Lure of the Falcon Read online

  'I had to have my guess confirmed,' Russell spoke to her quietly. 'I couldn't let Diane get away with such a monstrous accusation—I'll explain later,' he promised as Louise made a small, distressed murmur. 'If I'd let the matter drop she might have repeated it at some time, if she was upset about anything.' He made no excuse for the girl's malicious spite, or for her potential for mischief if things did not go her way.

  'If your uncle was of—how do they put it? Unsound mind?' Wyn looked at Russell hopefully, 'might his will be invalid? Perhaps there's another way of proving who is heir to the Grange?'

  'Tempest Tylar was in full possession of his faculties,' the solicitor dampened her enthusiasm. 'Having a grudge against mankind in general does not constitute feeble-mindedness,' he pointed out. 'And besides, litigation is ruinously expensive. To prove Mr Tylar's claim in that way could drain the estate of its resources until there was nothing left to inherit,' he told her. 'It would be better for everyone, including the estate, whoever inherits it, if a will could be found. Have you had no success in that direction so far?' he addressed Wyn directly.

  'None.' She did not waste words bolstering false hope. 'I was examining the last piece of furniture when you Came in,' she explained to Russell. 'There wasn't a dent in it that would hide a postage stamp, let alone a document of the size we're looking for,' she said disconsolately.

  'Come back, Scamp!'

  A shrill call cut across the small silence that fell on the group in the study like a faint, grey cloud, so still that they could almost hear one another's thoughts. Wyn tightened her fingers convulsively about Russell's slim brown hand, wretched at her own failure to help him, and not knowing what else to suggest. Perhaps if Bill Stapleton had come as he originally intended to, he might have had better luck.

  `Don't let that dog into the house, Master Jon. Your uncle's got a visitor. There, now he's in, and there'll be no stopping him!' Nanny's voice, raised in exasperation, floated through the open study door. 'He'll head straight for Mr Russell, you know he always does.'

  'Prepare to repel boarders!' Russell's lips twitched at the sounds of domestic strife, and a triumphant puppy yap that proclaimed Scamp's success at eluding his captors. 'I'll put him out when he gets here,' he stilled Louise's movement to get up from her chair.

  'What do you suggest our next move should be, Avery?' He turned back to the solicitor.

  `Well, Mr Tylar,' his visitor looked thoroughly worried, `this—er—person,' he did not even deign to mention his name, 'who is contesting your right to the Grange—his lawyers are getting restless at the delay.' He pursed his lips disapprovingly. 'I've done all I can, but they're threatening stronger action ...'

  'Scamp, come back, I said a despairing wail cut across his words, and Val looked across at his brother.

  'Shall I shut the door against him?' He reached out towards the wrought iron handle of the big, leather-covered door stop that propped it open.

  'No, leave it, it's too warm to close up,' Russell shook

  his head. 'I'll grab the pup and get the children to take him into the knot garden out of the way. Jon, I've told you before not to let his lead trail,' he added sharply as the pup tumbled into the room and hurled itself at Russell's legs, closely followed by the boy.

  'I put it on him so's he wouldn't come inside, but he heard you speak an' he was off like a shot.' Jon grabbed ineffectually at the lead, and the pup, sensing capture, dived under the spokes of Val's chair, nearly upsetting him in the process as he, too, reached out to grab the lead, and missed.

  'Outside, Scamp!' Russell raised his voice threateningly, and pointed a stern finger at the door. There was no mistaking the voice of authority, and the terrier reacted instantly. His lead still trailing, he shot for the door, and promptly became entangled by the loop of the leather, which wrapped itself round the wrought iron handle of the doorstop, and snagged him to an abrupt halt.

  'Jump ! ' Wyn grabbed Jon up as the pup's speed swung the heavy doorstop across the doorway, sliding it like a curling stone on the polished parquet floor. It arced across the doorway and hit the wall on the other side with a resounding crack that made Wyn wince. 'Thank goodness it missed you,' she let Jon go, 'or you'd have been the second one to be taken to hospital.' One casualty, she felt, was quite enough, she still felt unnerved by the happenings of the previous day.

  'Ooh, Scamp, you've broke it!' Jane stood round-eyed outside the door, which Russell put his foot against to prevent it from swinging to. The child's eyes widened with awe as the doorstop split apart with the force of its contact with the wall, and clattered into two

  halves on the floor. Even the pup looked comically dismayed. Its small, furry face registered indecision at whether to make a dash away from the retribution that must surely fall at this latest and worst escapade of its short life so far, or to jump at the interesting-looking roll of something with fluttering tapes that spilled out from between the two halves of the doorstop, and slid across the floor.

  Russell reached ‘it first.

  His fingers closed about it a second before the pup's teeth snapped to, on empty air.

  'It's a document of some sort.' He turned it over in his hand. 'It's sealed with wax.' His face had, gone pale under its tan, and he turned towards the solicitor, holding out the roll for him to see. 'I think you should take charge of this, Avery.' His voice shook slightly, reflecting the almost unbearable tension that crackled across the room. Val half rose from his chair, and stayed frozen, as if afraid that any movement of his might break the spell that had caught them all in its thrall.

  'Let me see.' Even the elderly man of law, accustomed as he must be to crises of all sorts in his daily work, could not quite keep the rising note of excite, ment out of his voice. He took it from Russell's hands and turned it over in his own thin, claw-like fingers. "It's been closed with the Tylar seal—look.' He tilted it so that the others could see the outline of the falcon family crest deeply indented in the scarlet wax, his legal training making him notice details even at such a time. 'And it's unopened.' He looked up at Russell. 'Have I your permission?'

