The Silver Falcon Read Online Free PDF Page A

given the job of teaching her. She had worked very hard for him in the first weeks, but it didn’t seem to matter how many hours she stayed in the office, because he took her with him round the stud, came to watch her riding lessons, criticized and praised her when she began to make real progress and inexorably involved her with every aspect of his horses. Isabel discovered two things about herself in those first weeks at Beaumont. She was physically brave and she was more at home in the new world of men and horses than she had ever been in the cloisters of Oxford.
    People seemed to like her; she responded to the friendliness of the staff at the stud. She wasn’t sure when Charles’s courtship actually began. She was invited to sit in with Tim and Geoffrey Oliver, who managed the stud, in the evening drinking session, and found herself playing hostess to his friends. There was no suggestion that he was fatherly towards her; no greater contrast to her own desiccated parent could be imagined than the dynamic, powerful, older man, with his exuberant masculinity. When he asked her to marry him she had been at Beaumont for less than three months. For a man of such personal pride that it bordered on arrogance, his proposal had been touching. If she could accept someone so much older, and trust him to make her happy, he would spend the rest of his life in doing exactly that. When he kissed her, the two men who had come and gone in her life were less substantial than shadows. She loved him and she felt in the most poignant way that she had found her home.
    Three happy years. Marred perhaps by twinges of uncertainty, because there was so much about him that she didn’t know, and there was a sense of disappointment which she suppressed because he didn’t want her to have children. It was soon sublimated in her devotion to him. It was a warm, secure world, presided over by her husband. She moved her chair closer to his bed, and took his hand in hers. It had wasted like his body; the veins stood out like cords above the pallid skin; his hands were the epitome of him. Large and strong, with a thick powerful wrist: they could be gentle with her and at the same time hold the strongest horse. She stayed by his bedside in the chair, from the evening through the night, sleeping in fits, but mostly awake and quietly waiting. Although he didn’t show any sign of consciousness, she felt that he knew she was near.
    She saw the dawn come up, creeping above the grey window panes, turning the glass rosy until the pink became suffused with gold as the sun rose. She had left the curtains open; it was Charles’s habit to sleep like that. He disliked the dark; he liked to wake to the sight of his own green fields. Isabel felt stiff and tired; she went into the big marble bathroom which led off their bedroom, and washed in cold water. Her reflection looked hollow-eyed and weary. It was six thirty; the household would be stirring soon. As she turned to come back into the bedroom she saw that Charles Schriber was awake.
    She stroked his forehead; it was cold, as cold as his cheek when she kissed him. ‘I’ll get the nurse, darling,’ she whispered. ‘She’ll help me make you comfortable.’ Slowly he shook his head. He was breathing with slow, laboured breaths and he caught at her with his hand, drawing her down to him.
    â€˜No nurse … I want you, Isabel. Only you. Stay with me.’ The eyes were dull, the hand fell away, slack and powerless to keep hold of her.
    â€˜I’m here,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t worry. I’m with you.’ She put her arms around him, resting his head against her breast.
    â€˜You’ve been here all night,’ he said. ‘I felt you.’
    â€˜Don’t talk,’ Isabel soothed him. ‘Stay quiet, darling, don’t tire yourself.…’
    â€˜I’ve left you everything,’ he said. ‘The stud, the horses, everything.