106. Love's Dream in Peril by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online Page A

have?”
    Adella nodded. She was feeling very thirsty indeed.
    She expected a parlourmaid or the housekeeper to come and take Uncle Edgar’s instructions, but it was the old butler who turned up.
    “Tea, sir? For the young lady? Of course,” he said. “And for yourself, sir?”
    “Bring me a tonic water. I shall not be taking tea.”
    The butler shuffled out and a heavy silence fell over the drawing room, for Uncle Edgar seemed to have nothing further to say.
    Adella perched herself on the edge of the green sofa and tried to keep a pleasant happy expression on her face, but it was hard work, as she felt tired and her head ached from the long journey from Oxford.
    The discomfort of it would not have bothered her at all if Digby had kept his promise and sent her a message.
    She sat in the semi-darkness of the drawing room, listening to the frenzied ticking of her uncle’s clocks and felt unhappiness pressing down her usual buoyant spirits.
    If only, right now, she could slip her hand into the pocket of her silk blouse and feel, next to her heart, the note that Digby had written to her.
    But there was no note. Digby had forgotten all about her.
    “Oh, whatever is that?” Adella started and almost leapt up from the sofa, as she heard a loud whirring noise from above the fireplace.
    A carved bird with a wide-open beak and spiky wooden feathers shot out from the front door of the clock that looked like a little house.
    “Cuckoo!” it squeaked over and over again, six times, Adella counted.
    “Aha! Marvellous!” Uncle Edgar’s face erupted in an unexpected smile. “Wonderful little chap, isn’t he?”
    Adella nodded, although she did not like either the clock or the sound it had just made.
    “It took me two years to build that clock, but I never fail to be delighted with the results of my labour,” Uncle Edgar boasted.
    He stood up and went over to the fireplace, patting the cuckoo with a proud forefinger.
    “Marvellous!” he exclaimed. Then he peered at the clock face. “Six o’clock already. Dinner will be upon us before we know it.”
    He shook his head and blinked in an absent-minded way and then wandered out of the room, passing the butler with the tea tray in the doorway.
    “There you are, miss,” he wheezed, “and when you are ready, I will show you up to your room.”
    “Uncle Edgar has left his tonic water,” Adella said.
    “I shall take it up to his study directly, miss. He is very preoccupied with his latest project at the moment.”
    “What is he working on?” she now asked, a little surprised, as she knew that her uncle had retired.
    The butler smiled.
    “He is building a model of the Red Fort. A most impressive building, miss, which he saw in India. He is creating it entirely from spent matchsticks.”
    Adella drank her cup of tea and thought about this. It sounded like a very odd hobby for an elderly gentleman.
    He was certainly not quite as she had expected.
    When she had finished her tea, she told the butler that she would like to go to her room.
    “Of course, miss. Your uncle has arranged that you should have one of the front rooms overlooking the Square. Beth, your maid, is waiting there for you. Mr. May does not normally like to have female servants in the house, but he has made a special exception for you.”
    How odd, Adella thought. But now she understood why the old butler served tea and not the housekeeper, as perhaps there was not such a person at 82 Dorset Square, if Uncle Edgar did not like female servants.
    The bedroom seemed vast and at least three times the size of her old room at Mrs. Mottram’s.
    A slight figure stood by the bed, dressed in a neat white apron and cap.
    “Good evenin’, miss,” a little voice piped up with a strong Cockney accent. “I’ve took the liberty, miss, of unpackin’ your trunks for you.”
    Adella stared at the girl. She seemed very young with fair hair escaping in fine wisps under her lace cap.
    “You must be Beth,” she said,