The huge stone house crouched in its shrinking clearing and waited.
Elms still flourished there, towering over oaks and creating a canopy above rhododendrons and laurel and lilac and scores of old- fashioned shrubs. The wide crowns of the elms formed a square fringe around the stone house. A fringe that lay within the forest's edge now, overtaken by time and less aristocratic growths. The skeleton of what might have been a grape arbor gleamed in the deep shade.
There was no reason for the insistent pull of the place. It was just an empty house in the woods, far back from the roads. A private place, where winter lay waiting beneath a mild autumn day.
Fay Reardon Saunders studied the autumn richness surrounding the cold granite building and shivered in spite of the warm September breeze. At the uneasy knot in her stomach, she told herself it had been too long since supper the night before, only she couldn't remember preparing anything then, either. And none of that made any difference.
She was there now. At last.
She climbed slowly out of her car without taking her eyes away from the old house, leaning back against the fender as though it reached out, loomed over her. Only a judge would have built such a square, ponderous, symmetrical house. Only a judge would have built his house of shaped granite blocks and set each window in a deep granite arch.
A judge who was long since dead. Like everyone else. Pushing herself away from the car, she took one sideways step and then another, moving along the edge of the rapidly shrinking lawn.
The old grape arbor emerged from the shade again, the wooden poles smoothed by wind and rain, fired in the sun. It called her, like carved ivory drew touch with its slick, soft soapiness -
...old bones, silvered in hot summer sun. Heat hung smotheringly over the clearing, even in the meager baked-dry shade of the oaks, and bees zoomed through the dust motes gilded by the sun. But it would be cooler in the arbor. That was why he'd built it. To give her a place to hide from the heat that could settle into that clearing, that safe place. Dim, shaded by immense grape leaves, the arbor was a dark refuge where hot, sullen breezes could not tug at the playing cards scattered between crystal glasses on the small table. Heavy purple clusters of fruit hung down within easy reach of the card players. When they came.
He frightened them. He didn't intend to. The woman hesitating on the lawn, peering into the shadows, she knew that. But he did frighten them. It was the way he looked at - things. Like he saw everything with such sharp clean edges. He even frightened her sometimes.
The branches had gone too long without trimming back. When had they grown so thick? She could hardly see the table in the arbor but it felt like someone had been there. Who? How could she have missed visitors? She fought her way nearer the abandoned cards and half empty wine glasses, into the shadows, until the cards turned into fallen leaves and wine glasses into a broken branch. Until a branch of lilac snagged her skirt and a bramble edge raked her ankle...
... Fay froze at the pain, seeing beads of blood appearing just above her sandal, leaning forward to free her skirt, pierced by the illogic of her own actions - popped free of an imaginary past.
She'd KNOWN she shouldn't go there. She'd ALWAYS known that.
As far back as she could remember, she'd refused to go there - yanking the cloth free, she fought her way out of the thicket, backing frantically out to the lawn. Only then did she let herself look back at the long abandoned arbor, empty, choked by grapevines gone wild.
That old house, a task too long avoided, guilt - no wonder her nerves jumped and fluttered, her imagination let her identify with someone long dead. Someone who'd probably never existed.
Just as quickly, she turned and glanced back towards the house, fearing someone might have seen her frenzied flight and saw only smooth gray stone, flat warm sunburned lawn - and a man on a ladder.
His back was towards her. Even as she wrapped her shaking hands in folds of her skirt, forcing herself to calm, her attention wrapped itself around the man on the ladder. After a moment, she frowned.
The ladder was extended to the third floor, where he braced himself two rungs from the top while he cleared the gutters of leaves and debris.
It looked dangerous.
She shouldn't have come, she told herself. Her uncertain, Sunday afternoon restlessness had accomplished what her father's requests had not. What lawyers' pleas and threats had not, in the three months since her parents' accident.
