Cobra Marked King , livre ebook

The Cobra Marked King
Brenda W. Clough



www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café edition November 16, 2021 ISBN: 978-1-61138-974-6 Copyright © 2021 Brenda W. Clough
Table of Contents
Book 1
The secret diary of Miss Tryphenia M. Tylerton, spinster but not for long!
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the correspondence of Marian, Lady Donthorne
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
The secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
From the letters of Marian, Lady Donthorne
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Found screwed into a ball under the bed in the best guest bedroom at Lord Gowthorpe’s house on Portman Square
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Tryphenia Tylerton’s secret diary
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
The secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Book 2
The secret diary of Miss Tryphenia Tylerton
Walter Hartright’s narrative
From the correspondence of Miss Tryphenia Tylerton
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
The secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
The secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Book 3
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Book 4
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Unmailed letter, stuck into the leaves of secret diary
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Book 5
The secret diary of Tryphenia Tylerton
Walter Hartright’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the court-martial testimony of 1st Lieutenant Albert Mortenson, first mate on the RN cruiser 2nd class Dorian
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the court-martial testimony of 1st Lieutenant Albert Mortenson
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the court-martial testimony of 1st Lieutenant Albert Mortenson
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Unmailed letter, crumpled into a ball and crammed into the back of a desk drawer in the Ziy’s Anang Abang office
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the letters of Laura Fairlie Hartright
From the correspondence of Lord Richard Lowry
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the files of Miss Pomona Oglivy (Mrs. Pomona Camlet)
Tad Camlet’s narrative
The secret diary of Miss Tryphenia M. Tylerton
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the scrapbook maintained by Miss Marian Margaret ‘Merry’ Camlet
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Book 6
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
From the papers of the Hon. Celeste Camlet Nettaway
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Pomona Camlet’s notes
Walter Hartright’s narrative, as recorded by Pomona Camlet
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Book 7
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Lady Richard Lowry’s narrative
27 April, on board the Blue Heron, in the South China Sea
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Lady Richard Lowry’s narrative
Tad Camlet’s narrative
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
Editor’s Note
All the Marians
Acknowledgments
Also by Brenda Clough
Copyrights & Credits
About Book View Café
Book 1
The secret diary of Miss Tryphenia M. Tylerton,spinster but not for long!
September 17, 1890
I had not known that one can’t take one’s money into prison.Since Pa’s sentence is for three years, he has given me his fortune. He is verywise! I have considered carefully the most prudent action. I think the bestthing to do with my sudden access of fortune is to marry royalty. Then, notonly will Pa’s money be safe. I could get my prince or king to pry Pa out of prison.Even the strictest parent could hardly complain about that, and I have Pa’smeasure. He will be delighted.
I take ship tomorrow from New York for London. I hear tellthere’s plenty of titles there, and I’m going to find me one.
Marian, Lady Donthorne’s journal
21 September 1890
To picnic on Hampstead Heath, the three young men haddragged out every cushion and rug in Sandett House. The painter John Constableused to sit on this very slope to capture clouds on his canvas: big-bellied puffsof white, mountain-high and foam-light, sailing majestically across afathomless blue sky. There is no landscape more English. We sat in the centre ofall that is our nation. I tipped the broad Leghorn hat to shade my eyes andthought to myself, I must remember this, this moment of perfection.
Zed spoke with dreamy peace from where he lay in the shadeof the chestnut tree. “Why is the sky so big in England?”
“Doesn’t it look this large in the South China Sea?” IdlyDickon tossed his empty beer bottle up into the air and caught it again.
Tad replied, “No, Zed’s right. Even in the middle of theocean, it’s not like this.”
There was a long somnolent pause, broken only by the joyfultwitter of swallows as they spun and swooped through the azure late-summer firmament.Even the insects dozed in the last delicious warmth of summer. Soon, too soon,winter shall come. But today is Paradise.
“Might as well let you fellows in on the news,” Dickon saidat last. “Last week I proposed to Merry, and she said yes.”
Zed rolled over. “Did she? About time. Tremendous congratters,Dickon! Shall I be your best man?”
“If you marry my sister, then we’ll be truly brothers!” Tadglanced at me. “And of course you approve, Mama.”
“Of course.” From my perch on a lawn chair I smiled down atthem, my boys, though I gave birth only to Tad. They were alike and yet quitedifferent. All three dark-haired and dark-eyed, they were entirely handsome, inthe first glorious bloom of early manhood.
Dickon is the slightest but visibly a Lowry, an Englisharistocrat whose ancestors came over with the Conqueror. My stepson Zed’s Asianblood shows in the subtly sculped cheekbones and eyes. The lean height, and hisstraight black hair and Eurasian light-brown skin, are from his father, my lostthird husband Tsan Ziyahn Lord Sze. And over the years Tad has, mercifully,become more and more like my first husband Theo. In sturdy build and mostespecially in turn of mind, he is his father’s son, intelligent and inventive.
Flushed with health, sunshine, and two baskets of an excellentSunday picnic luncheon, they were glorious young men. Surely no sight makes amother’s heart lighter. “Merry loves you, Dickon. So how can I object?”
“She loves me for myself,” he replied. “Not my title, nor myfortune, but me! You’ve no notion, chaps, how wonderful that is.” Dickon isproperly known as Lord Richard Henry Halcombe Lowry. He shall be Earl of Breconand Stowe when his father, my third cousin, passes. He could marry any girl inthe world. My youngest daughter Merry is innocent of guile or ambition. She hasnever needed them, being armed instead with beauty and charm to the strength oftriple steel. But now she’ll marry far above her station – dangerously far.
The thought impelled me to speak again. “Dickon, what doesyour father say?”
There was no shadow of trouble in his reply. “For the firstten years of our lives, everyone said how sweet it was, that Merry and I werechildren so fond of each other. The next decade it was calf love, something theyassured us all young people outgrow. Even when I became of age, my older sisterCressy was getting married, and I had to wait. But now, what objection couldanyone possibly make?”
Before I could reply there was a distant halloo from behindus. At the top of the slope near the house a tall goatee-bearded figure wavedhis bowler at us. Sir Roderick Donthorne is one of my oldest friends. It stillastonishes me, that he waited for decades for the chance to become my fourthhusband. “Come join us, Roderick,” I cried.
“There’s news, my dear,” my husband called. “This way, sirs– he’s here.”
To my astonishment Roderick was at the head of a considerablecavalcade. Perhaps a dozen men in suits and bowlers, older men in frock coatsand tall hats, and in the middle foreigners, in strange clothing. They troopeddown the hill, stepping gingerly over the tussocks of buttercup and ox-eye daisy.
Had the day come at last? Terrified, I sat up and looked at Zed.Under the biscuit-brown, my stepson had gone pale. Slowly he rose to his feet.
Instinctively the other two young men stood with him, one oneach side, as they have stood for so many years. I scrambled out of my chair asRoderick came and took my hand. He looked down from his greater height at me,and from behind the gold pince-nez he flicked an eyelid, only half a wink.
The white men hung back to let the foreigners approach.There were half a dozen of them, Asiatics with straight black hair like Zed’s. Somewere dressed like his late father’s people, in loose dark tunics and trousersgirded with cutlasses. Others had sarongs over their silk pyjamas, and cylindricalcaps. They came straight to Zed and shuffled themselves into a ragged line beforehim.
Then to my amazement they bowed, not from the waist likeWestern gentlemen but the Asian prostration, bending both knees and crouchingwith their forearms flat on the turf. Only the