Lure of the Falcon Read online

  'I can see something inside, some paper ...' His voice was hoarse with excitement.

  'You look—it's your right.' Nicety of feeling made Wyn hang back, but he gripped her hand and took her with him across the intervening stretch of carpet to the front of the desk, where with one accord they both dropped to their knees, Wyn because hers trembled so much that they would hardly hold her, from excitement, not from the bump, and Russell to reduce his considerable height, so that his head was on a level with her own. He turned to look at her, and his eyes were alight with a mixture of excitement and hope.

  `Go on, reach inside and get it out.' Her throat was dry, anticipation flared inside her, making her voice taut. Let it be Russell's name in the will, she beseeched silently. Let it be Russell ... 'It isn't a drawer, it's just a concealed hole, you'll have to feel inside,' she urged him.

  'You feel, my hand's too big.' He withdrew his hand and gripped hers, his fingers over-strong in his eagerness, and Wyn wriggled her abused members in protest.

  'Loose me, then, so I've got two hands to use.'

  'Poor little hand! ' He rubbed it remorsefully. 'That's twice I've hurt you.'

  It was three times, but he was not to know about the other hurt. With suddenly set lips she turned her face away from him towards the aperture in the front of the desk, that ran back narrow and flat, and to which the leaf cut-out served as a door.

  'There's a sheaf of papers.' She felt inside experimentally.

  'Let me see.' Russell put his face down against her own, peering into the aperture with her, his cheek, with

  the faint dark blue jowl line that no amount of close shaving would erase, disturbingly touching her own. Her heart did odd things inside her breast, but he seemed unconscious of its beating, although it sounded in Wyn's ears as if it might be heard as far away as the village.

  'Handle the papers gently, in case they're old. They might crumble,' she checked his eagerness, instinct and training combining to guide her own handling of the documents. Cautiously she drew them out, and without looking to see what they 'were she instantly placed them in his outstretched fingers.

  For a brief moment he ignored them, and their eyes met, his acknowledging her restraint, thanking her for it, and then he looked down at the bundle of yellowed papers which had been carefully clipped together at the top.

  'They're newspaper cuttings.' He sounded bewildered. 'They look like advertisements for the most part.' Slowly he leafed through them.

  'Let me look.' Wyn took them from him and spread them out on the carpet between them, carefully stroking them flat. She glanced at the headings on the tops of the pages. They were all sheets from London newspapers, and all of them were many years old.

  'There's a theatre bill here ... Your uncle's wife—do you know what her stage name was?' she asked him, sharp disappointment flattening her voice. There was no will among the papers.

  'Tempest's wife?' Bewilderment still rode his tone. 'I think she just called herself Marylyn. Why?' 'We've stumbled on your uncle's souvenirs,' Wyn

  told him gently. 'Playbills,' she ruffled through them again, 'and critics' columns from the London papers of the day.' She smoothed them flat again with gentle fingers.

  `There's something else in the desk.' Russell peered inside.

  'In that corner? I can see it.' Wyn reached inside again to the back of the hole, and fished out the only other thing it contained. Silently she held it out to him, a small, tissue-wrapped bundle, but he shook his head.

  `I'd rather you opened it. I feel I'm—trespassing.'

  'Shall I put it back?' She made no move to touch it.

  `No, open it, we'll put it all back afterwards,' he told her quietly.

  She looked at the tissue paper, yellow with age, and knew how Russell felt when he said he was trespassing. Hesitantly she glanced up at him, but he nodded, obliging her to do as he asked, and reluctantly she unfolded the wrapping, parting the wafer-thin sheets.

  'It's a rose—a dark one.' Wonderfully preserved, the once red bud lay open to their gaze. The long, slender stem held one thorn, still sharp, Wyn discovered. Her abrupt movement away from its point disturbed something from among the dried petals, something round and shiny that rolled to the floor. She bent swiftly to retrieve it before it rolled under the desk, and Russell bent at the same time. Their hands reached it together, clasped one another and missed the errant object, and Russell smiled.