That afternoon, some dark whim had said seven generations deserved at least a passing nod. She hadn't gone there when her father had wanted her to. And after, there'd seemed even less point. Why should she do for some faceless, distant lawyers what she had not done for someone for whom she'd cared?
Her father had told her she was the seventh generation, the last direct descendent of the old man who had built the place. He'd had some attachment to this horrible place that he'd wanted her to share, when the whole idea of anyone judging another made her skin crawl. He could have asked her anything else. Anything but that.
But finally turning up when it no longer mattered, facing that pile of stone, the one thing she hadn't anticipated was how alone she'd feel. Nothing else had made her see so clearly that she was the only one left.
Then, nothing else had ever made her resent the whole idea of judging. She'd been sure and confident once. Perhaps she only resented that the Judge had remained so and she had not. In place of confidence, Jed's death had taught her how to build walls. Nothing had warned her to keep anything in reserve. To protect herself. But she had learned about walls. Maybe the Judge had left legacies besides that oppressive pile of stones.
From the edge of the lawn, Fay felt the insistence of the place and an unfamiliar annoyance at the man working so high against the three story house, blaming him for her unease because he was tangible.
And because his precarious perch was goading her into interfering - exactly what she had worked so hard to avoid.
The house was more of a curse than anything else. Not worth anyone's getting hurt for. Reluctantly, she started across the narrow lawn.
This was stupid. Going there. Paying attention to this stranger - getting hooked into things she wanted no part of - she argued with herself as she crossed the seventy feet of old lawn. She was less than thirty feet from the ladder when the man sensed something.
Glancing down and finding himself not alone, the man's quick angry movement jarred the ladder and reaching for a lower rung, his foot slipped.
Before her heart had more than begun the surge downward to panic, his arms easily bore his weight while he reached again for the rung and started down the ladder.
After a moment, Fay turned to study the old overgrown plantings, rather than watch the awkward, uneasy progress of a lame man descending a ladder.
She had just managed to convince herself to be patient when a hard hand on her shoulder twisted her around. Through the fog of anger and out of the confusion of denim and beard, brilliant hazel eyes emerged.
"Dammit to hell, I don't know what you think you're doing prowling around out here, but this is private property. I could have broken my goddamn neck from your trespassing!" Before she could open her mouth, Fay found herself being hustled back to her car.
His lameness added anger to his uneven stride. "I knew I should have persuaded them to chain the driveway," he said to the back of her head.
The gravelly voice was quietly, deeply, locked-in furious. Fay realized what she heard was only the overflow. He didn't have to worry. If it hadn't been for the hand clamped around her upper arm forcing her forward, she'd have already been running away even faster.
Not until he reached down to open her car door, could she see the man so anxious to throw her out. His thin chambray shirt outlined well-muscled arms and shoulders that explained his easy rebalancing. Broad shoulders narrowed to faded jeans hugging muscular thighs. With his moccasins stubbornly planted, his hand on her door, he looked more than able to compensate for a lame leg.
She nearly made it into the car, as anxious to be free of the situation as he was to be rid of her, when he saw the scrap of paper on her car dashboard.
Even as he reevaluated the situation, he slammed her car door closed and stranded her outside.
The brilliant eyes moved over her like camera lenses. "So," he ended his own inspection, "you've turned up at last." He exhaled tiredly. "You'll have to come around to the back patio. I don't carry the front door key as a rule."
Fay yanked herself free of the demanding hazel eyes to see that his wiry brown beard was threaded with gray. His dark brawn hair curled thick and shaggy. He had to be crazy. Dragging her along, yanking her back. She felt like a push toy.
"Wait a minute." She found her voice at last. "I've never been here before. You can't know me-"
"You've got Massachusetts' plates on your car, same as the rest of the Reardons I've seen. You're out here looking at this godforsaken place. A trespasser wouldn't have made herself so much at home." He assessed her briefly this time, scanning a picture he already knew. "And with that black hair and violet eyes, you're the first Reardon who looks like the Judge."
"How do you know that?"
