“I’m sure I’ll never be able to replace you, Mrs. Quinn. I can only do my best. I hope you’ll look upon my efforts kindly, and be patient.”
“But—”
“What, for instance, can be done with this room, Mrs. Quinn? Lily? What would you suggest that might make our guests inclined to linger here and not move immediately over to the harbor inn, which is more convenient by far to Aislinn House?”
Even his father looked around at that, straining to see some room for improvement. Lily and Mrs. Quinn, challenged by the threat, their eyes narrowed in eerily similar expressions, studied the room silently.
“Everything needs a good scrub,” Lily pronounced firmly. “Including and especially the windows. Maybe some curtains to soften the stones?”
“A good dusting,” Mrs. Quinn suggested. “If bottles there must be, those bottles should shine. And the tankards. A carpet by the hearth. And a few chairs around it.” She was on her feet abruptly. “And these tables—all scattered every which way. They need some kind of pattern. There’s a great deal of charm in a good pattern. I’ll show you. Help me, Mr. Quinn.”
Judd helped his father up and out of their way. In the hall, he found Ridley Dow. Still in his coat and on his way out again, he had paused to listen.
“You were brilliant,” he murmured to Judd.
“Was I?” Judd asked him, suddenly dubious. “Can you cook?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. Ah—you have no one else in mind?”
Judd shook his head. “Not an inkling.”
“I don’t care,” Dugold sighed contentedly. “I’d as soon eat a boiled boot than another bite of Mrs. Quinn’s cooking.”
“Let’s hope I can do better than boot leather. I don’t blame you,” he added to Ridley, “for fleeing the confusion. I’m sorry for it. We shouldn’t be driving our only paying guest out on the rumor of others. Though I suppose you might know some of Miss Beryl’s friends?”
Ridley hesitated. “I might have met one or two,” he said slowly and without his usual easy smile. “I doubt they would remember me.” He paused again; Judd heard the screech of table legs across the floor. “One especially, I would prefer to avoid. But more than likely he would be staying at Aislinn House.”
“I’m sorry,” Judd said abruptly. “You’re the last guest I would want to make uncomfortable. I could put Mrs. Quinn back in the kitchen; she’ll get rid of everyone in no time.”
Ridley’s smile rose to the surface again. “Please—anything but that. And I’m not driven out by the noise. I’m going to ride back to the wood, see if I can find the tree house. If at all possible, I would like to explore Aislinn House before Miss Beryl gets there. I think the herbalist might be the perfect guide.”
“For what?” Judd asked incredulously. “What can the bell possibly have to do with that faded old house? Or Emma’s mother?”
“I won’t know unless I find out,” Ridley answered imperturbably. Something crashed in the taproom; there was a confused gabble of voices. Ridley nodded speechlessly, dropped his hat on his head, and went one way quickly; Judd grasped his father’s arm and bore him the other.
He left Dugold in his rocker, raptly contemplating their good fortune, and descended into the kitchen to see what he had inherited from Mrs. Quinn. He found beef boiling merrily in a pot above the dying fire, and, in the oven, burning bread. He pulled the bread out in a cloud of smoke and thought briefly of tossing it onto the fire, for the loaves seemed to have the density and texture of nicely seasoned wood. He poked at the beef with a fork. The prongs bounced off the meat. He pulled the pot off the hook, set it on the floor, and contemplated, with some bitterness, what might have appeared on his plate in the guise of supper.
He put his hand in his pocket, counted what came out of it. He went back upstairs to the taproom, where the three Quinns were busy transforming the room into total chaos.
“I’ll be back,” he told them tersely.
Halfway down the cliff road into town, he met Gwyneth Blair and her sister Pandora, walking up the road toward the inn.
He stopped, wordless, entranced by that long golden hair streaming back from Gwyneth’s face, then suddenly scattering every which way as the wind changed its mind and turned. She was laughing; so was her younger sister, and Judd felt his own mouth tugged into a smile.
“What?” he demanded. “Did I forget to take my apron off?”
“We were coming to have tea with you!” Pandora exclaimed. “And here you are.”
