Hallow House - Part Two Read Online Free PDF Page B

to use the horses," he said. "I would like to have you ride with me. Will Grosbeck once told me of a secret cave near here. If you know where it is, perhaps we could picnic there."
     
    Picnic at Skull Cave? Samara shivered.
     
    "If you do not wish to ride with me, I will understand," Mark said, releasing her hand.
     
    "I'd enjoy that very much," she said hastily. "Maybe not a picnic, though. Not there anyway."
     
    "I would enjoy seeing this mysterious cave. We might go early. Tomorrow at dawn? Of course, if you are too afraid of the place--"
     
    "No, no, that's all right," she said, ashamed to admit she hated the cave. Sergei had found it on one of his excursions and made her go there with him. He'd forced her to go inside. But Mark wouldn't do that to her. It would be safe to go with him.
     
    "I've always treasured the feeling of being the first to see a new day," she confided to him.
     
    "And now we will experience the wonder together," he said. "Tomorrow at dawn."
     
    He touched her face with gentle, caressing fingers, thrilling her, sending waves of yearning through her. She was more than ready for a kiss that didn't come.
     
    Instead, he took her hand and led her back toward the house. "I would not like your parents to feel I was monopolizing their daughter on her first night home," he told her.
     
    She wished he didn't have such perfect manners. When she entered the house, she heard piano music and knew Uncle Vince was in the music room playing. Not wanting to run into him, she wandered into the library where her father was reading. Vera, she assumed, was helping Frances put the children to bed.
     
    "I thought you'd be listening to the radio," she told her father.
     
    "There's such a thing as too much of Hitler and Mussolini," he said with a grin. "Let's talk about you, that's much more interesting. What are you planning to do this summer?"
     
    "Laze around, I guess."
     
    "Sure you won't get bored? We're pretty quiet here."
     
    She made a face at him. "You're one to talk about getting bored. Why don't you ever take Vera off somewhere? If I were her, I'd complain."
     
    He looked startled. "Do you think she minds?"
     
    Samara laughed. "Not everyone's like you. Most people like to go someplace else once in a while. To travel. You seem to think Hallow House will fall apart without you here. Last time I was home, I heard Stan tell Uncle Vince it was a good thing you had an unfailing knack for picking talented and honest men to run your business or you wouldn't have any."
     
    "Oh, Stan. He's always complaining because I don't want to sit in an office in San Francisco." John paused and gave Samara a penetrating look. "I wonder if you can understand, he said finally. "Though, after all, you are a Gregory. I've talked to Vincent about this and he knows what I mean even though it affects him less. You were very nearly correct in your assumption that I think Hallow House might 'fall apart' if I'm not here. I have a compulsion to be here. I'm not sure of the exact date when I began to have this feeling. but it was shortly after my father died in 1922."
     
    "I'm trying to understand," she said, "but I'm afraid I don't."
     
    "Your mother never could," John told her. "I suppose no one but a Gregory would. You're likely to be affected with this urge after my death. I can't be sure, though." He paused and stared off into the distance. "Always before there's been a Gregory son."
     
    Sergei was dead. Shot by her father. For the first time it occurred to Samara that he might be still suffering, that he might never be able to forget it. She leaned forward, touched his arm and murmured. "I'll try to be the heir you expect, Daddy."
     
     
     
    Irma had just begun to make coffee when Samara came down early the next morning. She drank a glass of orange juice and ate a graham cracker, telling Irma she didn't have time for anything more. As she hurried out into the still cool new day she was aware her jodhpurs fit her