No bonnet. Four hours of morning sun. Lavinia examined her face from every angle in the mirror mounted atop the oak dresser. All things considered, the damage had been minimal. She tolerated sun, it seemed, in larger doses than she tolerated strawberries. She looked blooming, rosy. The rosy nose was not optimal, of course. Rosiness, if it had to occur, should be of mild degree and confined to the upper cheeks. But at least her skin remained smooth.
She’d spent ages in the dim chancel of the church wrapping lichens in paper while Neal and the vicar alternately hammered and chiseled them off the rock wall. Maybe that sunless interlude had been her saving grace.
Before she left the well-appointed bedroom, she applied a thin coat of Varnham’s Ointment. A woman should be pictured on the advertisements, all dewiness. She’d tell Neal that this was an essential stratagem. Not her, of course. She’d suggest Emmeline.
Which reminded her.
She found Emmeline in the kitchen preparing lunch for the twins, milk pudding and soft-boiled eggs. Now or never. She plunged ahead without even a greeting. Their track record with pleasantries being what it was.
“Upstairs, in my trunk,” she began, “I have a gown, a lovely gown, lace and pale pink silk, from Paris.”
“How nice for you.” Emmeline dealt a severe blow to the egg in her hand and flicked shell at the table.
Lavinia could tell she’d best hurry to the point.
“It’s the perfect color for your complexion, and it would fit you perfectly, I know it would.” She had an eye for such things. The gown was unforgiving, cut in the slender style, the tight bodice extending all the way down to the hem, but Emmeline was slim and small breasted, within an inch of her height.
She took a deep breath. “I want to give it to you.”
Emmeline dropped the half-peeled egg onto a plate. Shocked. But not pleased. She crossed her arms. “I should wear your hand-me-down clothes, is that it?”
Lavinia sighed. After last night’s long, genial dinner, at which the near tragedy had been recounted for Kelyn—with lavish attention paid to each person’s role in averting it—she’d hoped that she and Emmeline might put their spat behind them. Hadn’t they united, albeit briefly, at the harbor?
Clearly, the girl still prickled at her slight.
“It was a beastly thing to say, and I’m sorry.” Well, that wasn’t so hard. But neither was it effective. Emmeline slid the remaining shell from the egg and began to savage the white blob with the back of a fork. Lavinia watched her for a moment.
Without looking up, Emmeline spoke in a voice as dry as sand.
“A gown from Paris. I could wear it to the Kyncastle opera.”
Lavinia flushed. Hadn’t she herself put on her most supercilious air and pointed out that Kyncastle offered nothing in the way of entertainments? On what occasion was Emmeline to put on Parisian finery?
“Well, you could wear it to a musical evening, a dance . . .” She trailed off. Neal had mentioned a midsummer festival in Penzance, but from Tomas and Kelyn’s response she’d gleaned it involved bonfires, which didn’t seem quite the thing.
Did all Cornish dancing occur at barbarous ceremonies for the blessing of hayricks or barrels of fish? There had to be gouty noblemen who hosted country balls somewhere on the northern coast. Why wasn’t Tomas leveraging his liniments, collecting invitations for his sisters?
Oh, bother. Emmeline really would look wonderful in that pink silk.
“You could wear it tonight,” she said, slowly, as the notion took shape. “If we arranged a little party.”
The fork stopped moving. Emmeline was staring at her. Here it was, the chink in her armor.
“Not a dinner party, of course.” She pressed a finger to her lips, making rapid calculations. “It would be after dinner, an evening entertainment.”
As she spoke, she felt her own eagerness mounting. Finally, she could draw on her own expertise. Why, she knew everything about parties. One didn’t plan them the day of, obviously, and certainly they were never attempted without a generous budget, and servants, and a grand house for hosting, but hadn’t she learned to adapt to unfavorable conditions?
First things first: scale down.
She began to pace. “We’d only need light refreshments.”
Cakes, biscuits, ices, bonbons, little sandwiches of cold tongue or watercress, tea, coffee, lemonade, wine, champagne. How she missed champagne!
