The Rightful Lord (The Saga Of Wolfbridge Manor Book 3), Sahara Kelly [english novels for students .TXT] 📗

“I won’t.”

Gwyneth rolled her eyes at the byplay, but it had distracted her from her concerns about the property they were about to visit. She stared out over the fields, bare now, with little to show for the last season. They’d been left untended, and she wondered if that would be a deterrent to anyone willing to make an offer on the land.

“Sad fields too,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

“Yes,” answered Harry. “Yes they are. But sometimes leaving them fallow for a few years isn’t always a bad thing.”

“They’ll recover,” added Gabriel. “Life goes on.”

“Not unlike us,” she mused. “We’ve recovered. All of us. And now our lives go on.”

Gabriel blinked. “It must have been something in the tea. I’m surrounded by deep thoughts and profound statements.”

Both Gwyneth and Harry chuckled at that comment and then held on as the horse turned the sharp bend into the Fivetrees driveway.

The house loomed dark and unwelcoming, and Gwyneth shivered, not from the cold, but from the unappealing and empty building before them.

“Oh dear.” It was a whisper.

“Don’t worry, my love,” Gabriel dropped a light kiss on her cheek, his lips cool in the winter air. “We will not tarry long.”

“No, we won’t.” Harry drove up to the entrance and leaped down, tying off the horse to the post by the front steps. “You have the key, Gwyneth?”

She nodded and left Gabriel’s lap for Harry’s arms as he lifted her down. The steps were bare of snow as they walked to the front door, unlike their last visit.

“I suppose we’ll just have to hope nobody has been here.” She glanced down at the stone expanse. “Not very comforting, I’ll admit.”

“Let’s go in.” Harry took the key from Gwyneth and unlocked the door, pushing it wide and letting both air and light into the dark hall. “It doesn’t get any better, does it?” He muttered the rhetorical question as he walked inside.

“No.” Gwyneth and Gabriel followed him, Gabriel closing the door as they moved forward.

“Where do we start?”

“There is a portrait gallery, I believe…” Gwyneth headed down a wide corridor. “We didn’t look here last time. It really was sheer luck that we stumbled on that room.” She rounded a corner and there it was, a long gallery with paintings on each section of the wall.

Harry wrinkled his nose. “Dusty as hell,” he muttered.

He was right. As they entered, the dust motes disturbed by their passage rose to dance in the beams of light entering from tall narrow windows.

“We have to start somewhere, I suppose.” Gabriel tugged a chair beneath the first painting, and gently lifted the bottom. “It was too much to hope for.” He shook his head. “Blank wall.”

Harry and Gwyneth followed his example.

She, wisely, focused on the smaller portraits that dotted the walls, which sometimes echoed the paintings above them, and at other times occupied an entire space.

It was a futile effort, though. She found nothing but spiders’ webs and years of grime. “What a pity none of this has been cared for.”

“Truthfully,” Harry brushed his hand together, “I can’t say that any of these subjects would be welcome on my walls. They really seem to be a lot of unpleasant and ugly people without a kind thought between ‘em.”

Gabriel chuckled. “I wondered if perhaps their underwear was uncomfortable.” He clambered down and once again shook his head. “We may be looking in the wrong place, you know.”

“I hate to think we are,” replied Gwyneth. “Because this is a massive house and I absolutely refuse to go through every room searching for a strongbox we’re not sure we can find.”

Sadly, that option grew ever larger as the gallery refused to produce anything at all of interest.

“We’ve been here for more than an hour,” she sighed, trying to rub grime off her hands. “Any ideas as to where to look next?”

Gabriel shook his head.

Harry glanced at them. “Well, if we assume that the Fairhursts were logical people, and didn’t use the gallery, where else would be the most likely place?”

Gwyneth thought about that. “My father had a hidey-hole in his study…?”

“Yes. That makes sense. But didn’t we look there last time?”

“We were only looking for signs of intrusion, if you recall,” said Gabriel. “I know we peeked in, but since there was nothing disturbed, we didn’t really go over it thoroughly.” He turned around and pointed. “It’s that way.”

They followed him back down the gallery and along the corridor until they reached the hall where he led them over to another smaller hallway and opened the first door he found.

“Goodness, you have a good memory, Gabriel,” observed Gwyneth as the room revealed itself to be the study.

“And nothing has been touched,” added Harry. “At least nothing I can see.” He lit the remains of a candle in one of the candlesticks. “It must have been a gloomy place to work with no windows. But it’s old. Perhaps the oldest of the rooms we’ve seen.” He walked around. “Which means that it might well date back to our original Bishop.”

“Not much left,” Gabriel nodded. “There were books at some point, that’s all.” He ran a finger across the large desk and frowned at the dust.

“So if I was a safe,” mused Gwyneth, looking around in the dim light, “where would I be?”

“An excellent question.” Harry mimicked her moves, and then walked to a wall directly behind the desk where a large mirror and two candle sconces hung on the dark wood panelling. He carefully lifted the bottom of the mirror.

“Nothing.” He sighed.

Gabriel began a survey of everything on the walls, checking behind paintings and maps, much as he had done in the gallery.

Gwyneth let her gaze roam, trying not to focus on