Iron Chamber of Memory Read Free

stay here, rather than in Oxford town, while doing the onerous work on his dissertation; he hoped the surroundings would inspire him when his willpower flagged.
    The island’s one inn, a refurbished sixteenth-century farmhouse owned by the Stocks family, was within view of the dock at Port du Moulin, and there was only one main road from which every other path branched, running over steep green hills, tall standing stones, past sheep pastures, apple orchards, and farms, running south to north along the spine of the island. The north end of the island was rougher ground, unsuitable for farming, and covered with a few acres of wild trees as old as the last Ice Age.
    All the coastline to the north was interrupted by looming rocks, narrow coves, and booming caves. The south was crisscrossed under the earth with mining tunnels. It would have been a smuggler’s paradise here, and Hal wondered how the first seigneur had kept his promise to clear the pirates away.
    It was remarkably dark under the trees. The path as it climbed grew tricky and rocky, in places like a staircase, with stones and ruts harder to see as the sun failed. Hal was unnerved when he thought he heard soft, light footsteps padding after him in the deepening gloom.
    He waited, gripping his walking stick, wondering at his sudden, unexpected sense of fear. There was nothing dangerous on this small and rustic island, surely. But why were the footsteps so quiet, and so stealthy? And what had happened to Manfred?
    So he hid himself behind the bole of an ancient oak by the side of the path, waiting. When the sound of the stealthy, half-inaudible footfalls passed him by, he stepped out suddenly behind his pursuer.
    She gave a yelp of surprise, and then burst into a merry laugh, seizing him around the waist. Hal found himself suddenly in the strangely familiar embrace of a girl in black silk. Reflexively, his arms closed around her, tightening as if to protect her. She clung to him, as if in fear, even though she had been the one pursuing him. She buried her face in his chest, as if she was a woman crying, but his shirt remained dry. The movement knocked the wide straw hat she had been wearing from her head and it fell silently to the ground. As the evening breeze blew over her hair, a burst of well-known fragrance, like honeysuckle after a spring rain, assailed his nostrils.
    Suddenly remembering himself, Hal released her. With a lingering squeeze, Laurel let go of him as well, and she stepped back, breathless.
    Her hair was dark as a thundercloud. She currently wore it up, but Hal knew that when it was unbound, it fell well past her hips, brushing the curve of her calves. Her eyes were green as glass, and glinted in the dark like the eyes of a she-wolf, large and expressive. Her skin was the fairest he had ever seen, free from moles or freckles, eerie in its porcelain whiteness. She was not an outdoorsy girl, though she had the vivid, high-cheekboned features that spoke of Spanish or Italian blood, or perhaps of a long-lost ancestor from Araby. Her lips were wide and full, and her smile was full of mischief.
    Like Hal himself, she preferred to dress in a modest and old-fashioned style. Her wanton masses of hair were pinned up high in a Gibson, a coiffeur so large it made her head seem small in comparison and exposed a graceful neck. She wore a high, starched collar, a blue bow tie, a dark blouse of silk with opal studs, a dark sash nearly as wide as a man’s cummerbund, and a long skirt that brushed her black-leather, high-topped buttoned shoes. The vintage, narrow-waisted style she affected could have been designed with her in mind, so elegantly did it frame her timeless charms.
    Her motions and gestures were poised and graceful, as if she were a ballerina. The footfalls that had pursued him had been light, not due to any deliberate stealth, but rather to a naturally fawnlike gait.
    “You so startled me.” In the deepening twilight, her voice sounded unexpectedly