She looked around the kitchen and bit her lip.
Scale down. And then: scale down further.
“Beer and biscuits,” she declared. “That will do nicely. Wine if it’s available.”
There must be a few bottles in the cellar. Doctors were almost gentlemen.
“And we don’t need four musicians. Two are adequate. There’s not time to print programs, but I can write cards by hand with the order of the dances so ladies can keep track of their engagements. Perhaps it should be on the shorter side, as everyone keeps such early hours. Eighteen dances. Better fourteen.”
She and Neal had to catch a morning train in Bodmin.
“The parlor is far too small. We could move the dining room table against the wall and roll up the carpet.” She felt her brow pucker. How many guests could the dining room hold? And what would the master and mistress of the house have to say about it?
“I don’t suppose Tomas or Kelyn would mind,” she murmured doubtfully.
“The guildhall,” breathed Emmeline, eyes shining. “There’s a piano.”
Lavinia’s heart lifted. She’d seen the guildhall. It was on Fore Street around the corner from the pub and letter office, a grim, medieval structure, all gray stone and slate. Probably the main room had low ceilings and smelled like a cave.
Scale down. Adapt.
She nodded. “We can bring in flowers,” she said. “To liven it up.” Not cut flowers from the florist, wildflowers she would gather herself. Foxglove and daisies and heather, and others that Neal had pointed out on their walk along the stream into the valley and up into Juliot woods. Willow herb, toadflax, sea carrot, yellow iris, pennywort.
“Kelyn could make her ginger biscuits.” Emmeline was pacing too. “Loveday’s the best on piano. Or I could ask Emily Polwhele. She’s even better. Mr. Hichens plays the hornpipe.”
Hornpipe. Lavinia stopped short. How to object without giving insult? One didn’t put on a Worth gown and dance to hornpipe.
“Perhaps a violinist?” she said. Emmeline snapped her fingers.
“Mr. Barnett!” she exclaimed. “He fiddles.”
Fiddle. She shrugged. Good enough. They had all the pieces. Location, musicians, refreshments, decorations. Now they needed to get to work. There were only so many hours.
“Let’s go find this Mr. Barnett, and Emily Polwhele.” Lavinia made to spin on her heel but Emmeline spread her arms, looking down at the table.
“Lunch,” she said glumly. “Kit’s in a choking phase. I have to watch him like a hawk.”
She set two bowls of milk pudding on a lacquered tray.
“Oh.” Lavinia frowned. Lunch. She squared her shoulders, stepped up to the table, and selected an egg from the basket. “I’ll give the twins lunch, then.”
More hands made light work. Wasn’t that the saying?
She examined the egg. One had to break the shell, then peel it off. She picked up a spoon and rapped the egg sharply. To her gratification, a wide crack spread halfway around the egg’s circumference.
Clear slime welled and slid onto her fingers. She dropped the egg with a cry and it split open on the table.
Emmeline pursed her lips. “Those ones aren’t boiled.” She took an egg from a black-bottomed pot and passed it to her. “Try this one.”
Lavinia didn’t meet Emmeline’s eyes. She focused on rolling the new egg back and forth on the table so the shell crinkled beneath her palm.
Anyone could have made that mistake.
Let Emmeline poke fun at her.
But when she looked up, she saw that Emmeline had clasped her hands to her chest and was staring dreamily into space. She glanced at Lavinia and lowered her hands, a blush mantling her cheeks.
Lavinia returned her attention to the egg. She didn’t want to embarrass the girl in the midst of some romantic reverie. The egg was spiderwebbed with cracks. Shouldn’t all the tiny pieces of shell fall off?
“Do you think—” Emmeline clattered two spoons on the tray, then leaned forward, unable to contain her nervous excitement. “Do you truly think people will come?”
Lavinia’s gaze shot up. “Of course people will come.”
There wouldn’t be a line of carriages, and dozens of glittering aristocrats spilling out of them, but there would be people. The whole village, if Emmeline wanted. Exclusivity wasn’t an option. Not at the guildhall. Besides, best not to leave out any potential partygoers, given the size of the total pool.
