Free Maelstrom by Jordan L. Hawk Page A

you’re
discreet.”
    “Absolutely,” I promised.
    “Then allow me to get Mr. Lambert’s
appointment book for you.”

Chapter 16
    Whyborne
     
    “Good afternoon, Master Percival,” Fenton
said as I stood on the stoop in front of Whyborne House. “Your
father awaits you in the dining room.”
    “Thank you, Fenton.” I stepped inside and
handed off my hat to the maid who silently appeared to take it. My
Gladstone with the codex and photographs, I kept with me.
    Fenton led the way, as though I might get
lost in the house I’d grown up in. I watched his straight back as
we walked, his bearing perfect, as though not a moment passed when
he wasn’t conscious of the part he played in upholding the dignity
of the family.
    I’d never been particularly good at doing my
part for the dignity of the family. First as a sickly child, my
health embarrassing in a house concerned with raising robust sons
to become captains of industry. Later, as a scholar who turned his
back on the masculine struggle of business to read dusty tomes
locked away in a museum. As a result, Father had always looked at
me with a certain amount of disdain, while fawning on Stanford.
Fenton followed Father’s lead, of course.
    And now Stanford was locked away with madmen
for the murder of our sister, while I remained.
    We entered the dining room, and Fenton
bowed. “Master Percival,” he announced me unnecessarily.
    Any other family would have chosen a smaller
room to eat in, and reserved the dining hall for entertaining. Not
us. No, we had to sit at one end of a table long enough to seat
twenty, our voices echoing amidst the high rafters.
    “Percival,” Father greeted me as I took my
seat. “It’s good to see you.”
    “Thank you, Father.” Despite the summer heat
outside, the dining room felt cold. Or perhaps it was I who was
cold. With Mother gone, what little warmth that penetrated this
mausoleum of a house had faded as well. Nothing about it seemed
like a home to me any more—not that it really ever had.
    The servants laid out our meal of poached
fish in a parsley sauce. “How is Griffin?” Father asked.
    “A pair of strange deaths—and more—connected
to one of his cases is why I’ve come,” I replied. Hadn’t I said as
much in my note?
    Father gave me an irritated look. “I know
that, Percival. I was merely enquiring after his health.”
    “Oh.” It was unspeakably odd, to have my
father asking after my lover. The younger version of myself, who’d
suffered through endless meals at this table, while Father
dissected my every failing, couldn’t have imagined it. “He is quite
well. He purchased a motor car not long ago.”
    Father’s eyes lit up. “Oh? What model?”
    I told him, and he asked a number of
questions about the infernal thing that I was wholly unqualified to
answer. The subject took us through the meal, at least, and at the
end Father rose to his feet. “Let’s retire to the study, and you
can show me what you’ve brought.”
    Once in the study, he seated himself behind
the massive desk. I sat across from him, feeling even more uneasy
than usual. None of my memories of the room were pleasant, but the
last time I’d set foot in it, I’d nearly destroyed it with wild
magic. All the while screaming at Father that I hated him.
    If he recalled the incident, he gave no
sign, merely waiting while I passed him the photographs and
explained the circumstances surrounding Griffin’s case. “The
standing stones are very like those on the Somerby Estate,” I
finished. “So I must ask: is the Brotherhood regrouping?”
    “No,” Father said, but he frowned as he
studied the photographs. “But you’re right about the stones. These
are very similar. According to the Brotherhood’s lore, the standing
stones predated the founding of the town. Blackbyrne took the lake
and the land around it for his own precisely because of their
presence. But I wasn’t aware there were more such ruins in the
area.”
    “I see.” I