  'It's all yours.' He drew his hand away, leaving her to pick it up. 'It's a ring of some sort.' He had only caught a brief glimpse of it as it fell.

  'It's a wedding ring ' Sudden tears pricked Wyn's

  eyes, blurring the smooth gold circle that rested on her palm, and she lowered her lids so that he should not see.

  'He still loved her ...' Her voice was no more than a whisper, a thin thread of sound through the constriction in her throat, made worse by the sudden feeling of kinship with the deceased owner of Tylar Grange.

  Unrequited love.

  It was a quaint old-fashioned phrase, belonging to the stilted theatre of yesteryear, and yet here in this room which contained so much that belonged to that era, it did not seem out of place to Wyn. The pain she felt at Russell's accidental touch was very real to her, and the desert of loneliness to which her heart had condemned her became a grey bleakness in her own future days, as well as a past reality in those of Tempest Tylar.

  'You've bought some new steps.' Jon peered round the door and discovered the new acquisition with interest. 'Can I climb up them?'

  `No ' Russell rose swiftly to his feet and with one lithe movement reached out and grabbed the boy as he reached the third rung of the stepladder that leaned rather precariously against the wall by the door. 'I'll spank you if I catch you on those,' he threatened severely.

  'Corporal Benny lets me climb his,' Jon protested vigorously at being brought down.

  'Benny's steps are not so high as these, and his can be used as a stool as well,' Russell countered swiftly, and Wyn bit back a smile. She was used to having to keep one step ahead of her own nieces and nephews, and it amused her to watch Russell coping with the

  same mental gymnastics, at which he seemed an able performer, she observed approvingly.

  'These are nicer. They're all shiny.' Jon stroked the high aluminium steps enviously, and puffed at a label tied temptingly at about the height of his head, so that it fluttered at the force of his breath.

  'You bought these new?' The label was a price ticket, she could see. 'You bought them for me?' They were tall steps, the sort decorators use, and their light alloy construction would enable her to handle them with ease. They would also be very expensive, she realised guiltily.

  'They're safe for you to use.' It was Russell's turn to look embarrassed. 'Safe for grown-ups, not for small boys,' he added sternly, meeting Jon's interested stare. 'And they'll always come in handy for—er—things, later on,' he excused his generosity. He did not specify for what things and there might not be a 'later on' for him, not at Tylar Grange.

  'I'm grateful,' she told him. 'You must have gone all the way to the village for them.'

  'The label says they're from Mostyns,' Jon read it out loud, proving, Wyn suspected, that he could read properly. 'That's in town—coming, Gran!' he broke off and ,pattered away as Louise's voice sounded faintly from the garden, calling his name.

  The nearest town was thirty miles away. Russell couldn't have gone to see Diane after all. The thought made Wyn forget the headache started by the bump she had received. Unless he had called on Diane and found her out, and gone on to town instead. Afterthought brought the headache back.

  'Shall we put these back again?' She turned to the

  desk and picked up the faded newspaper cuttings, then folded the rose and the barrel-shaped wedding ring back into its tissue paper.

  'Yes, now we know where to find them we can show them to the others later on. Let's make sure we know which piece of carving is the one that opens.' He counted the leaf cutouts from
each side of the top of the kneehole. 'It's the centre one.'

  'I found it before, well enough,' Wyn commented ruefully, and he laughed.

  'Don't make a habit of opening it like that,' he advised her drily. 'You may not be so lucky the next time.'

  She did not feel particularly lucky now. The bump to her head would heal, but her heart had sustained more enduring damage. It twisted inside her now as she replaced the pitiful remnants of another's broken love affair, aching with newly awakened fellow feeling.

  'It needs a fairly sharp pull, but it opens easily enough.' She snapped the small door shut and pulled it open again to make sure.

  'Let's leave it now: Russell took her arm, urging her away.

  'I'd already gone over the rest of the desk, I don't think there's likely to be anything else to find,' she told him. 'I'll start on the picture now you've brought the steps.'

