“A fascinating, admirable woman!” Raven exclaimed, as they waited for their horses.
“So beautiful,” Daria murmured, clasping Gwyneth’s arm. “Oh, I can hardly wait for the party. Can you, Gwyneth? Though I am not sure that I quite liked her friend, Mr. Moren, did you, Gwyneth?” She watched her brother pawing the gravel like a steed, his eyes on a flock of warblers flitting overhead, and whispered, without waiting for Gwyneth’s opinion that, indeed, she found Mr. Moren unsettling, yet somehow intriguing, “Raven seems a bit smitten. But don’t pay any attention to it. Men get this way. I’ve read about it. It’s like a rash. They wake one morning, and it’s gone. Now,” she said aloud, as Miss Beryl’s stablers brought their horses up, “let us go over to the inn and find Mr. Dow, who is spending entirely too much time without us.”
They continued their journey back downhill and around the harbor, where Gwyneth’s thoughts strayed to her mysterious ship, anchored, surely, just in that brilliant splash of light rippling across the bay. Not pirates, she determined, nor faery, nor from any earthly realm. But what then? And from where?
Beyond the town, they rode abreast up the headland, Raven in the middle, where he veered randomly between discussing the details of the party with Daria and extolling the remarkable qualities of Lady Eglantyne’s heir.
“Such grace and composure in her time of trouble. Not only must she tend to her great-aunt, but she must keep her friends amused as well. We must help her in that as best we can.” He cast a solemn look at each of the young women beside him. “I expect you will be able to come up with suitable ideas to entertain her. I can think of nothing better than a brisk ride every morning. Perhaps along the waves. The sea air would do her good.”
The sea air was busy tying Gwyneth’s hair in knots and trying to push them all out of their saddles. Daria clamped her hat, a straw confection wreathed in pale green tulle, on her head with one arm; its broad brim flapped, tried to fly. Down the cliff, the waves boomed like cannon fire against the rocks and broke with frothy glee. A pair of seals dived effortlessly in and out of the tide. Gwyneth watched them, envying their grace, their composure in the wild waters.
Seals, she thought. Selkies. Sea people.
Princes of the sea.
Come to Sealey Head for...
“Sealey Head,” she said aloud, involuntarily. She felt the Sproules’ eyes on her, and turned to meet them, smiling. “Sorry. I was lost in my story.”
“The pirate story?” Daria asked eagerly.
“No. Not pirates,” she said firmly. “Better than pirates.”
“What an extraordinary thing to be thinking about after visiting Aislinn House,” Raven remarked. Gwyneth, glancing at him, wondered why his uplifted profile seemed more parroty than usual. Exaltedly beaky.
“One must think of something,” she said, amused. “Presumably Miss Beryl is thinking enough about death and its awesome responsibilities for us all.”
“Yes, but pirates?”
“It’s the way my mind works. I doubt that any chiding or lecturing will change it, since I feel most comfortable this way.”
Raven found nothing to say to that, which he said with significant silence the last quarter mile to the inn. Daria chattered for all of them. Gwyneth’s thoughts rode ahead to the inn, where the innkeeper would come out smiling to welcome them to his suddenly bustling establishment. Or not smiling, she remembered abruptly, if he had not found a decent cook for the crowd.
And crowd there seemed to be, judging from horses saddled in the yard, awaiting riders, from the carriage being readied, from neatly, soberly dressed underlings venturing out to the cliff edge to marvel at the sea. Were they all leaving so soon? she wondered with concern. Had the worst occurred already: Mrs. Quinn had cooked them breakfast?
But the innkeeper, helping Mr. Quinn with the carriage, smiled with pleased surprise upon them as they rode into his yard.
“Welcome,” he called. Raven, surrounded by horses, dismounted quickly, and, with one of his unexpected and charming gestures, went to help with the very handsome matched set of four grays being harnessed to the carriage. Judd relinquished the task to him and came to greet the ladies.
“You found a cook,” Gwyneth guessed immediately, and he laughed.
“An exceptional one came to my door in the nick of time. He spent the last twenty years at sea, cooking for any number of people; he was completely undaunted by the impending throng from Landringham and cooked an amazing supper for them that brought praise even from Mrs. Quinn. But what brings you here on such a boisterous day?”
“What, indeed!” Daria exclaimed, dismounting with a sigh. “I thought the wind would blow us out among the gulls. We have come to recapture Mr. Dow’s attention; he has been neglecting us all, and we miss him.”
“Oh.” Judd’s smile vanished. “You haven’t seen him, either, then.”
“He’s not here?” Daria said incredulously. “After we rode all this way?”
“You don’t know where he is?” Gwyneth asked, surprised. “When did you last see him?”
“Several days ago,” Judd said slowly. “He said he was going to ride into the woods to look for Hesper.”
“Hesper?”
“Why Hesper?” Daria demanded fretfully. “What could he want with the wood witch?”
Judd shook his head. “Something about that bell and Aislinn House. That’s all he said.” He glanced down the cliff toward the shadowy trees on the hill behind the harbor. “I haven’t seen him since.”
“Is he staying somewhere else?” Gwyneth suggested, though it hardly seemed likely. “He wouldn’t do that without telling you.”
“All his things are still here. All his books. He hasn’t even been back for a change of clothes, so far as I know. And you know how he likes to dress. Mr. Trent hasn’t seen him, either.”
“Aunt Phoebe asked after him; he hasn’t come to tea again.”
“He seems to have vanished ... What trouble could he possibly have gotten into between here and Aislinn House?”
Gwyneth looked back at him silently, equally mystified. Daria, her eyes flickering between their faces, filled her lungs abruptly and bellowed across the yard in a voice not even her brother recognized, “Raven! Stop dawdling among the horses and come here! We are riding back to Aislinn House.”
She had mounted and turned her horse onto the road before her bewildered brother extricated himself from the carriage harness. Gwyneth sighed, moved reluctantly to her horse.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Judd. “We are never able to talk.”
“No,” he agreed somberly. “Let me know if you find him?” She nodded; he added quickly, “Let me know if you don’t.”
“Yes,” she said, and followed the impulsive Daria. Midway down the headland, Raven, raising a formidable army of arguments, including rudeness, inconvenience, and the prospect of disturbing Lady Eglantyne, finally persuaded his sister not to gallop back to Aislinn House and announce her intention to search for the missing Mr. Dow in the closets or under the beds.
“Miss Beryl would surely have mentioned it if he were staying there,” he said at least half a dozen times. “She seemed quite surprised that he might be in Sealey Head at all. He probably left town suddenly on business, and of course he will be back. He would have told us otherwise.”
Gwyneth stopped with relief in front of her house, let them return to Sproule Manor without her.
Daria, leaning from her saddle, whispered fiercely, “Keep looking for him; so shall I. Let me know if you hear anything at all.”
“I will. I promise.”
Gwyneth watched them ride sedately down the street, Raven leading the horse she had ridden, and no doubt thinking of Miranda Beryl, his sister riding silently beside him, her thoughts no doubt in a turmoil over Mr. Ridley Dow.
Sproules in love, she thought with wonder, and went upstairs quickly, before Aunt Phoebe noticed she was back, to continue her story.
She wrote:
