She opened her mouth, found herself wordless. She could only laugh with delight and longing at the preposterous idea, a sudden, merry peal that brought Dulcie scampering toward her, and, following, Aunt Phoebe.
“My dear,” Phoebe said, amazed, “what can Mr. Cauley have been saying to you?”
“He worried that my literary efforts will make me so famous I might leave Sealey Head and wander about the world like my father.”
“Litterforts!” Dulcie cried, pushing her face gleefully into Gwyneth’s skirt.
“Indeed,” Gwyneth said, swooping the child up into her arms. “Say good day to Mr. Judd Cauley, whom you last met, I believe, when you were a bubbling infant. Most days, I do not believe, Mr. Cauley, that my litterforts will find their ways out from under my bed.”
“Fortunately,” Aunt Phoebe said, her voice abruptly booming like one of the conch shells, “your father will be able to provide for you, in any event, so you needn’t—Ah.” The door opened behind Gwyneth. She watched, amused, as Phoebe’s face rearranged itself into a familiar pleased expression before she remembered the amiable and wealthy Mr. Dow, and her pleasure wavered into sudden confusion.
“The bird,” Dulcie announced briefly, chewing a finger thoughtfully over Gwyneth’s shoulder. Daria’s sprightly laugh preceded them into the company.
Dr. Grantham joined them a little later, on his way back from Aislinn House. Aunt Phoebe summoned her brother and a bottle of sherry, for which the doctor seemed most grateful.
Toland, bypassing commonplaces, asked the question on everyone’s mind: “How is Lady Eglantyne?”
Even Daria was silent, blinking moistly at the doctor. He sipped sherry and sighed.
“This is wonderful. It brings out the sun in your veins, even in a windowless room.”
“The grapes on the tiny island where it is made have nothing to do all day but grow fat with light.”
“Perhaps it might benefit Lady Eglantyne,” Daria suggested, herding them back to the topic.
Dr. Grantham sighed again, put down his glass. “Very little change,” he said bluntly, “and none for the better. She seems content to dream her life away. I have warned the family solicitors that if they don’t send for her heir immediately, I will. An idle threat, since I have no idea where to write. I thought you might know someone, Toland, who knows someone?”
“Indeed I do,” Toland said quickly. He plucked the bottle off the tea tray. “Come with me to the library; I have an address there for someone closely acquainted with the young lady. Quite a glitter she sheds in Landringham society, I’m told. I suspect Sealey Head will be a shock to her.”
The silence he left behind was broken by Daria’s slow, tidal flow of indrawn breath. “Oh,” she cried, trembling with the idea, “we must give a party for her!”
“Surely not on such a sad occasion,” Aunt Phoebe said doubtfully, and Raven nodded shortly.
“Great-aunt dying in her bed and all that,” he murmured.
But their expressions disagreed with them; they were silent again, seeking ways around the unfortunate event.
“A quiet party,” Daria said. “To welcome the newcomer to Sealey Head, acquaint her with her neighbors. You shall all be invited, of course. And Mr. Trent, and all the Trevor boys and everyone else who is agreeable, or with whom she might do business. And you must come, Mr. Dow! Being from Landringham yourself, you must know her.”
“I know of her,” Ridley Dow said, after a tiny, surprising hesitation. He seemed oddly wary, Gwyneth realized, still affable, but choosing his words with care. “As Mr. Blair intimated, she travels in exalted circles, generally unfrequented by dull scholars. Anyway, I am away from the city much of the time.”
“Surely not,” Daria murmured, smiling and surveying him under her eloquent lashes. “Surely never dull.”
“Can you at least tell us her name?” Gwyneth asked. He seemed reluctant to do even that, she saw with sudden, avid interest.
“Miss Beryl,” he answered briefly. “Miranda Beryl.”
“Soon to be Lady Beryl,” Daria breathed, “of Aislinn House. Please tell us you’ve met her!”
“I believe we have met,” Ridley conceded, after a swift, wordless appeal across the room to Judd. “Once. At least once. Very briefly. I doubt she would remember.”
“But you do? Tell us, Mr. Dow, is she very beautiful?”
Something hit the floorboards near the mahogany shelves. Glass splintered. A smell of fish oil pervaded the room. Judd, his face scarlet, bent to rescue the fish jaws, and sent strands of seashells clattering off the shelf with his elbow, then bumped a tall wooden shield balanced against the wall. It rapped him back and landed with a bang in the pool of oil.
“Again!” Dulcie instructed with delight. Gwyneth put her down quickly, went to help the besieged innkeeper.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, shaking with what looked like acute embarrassment or an imminent explosion of laughter.
“Never mind,” Aunt Phoebe said with unexpected gallantry. “Is it the fish-jaw lantern, I hope? Leave it. We can’t stay in here with that dreadful smell. Let’s join Toland in the library. Gwyneth, help me with the tea trays. Pandora, you call Ivy to clear it—Pandora? Where is that child? Always vanishing, the pair of them. Gwyneth, you call Ivy, and Mr. Cauley will help me with the tea things.”
“Are you sure you trust me with them?” Judd asked, wending his way cautiously around a spiky bamboo chair.
“Of course. You would not dare drop my second-best teapot.”
In the library, Dr. Grantham snared Judd to ask about his father; Raven and Daria gravitated toward Toland to question him further about this friend of his who flowed in the bright wake of the heir to Aislinn House. Gwyneth, pouring fresh tea, found herself gazing into Ridley Dow’s parched cup.
She refilled it, aware of his dark, speculative gaze behind his spectacles. She set the teapot down and met it, every bit as curious as he.
“Judd told me you think the bell has to do with magic,” she said. “When he said the word, I realized I had no idea what it means. Outside of a fairy tale, I mean. What might magic be in the prosaic little world of Sealey Head? When a fishing boat sinks into the deep, not a wish or a word will bring it up again. You’d think if magic were around, that’s one of the first things people might do with it.”
He nodded. “Bring the dead to life. Surely that would be an enormously powerful impulse.” He sipped tea, went on slowly, “I tend to believe that there are varying degrees of power.”
“Power.”
“Magical ability. When you learn to read, you begin with very simple words, very short sentences. So, I think, magic is learned. One small word at a time.”
“What word?” she asked, entranced. “Give me an example.”
“Well. For instance, the bell. Suppose it has nothing at all to do with the sea.”
“Oh,” she said, disconcerted, thinking of her latest tale.
“In theory,” he assured her. “In life, anything is possible.
Suppose, in some complex world just beyond our eyesight, the bell is rung by someone very much alive and not at all wet.”
“Oh,” she said again, disappointed now. “But I’ve written such things many times, Mr. Dow. The only true magic is in my pen. You can no more find that world within Sealey Head than you can dive headfirst into a piece of paper.”
He smiled. “I would like to read those stories, Miss Blair.”
“You are changing the subject. Is magic so difficult to define?”
“Perhaps the bell isn’t a good place to start. It is subject to all kinds of explanations, none of which can be proven or disproven.” He took another sip of tea, meditated a moment. “Think of some action you never think about doing, you just do. Lighting a candle. Shutting a door. Putting your cup down on your saucer.”