Читать книгу Dangerous to Know - Barbara Taylor Bradford - Страница 14

Sebastian’s funeral was a distressing ordeal for me in a variety of ways, and I was sorrowful and forlorn as I sat in the front pew of the little church in Cornwall.

Jack and Luciana were on one side of me, Cyrus Locke and Madeleine Connors on the other, and I felt wedged in amongst alien beings, even though they were the nearest thing to family I had.

It was not that any of them had said anything unpleasant to me or behaved badly. Rather, it was their attitude that disturbed me. I detected a singular lack of grief in all of them and this made me angry inside. But I bit down on that anger, kept a calm demeanor, presented an inscrutable face to the world.

I sat perfectly still in the pew, my hands folded in my lap, wishing this day had never come into being. We all had to die at some time or other, none of us were immortal, but Sebastian had died too young, too soon. And how had he died? That was the thing that worried me.

Surreptitiously, I stole a look at Jack, who was seated next to me. He was pale, had dark rings under his eyes, and his expression was as inscrutable as mine. Only his hands betrayed his nervousness.

I closed my eyes, tried to concentrate on the service; after a moment I realized I was only half listening to the current president of Locke Industries who was giving one of the eulogies. My thoughts were on Sebastian’s father who was sitting on my other side.

I had expected Cyrus to resemble a cadaver, to be at death’s door. After all, he was ninety years old, but he looked surprisingly fit to me. His white hair was sparse, thinly combed across his mottled bald pate, and the skin of his face was almost transparent, stretched so tightly over his bones they were unusually prominent. Yet his eyes were bright, not a bit rheumy or vacant, and I’d noticed a spring in his step when he went up the path ahead of me earlier. A tall thin man with a mind like a steel trap, that’s how I remembered him, and he didn’t seem much different to me today. Older yes, and frail, but not quite as frail as Madeleine had made out to Jack. When he had spoken to me outside the church a short while ago he had sounded lively and sharp. It wouldn’t surprise me if Cyrus Locke lived to be a hundred.