The Bell at Sealey Head Read online

  “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.

  And as they watched, they were watched.

  “Gwyneth!” Aunt Phoebe called from the bottom of the attic stairs. “Are you coming?”

  Gwyneth jumped, having forgotten, for the moment, which world she inhabited: her aunt’s voice boomed incongruously across the yardarm of the mysterious ship.

  “Coming!” she answered, wondering where, and then remembered: she had promised to accompany Phoebe for various errands along Water Street. She left her page to dry, wiped her pen nib, and capped the ink, all while getting to her feet and dodging, out of habit, the sharply sloping roof.

  She opened the door, peered down; her aunt had already bustled away, calling to the twins. Gwyneth, still feeling the tidal pull of her story, closed the door firmly and regretfully upon it, and went down to join Phoebe.

  The young maid Ivy was with her, looking flurried, her arms full of Dulcie. “I can’t find them, ma’am.”

  Phoebe put her fingers delicately to her eyes while her voice gathered power enough to be heard behind couches in the parlor, potted palms in the library, and whatever books the twins might have vanished into.

  “Pandora! Crispin! I need you to watch Dulcie while we are gone! Those two. They melt into the air at any hint of responsibility. You’ll have to find them, Ivy.”

  The girl’s eyes grew wide. “Yes, ma’am. But ma’am, the cook wants me to run to the butcher for a pork roast she forgot—”

  How does one forget a pork roast? Gwyneth wondered, then thought, for some reason, of Judd. Cook, she remembered. Cook.

  “Ivy, do you know anyone looking for a position as cook? Mr. Cauley at the inn is desperate.”

  The maid gave a faint giggle and slid her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, miss. It’s just we’ve been wondering what he was going to do about Mrs. Quinn.”

  “If you hear or think of anyone, will you tell me? And ask the cook.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Meanwhile,” Aunt Phoebe demanded fulminately of the chandelier, “what are we to do about the twins?”

  Mr. Blair threw open the library door. “I cannot hear myself think,” he said testily, then bellowed like a bull, “Twins! I’ve heard less noise from an army taking over a government and dethroning a king.”

  “I’m sorry, Toland,” Aunt Phoebe said a trifle crisply. “They’re apparently in hiding; we’re all going out and—”

  “Yes. I heard.” He held out his arms. “Give Dulcie to me. I’ll find the twins. Stop grinning, you little bundle of trouble. I’ll put you in the cage with the parrot. Pandora!”

  “Yes, Father?” she said, gliding with dignity down the stairs behind him. “What is everyone shouting about? I’ve only been in my room, trying to finish a sentence in my diary.”

  “It must have been an excruciatingly long sentence,” Aunt Phoebe said acridly. “We’re going out. Watch the child.”

  “Of course, Aunt Phoebe,” Pandora said mildly, receiving the bundle and setting her on her feet. “Come, child. We’ll go and teach the par
rot some new words.”

  Phoebe opened her mouth, closed it, watching their slow amble down the hall toward the parlor. She closed her eyes. “Toland.”

  “Yes, Phoebe.”

  “The parrot is stuffed.”

  “Fortunately, don’t you think, knowing the twins?”

  He disappeared back into the library. Aunt Phoebe gripped Gwyneth’s arm.

  “I need air,” she said. “Now.”

  On the street, her hold loosened a little; the brisk wind from the sea, the busy, glittering water behind the shops along the harbor, the smiles and greetings of townspeople growing more and more familiar to her, eased the severity of her expression, replaced it with one that made Gwyneth suddenly wary. Her aunt shifted closer to her, patted her arm a couple of times, mentioned idly that they must remember to go to the confectioner’s for tea cakes, since the Sproules would surely stop by that afternoon.

  “Especially since they missed you yesterday,” she said.

  Gwyneth, who was absently searching the harbor for the ship in her story, blinked at the suddenly meaningful note in her aunt’s voice.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Pandora and I went for a walk.”

  “Raven especially expressed his disappointment that you weren’t home. Couldn’t you have taken your walk earlier in the day?”

  “I was working earlier.”

  “Writing.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are a well-to-do merchant’s daughter being courted—very seriously, I must say—by the squire’s son and heir. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  “I was trying not to,” Gwyneth sighed. “Aunt Phoebe, I know he’s nice enough, and very sweet to Dulcie. But—”

  “Obviously longing for a family of his own,” Phoebe said briskly. “Outside of niceness and sweetness, what objections could you possibly have? His family is wealthy and eminently respectable; you could not find a better match in these parts, except at Aislinn House, and there is no one eligible for you there. Not that the family would even consider a merchant’s daughter. That the Sproules would is to their credit, and obviously only because of the strong feelings the young man has for you.”

  “Aunt Phoebe, they are descended from farmers! Now, they’re farmers with a title.”

  “Well, at any rate, you don’t have one,” Phoebe said a trifle nebulously, “and he does. Or will. Well. Besides that, I mean. Do you have objections to his suit?”

  “Yes, I have objections,” Gwyneth said roundly; her aunt’s fingers, tightening again on her arm, checked her impulse to stride. “We don’t have a thing in common to talk about; he has no chin; he is better at charming you and Dulcie than me; I suspect that at heart he believes that marriage is the proper cure for a woman who writes. And he thinks a great deal too highly of himself. He loves himself far more than I could ever love him.”

