The Hidden Blade Read Free Page A

little impatient. He also saw that it was odd for Father to have taken them rowing and hiking the moment Herb had stepped off the train. Leighton hadn’t minded, because he loved to be outside. But would Herb have preferred to spend the afternoon resting at Starling Manor?
    Why hadn’t Herb said anything? His presence was what made his visits such highlights, not whether they traipsed over the downs or sat inside and played card games.
    It was almost as if Herb and Father could not speak frankly to each other.
    Leighton pushed aside the bedcover and sat up. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. The idea of either Father or Herb with a chest full of words they could not say…
    A stomachache was preferable any day of the week.
    In the library, Herb had created a special nook for the books and magazines he brought Leighton, everything from penny dreadfuls to
The Count of Monte Cristo
—and lately scientific romances by Jules Verne. Usually Leighton would discover new books only after Herb’s departure, but tonight a book he had already read would do. Anything would do.
    Light seeped out from beneath the doors of the library. Were Father and Herb still up? It was almost midnight. Leighton climbed up one floor to the solarium: There was another way into the library.
    The manor, built by a man who believed himself hunted by mortal enemies out for vengeance, had a number of secret passages. Some had been bricked over by later occupants, but others had been left alone.
    Leighton slipped into the library and pushed back into place the bookshelf that had swung open to let him through. A gallery wrapped around the upper portion of the room on three sides. He tiptoed forward, crouched down, and looked through the ornamental gaps in the parapet.
    Father sat before the chessboard and stared at the pieces. He was a handsome man, with black hair and green eyes that Leighton had inherited. Compared to Herb, he was quieter, more restrained, yet in some ways far more intense. Sometimes he made Leighton think of strings on a violin that had been pulled too taut. But he never snapped, though sometimes he disappeared into his study for days on end. Nobody had to walk on eggshells when he did that—there was no belligerence or brutality to Father—but the entire house would be so quiet, almost funereal, and every sound seemed to produce a distant echo.
    Herb did not sit opposite Father, but paced. Prowled like a caged wolf.
    All at once he stopped and spun around to face him.
    Father did not look up from the chessboard. But underneath the table, where Herb could not see but Leighton could, Father’s hands clenched and unclenched continuously.
    Herb strode toward Father. Leighton bit his lower lip. They were such good friends; he didn’t want them to be at odds.
    Herb pushed the chess table out of the way. Pawns wobbled; two knights fell over and rolled onto the floor. Father gripped the armrests, his person pressed into the back of the chair.
    Leighton half rose to his feet, a plea emerging.
    Herb leaned forward, took hold of Father’s face, and kissed him.
    Leighton covered his own mouth, spun around, and crouched low. The inside of his head sounded like a battlefield, all exploding ordnance and hurtling shrapnel.
    “You know we mustn’t,” Father said all of a sudden, his breathing labored. “My brother will find out.”
    Sir Curtis, Father’s half brother by a different mother, was fifteen years older than Father. Father always became agitated before one of Sir Curtis’s infrequent visits, as if he were a pupil who had to sit for an examination for which he had not prepared. Mother, too, behaved strangely when Sir Curtis was around, prattling on about her support for missionary work abroad and the fact that Leighton had read the Bible end to end, both the King James and the Latin Vulgate translations.
    Was
this
why?
    “There is no one here except you and me, Nigel,” said Herb—incorrectly. “All your servants are abed,