LITMIR.BIZ

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in the chair, he slipped one meticulously manicured hand inside a small pocket in his waistcoat and extracted his heavy gold watch, opening it just in time for it to chime out the hour of three in a clear, melodic song that drew him an instant look of censure from the moulting crow.

      He returned her gaze along with a congenial smile, lifting his broad shoulders slightly while spreading his palms—as if to say he hadn’t meant to interrupt the strained silence—but she merely lowered her curiously unnerving brown eyes before averting her head once more.

      “Bloodless old maid,” he muttered satisfyingly under his breath without real heat. “I should buy her a little canary in a gilt cage if I didn’t believe she’d throttle it the first time it dared break into song.”

      “Prattling to yourself, my Lord Wickford? Bad sign, that. Mind if I sit my timid self down beside you? I feel this sudden, undeniable desire to have someone trustworthy about in order to guard my back. But perhaps I overreact. It may merely be something I ate that has put me so sadly out of coil.”

      Patrick, who also happened to be the Eleventh Earl of Wickford, looked up languidly to see the debonair Pierre Standish lowering his slim, elegant frame into the chair the man had moved to place just beside his own. “I didn’t see you at the funeral, Pierre. It wasn’t particularly jolly,” Patrick whispered, leaning a bit closer to his companion. “By your presence, may I deduce that you are also mentioned in the late Professor’s will?”

      Standish carefully adjusted his lace shirt cuffs as he cast his gaze about the room with an air of bored indifference. “Funerals depress me, dearest,” he answered at last in his deep, silk-smooth voice, causing every head in the room to turn immediately in his direction. “I would have sent my man, Duvall, here in my stead this afternoon, could I have but carried it off, but the Professor’s solicitor expressly desired my presence. It crossed my mind—only fleetingly, you understand—to disappoint the gentleman anyway, but I restrained the impulse. Tiresome, you’ll agree, but there it is.”

      He paused a moment, a pained expression crossing his handsome, tanned face before he spoke again in the same clear voice. “Tsk, tsk, Patrick. Can that poor, plain creature possibly be the so estimable daughter? Good gracious, how deflating! Whatever Quinton bequeathed to me I shall immediately deed over to the unfortunate lady. I should not sleep nights, else.”

      Sherbourne prudently lifted a hand to cover his smiling mouth before attempting a reply. “Although I am fully aware that you are cognizant of it, dare I remind you that voices rather tend to carry in quiet rooms? Behave yourself, Pierre, I beg you. The creature may have feelings.”

      “Impossible, my darling man, utterly impossible,” Standish replied quickly, although he did oblige his friend by lowering his voice ever so slightly. “If it has feelings, it wouldn’t be so heartless as to subject us to its so distressing sight, would it? Ah,” he said more loudly as a middle-aged man of nondescript features entered the room and took up his position behind the Professor’s scarred and battered desk. “It would appear that the reading is about to commence. Shall we feign a polite interest in the proceedings, Patrick, or do you wish to abet my malicious self in creating a scene? I am not adverse, you know.”

      “I’d rather not, Pierre—and you already have,” Sherbourne answered, shaking his head in tolerant amusement. “But I will admit to a recognition of the sort of uneasiness you are experiencing. At any moment I expect the proctor to come round, crudely demanding an inspection of our hands and nails as he searched for signs of poor hygiene. It is my conclusion that there lives in us both some radical, inbred objection to authority that compels us to automatically struggle against ever being relegated to the role of powerless standers-by.”

      “How lovely that was, my dearest Patrick!” Pierre exclaimed, reverently touching Sherbourne’s arm. “Perhaps even profound.”

      The solicitor had begun to speak, to drone on insincerely for long, uncomfortable moments as to the sterling qualities of the deceased before clearing his throat and beginning the actual reading of the will, the first part of which dealt with nothing more than a series of high-flown, tongue-twisting legal phrases that could not possibly hold Sherbourne’s interest.

      “I wasn’t aware you were acquainted with old Quinton,” Patrick observed quietly to Standish, having realized at last that Pierre had never sufficiently answered his earlier query on the subject. As if they were exchanging confidences, he went on, “Indeed, friend, I am feeling particularly stupid in that I have failed to comprehend why either one of us should be found unhappily present here today. For myself, I can only say that the good Professor did not exactly clasp me close to his fatherly bosom whilst he was above ground.”

      “I knew the man but slightly, untold years ago in my grasstime,” Standish replied, adding smoothly, “though I had foolishly not thought to inform you of that fact. I trust, dearest, that you will accept my apologies for this lapse.”

      “Why not just call me out, Pierre, and have done with it?” Sherbourne asked facetiously, slowly shaking his blond head, as he should have known he couldn’t get past Standish so easily. “And please accept my apologies for my unthinking interrogation. I was striving only for a bit of mindless, time-passing conversation. I assure you it was never my intention to launch an inquisition.”

      “Are you quite set against starting one, then?” Standish asked glumly, appearing quite crestfallen. “A pity. I begin to believe I should have welcomed the diversion—if not the thumbscrews. Our prosy friend behind the desk is not exactly a scintillating orator, is he?”

      Just then Patrick thought he caught a hint of something the solicitor was saying. “O-ho, friend, prepare yourself. Here we go. He’s reading the gifts to the servants. We should be next, before the family bequests. What say you, Pierre? Do you suppose it would be crushingly bad ton if we were to spring ourselves from this mausoleum the moment we collect our booty?”

      “Shhh, Patrick, I want to hear this. Oh, my dear man, did you hear that?”

      “I’m afraid I missed it, Pierre,” Patrick said, amused by the patently false concern on Standish’s face.

      “Quinton left his housekeeper of twenty-five years a miserly thirty pounds and a miniature of himself in a wooden frame!” Standish pronounced the words in accents of outraged astonishment. “One can only hope the old dear robbed the bloody boor blind during his lifetime.”

      The solicitor reddened painfully upon hearing this outburst from the rear of the room, then cleared his throat yet again before continuing with the next bequest, an even smaller portion for the kitchen maid.

      “As the Irish say, my dear Patrick, Quinton was a generous man,” Pierre ventured devilishly. “So generous that, if he had only an egg, he’d gladly give you the shell.”

      This last remark was just too much—especially considering that the housekeeper, upon hearing it, gave out a great shout of laughter, totally disrupting the proceedings, while drawing Standish a chilling look from Miss Quinton. The angry solicitor removed his gaze from the document before him, prepared to impale the author of such blasphemy with a withering glare, but realized his error in time. A man did not point out the niceties of proper behavior to Pierre Standish—not if that man wished to die peacefully in his bed.

      Flushing hotly to the top of his bald head, the solicitor quickly returned his attention to the will, reading importantly: “To Patrick Sherbourne, Eleventh Earl of Wickford, I hereby bestow all my considerable volumes of accumulated knowledge, as well as the research papers of a lifetime, with the sincere hope that he will, as it befits his moral responsibility as an honorable gentleman, continue my important work.”

      “He never did!” came the incredulous outburst from the housekeeper as she whirled about in her seat to look compassionately at Professor Quinton’s only child. “Oh, Miss Victoria, I be that sorry!”

      “Not half as sorry as I am,” Patrick told Standish in an undertone. “I shall have to build another library at Wickford just to hold the stuff.”

      “If I might continue?” the solicitor asked as the housekeeper’s

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