her, but when he had seen the flowers there last night, he had been sure that they had been chosen and placed with careful significance. He knew women sometimes used flowers to make declarations of their feelings and that every flower and leaf had a meaning to those who knew their language. He did not, and he was glad of it. Their presence alone was enough to disturb him.
    When he had come up the hill towards the Bower Well and she had caught sight of him, she had seemed to surge with joy, as he were the only thing capable of giving him any pleasure. Then in the carriage back to the house, as he sat opposite her and the Major, he had been acutely aware of her gazing at him. Had Major Vernon guessed that she had developed feelings? For a man as observant as the Major, it seemed likely. How could he have not seen the looks she gave him and interpreted them for what they were? Felix wished that they might discuss it. He had been thinking last night that the topic must be broached, sooner rather than later, but this business at Holbroke had carried the Major and the opportunity for that conversation abruptly away. The Major trusted him implicitly, he knew, and he would have walked a hundred leagues in his bare feet rather than betray him, and yet, the feeling remained that he was not a man to be trusted. In short he did not trust himself.
    He put on a clean shirt, retied his cravat, and forced himself back into the formality of his waistcoat and coat. Despite the heat, it would not do to send such a signal of being at ease with her. He had to be