Free The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia McKillip

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