  'Not now—leave it for today and have a break.' He took the steps away from their leaning post and opened them out fully in the space of the room. 'You can start again tomorrow morning. I'll reach the picture down for you then. If you try to carry on working now,' he interrupted her half-hearted protest, 'you'll only end

  up with a worse headache, and have to give up tomorrow.'

  `The children asked me to go and play with them in the maze.' The sense of his reasoning overcame her conscientiousness.

  `Trying to get out of the maze won't help your head, but the sunshine might,' he smiled. 'Come this way,' he offered to guide her. 'There's a short cut through the conservatory into the knot garden.'

  Even in its neglected state it was pretty. The entire garden consisted of a formal arrangement of miniature box hedges. The outside hedges made four large squares, separated by wide grass paths, which in many places had given way to the rampant growth of weeds. The same slow-growing evergreen had been used to break up the individual squares into an assortment of different shapes, inter-connecting with one another, and the centre of each shape filled with brightly coloured flowering plants that responded to the warm May sunshine with a brilliance and perfume that brought a delighted sparkle to Wyn's eyes.

  `You love gardens?' He had been watching her, and read his answer in her expression. She had no need to hide her feelings from him on this.

  'Oh, yes! My fingers itch to clear the weeds, though.' Her love of growing things deplored the wild growth, however showy its colour, knowing it to be a fight for survival that made for spindly height instead of sturdy plants, with room to breathe and bloom their best.

  'Me, too.' He shared her feeling companionably. `This was going to be one of my first jobs when we came here, to clip back the hedges and replant the beds. Now, I don't feel I've got the right to interfere.' His

  voice trailed away, and Wyn looked up at him sympathetically.

  'We found your uncle's souvenirs,' she reminded him, 'we'll find the will in the same way. It will probably take time ...'

  But find it she must, if it took her months, she determined. No one must be allowed to destroy beauty such as this.. Sheltered on three sides by the house walls, and merging into the velvet softness of old turf on the fourth, the formal elegance of the knot garden breathed back past romance. The soft rustle of silks and taffetas would be heard here, as their wearers avoided the eyes of their ever watchful chaperones and kept assignations with the gallants of their day. Whispered vows would be made, and now and then broken. Perhaps Tempest Tylar and his wife—but no, Wyn could not visualise the woman whose stage name was Marylyn walking here. There would be tears, perhaps, and soft laughter.

  There was children's laughter now, as Jane and Jon ran to and fro in the only box-hedged square that carried no other colour, but where the neatly clipped hedges marched in pairs, presenting paths that from the antics of the pair running along them nearly all came to a dead end. Wyn and Russell strolled towards them.

  'I haven't thanked you yet for moving my room. It reminds me of—this,' she gestured vaguely to the garden. In its full glory it would match the room she now occupied, in dainty elegance. She could not put her thoughts into words, but somehow she felt he would understand.

  `We expected our guest to be a man,' he reminded her, courteously promoting her own status in the

  household, and briefly, humanly, Wyn wished Diane could hear him. She thrust the feeling away, and capitulated to the urging of the two children.

  `Come and join us. Help us to find a way out.'

  Everyone in the household was trying to find a way out, she thought; and sudden depression gripped her. The children wanted her help to find a way out of the maze, and as soon as they knew the right route it would spoil the game for them for the future. Russell wanted her help to find the will, and she herself ...

  Russell was the only one who could help her, and he did not know of her need. To him she was just a hired help, here by virtue of the fact that the person he had wanted to come—Bill Stapleton-was ill. She was second best so far as he was concerned, and she did not need Diane to remind her of the fact.

  With leaden feet she followed the happy pair along the paths, coming up against a blank end each time, and having to turn back. Although she could easily see the path that lead out of the, maze she could not unravel the complications of turns and twists that would set .her feet upon it, and in the end she followed the example of the wirehaired terrier and jumped over the hedge, frog-hopping Jane and Jon across them too when they tired of their play, and letting them run ahead of her to where Russell awaited them at the end of the path, with his arms wide open to receive their hurtling advance, and closing about them again as they reached him, hugging them close against him, and effectively shutting her out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  'YOU'RE not going to start work again this afternoon, surely? It's Saturday.' Val regarded Wyn in amazement.

