Pursued by Shadows by Medora Sale Read Free Book Online

to any one room in a house. But suddenly there he stood, blocking her exit, examining her cautiously for signs of hostility. His dark eyes glowed in the firelight; his perpetually stubbly chin made the rest of his face look very white. After a pause that went on too long, he altered his expression slightly, and nodded.
    â€œYou remember Harriet Jeffries, don’t you, Dean? The photographer. Why don’t you get us some sherry and help yourself to whatever you’d like.”
    Cursing herself for allowing Nina Smithson to outmanoeuvre her one more time, Harriet accepted the crystal glass with pale sherry in it because it seemed easier than turning it down. “What are you doing with yourself these days, Dean?” she asked.
    â€œI’m at the gallery,” he said curtly. “Looking after the business side of things.”
    â€œYes,” said Nina, sounding almost fluttery. “I don’t know how I’d manage if he didn’t keep track of the money and details and shipments and things like that.”
    â€œYou’d hire someone else to do it,” her son replied. It had a dampening effect on the conversation. “Has Christopher made it back yet?”
    â€œNot yet,” Nina replied warily. “Isn’t that the car?”
    The last time Harriet had seen Christopher Smithson he had been a gangly youth of sixteen with a spotty face and a grubby exterior. He hadn’t changed much. The young man who walked into the room was a little taller, almost as thin, and not quite as grubby. His fair hair still hung in strands around his neck; his face was pale, weak-chinned, and still rather spotty. On the other hand, he no longer looked as if he were about to knock over all the furniture, and his voice, when he greeted them, was soft, deep, and pleasant. His mother gave him an anxious look, as if she feared for his life every time he left the house. He grinned easily at her, shaking his head ruefully. He acknowledged having lively memories of Harriet and grasped her hand. Clearly he was developing a certain gallantry that would always elude his older brother.
    There are individual parents who seem to leave almost no genetic imprint, physically, on their children, no matter how deeply they may influence mind and soul. Nina appeared to be one of these; she had passed on none of her beauty, and little of her gracefulness of manner to her sons. Neither one of her children resembled her in the least. Dean was clearly a taller copy of his raw, uncouth, powerful father. Pictures of Marco—short, broad, smoldering, angry-looking—that Harriet had seen around the house offered abundant proof of that. The mystery for Harriet had always been who the father of Christopher was. Because he looked no more like Nina than Dean did, and yet the village in Albania where Marco sprang to existence had never in its entire history produced a child to resemble him. As he grew older, Christopher would, no doubt, be able to look perfectly at home in the British Cabinet, if he wanted; at the moment he appeared to be an effete and overbred English schoolboy, younger than his eighteen years.
    A sharp ringing of the doorbell interrupted their desultory chat, and the rumbling of annoyed voices filled the hall, dropping a curtain of silence over the room. Everyone in the little party, filled with aimless curiosity, and drawn inescapably to the unexpected, turned toward the door. “It’s the professor, Mrs. Smithson,” said Bernice, who had drifted, ghostlike, into the room once more. “He says that he has some important business to discuss.”
    â€œDon’t let me keep you,” said Harriet quickly, and scooted out of the house, pausing a millisecond to nod politely to the distinguished-looking man standing in the front hall.
    â€œMy goodness.” John’s voice floated down from his six foot plus height. “I expected dark glasses and a hat pulled low over your brow at the