“And lucky you are,” he told them. “The inn is in shambles, and I’ve taken Mrs. Quinn out of the kitchen to put everything back together again. There’s no one left to boil water for you.”
“Oh,” Gwyneth said, her brows crooking above her lenses. “Is this to do with Miss Beryl? We’ve been hearing rumors.”
“Already?”
“Dr. Grantham told my father that he’d received a note from her. Is she staying with you?”
“No, only some of her party. Which inspired me to ban Mrs. Quinn from the kitchen. So now I must find another cook. Do you know of any cooks at loose ends, roaming about Sealey Head begging for a position?”
“Let me give it some thought . . . Are you absolutely adamant that you’ll give us no tea?”
“You’ll thank me,” he assured her. Then he paused, struck by a likely possibility; he added slowly, “Mr. Dow might find it well within his capabilities to boil water, but he has fled the scene as well. I’m very sorry. I’m on my way to find something to replace the disaster in the kitchen that was to be our supper. Since I got rid of the cook, I seem to be responsible for feeding people.”
“Ah, well,” she said composedly. “Another time, then. Though—” She hesitated, an odd expression in her eyes as she gazed over his shoulder at the inn on the bluff. “I did want a word with Mr. Dow.”
“Ah.”
“Has he mentioned magic to you?”
“Once or twice. He gave me a book to read. It’s quite entertaining, a sort of romance about some sorcerer who came to Sealey Head long ago.”
“Really?” A little color fanned across her cheekbones; he recognized, in her eyes, the cupidity of another whose reason was lost to books. “May I read it when you’re finished?”
“It may be a while, if I actually have to stop reading and behave like an innkeeper.”
“Perhaps your guests won’t stay long,” she said fervently, then laughed at herself as he smiled. “I’m sorry. I can imagine a little of what all this means to the inn. First the wealthy Mr. Dow and now Miranda Beryl’s entourage. But what am I thinking, keeping you standing here when you must go hunting up a cook? I’d ask at the bakery, if I were you. And I’ll ask Aunt Phoebe. She might know someone who knows someone. Pandora!” she called abruptly to her sister, who was bent over and digging perilously at something down the side of the cliff. “Be careful! The wind will push you right over.”
Pandora straightened finally. “I’ve found a perfect fossil!”
“Good for you! Come over here before you become one at the bottom of the cliff.” She looked at Judd, seemed to read the thought in his eyes, to hear the words lined up in his impulsively opened mouth. “I promised to take her to the top of Sealey Head,” she said apologetically. “Otherwise, we would walk with you back into town. She wants to see if she can see the ghostly ship going under as the bell rings.”
“That’s a couple of hours from now, and a walk back in the twilight,” he reminded her gravely.
“I know. I doubt we’ll stay out that long today. Do you still?”
“Do I—”
“Still look for the ghost ship?”
“Of course. Always, if I’m watching the sunset.”
“Mr. Dow seems to think the bell has nothing to do with a ship,” she said puzzledly. “I wanted to ask him what he truly thinks. But we always seem surrounded by Sproules, when we meet, so it’s hard to talk coherently about ghosts.”
“I noticed.”
She threw him a sudden, mischievous smile. “That’s partly why I promised Pandora this excursion. And if we go back down too soon, they’ll most likely be there still in the parlor with Aunt Phoebe.”
“Ah,” he said, enlightened and relieved, at least on that score. He added, reluctant to bring the wealthy and charming Mr. Dow into the conversation again, but it seemed only fair to tell her, “Ridley Dow seems to think the bell has something to do with Aislinn House.”
“Really?” she said, astonished. “How could it? The house never had a bell tower, did it? And there’s no local lore suggesting a connection.”
“That’s where he is now, trying to find Hesper Wood and all her local lore. He thinks she must know something about the bell.”
“Why on earth?”
“I have no idea, beyond that she is obsessed with the history of the inhabitants of Sealey Head.”
“Tenuous,” she remarked after a moment.
“Perhaps. But sometimes strangers see something more clearly than those who have been looking at it all their lives.”
“Well. I’m working on my own theory about the bell. It does involve Aislinn House, but many other aspects of Sealey Head as well.”
“You’re writing this?”
She nodded, flushing again. “The twins like it.”
