AllFreeNovel
Share Us
*~*~**~*~*
The door closed behind her. With ravenous curiosity, my eyes fastened on the closed door. Suddenly, I knew exactly how Pandora must have felt when she rattled that box, trying to find out what was inside. Mr Ambrose’s mother! Good God! What secrets I could discover here! She must have known him before he turned into a block of stone - back when he had actually been a human being!
In front of my inner eye passed the seal on the pink envelopes that I had seen so many, many times: undoubtedly the coat of arms of a noble family. And yet, Mr Ambrose used no title. Not duke, not baronet, not lord, not even ‘the right honourable so-and-so’. He was just ‘Mister’. Cold. Hard. Short. Efficient. And strangely, a hundred times more alluring and powerful than any noble title would have been.
Where had he come from? Why would he deny his noble roots? Especially if there was money to inherit? Why had he spent years and years in the Colonies? Why was there enmity between him and Lord Dalgliesh? A thousand questions - and the woman behind that door probably held the answers to all of them!
And the best thing was: I wouldn’t even have to ask her!
Quickly, I jumped to my feet and rushed over to the door. All right, I admit it! I hadn’t let her in out of the goodness of my heart! I had completely selfish motives! That didn’t mean my heart wasn’t still good, a tiny little bit. But ‘g’ came after ‘c’ in the alphabet, just like goodness came after curiosity.
Falling to my knees in front of the door, I was about to press my ear to the keyhole, when I hesitated.
What was I doing?
Why listen at the keyhole? After all, Mr Ambrose had kindly provided me with my own surveillance equipment. Rushing back to my desk, I snatched up a horn that was connected by a tube to the wall. Ordinarily, it was used by Mr Ambrose to bark orders at me or any of his other employees that happened to be unlucky enough to catch his attention. Today, it would be used for a different purpose.
Taking a deep breath to calm my breathing, I lifted the horn to my ear. For a few moments, there was absolute silence. Then -
‘Mother?’
I hardly recognized Mr Ambrose’s voice. For one moment, it almost sounded as if there were actual emotion in it.
I shook my head. It probably was just the distorting effect of the long rubber tube. The first time I had listened to him speaking through it, he’d sounded like a deranged nightingale with a severe speech problem.
‘Ricky.’
I nearly bit my tongue off. Ricky? Ricky?!
The thought of anyone referring to my employer by that name made me feel faint. I suppose, on some level, I knew that his mother probably hadn’t referred to him as ‘Mr Ambrose’ or ‘Sir’ while he’d been growing up, but it was still a shock.
‘W-what are you doing here?’
Had I heard right? Had he just stuttered? Mr Rikkard ‘don’t-use-unnecessary-time-wasting- syllables’ Ambrose?
It had to be a trick of the bad connection.
‘I came to see you, son.’
‘How did you get in here?’
Oh, bugger!
‘That nice young secretary of yours let me in.’
‘Did he, now?’
Blast, blast, blast and double blast!
There was a rustle of papers from the other end of the tube. I could just imagine Mr Ambrose building up a wall of important documents between himself and the unwanted visitor.
‘Why did you wish to see me?’ His voice was suddenly back to the cold, calculated tone I knew and lo- Well, the tone I
knew and had gotten really used to, anyway. ‘I am a busy man, Mother.’
‘I know, Ricky. I just…I had to see you, son. It’s been so long…’
‘Not long enough.’
