(A Charm of Magpies 1)The Magpie Lord by Kj Charles Read Free Book Online Page A

as well?”
    “In the last room? No, I’ve no idea who that was. Some passing Bedlamite, perhaps. My grandfather organised the magpie-bearing silverware, as you will see at dinner if Graham hasn’t sold it all. From here we can go down to the library or up to the next floor, which is mostly under covers, except for the Long Gallery where we keep the family pictures, and which will make you think better of Great-Aunt Lucie’s porcelain birds.”
    “Library last, please,” said Stephen. “Let’s try the gallery.”
    “If you insist. You’re looking for something, aren’t you?” Crane led the way up stairs whose oak treads were deeply worn.
    “I am, but I’m not sure what,” Stephen admitted. “There’s something very old and odd and quite unpleasant about this house.”
    “Yes, it’s Graham.”
    Stephen grinned and followed him into the long room.
    It was very dusty and, again, very cold. There were a couple of chairs, swathed in holland covers. A few tall windows let in the sunshine, which seemed to lose all its heat on the way through the glass. Above, a long skylight was covered in dead leaves and dirt, so that the room was still somewhat murky. Pictures, framed in gilt and dark wood, hung all the way down.
    Stephen stared up at the ceiling. “This could be a lovely room if that skylight was clean.” He jumped slightly as something landed on the glass with a thump.
    “Bloody magpies,” said Crane. “If you cleaned it, they’d just foul it in minutes. Well, here, we are. My father and Hector.”
    Stephen had never seen the previous Lord Crane. He had seen Hector Vaudrey on the terrible night when he had come to their house. He had been just twelve, and his mother had sent him to his room at once, but he remembered the red face, the smell of drink, the voices.
    He made himself look at the full-length portrait. A bulky, grey-haired elderly man stood next to a large, well-built, golden-blond man in his thirties. Stephen remembered him from the vantage point of a terrified child, as a giant, and given the way the painted figure towered over his father, he guessed Hector must have been a similar height to his younger brother, perhaps three inches over six feet, though much broader in the shoulders.
    Hector was staring out of the portrait with a slight sneer on his finely shaped mouth, and a set to his jaw that suggested command, and not a kindly sort. Stephen detected cruelty in his face, nothing in the old lord’s neutral gaze. Behind them, two magpies perched on an apple tree.
    Stephen glanced round. Crane was watching him. “Is this a good likeness?” he asked, for something to say.
    “Probably. Hector got fat, I’m told. This one here is my father as a boy. He kept the magpie as a pet. The next one is him with my grandmother—”
    “Is this in chronological order?”
    “Yes, pretty much.”
    “There’s not one of you, or your mother?”
    “There was a family portrait from when I was a baby, but my father took it down. It’s in the attic.”
    “Oh. Did she die?”
    “No.” Crane started to stroll down the line of paintings. “She left my father when I was a year old. I’ve no idea what happened to her.”
    Stephen stood still for a moment, so that he had to hurry after Crane. “Did you never see her again?”
    “No, how should I? This is Great-Aunt Lucie. Fear her. My grandfather, just before his death.”
    “Really?” The picture showed a mere youth, wearing a waistcoat embroidered with magpies.
    “Yes, my father was posthumous.”
    “They all keep up the magpie theme in the paintings,” Stephen observed.
    “Tradition,” said Crane, without interest. “Although putting them on one’s waistcoat really is the outside of enough. This is the third earl, the second didn’t live long either. Here’s the first—this is the only good painting in the room if you ask me. Feel free to comment on what a handsome devil he is. Then the next—Mr. Day?”
    Stephen was standing in front