  'I only came out for a breath of fresh air,' she reminded him, turning away from the paddock fence towards the house. The whole family seemed to regard the walk under the aisle of trees as far as the paddocks as a regular perambulation, taking a titbit for the horses providing them with a point as well as a turning point to their stroll.

  'You worked all morning,' Val pointed out, which was true. Russell had worked with her for part of the time, reaching down the solitary painting from the study wall, so that she could examine it more easily, ,observing her movements closely. Too closely for her peace of mind, since her fingers trembled so that she had difficulty in holding the priceless oil, and found they shook as much from fear in case her distress should show, and that Russell might enquire the cause, as from his nearness as they worked.

  'You didn't find anything of interest in the study,' Val said impatiently. 'Russell showed us what you found in that hole in the desk. A lot of mouldy old newspaper clippings,' he said disgustedly.

  'They were your uncle's souvenirs,' Wyn pointed out gently.

  'Souvenirs!' Val was not disposed to sentiment. 'I

  can't think why you bothered to put them back, you might as well have thrown them out and have done with it. I say, Russ ! ' He broke off and quickened his step, and Wyn saw to her dismay that Russell and Diane were heading in their direction along the avenue.

  'I'll go indoors.' She could cut across the bridge over the stream, and she need only smile and pass on when she met the couple approaching her. Diane would not want to stop and speak, of that she could be sure, and in Diane's company, neither would Russell.

  `No, you won't.' Val caught at her arm masterfully. Unless she struggled she could not release his grip, and it was too late now, anyway. At Val's hail Russell quickened his step towards them, and Diane was obliged to do the same or be left behind.

  'You don't expect Wyn to work on a Saturday afternoon, surely?' Val lost no time in coming to the point, and Wyn wished heartily that he had not joined her on what had started out as a pleasantly solitary walk until he spotted her from the house windows and hurried out to join her. From his tone it sounded as if he was accusing his brother of
slavedriving, and that she had been complaining.

  'Of course not.' Russell's brows rose enquiringly. 'Not unless she wants to, that is?' As in the case of the children, he left the choice to her.

  'Are you and Diane going riding?' It must have been obvious to Val that they were, since they were both dressed in riding kit, and Diane swung a hard black hat by its chinstrap from her fingers. 'Let's make it a foursome, shall we? If you'll wait a few minutes for us, we'll soon be ready,' Val said eagerly.

  'I don't have any riding kit with me,' Wyn protested, annoyed at not even being consulted before he tried to make the arrangements. Surely even Val's youthful impetuosity could see when he was not wanted? The scowl on Diane's face was as black as an August thundercloud. Although Val had gone to the trouble of mending her battery carrier for her she did not hide from him the fact that his room would be more welcome than his company. Wyn held her breath. The girl's look was so venomous she half expected Val to turn into a cinder on the spot.

  'The right clothes don't matter. I'll stay in reach-me-downs as well, to keep you company,' Val urged. 'Your slacks look comfortable enough to me,' he gave them a cursory glance, 'they're not the wide sort that might flap.'

  'If you're coming with us, go and cut out two of the mares,' Russell suggested, seeing that his brother was determined. 'Those in the top paddock could do with some exercise.'

  'They're not a very lively ride.' Val seemed inclined to argue.

  `Wyn won't want a skittish mount,' Russell retorted flatly, 'she'll be riding without a hat,' he pointed out, and his younger brother subsided.

  'I'll go and collect two for us.'

  'I'll come with you,' Russell decided suddenly, patently not trusting Val to choose wisely. 'We won't be a moment,' he promised the two girls, and Wyn's heart sank. She did not want to be left in Diane's company, but if she turned back towards the paddock rail she would leave herself open to an accusation of un-