Read Eve Silver for Free Online

special way. No trays were sent up when he missed a meal. No warm chocolate or coffee kept at the ready for his request.
    Thinking back to smiling Mrs. Beales, the cook who had worked in the home of her childhood, Darcie remembered the tray of cold meat and cheese, the sweet tarts, the hot coffee, always at the ready should Steppy return from work late in the night. It seemed sad that Dr. Cole had no such consideration, no one at all to care about him.
    One afternoon Darcie placed a freshly delivered fish in the wet larder and after working up her courage, she approached Cook with her thoughts.
    “I noticed that Dr. Cole has eaten nothing today,” she began.
    Cook's hand, which was wielding a knife in a rapid chopping motion expertly cutting vegetables, paused mid-air at Darcie's observation. The portly woman turned and looked at her with a questioning expression. “Nothing new there, dear.”
    Darcie nodded. “Shall I take him a tray?”
    Cook's brows shot upward in surprise. “Won't eat it,” she muttered and returned her attention to chopping the carrots in front of her.
    “Perhaps I could just take it up to him?” Darcie surprised herself by persevering.
    Shaking her head, Cook set aside the knife and turned to meet Darcie's gaze. “Don't think I haven't tried. But no one's allowed out to the carriage house, and if I leave it at the foot of the stairs, the food's still there hours later. He'll eat when he's ready.”
    “He isn't in the carriage house,” Darcie said, her heart pounding as she forced herself to stand her ground. “He's in his study. I saw him go up an hour past.”
    Setting her fists on her ample hips, Cook stared at Darcie for a long minute. Then she shrugged, and took down a plate, heaping it with cheese, bread and some fresh berries. “Go on and take it up, then. You'll see. He won't take a bite. Like as not, he's in the drink.”
    Darcie had placed the plate on a tray, and turned to leave the kitchen, but Cook's words stopped her.
    “In the drink?” she asked, looking at Cook over her shoulder.
    The other woman nodded. “He'll go on for a good long while right as rain, then the melancholy'll come on him.” She shrugged, took up her knife, and resumed the chore of preparing supper.
    Clearly Cook had no intention of saying more.
    Darcie ascended to the doctor's study, tray in hand, her thoughts troubled by Cook's revelations. She rapped lightly on the door.
    “Come in.”
    Balancing the tray on one hip, she eased the door open and stepped into the room. The heavy drapery was closed against the afternoon sun, leaving the room in dim and shadowed.
    Dr. Cole sat behind his desk, a book open before him. He blinked against the light that entered the room from the hallway.
    “Why do you read in the dark?” Darcie asked, an echo of her own mother. She bit her lip as she wished she could call the words back. He was hardly a child, and she was in no position to be chastising him.
    He ignored her question, glancing instead at the tray she set on the desk before him.
    “What is this?” he asked, his brows drawing together in bewilderment.
    For some reason, his expression made Darcie want to smooth her hand across his brow.
    Instead, she answered his question.
    “This is food,” she said. “Human beings require it to survive.”
    His head jerked up sharply. A rusty laugh escaped him. The way he looked at her in that instant…it was as if he were seeing her for the very first time.
    “You are a brave little mouse,” he said at length.
    Darcie shook her head, but said nothing. She was not brave at all; rather, she was foolish in the extreme to speak to him so, and she was at a loss to explain why she did. She should have simply set the tray down and scurried away.
    Turning to do just that, she was surprised when his fingers closed lightly about her wrist.
    “Stay.” His voice was low and rough.
    She glanced back at him, taking in the half-empty brandy snifter on the desk, her senses