"Smith, Wilbur - Courtney 02 - Monsoon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

"Come on! We'll be late." He struck out up the steep ravine.

The other two trailed after him with varying degrees of reluctance.

"Who could come anyway?" Dorian persisted.

"Everybody's busy. Even we should be helping."

"Black Billy could come," Tom replied, without looking back. That name
silenced even Dorian. Black Billy was the oldest Courtney son. His
mother had been an Ethiopian princess whom Sir Hal Courtney had brought
back from Africa when he returned from his first voyage to that mystic
continent.

A royal bride and a shipload of treasure plundered from the Dutch and
the pagan, a vast fortune with which their father had more than doubled
the acreage of his ancient estate, and in so doing had elevated the
family to among the wealthiest in all Devon, rivalling even the
Grenvilles.

William Courtney, Black Billy to his younger half, brothers, was almost
twenty-four, seven years older than the twins. He was clever,
ruthless, handsome, in a dark wolf-like way, and his younger brothers
feared and hated him with good reason. The threat of his name made
Dorian shiver, and they climbed the last half-mile in silence. At last
they left the stream and approached the rim, pausing under the big oak
where the hen harrier had nested last spring.

Tom flopped down against the hole of the tree to catch his breath.

"If this wind holds we can go sailing in the morning," he announced, as
he removed his cap and wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve.

There was a mallard wing feather in his cap, taken from the first bird
ever killed by his own falcon.

He looked around him. From here the view encompassed almost half the
Courtney estate, fifteen thousand acres of rolling hills and steep
valleys, of woodland, pasture and wheat fields that stretched down to
the cliffs along the shore, and reached almost to the outskirts of the
port. But it was ground so familiar that Tom did not linger long on
the view.

"I'll go ahead to see if the coast is clear," he said, and scrambled to
his feet. Crouching low, he moved cautiously to the stone wall that
surrounded the chapel.

Then he lifted his head and peered over.

The chapel had been built by his great grandfather, Sir Charles, who