"From the portrait in YOUR family's library." His eyes returned to the scrap of paper she'd tossed down when she'd stopped the car.
"And you've got one of Tom Reardon's hand drawn maps."
He'd known her father. He had to be the caretaker.
He sensed her next move. This time he clamped one battered hand around her wrist to prevent the departure he'd been so eager for a moment before. His fingers overlapped by the width of her wrist again and calluses scratched the thin skin of her inner wrist, as he compelled her nearer the stone building and around to the right, to the back patio.
"You people could at least have the decency to tell me when you're coming," he said under his breath. "Last thing I need is some girl telling them I nearly tipped myself off a ladder - which I did not," he added coldly.
She'd embarrassed him. Tough and capable on the ground, he'd let her see an awkward moment. But she was tired. She did not want to be aware of his anger or embarrassment at his handicap. She had used up her quota of understanding at the clinic in her own work.
However this rude, angry man compensated for his lameness, he had no right to haul her around the lawn like a pull toy, just because she'd never learned the trick of fighting back. And once at least, she knew she'd heard his name.
The stone house loomed over them and with panicked strength, she threw herself back, wrenching her wrist in her need to halt him. His eyes narrowed suspiciously on her face while she searched her memory.
It had reminded her of some mythical beast. That was the only reason she remembered hearing it.
"Griffin?" she said uncertainly. It fit him, that creature's name, a beast half eagle, half lion. A fitting combination for a fierce man. "I don't remember your last name, but you ARE Griffin?"
"Don't expect me to be impressed. I've only been here eight years."
Her stomach knotted at his careless anger. "I wasn't trying to impress you. I was trying to figure out who you are and why you're dragging me to see this place."
"If you can't do anything about it, what difference does it make?"
Fay stared at him in shock. "It makes a lot of difference to me."
He turned her wrist to emphasize how his hard hand enclosed her slender bones. The wide embroidered sleeve of her muslin shirt slid back revealing a pale, golden tanned forearm. His eyes moved down her body and Fay stiffened, regretting the soft indigo skirt and flimsy sandals she'd chosen. Simple cotton was no armor.
"I could probably out-run you," she said and instantly regretted her words, feeling her cheeks warm.
He studied her face and his deep-set hazel eyes brightened as though a squirrel had run up on the porch and bitten his foot. "Are you worried about hurting my feelings?"
Her face burned at his amusement. Apparently only his clumsiness had angered him.
"Because running wouldn't do you much good. You'd be faster - I don't know for how long - but you don't know where you're going."
She bit her lip and stayed silent.
His eyes rested on her face and hair before once more traveling downward in casual inspection. Fay backed away from him and caught her sandal on the flagstone edge of the path. His grip on her arm kept her from falling and she had to twist around to keep her balance as he took her closer to the cold stone walls.
Three sets of French doors watched them come near, all opening onto a wide patio whose stone absorbed the sound of their steps. Even on the patio, one hand circled her wrist while he worked his free hand into the pocket of his worn jeans and extracted a carved brass key.
An old, green, tarnished key, with the fanciful design of another time.
The chill emanating from the antique key and the idiot's stare of all the empty windows bit through her thin cotton shirt and broke the spell of his physical assurance
"I don't want to go inside! I don't need to!" There was a reason, a good reason, for her not to enter that place. She didn't know what it was, but it didn't matter. "I'm not checking up on you. If you hadn't stopped me from leaving ..."
Her voice trailed off. If he hadn't stopped her, she'd be where? The rented, empty cottage she called home from carelessness? At her distraction, the hazel eyes appraised her in a different way. His thumb moved slowly against her skin, stroking the soft inner flesh of her wrist like a caress.
Her eyes dropped to their skin met. "Don't do that," she said under her breath.
"Why not?" His thumb continued its subtle caress. "Why not? Someone should have come a long time ago, but not you. Someone tough, who can get this place straightened out. Not someone - " His thumb slowed in his consideration. "Not someone with huge purple eyes and a cloud of black hair, who hides in soft clothes and couldn't protect herself from a kitten."
