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

the curving drive that ran alongside the house. We'd come full circle round the property, and the tower, at the bottom of the drive, seemed to be waiting for us.
    I felt small in its shadow. Even in its ruined state, the stone walls rose some thirty feet straight up, to scrape the sky with jagged fingers darkly stained with moss. It was a narrow structure, hard and angular, save for the turret-like curve at one corner that probably sheltered a stairwell inside.
    Reaching out, I ran my hand caressingly over the cold stones as we walked past. "Is it safe to go up?" I asked, always keen to explore a ruin.
    "Yes, I think so. Uncle Ralph should have a key somewhere, I'll take a look tomorrow."
    It was too late to go up the tower anyway. The light had nearly gone. My trailing fingers snagged on something sharp, and I pulled my hand back, breaking contact with the tower wall.
    "Come on," said James, "it's getting cold. Let's go and have a drink."

VI
    In faith he is a worthy gentleman;
    Exceedingly well read, and profited
    In strange concealments.,.
     

William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One
     
     
    We went in through the front door, through the white-painted porch with the chequerboard floor. It smelted sharply of cut wood and coal dust and damp quarry tile.
    "If you're ever in the mood to light a fire, you'll find the things you need in here," said James, lifting the hinged lid of a long wooden box fitted snugly underneath the porch's window. "There's a shovel there, for the coal— every room has its own scuttle, which you need to heft about, I'm afraid—and that little box holds sticks for kindling. Firelighters and newspapers are in the hall cupboard. Only don't burn the local papers," he warned me. "I save those, for research."
    I nodded, shrugged my jacket off, and waited a decent interval before following up on his last comment. "Is your new book set in Angle, then?"
    "Not Angle, specifically—I couldn't stand the lawsuits. No, I've taken the rather more cowardly path of inventing my own coastal village." Moving into the hall, he pushed open the nearest door and stood aside to let me enter first.
    "I've been thinking that I ought to go one better, and invent my own damn county. The Thomas Hardy touch, you know. Though anyone with half a brain will recognize the Milford Haven references, no matter what I do."
    This room, I thought as I went in, was clearly where he did his writing. In the centre of the carpet, a rosewood table, spindle-legged, strained to support a tilting stack of books and magazines at one end, and a slick laptop computer at the other. An elegant mantelpiece on the wall behind had also been converted to a temporary bookshelf, and the fireplace grate was mounded high with cinders, as though someone had set light to it and then become distracted, leaving the coals to slowly choke on their own ashes.
    My own bedroom, I judged, must be directly overhead, and the windows here offered the same sort of views, of the fields to the west, and the walled lawn and drive to the front. And the tower. It looked quite forlorn in the fast-fading light.
    James crossed to draw the wine-red velvet curtains. "It always makes me think of old detective novels, this room does. A murderer could hide behind these curtains and you'd never see him."
    I saw what he meant. The walls were built so thickly that the windows cut deep wells into the plastered stone, and the front window formed a bay in which a man could easily have stood. He could easily have sat there, I amended the thought, in an overstuffed armchair, and still have stayed hidden.
    The curtains drawn, James switched on a pair of chair-side lamps, and in the wanner light I felt a tug of recognition. "You've written about this room, surely? In The Leaden Sky. It's Bernard's study."
    His startled upwards glance told me I'd scored full points. "How the devil did you spot that?"
    ' 'You did a brilliant job describing it. Right down to the one missing brick on the hearth,