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conversation and fresh viewpoint repays you for that horrendous drive or the one you have to make to go back down.”
        “The drive is second nature,” he said. “And without me, you'd merely have spent a week in town before coming up here. Maybe that would have been better than-maybe that wouldn't have been so bad.”
        The man standing in the doorway came out to them. He was Katherine's height, five feet four, very broad across the shoulders, a beefy man packed with muscles like a weightlifter. His face was swarthy, his eyes dark and deep set. His mouth was wide, his lips thick and his voice European yet accentless when he spoke. “My name is Yuri, Miss Sellers. I am the general caretaker of Owlsden, and I hope you haven't had any serious trouble getting here in this abominable weather.”
        “Thanks to Mr. Harrison, very little,” she said.
        Yuri turned to the younger man now and smiled. From the coarse look of him, one expected the teeth to be broken and rotted. Instead, they were fine, white, pointed and even. “Mrs. Boland would like to invite you to remain for dinner.”
        “I wouldn't want to impose,” Harrison said uneasily.
        “No imposition,” Yuri assured him. “We set an extra place and cooked for another, in the expectation that only your Land Rover would be able to ferry Miss Sellers up here.” The gentle, cultured voice seemed odd coming from the brutal figure of Yuri.
        “No thank you again,” Harrison said. “Please give Lydia my thanks and regrets. But I must get back down the mountain before the snow gets too much worse.” That was a lie, since everyone seemed aware that no degree of terrible weather could phase him as long as he had the Rover.
        He went around to the driver's seat, closed his door after him and put the vehicle in gear. He drove jerkily away from them, kicking up clouds of snow behind.
        “Come along,” Yuri said, lifting two of her bags. “I'll get your last two cases in a minute.”
        He lead the way across the lawn toward the open house, oblivious to the bitter cold, the wind and the snow, though he was only wearing a light suit without benefit of even an overcoat, hat or scarf.
        Katherine turned and looked back toward the edge of the mountain, not certain what she hoped to see. But, not seeing it, she suddenly knew: the Land Rover. It was completely out of sight now, even the glow of its powerful headlights swallowed in the white mouth of the storm. She felt terribly alone.

CHAPTER 3
        
        The rooms of Owlsden matched the grandeur of the outside, with none of the brooding darkness that had bothered her about its mammoth walls. The entrance foyer was wallpapered in gold and white, carpeted in gold, with a bright, crystal chandelier filling half the ceiling with dancing strips of colored light. The corridor that lead from it to the main perpendicular hall that ran the great length of the mansion was also carpeted in gold, the walls paneled in rich, dark woods. Inset in the ceiling were flat plates of light, a strikingly modem touch in comparison with the antiquity of the house. The furniture that she saw-a writing desk, an umbrella stand, a few occasional chairs, a pedestal or two with busts and statues on them-was all heavy, dark and pleasantly modern, not chintzy Danish but modern furniture with a style, a feeling of artistic merit and value.
        Yuri lead her down the south wing to the main drawing room through a wide, paneled arch into a bright room with a wine-colored carpet, cream walls, bold modern paintings and furniture of vinyls and plastics and polished, stainless steel.
        “Miss Sellers,” he announced.
        There were two people in the room, an old woman and a man about as old as Mike Harrison, twenty-four or twenty-five. For the first time, seeing mother and son together, it occurred to Katherine that Alex Boland had been what is often called an “autumn baby” or “late