  'You're the trustee until the identity of the heir is established,' Russell countered. 'You don't need my

  permission to open it,' he reminded him.

  'In that case—' the solicitor slid his finger under the edge, splitting the seal with a deliberation that made Wyn want to scream at him to hurry. Russell reacheced down" and gripped her hand, and the force of his hold told her that he must want to do exactly the same.

  'It's a will.' The solicitor resumed his seat and fumbled in his jacket for his spectacle case. He extracted a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez and clipped them on to the end of his nose, then closed the case lid again with a little snap. The small sharpness of the sound released some of the tension that had become almost a tangible presence in the study. Val exhaled a long breath and sat down again, and Russell lowered himself on to the arm of the settee beside Wyn as if, she thought with quick compassion, his knees felt suddenly unsteady, although there was no hint of a tremor in the arm that he put across her shoulders, holding her to him as if to assure her that, whatever the contents of the will, they could not affect their happiness together.

  'It's signed by your uncle, the late Tempest Tylar.' The legal man became briskly businesslike.

  'There can be no mistake?' Russell responded in kind.

  'None.' The solicitor cleared his throat, and began to ., read in the ensuing hush that gave flattering attention to his every word. 'Your uncle's handwriting is unmistakable, as is his signature. I'll have it checked, of course.' Wyn stifled a sudden urge to giggle at this cautious volte-face as he read on. 'I, Tempest Tylar, being of sound mind ...' His dry, legal voice droned

  on through the usual phrases. `Ah, here's what we're looking for!' a sudden enthusiasm warmed his utterance. let it be known that my rightful heir is my nephew, Russell Tylar, son of my brother of that name.' Wyn heard Russell's sharp intake of breath, but beyond that he made no sound
and after a slight pause the solicitor read on, 'and that the male child, baptised Cedric, born to my wife, is not my son. He is the child of an actor, one Cedric Plumb, after whom the boy was named._ I charge my trustees to ensure that my estate be handed down in due time to my rightful heir, so that in some measure the wrong that has been done to me shall at last be righted. Ave et Vale!'

  'Hail and farewell! ' Russell repeated softly, into the pregnant silence that followed the solicitor's reading.

  'Farewell to uncertainty, anyway,' the little man spoke briskly, and retied the tapes securely about the parchment. 'The outcome of this will give everyone concerned—except the contestant—the utmost satisfaction, Mr Tylar,' he came as near to congratulating Russell as his legal caution would allow him.

  'What puzzles me is what Tempest meant by hounds.' Val's forehead wrinkled in perplexity. 'Why go on like that about his hounds being his guardians? He led us all a merry dance, and all for nothing,' he said disgustedly. 'He left the beastly will in one of the doorstops after all.'

  'Door dogs,' Wyn laughed out loud. 'Oh, Russell, why didn't we think of it before?' she cried. 'The old folks called them door dogs, not stops. And I ignored them because when I said dogs, you told me "hounds",' she chuckled as she remembered the sharp way he cor-

  rected her, and her resentment at the time.

  'Does this mean we can go 'n live in the Lodge, Gran?' Jon piped up, unable to bear the suspense any longer.

  'Yes, it does,' Louise smiled at him. 'Just as soon as it can be put ready for us, and that shouldn't be long.'

  'I bags the bedroom at the back, by the pear tree,' Jon put in a prompt claim, with harvest time evidently in mind.

  'I haven't been upstairs in the Lodge. It isn't fair .. His sister's lips drooped.

  'We'll go down there now, and have a look, shall we?' Louise put in quickly. 'We'll take Scamp—and Uncle Val as well,' she added firmly.

  'Me?' Val looked surprised. 'Why me? Oh!' He glanced from his mother to his brother, and back again. 'Yes, of course. Right away,' he said hastily, and picking up the pup he disappeared rapidly after the two children.

  `I must be getting along, too. I've things to do.' The solicitor beamed at Wyn, shook hands with Russell, and bowed himself out. 'I'm very glad things have turned out the way they have.'

  `So am I,' Russell agreed fervently, but the look which he directed at Wyn, and which brought the rising tide of colour to her cheeks, held a double meaning, which from the solicitor's smile he was not slow to interpret. 'We'll see you off,' he kept his arm about her, and they walked together to the door, waving as the solicitor drove away in a back-looking manner that nearly caused him to collide with Corporal Benny, who crunched across the gravel sweep in the pony and trap, with a passenger beside him whom Wyn recognised as

  the man who was teaching the groom to repair the drystone walls.

  'We've come up to see the foal, sir. I knew you wouldn't mind.' The groom slowed their progress to speak.

  'Of course not.' Russell nodded courteously to the old craftsman, and received a dignified salute in return as the two rolled off in the direction of the stables.

  `Evenin', miss. Evenin', Squire.' His still sturdy voice floated back to them, and then they were alone, standing together on the doorstep of their future home, under the stone carving of the peregrine falcon that no longer seemed fierce to Wyn, but rather poised as if its outstretched wings were raised in shelter over them.

  'He can call you Squire and mean it, now,' she murmured, her voice closely muffled against his shoulder.

  'I don't mind being Squire, with you as my lady,' he murmured back contentedly, so softly that not even the falcon overheard.