Read Online The Sleeping Sword by Brenda Jagger - Free Book Online

both—and I reckon you’ll find other things in common. You could take him to a tailor and a music-hall—and a few other places of entertainment I expect you’ll know about—if you feel up to the responsibility, that is.’
    â€˜One tends to rise to the occasion.’
    â€˜Good. Tomorrow, then. The morning train. I’d planned to send Liam Adair but he’s needed.’
    â€˜How very nice for him,’ Gervase said sweetly, ‘to be needed.’
    And now at last there was anger, just a moment that contained the possibility of a bellow of rage, a box on the ear, the easy, healthy curses which any other father would already have been hurling at any other son. But—since anger implies a degree of caring, or hoping, and is a warm thing in any case—the moment froze, or withered, and with a casual ‘I’ll make my arrangements, then’, Gervase got up and walked away, brushing a hand lightly against Venetia’s shoulder as he passed.
    â€˜Doesn’t it occur to you, papa,’ she said, staring down at her hands, folded tightly before her on the table, ‘that one day perhaps he won’t come back? In his place I don’t think I’d come back—not every time.’
    But her father chose neither to hear nor to reply, asking me instead for more coffee, which he accepted with a smile of amazing charm, his grim contempt giving way to an altogether unexpected cordiality.
    â€˜I hear you did very well in Switzerland, Grace.’
    â€˜As well as I could, Mr. Barforth.’
    â€˜Aye—which put you so far at the head of your class as to set your father wishing you’d been born a boy. He reckons you could run Fieldhead mill, if you were the right gender, without much trouble.’
    â€˜I am very pleased he should think so.’
    And offering me once again that astonishing smile he submitted me to a moment’s scrutiny, examining me as carefully as if he had never seen me before, a keen mind assessing not only my appearance, my character, but the uses to which they might be put, as if—like Gideon Chard—I had come to him for employment.
    â€˜Didn’t you know,’ Venetia said when he had left the room, ‘how charming he can be?’
    â€˜Why, yes—I suppose I did.’
    â€˜I suppose you did not, because he has never taken the trouble to be nice to you before. Lord, he even charms me sometimes! Well, Grace, you had better watch out, because he must want something from you, or from your father. I wonder what it can be? Perhaps he wants to send me abroad, out of harm’s way, and thinks you’d be the one to keep an eye on me. Or perhaps he’s just picked you out as the right wife for Gervase. Heavens! I didn’t mean to say that—’
    â€˜Then please don’t say it again.’
    â€˜I won’t, for there’s no hope of it. Gervase won’t get married for ages yet. He’s enjoying himself too much. And when he does he’ll go to one of the foxhunting set—Diana Flood, I suppose, if she keeps on making eyes at him in that odious fashion.’
    â€˜I gather you don’t much care for Diana Flood.’
    She shrugged, her mind probing beyond Miss Flood, who was known to me only as the niece of Sir Julian Flood whose family had held the manor of Cullingford as long as there had been Chards at Listonby and Clevedons at Galton Abbey; a gentleman, in fact, who intrigued me rather more than the equestrienne Diana, since it had long been rumoured that if Venetia’s mother had ever had a lover, then most assuredly it had been—might still be—the impecunious, unsteady, yet undeniably well-bred Sir Julian. Yet if these rumours had reached Venetia she made light of them now, displaying no more than a mild irritation towards the girl who might well become her sister-in-law, a young lady whose aristocratic notions and athletic habits must surely appeal both to