“I’ll trade you Ridley’s book for a glimpse of it,” he said promptly.
She laughed. “That’s unfair! How can I say no? But you’ll have to wait; I’m still working my theory out.”
“Maybe by then, there will be someone in the kitchen to make you tea. I hope you’ll come again,” he added. “I can promise you access to any number of odd books. And I’d love to read one of your tales.”
She studied him silently a moment, then gave a little nod. Her gray eyes, he saw, were the exact shade of the clouds gathering at the edge of the world, preparing to grapple the sun into the sea. “I remember we used to like the same books when we were young,” she said. “I’d like you to read what I’m writing.” She turned, shading her eyes. “Pan—Oh.”
Her sister was with them suddenly, a whirlwind of lavender skirts and dark, wild hair. She held out her hand, showed them the spiral shell caught in crumbling layers of stone. “Mr. Trent has a book of drawings of fossils. I’m going to see if this matches any of them. I’m sorry you didn’t have tea for us,” she told Judd. “I liked your Mr. Dow.”
“We’ll come again,” Gwyneth promised.
Smiling, Judd watched them pushing uphill against the wind, skirts billowing and twisting around their ankles, until he remembered, with a start and a sudden turn, the ruins of overcooked supper and the triumphant Mrs. Quinn who awaited him if he returned empty-handed from his quest.
Ten
They were not your ordinary merchant sailors,
Gwyneth wrote the following morning in her tiny room under the eaves.
Not hairy and hardworking, dressed in blue gabardine trousers and mostly barefoot. Nor were they in any kind of uniform. Nor, Mr. Blair hastened to assure himself through the end of his telescope, were they pirates, unless the wild marauders of the deep seas wore breeches and coats of silk all the hues of mother-of-pearl, and boots so brightly polished they reflected sunlight like metal. Like the ship, they carried no arms, no pistols or swords. At least, he amended grimly, none were visible. And, oddly enough, no hats. As the ship had turned from the channel into the harbor, he had noticed something even stranger. The vessel slowed as sail was taken in, but Mr. Blair could see no one at all—no bustling sailors, bellowing in answer to orders below, clambering among the rigging on the masts, loosening,
taking in, taking up—no one tending to the sails at all. It seemed as though they cupped their windward hollows to a wish, like giant ears, luffed in answer, and rolled themselves up.
The ship glided to the center of the harbor, lowered an anchor, and sat there admiring its reflection. It seemed, with its colors and lovely grace in the limpid, blue-gray water, like some rare bird come to light upon the waters of Sealey Head.
Nothing happened.
Mr. Blair waited.
Nothing happened.
He heard steps pounding up the stairs to his office on the second floor of the warehouse along the docks. He kept the telescope trained on the ship, waiting for the splash of a longboat, a raised flag, even a blast on a hunting horn from that odd crew: any kind of a courtesy signal greeting Sealey Head and assuring the populace of friendly intentions.
Nothing.
The door opened; his son Jarret, lithe and dark-haired, stood panting, staring over Mr. Blair’s shoulder out the grimy mullioned window. “Did you see what—”
“Yes.”
“Who in the world—”
“I have no idea.”
They were not the only ones watching the ship. Sir Magnus Sproule, riding despondently back to his house after viewing his desiccated fields, and pleading vociferously with the cloudless sky, had reined in his horse along the cliff. He sat there staring in disbelief at the elegant vessel. “Lost,” he muttered finally, but made no move to ride away. On the other cusp of the town, on Sealey Head itself, the innkeeper, Anscom Cauley, crouched on his roof and hammering down patches over the leaks, had been transfixed as well by the unexpected
sight. He felt his face trying to do something it had nearly forgotten how: to smile. “Guests,” he breathed. And in Aislinn House, becalmed and morose in its penniless state, Lord Aislinn’s daughter, Eloise, gazed down the hillside at the gleaming ship. Her small, mushroom brown eyes took on a gleam unaccounted for by the gloomy shadows. “Wealth,” she saw, and “men,” perhaps even “marriageable men.” At that point in her tedious life, she would have wedded the Pirate King himself just to get away from Aislinn House and her dissolute father.