Forever and Ever by Patricia Gaffney

Author:Patricia Gaffney [Gaffney, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780451207913
Google: fcclb_MxkgwC
Publisher: New American Library
Published: 2003-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

XIV

“Huh-huh here’s the ruh rest o’ the fuh-fuh forty-fourth. Ye’ll hah-hah have it cah-cah copied oot by muh-muh-muh-muh—”

“Morning.”

The white beetling brows of Angus McDougal, Q.C., drew together over his thin blade of a nose. People who finished his stammering, incomprehensible, infuriating sentences earned his ire, not his gratitude. Connor knew that, from a dozen personal experiences over the last few weeks, but he simply could not help himself. His employer was driving him wild.

“Aye, muh-muh-muh mornin’,” the Scotsman confirmed deliberately. To pay Connor back, he decided to say more. “I wuh-wuh wasn’t puh pleased wi’ yer last truh-truh trans scruh-scruh scription, Mr. Puh-Puh Pendarvis. Chuh chapter fuh-fuh forty-three had ink bluh-bluh blots in the margins, and some of it wuh was illeg-leg-legible.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try to do better with forty-four.”

“Aye, suh-suh see that ye do.” He put a white envelope on the corner of Connor’s desk. “I fuh-fuh-fuh forgot t’ gie ye this luh-luh letter. Came in yeh-yeh yesterday’s puh-puh-puh—”

“Post.” He bowed his head in contrition, at the same time he bit down hard on the knuckle of his right index finger. He felt like screaming.

“Post,” McDougal said coldly. From the pocket of his seedy, pipe ash–littered waistcoat he took out a key. “Ye’ll lah-lah-lah-lah lock up at six, will ye?”

“Yes, sir.” He did it every night, and every morning McDougal asked for the key back.

“No’ a minute sooner,” he warned, sticking a bony finger in Connor’s face. He wasn’t by nature a mean man, but he seemed compelled to act out his own Dickensian fantasy of the irascible, eccentric lawyer, full of maggoty habits and exasperating mannerisms. His stuttering brogue was intensely annoying, but it was only one of his quirks; he had a hundred others.

Like forgetting what day was payday. His Scottish frugality was the real article, no affectation. Through the opaque glass of the half window, Connor watched his thin, black-coated form slip through the street door and recede into the rainy evening, but he didn’t call out a reminder. The day had been long and unusually tedious. He would rather be broke, he decided, than endure another minute of his employer’s conversation.

The letter in the envelope was nothing more than a scrawl on a half sheet of cheap vellum. “A quick note, probably illegible because I am on a train, to say again that Mr. Thacker and I enjoyed our dinner with you on Thursday evening. Please be assured that I’ll be in touch with you in the quite near future. Yrs., etc., Ian Braithwaite.”

Cryptic, to say the least. So had his visit been, sudden and out of the blue, last week. Braithwaite was a party agent for one of the liberal arms of the Whigs. He and Thacker, his associate, had read Connor’s piece in the Rhadamanthus Society’s quarterly and been impressed by it, they claimed. They’d come up from Plymouth, apparently for the sole purpose of taking him out for a meal. They’d had a long, wide-ranging conversation about politics and reform, and when it over Connor had no idea why they’d gone to the trouble.

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