Shadowy Horses Read Online Free PDF Page B

benignly at the foot of my bed and blinked without expression. Stupid animal, I thought. There had been nothing out there, nothing at all. Only the tree and the daffodils, and the dark, deserted field.
    Nevertheless, I was glad of the tomcat's company when I crawled beneath my blankets, having chosen the twin bed further from the window. And for the first time since my nursery days, I didn't reach to turn off the bedside lamp.
    "Do you always sleep with your light on?" Fabia Quinnell asked me next morning, at breakfast. Waiting for me to finish my toast and coffee, she leaned an elbow on the kitchen counter and nibbled a dried apricot.
    I hadn't yet made up my mind about Fabia. She was of an age with my sister Alison, not quite twenty, but where Alison was sensible and unaffected, Fabia Quinnell wore the deliberately bored look of an adolescent, and called her grandfather "Peter."
    She was, as Adrian had said, a fetching young woman— quite stunning, in fact. And decidedly blond. Her pale hair, baby-fine, swung against her soft jaw at an artful angle, leaving the nape of her fragile neck bare. Small-boned and doe-eyed, she looked nothing like her grandfather. Nor did she appear to share his hospitable nature. The greeting she had given me was anything but warm.
    I rather doubted she'd done anything to decorate my bedroom, despite what Quinnell had told me last night. More likely the old man himself had selected the curtains and coverlet, made things look comfortable. Fabia, I suspected, wasn't the sort of young woman to concern herself with someone else's comfort.
    It surprised me that she'd even noticed my bedroom light, last night.
    In answer to her question I replied, through a mouthful of cold toast, that I normally slept in the dark, like everyone else. "I just have a foolish imagination, sometimes—things that go bump in the night. Especially in strange houses. So I find it helps to leave the light on."
    "Well, you gave me quite a turn, last night," she said. "I thought it might be Peter, waiting up for me. He drinks, you know, and then he wants to talk." She rolled her eyes with feeling. "A typical Irishman."
    I wouldn't have guessed Peter Quinnell was Irish. He had, after all, that beautifully elegant voice, with no trace of a brogue whatsoever—but now that I'd had the fact pointed out to me I could recognize that indefinable quality, the faint hint of horses and hounds, that marked a certain segment of the Anglo-Irish gentry.
    Taking another sip of coffee, I turned in my chair so I could see out the narrow kitchen window. From the treeless ridge behind the house a lush green field sloped gently downwards, bounded at its bottom edge by the thick tangle of thorn and briar that hid the road from view. Two men were standing in the center of the field, eyes fixed upon the ridge.
    One of the men was Peter Quinnell. The other was larger, broader about the shoulders, with curling jet-black hair.
    "They've started early," I commented.
    "Who?" Her uninterested gray eyes flicked toward the window. "Oh, Peter and Davy, yes. They're always puttering around."
    "What docs David Fortune do, exactly?" I asked.
    "He's an archaeologist, the same as Peter. Lectures at the University of Edinburgh."
    "But surely ..." I frowned. "I mean, wouldn't your grandfather prefer to manage the excavation on his own?''
    "I doubt it," she said, flatly. "And anyway, he needs Davy. Or rather, he needs Davy's name on his publications, to make the dig legitimate. Peter's name simply doesn't impress people, these days," she explained, her tone offhand. "Most people think he's past it." Pushing herself away from the counter, she nodded at my empty plate. "Are you finished with that? Good. Come on, then—I've been ordered to give you the grand tour."
    Shrugging on my crumpled anorak, I followed Fabia outside. The morning was crisp for late April, clear and sunny, with a brisk breeze blowing from the southwest.
    I turned my back to the breeze for a