“We’ll tell everyone,” she said. No guest list. No invitations. They’d spread the news by word of mouth. Shout it from the cliff tops.
“People will come.” Emmeline nodded. “People will come,” she assured herself, and traced a circle on her cheek with the tip of a loose curl.
People. Lavinia hid her smile.
“You could invite him personally,” she said, picking at her egg with as innocent an expression as she could muster. The shell was somehow still stuck together.
Emmeline stood bolt upright, blushing furiously.
Ah. Just as she’d suspected.
Did Kelyn and Loveday know that Emmeline had a sweetheart?
His jaw would drop when he saw her in the pink silk.
Lavinia scooped the peeled egg onto a plate. A sorry, mangled-looking blob, yolk peeping through where the white had come away with the shell.
The twins would have to make do.
Lavinia and Emmeline had a party to plan. The first and last ball of the Kyncastle Season.
“What do you reckon they’ve been doing?” Davy sat back on his heels and wiped his forehead with his shirt cuff. Neal threw his rag onto the dock and shook his head slowly.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” He rolled his left shoulder, easing the tight muscle, then crossed his arms behind his head and flopped onto his back.
Not a cloud in the periwinkle sky. Yesterday’s storm had blown by and taken with it every scrap of moisture. The air over the bay was still and bone-dry.
He’d pay a pound sterling for a breeze.
It was hot work, repairing the hole in the hull of the Strouts’ battered seiner. He and Davy had been at it for hours. The sun had crept west and come down from its heights, beams slanting with diminished intensity. But that was only a small mercy. He pulled damp cloth away from his chest, used his shirtfront to fan himself.
Sweating like a furze bush on a dewy morning. That was what his father would say. What else would his father say if he could look down from heaven, as Curnow had suggested?
Tell me, my boy, are those my father’s Hessians you’re wearing?
They are. Tomas brought them down from the attic. Maybe you missed it—I had to kick off my own boots yesterday to facilitate an unexpected swim.
Missed it? Bollocks! I interceded on your behalf. Why do you think it stopped raining?
Why—what a Romish idea. You can’t be serious.
Of course I’m not serious. The dead mustn’t have a sense of humor?
What I hear the dead have is a bird’s-eye view. If that’s the case, you might help me find that dandelion, the one I’m naming for Mother.
Your mother wants you to settle down, do you know that?
She told me.
I want it too. You’re too reckless. You need to keep your feet on the ground.
Well, you’ll both be happy to hear I’ve found my future wife.
Is she happy to hear it? Your future wife?
I don’t know. I haven’t told her yet.
Reckless and presumptuous. What will I ever do with you?
Watch over me, I suppose. Rejoice but on a farther shore.
You always had a smart mouth. I’ll rejoice on your wedding day if you find a woman who can get the upper hand of you.
Neal sighed and lifted a leg to inspect the big black boot, a Regency relic, the sound of his father’s deep, amused voice echoing in his ears. The memory of his voice was stronger, clearer somehow than the memory of his face. Enough daydreaming.
He sat up. “There they are again.”
Muriel and Emmeline were coming along the street that fronted the harbor with their heads together, apparently locked in conference.
Davy grunted. He’d returned to his labors, using pitch to fill in the seams between planks in the boat’s hull.
The seiner would be as good as new. Not so the smaller boat, the dinghy Davy’s brothers had rode into the storm. Fragments were still washing up onshore, and the boys had been tasked with collecting the wreckage. They’d spent the afternoon scouting excitedly up and down the shoreline, dragging what they found across the sand to Davy, who’d eyed each splintered board, assessing its usefulness, before tossing it in one of two piles.
High-spirited lads that they were, they’d taken the day’s work more as a reward than a punishment.
Neal rose to help Davy with the last of it. As he did so, he looked again toward the young women. Emmeline saw him looking and nudged Muriel, who turned her head and gave him a cool wave. Then she marched into the pub, Emmeline on her heels.
Neal whistled. “I think they’re having a pint.”