  Phoebe was silent. They passed the stationer’s shop. Gwyneth cast a wistful glance into the window, saw Mr. Trent placing the latest fashionable novel to advantage on the windowsill.

  Will I? she wondered wistfully. Will my name? Will complete strangers read mine? What, she thought more coherently, is Aunt Phoebe thinking?

  Her aunt told her abruptly. “Are you in love with someone else?”

  Gwyneth froze half a step; her aunt’s fingers finally slid away. “No,” she answered fiercely. “Of course not. That has nothing whatsoever to do with my feelings about Raven Sproule. Must we talk about this? He might as easily fall in love with somebody else next week.”

  “He might,” Phoebe agreed. “That’s why I think you should encourage him a little more. Be home when he comes to call. Talk to him. You gave most of your attention last time to Mr. Cauley and Mr. Dow. That was good of you to be solicitous of Mr. Cauley, who has been going through difficult times. But you don’t seem to notice his feelings toward you, and it isn’t fair of you to encourage him.”

  Gwyneth stared at her aunt, felt the warmth, despite the wind, in her face. “What feelings?”

  “Mr. Dow, of course, is another question.” She paused again, revealing to her fascinated niece what kind of question. “Wealthy, well-mannered, very sympathetic, very handsome. I don’t blame you if you have discovered feelings for him.”

  “Mr. Dow,” Gwyneth echoed faintly.

  “But we don’t really know anything at all about him. It’s wiser not to risk your future on the unknown, the charming stranger whose own heart might already be taken, and lose both him and the comfortable life you might have had with the more familiar.”

  Gwyneth stepped wordlessly around a pile of crab traps a fisher was unloading at the end of a dock. “You don’t think Mr. Dow could love me?” she asked finally. Her aunt, she realized, had just handed her the plot of the previous latest fashionable novel. She might as well use it to cloud the issue, since Phoebe didn’t want to hear anything Gwyneth had to say, anyway.

  Her arm was taken again, gently. “I would think far less of Mr. Dow if he couldn’t. I see no reason why he shouldn’t. But he may have very good reasons: family obligations, or an engagement of his own in Landringham, for example. He frequents quite a different world from Sealey Head and has a life there of which we know nothing. Besides, you wouldn’t dream, I hope, of living so far from your family.”

  “I lived most of three years there,” Gwyneth reminded her, “and here I am, back again. I missed the wildness here. The sense of living on the edge of the world, the borders of the unknown.”

  “Your father would be very glad to hear that. He would miss you if you went to live anywhere else. And Raven Sproule would give you the best of all reasons to stay here in Sealey Head. Far be it from me to tell you what to do,” she added, as Gwyneth opened her mouth. “I am only trying to give you a sense of direction you seem to lack. Just think about what I’ve said. And—Oh! Here’s the chandler’s; we’re running low on candles. And then to the grocer’s for tea. I’m glad we were able to talk, Gwyneth. Sometimes our lives are so full of people we can’t hear what anyone is saying.”

  “Indeed,” Gwyneth breathed dazedly, and followed her aunt into the shop, where they found Judd Cauley placing a very large order for the inn.

  “I hope, Mr. Cauley, you will spare a few for us,” Aunt Phoebe said affably.

  He looked even more harried than usual, Gwyneth saw as he turned to greet them. But, meeting his eyes, she found the pleased smile in them, and then felt her own. As simple as that, she thought, then wondered what that meant.

  “Are you ready for your onslaught of company?” she asked.

  “I’m dreading it,” he confessed. “The inn is in complete confusion; I still don’t have a cook, and we seem to have driven away our sole lodger with our noise and disorder and my cooking. I haven’t seen Mr. Dow since yesterday.”

  “If he reappears, please send him to us for his tea,” Aunt Phoebe said with bewildering inconsistency.

  “Thank you, Miss Blair; I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

  “We’ll send word immediately if we find a cook for you,” Gwyneth promised.

  “Just send the cook,” he pleaded. “I can make do as long as we have to feed only ourselves and rumor. But the truth of the matter will appear under our inn sign tomorrow, and if I must send them all into town to eat, I doubt they’ll be with us long.”

  “There’s my cousin,” Ross Carbery, the chandler, said abruptly. “You might talk to her. She cooks nicely, and since her husband was laid up with a fever and is too weak yet to go out in his boat, she’s had to take in mending and laundry.”

  “Of course I know Hazel,” Judd said gratefully. “I’d be happy to give her a try.”

  “She’s just a door or two down on Mackerel Street. I don’t know how she’d feel about cooking for a crowd. But she’s got a cool head and busy hands; she might just do.”

  “Good. I’ll go there immediately. Thank you, Ross.” He nodded farewell, backing toward the door; his eyes returned to Gwyneth. “Next time you ask me for tea, I mig
ht just have it for you, Miss Blair.”

  “I’ll hold you to your challenge, Mr. Cauley.”

  “Whatever did he mean?” Aunt Phoebe asked with mystification of the closing door.

  “Pandora and I got tired walking up Sealey Head yesterday,” Gwyneth explained, and found herself smiling at the memory. “We begged Mr. Cauley for tea, but he wouldn’t give it to us.”

  Phoebe pulled the door open; the cowbell rattled alarmingly. She pronounced judgment tartly as they stepped into the street.

  “How very peculiar of you both.”

  GWYNETH wrote in the scant hour she had free between errands and tea: