"Where are they off to?" Lady Dorothea inquired curiously.
"Up the mountain," he told her. "There is some sort of local legend about a ruined castle atop the ridge, and they are to meet up with several of George's friends from Oxford who have been riding about the countryside. They will return with the children later for a stay of several weeks here at Tretower Wells. Quite nice young fellows, they are. Olympia 's betrothed, Sir Halsey Halstead, and two others, Sir Frederick Galton and Sir Thomas Small. Perfectly eligible, both of them, m'dear, or had you forgotten?" he grinned at his wife.
"They are indeed eligible! You are correct, Rumford! I had quite forgotten that Freddie Galton and Tom Small were coming to Tretower Wells." Lady Marcella had brightened considerably.
"Sir Thomas Small? Isn't he Baron Lindell? Why, he came into his money when he was just five years old. Raised by a spinster aunt. I went to school with Emily Small," Lady Dorothea said excitedly. "He's fabulously wealthy, y'know! Has properties in India and the Americas as well. The money comes from tea, and furs, I'm told, not to mention huge holdings in land."
"Indeed?" Lady Marcella said, almost purring, her blue eyes dancing with interest. "We have only met him twice. Once at Oxford, and once when George brought him home between terms. He is a handsome young man, rather dramatically so, I thought. I was not aware of his most excellent background, my dear Dorothea. How kind of you to enlighten me. He is certainly a very possible match for our Honoria. He is not betrothed, is he?" she asked anxiously.
"I have not heard of it if he is," Dorothea Thorley replied, delighted to have known something that her formidable friend did not.
"Then perhaps it is better I did not send a chaperone along with the children," Lady Marcella decided out loud. "They will feel freer to get to know one another in a more informal setting. Oh, I do hope Honoria will not do anything unseemly to put this worthy gentleman off," she fretted.
"Do not distress yourself about Honoria, my dear," her husband said. "She is just a bit high-spirited. Most gentlemen find that charming in a young girl."
Lady Marcella looked once again in the direction that the riders had gone, but the shaggy little Welsh ponies were long out of sight. She frowned.
"Why, I vow I can actually feel Mama worrying that she has let us go without a proper chaperone," Miss Olympia Bowen said as they trotted along.
Her siblings laughed, and then her brother Anscom said, "I believe I should censure you for such an unfilial thought, my dear sister."
"You're no parson yet, Anny," Olympia replied tartly.
"And I should not be at all had not George been so discourteous as to be born before me," Anscom Bowen replied mischievously.
"Do not blame me," George Bowen replied. "Have you any idea at all the difficulties involved in being the heir? I should just as soon study for nice quiet Holy Orders, Anny, as be responsible for Bowenbrooke House in London, and Bowenwood Manor in Worcestershire, and of course, first and foremost, by appointment to His Majesty, Bowen's Best, the Tea of Royalty."
The riders laughed again, and then Miss Honoria Bowen said, "And do not forget, Georgie, that Mama is counting upon you to marry some wickedly rich and fecund young heiress."
"Rich and fecund heiresses are usually horse-faced. I must have a pretty wife, or none at all," he told them. "It's only fair."
"I am quite insulted, George," their cousin Miss Katherine Williams said. "I am most wickedly rich, although I do not know if I am fecund, but I am certainly not horse-faced."
"Then marry me, Kitty, and put an end to all our troubles. Mama will be looking for a husband for you as soon as she has settled Honoria, I warn you!"
"Dear George!" Kitty reached out and patted his hand with hers. "You deserve a girl who loves you unabashedly, and I deserve a man whom I can love forevermore. Neither of us is that person for the other, and well you know it."
"You are a most unrepentant romantic, dear Kitty," Olympia told her.
"Do you not love Sir Halsey then, cousin?" Kitty probed.
The Honorable Miss Olympia Bowen blushed to the roots of her short chestnut-brown hair, but said boldly, "I most certainly do love Halsey! He is the best of men!"
"Then will you not allow me the same good fortune as you yourself have found?" her cousin asked.
"Love! Love! Love! Is that all you silly creatures are going to talk about?" demanded Lieutenant Darius Bowen, of His Majesty's Bengal Lancers. "This castle we're off to see was, I am told, in a most perfectly and naturally fortified setting. It was, so legend says, never successfully captured in a war."
"Then why is it deserted, little brother?" George Bowen asked.
"I've absolutely no idea," Darius answered with a shrug. "The family probably gained properties in the lowlands, and decided to come down off their mountain in a safe century. Why on earth live in such an out-of-the-way place if you didn't have to, I say!"
"Mr. Tretower, the original owner of the wells, says that the castle once belonged to a family of sorcerer princes," Honoria told them. Honoria, like her father, and youngest brother, was a blond with huge, ingenuous blue eyes. Her hair, as her elder sister and cousin's, was cut fashionably close to her head, a la Grecque. Her tiny ringlets were most appealing. She was petite in a family of tall women, which was considered most odd.
"Mr. Tretower says," Honoria continued, "that his great-grammy was always talking about the sorcerer prince, and his beautiful wife, and some terrible tragedy that separated them."
"The usual Welsh fairy tale," Olympia said dryly.
Ignoring her, Honoria continued, "Mr. Tretower's great-grammy used to cry whenever she told him the story. She said she could just feel the sadness in the very stones of the ruins. Isn't that just simply wonderful!" At seventeen, Honoria was wildly romantic.
"Mr. Tretower," Olympia said, "has a Celtic flair for the dramatic. I expect he tells that Banbury tale to every gullible young girl who comes to the spa. Then he rents her one of his ponies to go off trekking for a day. A most profitable business, I think."
"It is not a Banbury tale!" Honoria said indignantly. "You believe me, Kitty, don't you?"
Katherine Williams did not hear her cousin, however. She was far too busy struggling with the strong sense of familiarity sweeping over her. I know where I'm going, she thought. I know precisely where I am going! Though a slightly startling revelation, it was not a particularly frightening one, for she had had such feelings of déjà vu before.
"Kitty!" Honoria's voice pushed insistently into her thoughts.
"What? Yes, Honoria, what is it?"
"Mr. Tretower did not tell me a Banbury tale just to rent us all ponies, did he? His story about the prince and his wife are true. I am certain it is!"
"Of course it is!" Kitty assured her, and then wondered why she had said the words with such conviction.
The ponies trotted across an ancient stone bridge spanning a rocky little river below, and Kitty felt her excitement mounting as they began their climb up. The narrow tract of a worn stone path that nature had definitely not fashioned was covered with lichens.
"Why, bless me! This seems to be a road of sorts," Olympia said, surprised.
"See!" Honoria crowed, kicking her pony's fat sides to hurry him forward that she might be first to the top.
The others followed her up the increasingly steep path that twisted and wound until finally, rounding a bend, they came upon what appeared to be the remains of some long-ago habitation in a clearing. The black stones soared in some places, lay tumbled in a forlorn heap in others. In some ways it almost seemed a part of the mountain itself.