A Most Extraordinary Pursuit by Juliana Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

with your help, and you will surely please the gods . . .’
    T
HE
B
OOK OF
T
IME
,
A. M. H AYWOOD (1921)

T hree

    H er Majesty did not follow us into the automobile, for which I was grateful. Next to me, Lord Silverton stretched out his long legs, tucked his head into the upholstered corner between door and seat, and went promptly to sleep. He did not awaken until the Burke’s wheels began to rattle over the paving stones of Southampton, and the driver took a particularly ambitious lurch around a corner.
    â€œI say.” His lordship picked himself up from my lap. “Are we there already?”
    â€œWe have been on the road nearly seven hours, your lordship, and stopped for water and petrol three times.”
    â€œDo call me Freddie, now.”
    â€œI cannot possibly call you Freddie.”
    â€œFrederick?”
    â€œI think it best if we continue to address each other in a formalmanner, Lord Silverton, in order to prevent any tendency to lapse into familiarity during our travels.”
    â€œGod forbid
that
,” he said. “Silverton, perhaps? Or even Silver, should you feel a momentary thaw coming on.”
    â€œSilverton, then. I beg your pardon.” I had just fallen against his shoulder.
    â€œThink nothing of it. I’ve had far worse calamities befall these old bones.” He helped me upright and peered out the window at the lurid pattern of the arc lamps against the terraced buildings. His hand disappeared into his waistcoat and emerged in possession of a handsome gold watch. “Half four already! Now there’s an odd perspective for you. One doesn’t usually see the hour from this angle.”
    â€œWhich angle is that?”
    â€œThe waking-up angle. As opposed to the falling-asleep.” He replaced the watch and stretched his apelike arms upward, getting as far as the elbow before clunking against the roof of the automobile. “Jolly nice motor, this.”
    â€œHis Grace took ownership of it only a month ago.”
    â€œPoor chap. I hope he got to ride in it.”
    â€œHe drove it home himself from the factory. He took enormous pleasure from Sir Phineas’s machines.”
    â€œYou mean his son.”
    I pressed my lips together. I quite liked Sir Phineas, who lived not far from Aldermere with his wife and children, but one couldn’t escape the fact that his mother was a noted adventuress who had once been the duke’s mistress, in the years before he met the dowager duchess.
    One could only ignore that fact politely.
    â€œAh, Truelove,” said Silverton. “What a jolly voyage spreads out before us.”
    â€œI don’t think it’s jolly at all. His Grace is scarcely a fortnight gone, and the present duke has disappeared—”
    â€œDo you always take everything so seriously, Truelove, or are you just trying to teach me a lesson?”
    â€œI don’t quite understand, your lordship.”
    â€œSilverton. Never mind. Here we are, then.” He turned back to the window. “Glorious Southampton docks in the dregs of night. I do hope they’ve readied us a drop or two of coffee aboard that old tramp. Or perhaps something stronger. Or the two together, a happy cohabitation.”
    â€œCoffee would be welcome,” I allowed. The well-cushioned interior of the Burke limousine, supplied at the outset with hot-water bottles and traveling blankets in abundance, had taken on the oppression of a prison after about an hour of Silverton’s percussive snoring. Outside the glass, the driver huddled around the steering wheel, wrapped like a Cossack in greatcoat and fur hat and several woolen scarves. “Though certainly poor William should have the first cup,” I said. “He seems half-frozen.”
    â€œ
Poor
William? What’s this? Do I detect a note of actual human sympathy in those stentorian tones, Truelove?”
    â€œOnly for those who deserve it.”
    The brakes