Free Kirkland Revels by Victoria Holt Page B

the country and in particular to have a look at the Abbey ruins. But on my way downstairs I met Luke. He grinned at me in a friendly way and stooped to have a word with Friday. Friday was delighted to be taken notice of and there was no doubt that he took a fancy to Luke right from the first.

    ” I like dogs,” Luke told me.

    “You have none?”

    He shook his head. ” Who’d look after them when I am away? I was often away … at school, you know. Now I’m in the transistory period.
    I have left school and shall shortly be going to Oxford.”

    ” Surely there are plenty of people to look after a dog while you’re away?”

    ” I don’t see it. If you have a dog it’s your dog and you can’t trust anyone else to look after it. Have you seen the house yet?” he asked.

    ” Not aH of it.”

    ” I’ll take you on a conducted tour. You ought to know it. You’ll get lost if you don’t. It’s so easy to take the wrong turning. Shall I show it to you?”

    I was anxious to be friends, and I felt it was best to accept his invitation. Moreover, I was eager to see the house, so I decided the walk could wait until the tour was over.

    I had no idea of the size of the house. I reckoned there must be at least a hundred rooms. Each of the four parts which made up that rectangle of stone was like a house in itself, and it certainly was easy to lose oneself.

    ” The story goes,” Luke told me, ” that one of our ancestors married four wives and kept them in separate houses; and for a long time none of them knew of the existence of the other three.”

    ” It sounds like Bluebeard.”

    “Perhaps the original Bluebeard was a Rockwell. There are dark secrets in our history, Catherine. You’ve no idea what a family you’ve married intol” His light eyes regarded me with amusement which was not untinged with cynicism; and I was reminded of Gabriel’s decision not to tell the family that he was going to marry me. Of course they regarded me as a fortune-hunter, for not only would Gabriel inherit this house, but also the means which would enable him to live in such a place, as well as the title which, as the only son of his baronet father, would be his when the old man died.

    ” I’m beginning to learn,” I told him.

    I went through those rooms in a state of bewilderment there were so many, and all had the high windows, the lofty ceilings often decorated with exquisite carving, the panelled walls, the furniture of another age. I saw the great cellars, the kitchens, where I met some of the servants who also seemed to eye me with a certain suspicion; I saw the other three balconies so like that near our own room; I examined 52 the massive stone pillars which supported them, and the faces of gargoyles which seemed to grimace at me from everywhere.

    ” How fond they seemed to be of these devils and grotesques,” I said.

    ” They were to scare off intruders,” Luke told me. ” You must admit they’re somewhat scarifying. Keep off,” they seem to be saying. The devils of Kirkland will get you if you don’t look out. “” ” Surely they sometimes wanted to welcome visitors,” I murmured lightly.

    ” We must have been an inhospitable crowd, sufficient unto ourselves perhaps.”

    When we reached the gallery he took me round, explaining who the subjects were. There was the first Sir Luke who had built the place, a fierce-looking gentleman in armour. There was Thomas, Mark, John, several Matthews and another Luke.

    ” We always have biblical names,” he said. ” It’s a feature of the family. Always Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Peter Simon, anything you can think of … even down to the Angel Gabriel. I often call him Angel, though he doesn’t like it much. I think that was going a bit too far. A nice down-to- earth Mark or John would have been so much better. Now that Sir Luke … he died young. He jumped over the balcony in the west wing.”

    I stared at the young man in the picture; they were