Sion Crossing by Anthony Price

Author:Anthony Price [Price, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781471900129
Publisher: The Murder Room
Published: 2013-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Latimer in America: On old Sion land

LATIMER FOLLOWED LUCY Cookridge down the passage from the air-conditioned coolness of the study into the more temperate climate of the immense living room.

His head didn’t ache so much now. After all, it had been a useful morning’s work, topped off by his successful handling of her mild interrogation; and there was this reassuring living room, with its well-filled bookshelves and its elegant furniture and colour scheme, and its pots of exotic greenery sprouting up to the ceiling or cascading onto the tiled floor. The absent couple from whom the house had been rented were clearly persons of taste and respectability; and somehow that, even at the remove of temporary occupancy, bestowed even greater respectability on Miss Cookridge and on the curious mission he had undertaken.

For it was a curious mission, and he still had the feeling that there must be more to it than he knew—more perhaps that he had seen, and more than Lucy Cookridge had revealed; in fact, the night before, in the uncertain moments of not-quite-asleep, he had felt very far alike from home and from the certainties and safety of his ordinary life, with its carefully calculated beginnings and ends. But he no longer regretted his actions.

“Kingston?” Lucy smiled at him as she called the name. “Where are you?”

Latimer returned the smile. He had known then, in that moment of doubt last night, how far he had strayed on impulse from his accustomed path. And he had never been a creature of impulse … which might very well account for young Mitchell’s irreverent curiosity about his whereabouts during that routine call.

“Kingston!” Lucy craned her neck towards the dining area.

Latimer studied the bookshelves. Lucy had said last night that the owner was an academic, and the study had been full of scientific work. Here the range was more catholic …

He could not honestly quarrel with Mitchell’s curiosity, he decided. And when he got back to England and took up the Deputy-Director’s reins he might cultivate that young man. Because, properly channelled—channelled away from David Audley’s erratic influence—that young man had possibilities. All Mitchell needed was discipline.

“Miz Lucy!” Kingston’s voice came from far away.

Now … Kingston was a much more equivocal character: there was more to that man than met the eye, and maybe a lot more. But, in the meantime, he felt at peace with the world.

“Come here!” Scarlett O’Hara herself could not have sounded more imperious; at least, out of earshot of her mother, who would have admonished her not to raise her voice so at the house-slaves!

“Ah’s a comin’!” The reply mimicked Miss O’Hara’s command, but from the slave quarters.

Lucy made a face at him. “But in his own time … But never mind, Oliver. I’ll have him drive you—he’s going to town anyway … So he can show you where to go, and then he can wait for you on his way back.”

But a slave Kingston certainly wasn’t, thought Latimer. That baffling manner of his, by

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.