The Earl in the Shadows by Brenda Clough

Author:Brenda Clough [Clough, Brenda W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Victorian thriller, historical adventure, action/adventure
ISBN: 9781611389449
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2021-04-13T05:00:00+00:00

Yes, I am safe and well. And I am now at home to visitors! Do you realise this shall be our first meeting in the flesh? After all these years! You will have some surprises. Knock very softly on the dressing room door, not the sitting room (which is dedicated to Mr. Hartright) and I will tell you all. Tonight!

Walter Hartright’s narrative

Is it some flaw in me, that I cannot like Redmund Lowry? A man cruelly deformed as he is deserves only pity. I strive earnestly to not let his crippled limbs affect my perception. But after a day in his company I cannot escape the thought that something else is missing in his lordship, something more basic even than arms and legs.

Perhaps it stems from his extraordinarily limited experience of humanity. He has had no friends, but only servants and his mother. As he noted, he has met only a few men. Thus he is easy, too easy, with females, not a manly ease but something womanish that looks ill on a man. Marian finds him very amusing. It is borne in on me that he is her third cousin. There is no resemblance in face or form, but now that I know the family better I can see the Lowry in Marian. That bullheadedness is a family trait! But Lord Redmund is awkwardly imperious with me. Not an equal and yet certainly not a servant, I am increasingly uncomfortable.

His appetite for human knowledge is enormous, and he is fastidious in dress, changing his linen twice or even three times a day. Like Camlet he is overly book-learned, but without my brother’s Cambridge education and business experience he cannot have the same balance. “Tell me of yourself, and of Miss Marian,” he demanded. “How is it you are her brother-in law? Do you share a house? Is it as large as Cranmorden?”

“No house is as large as Cranmorden,” I said. Though I do not care for talking about family matters I had to concede that Lord Redmund had a right to know something of his connections. “I met Marian on the same day I met my wife, her sister Laura. They were young women at the time, residing in Limmeridge House up on the Cumberland coast. I still live there, but Marian removed to Hampstead, near London, when she married Mr. Camlet…”

I was obliged to put in an appearance at dinner on Sunday, at the late hour that is fashionable in high circles. The earl’s guest list was still annoyingly large, and we had to congregate in the saloon and pair off to formally process into the dining room. Marian’s gown was transformed by a low-cut evening bodice in green and ivory velvet. An elaborate green-velvet bow at the back trailed its wide streamers almost down to the floor. Some buttons on her left glove had to be left undone to accommodate the bandage, but both wrists were adorned with bracelets that a queen would not have disdained, and she wore her sapphire wedding ring.

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