 Brought to you by Penguin Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle, by Giorgette Hayer Read by Matt Addis Chapter 1 Sylvester stood in the window of his breakfast parlour, leaning his hands on the ledge and gazing out upon a fair prospect. No view of the ornamental water could be obtained from this, the east front of chance, but the undulations of a lawn shaved all summer by sidemen were broken by a cedar, and beyond the lawn the stems of beech trees, outliers of the home wood, shimmered in wintry sunlight. They still held their lure for Sylvester, though they beckoned him now to his covets rather than to a land where every thicket concealed a dragon, and false knights came pricking down the rides. He and Harry, his twin, had slain the dragons, and ridden great wallops at the knights. There were none left now, and Harry had been dead for almost four years. But there were pheasants to tempt Sylvester forth, and they did tempt him. For a succession of black frosts had made the ground iron hard, robbing him of two hunting days, and a blusterous north wind would not have invited the most ardent of sportsmen to take a gun out. It was still very cold, but the wind had dropped and the sun shone, and what a bore it was that he should have decided that this day, out of all the inclement ones that had preceded it, should be devoted to business. He could change his mind, of course, telling his butler to inform the various persons now awaiting his pleasure that he would see them on the following day. His agent-in-chief and his man of business had come all the way from London to attend upon him, but it did not occur to Sylvester that they could find any cause for complaint in being kept kicking their heels. They were in his employ, and had no other concern and to serve his interests. They would accept his change of mind as the Caprice to be expected from a noble and wealthy master. But Sylvester was not capricious, and he had no intention of succumbing to temptation. Caprice bred bad servants, and where the management of vast estates was concerned, good service was essential. Sylvester had only just entered his twenty-eighth year, but he had succeeded to his huge inheritance when he was nineteen. And whatever follies and extravagances he had committed, they had never led him to treat that inheritance as his plaything, or to evade the least one of its responsibilities. He had been born to a great position, reared to fill it in a manner worthy of a long line of distinguished forebears, and as little as he questioned his right to command the obedience of all the persons whose names were inscribed on his staggering payroll, did he question the inescapability of the duties which had been laid on his shoulders. Had he been asked if he enjoyed his consequence, he would have replied truthfully that he never thought of it. But he would certainly have disliked very much to have had it suddenly removed. No one was in the least likely to ask him such a question, of course. He was generally considered to be a singularly fortunate young man, endowed with rank, wealth, and elegance. No bad fairy had attended his christening to leaven his luck with the gift of a hunchback or a hair-lip. Though not above medium height, he was well proportioned, with good shoulders, a pair of shapely legs, and a countenance sufficiently pleasing to make the epithet handsome, frequently bestowed on it, not altogether ridiculous. In a lesser man the oddity of eyes set with the suspicion of a slant under flying black brows might have been accounted a blemish. In the Duke of Salford they were naturally held to lend distinction. And those who had admired his mother in her heyday remembered that she too had that thin, soaring line of eyebrow. It was just as though the brows had been added with a paintbrush, drawn in a sleek line upwards towards the temples. In the Duchess this peculiarity was charming. In Sylvester it was less attractive. It gave him when he was vexed and the upward trend was exaggerated by a frown, a slight look of a satyr. He was about to turn away from the window, when his attention was caught by a small sking. Sample complete. Ready to continue?