Her eyes lifted from his hand to his bearded face where the brilliant hazel eyes watched her intently. She moistened her lips and then lost words against such deadly directness.
His hand slid up inside her loose sleeve and where he touched her, she burned. He was so close. His hand circled her upper arm inside her sleeve. His fingers grazed the side of her breast.
Dragging in a ragged breath, she could see the fine texture of brown and silver threads in his beard, the lines of weather and watching raying out at the corners of his eyes. With a quick, sharp movement, she freed her arm and took a single step back. His hand fell to his side.
"I did NOT come up here to check on you," she repeated, trying to collect her senses. "As far as this place goes, its done nothing but keep my family fighting over something nobody really wanted for generations." Her words tumbled out, hurrying her away from dangerous ground. "Its a cold, evil pile of granite. I'm not worried about it. I don't CARE about it."
"Well, I damn well care! Its September already. Everybody seems to have forgotten the goddamn furnace died last winter and the only way to drain the plumbing that nobody uses is to climb down the goddamn well! Something I'm no better at than ladders. The only way to keep this whole place from freezing is a wood furnace as old as the house that will keep me up day and night -"
At his anger, she shrank inside her shirt, her very skin tightening. His eyes narrowed at her withdrawal.
"Decorative as you are, its Tom Reardon I need here. If I could find him-"
But he wouldn't find her father. Even she couldn't do that. Not any more, Fay told herself, surprised at the flicker of pain rippling through her. She had built her walls so well for three years, since Jed's death had belatedly educated her, that even her parents' deaths had been held off at a distance. A distance this stranger had erased. She hadn't thought she could feel more pain.
"Where the hell has Reardon gone to? That's the only number I have."
The shadow of the house chilled her. She had to get away from the stone. And from the caretaker. She stepped back carefully.
"I'll call them about the furnace this afternoon," Fay said. "I'll have someone get back to you."
"Them. Someone. Why not you? Why don't you take a hand in this? You're here. You've got to be the point of all this. You're more Reardon than I've seen in years. Why don't you find a use for this bloody house? It'll never burn down or fall down or disappear by itself. Nobody else looks likely to want it."
"NOW nobody wants it," she said, the bitterness of years of family infighting staining her voice. "Now that it doesn't make any difference." She felt earth beneath her feet at last and the late afternoon sun on her back. Her eyes traveled up the face of the three floored house, each floor with eight or ten rooms, not counting the attics and cellars.
The granite gleamed blue-green-gray in that light and Fay dragged her eyes away, asking herself what kind of counselor let herself be dominated by a caretaker with insulting ease and dazzled by the colors dancing on old stone. How could she be expected deal smoothly with strangers when she had no people of her own? Maybe it was supposed to be easier with just houses and insurance, but without Jed, what would she want with a house? Any house?
"I don't have any use for it. Anything I can, I get rid of. There's nothing here I want."
"Bullshit!" Griffin exploded. "That kind of drivel belongs locked in an attic. You have so much you can throw away a house that nobody could even think of building now?"
He only guessed well, Fay told herself. He didn't know. He was far outside her walls after all. "No," she said quietly. "I have so little that a house, even this house, could make no difference."
Frustration dominated the bearded face, his mobile brows still hooked in anger.
"I'll call them when I get back. They should be able to get things fixed before frost. They'll get right back to you."
"And if they don't? Who else do I find? How do I find you?"
She shook her head. "They'll tend to it."
"Why are you playing games now? Why not leave me your number, if you're the pipeline to people in charge?"
"Because I don't want to be involved with this place. I'm not the one you need. I shouldn't even have come here. I knew better."
"Because of me or the house?"
"Both."
He grinned. "My place is through there." He motioned to a path worn in the tall grass. It led around the southeast corner of the old house where pines encroached on the fringe of elms. "When you need the keys."