Free The Hidden Blade by Sherry Thomas Page A

he turned seven he’d declined the bribe, feeling himself quite capable of suffering through the sermon like a man. Father had ruffled his hair.
Seven going on twenty-seven, aren’t you?
    Perhaps he was in danger of weeping, after all.
    He blinked back the tears. Several mourners away, someone leaned forward slightly to look at him: Sir Curtis’s fiancée, Miss Saithwaite.
    Before the funeral he had met Miss Saithwaite for the first time. She was almost eye-wateringly beautiful, blond and ethereal. But more than her beauty, he had been struck by her age: She could not be more than nineteen. And Sir Curtis, despite his slim figure and unlined face, was nearly fifty.
    Her gaze was quite impersonal, almost Sphinx-like. And swift—a second later her attention had already turned back to the eulogist. Briefly Leighton wondered what kind of woman would marry Sir Curtis. If he’d been told, sight unseen, that Sir Curtis’s bride-to-be was nearly thirty years his junior, he would have guessed that she had been compelled by her parents to accept his suit.
    But this girl, with her cool pride that verged on arrogance, was not the kind to allow herself to be compelled by anyone. She was marrying Sir Curtis because she wished to.
    It was terrifying, the idea that there existed a kindred spirit for Sir Curtis.

    Words of sympathy flowed Leighton and Mother’s way as they made their way out of the church. Many a hand came to rest on Leighton’s shoulder—he only wished that he could draw actual strength from the crowd of mourners. Or that they could form a true barrier between Sir Curtis and the rest of the family.
    A man stood at the very back of the sanctuary, looking as if he hadn’t eaten or slept in a week. Herb! The backs of Leighton’s eyes stung. He wished he could run to Herb; he wished they could be alone. With him there would be no shame giving in to the tumult inside. They could weep, scream, or destroy an entire room at the needlessness and injustice of Father’s death.
    But Leighton only dared give a tiny nod as he filed out behind Mother.
    “Mr. Gordon is here,” he said to her, when they were out of earshot of Sir Curtis and his fiancée.
    “Yes, I expect he has been asked by the solicitors to come and hear the will.”
    She sounded nervous, yet half hopeful, as if she expected the reading of the will to be an emancipation.
    Leighton should have thought of the question sooner, but he hadn’t. “Do you know whom Father appointed as our guardian, ma’am?”
    Mother briefly laid her hand on his arm. “Not Sir Curtis. You can be sure of that.”
    Father was buried at the family’s private cemetery, which gave out to a wide vista of rolling hills and green fields. They had often stopped here on their long hikes through the surrounding countryside. Leighton could still see Father as he was the last time, his coat on the grass, his sleeves rolled up, dividing a large sandwich into three, making sure that Leighton and Herb had the bigger pieces.
    Herb, too, was at the interment, but he stood halfway down the slope, gazing up at the sight of his beloved being lowered into the ground. He wiped at his eyes.
    Leighton was the last person to drop a handful of soil onto Father’s casket. Inside the casket, lying upon Father’s no longer beating heart, was an envelope that contained a copy of Leighton’s favorite photograph of the three of them together, on the bank of the trout stream before a canoe, each with an oar in hand.
    On the back of the photograph, he had written,
Rest in peace, Father. I will look after everyone you loved.

    In the nursery, Marland, who hadn’t attended the funeral because he was judged too young, was knocking over column after column of blocks. The moment he saw Leighton, he came running and grabbed Leighton’s hand. “Did they bury Father?”
    Father had loved Marland, albeit with an anxiety that Leighton had not understood completely until he’d learned that Marland was not Father’s