Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley Read Free Book Online Page A

your code of ethics."
    It wasn't ethics, I could have told him. I wouldn't have felt the least bit guilty stealing a client from Ivor Whit-comb, but I'd been sitting in a car all day and I was longing for a chance to stretch my legs, to breathe the country air and cleanse my weary mind and body of the hustle and hassles of London. Talking shop right now would be the worst thing I could do, I thought. I wanted reviving.
    And I'd always been rather fond of sheep.
    The cluster of ewes kept a respectful distance on their side of the fence, heads lifting now and then to watch us, soft breath steaming in the crisp air of the dying afternoon. We were losing the light, and the setting sun had tinged the clouds a golden rose that glowed against the cold flat blue of dusk.
    James, beside me, propped his elbows on the fence rail and resumed his guided tour. "You know, you're standing on the only freehold farm in all of Angle." "Really? Who owns all the others, then?" "The family at the Hall, where I went shooting. They own everything—the Hall, the village, everything. Have done for nearly two centuries. One of their ancestors went off to fight the South African Wars, that's why some of the houses in Angle look sprung from the colonies. Neo-Natalian, they call it, that flat-topped design. And the Globe Inn," he pointed behind us to the half-obscured outline of a colonnaded building in the village street, "that's the best example. Pure Johannesburg."
    I looked across the narrow, feudal fields of rich red earth and verdant pasture sloping gently down from either side to form the shallow valley of the village, thinking how furious my brother Patrick would have been to know one family owned all this. He hated the concept of massive estates.
    "Castle Farm," James went on, "was the old Rectorial Glebe land, you know, till it came up for auction in the twenties and Uncle Ralph's father managed to outbid the local gentry. There wasn't much to the property, back then, it was really just the tower and the dovecote and the ruins of a house, but Uncle Ralph's dad fixed things up again and added on the Esast House."
    I turned to look down at the long, unbroken building with its dun-coloured pebble-dash walls. "So the part that we're in is the oldest, then."
    "Yes. No one knows how old, exactly, though we know there was an inn here in Elizabethan times."
    Squinting a little, I studied the westernmost end of the house, comparing the heavy stone walls to the shape of the tower. "The tower's much older than that, surely?"
    "Norman," he said with a nod. "There's an old legend goes with the tower, you know, that says in those days there were three sisters, all of whom inherited their father's estate, but none of whom wanted to live with the others. So one built a house where the Hall now stands, one built the castle—that's the castle there," he put in, pointing back again towards the village, ' 'or at least the ruins of it, behind the post office, there isn't much left. And the third sister built this square tower, to live in."
    "But nobody knows who the sisters were?"
    "I doubt they ever existed, myself. I should think it more likely the tower belonged to some great Norman nobleman. Ordinary people," he said, with authority, "didn't have dovecotes."
    We were standing by the dovecote, now, not more than ten yards distant from the grey stone dome-capped turret with its wooden door ajar. The sheep grazed round it, unimpressed by its obvious age, and the tabby cat dozed in the doorway. I smiled. "I'll have to take a picture of this, for a friend of ours—Bridget's former illustrator, actually. She has a thing for dovecotes."
    "So does Christopher," said James. "My brother, if he could, would make it a hanging offence to tear down any building that pre-dates the war. Still, he does come by it honestly, I suppose. Our mother loves old things."
    He straightened away from the fence, and tearing myself from the dull-eyed ewes I turned to follow him, back along