Davy banged the bottom of the boat so hard it slid an inch on the blocks, and laughed. “Are they, now?”
The small panes of the pub windows were dark. No seeing through to the scene inside. Neal returned his attention to the boat.
“It’s anyone’s guess.”
Muriel and Emmeline had been popping up at every turn. When Neal had loped back up through the terraced houses of the village—for a stouter saw, a second caulking iron, more pitch—he’d passed them each time, coming and going. Once he’d seen them through the open door of the bakery, Muriel with her hands on her hips haggling loudly with Mrs. Wilmot. Once he’d seen them coming out of Mr. Barnett’s house, Mr. Barnett following with a grin as wide as a griddle, a spring in his step to match his springy gray hair. Once he’d seen them emerging from the footpath behind the vicarage, their arms filled with flowers.
Whenever they spotted him, they raised their eyebrows, smiled, waved, or shot each other mischievous glances, but they never stopped what they were doing long enough to exchange a greeting.
Thick as thieves, tearing about hell-for-leather. It could mean anything.
“That’s more than a pint they’ve got there.” Davy directed Neal’s attention.
Muriel and Emmeline had reappeared, each holding a jug of beer. They ducked into the alley.
Neal leaned his elbows on the boat, squinting after them. At last he gave up, reconciled himself to the mystery.
“We’ll figure it out when they want us to,” he said, and Davy laughed.
“That’s what I’m learning.” He grinned happily. “I’ll be prepared come September.”
When he married Loveday.
Neal grinned back at him. “I wouldn’t count on it, coz.”
A recalcitrant plank monopolized the next hour. When they finally started up to the quayside, Tomas halloed, bounding down to them.
“The house has been bewitched,” he called. “Come help a man disenchant his kingdom.”
The sight that greeted them in the Traymayne dining room was certainly a strange one.
“Where are the chairs?” asked Davy, circling the table.
“With the women, perhaps?” Tomas scratched his brow.
“Cold,” Davy pronounced, leaning over the table to squeeze a wedge of potato in a serving dish. He felt the tureens. “Everything’s cold.”
Neal poked his head into the kitchen. The empty kitchen. The air smelled sweet and gingery. The cups and dishes were missing from the sideboards.
“Kelyn?” Davy looked at Neal as he returned to the dining room. Neal shook his head.
“You can see why I turned around at once and went in search of reinforcements.” Tomas popped a wedge of potato into his mouth.
“You’ve done it now,” said Davy. “What if the pixies stole away your wife and children and put a spell on the food? You’re under their power.”
“In for a penny,” said Tomas, and filched a second potato.
“Footsteps.” Neal prowled to the staircase, Davy and Tomas behind him. Muriel was sailing down the stairs in a low-cut gown of red silk and white lace, making ushering gestures with her hands.
“Don’t stand there woolgathering,” she said. “You need to dress and dine and help carry the refreshments down to the guildhall. The ball starts promptly at nine.”
Ball? His frown was automatic. Muriel had turned the whole house, no, the whole village, upside down for a ball? And now she was issuing commands?
Christ, he’d have to apologize to Tomas. What must his cousin be thinking? His houseguest was the pixie.
She stopped halfway down the staircase.
“You look so consternated,” she said to them all. “I should have made it more clear—you are most certainly invited.”
Loveday appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Muriel, do you think this shawl . . .” She trailed off, spotting the men on the landing.
“I think so!” Davy burst out heartily. A jackanapes, perhaps, but an endearing jackanapes.
Neal’s frown smoothed at Davy’s dazzled expression and Loveday’s answering blush. She did look uncommonly well. Something different about her hair. It was loose, that was it. A few pieces twisted back over her ears, but aside from that, curls tumbling on her shoulders. The lavender wrap brought out the green in her hazel eyes.
Muriel was surveying Davy and Loveday, the hint of a smile curving the bow of her lips. Loveday’s hair was her handiwork, of course, and that lavender tulle had been magicked out of her massive trunk.
Neal turned to Tomas, who’d put his foot up on the bottom stair and was leaning against the banister. Consternation was giving way to mirth. Neal could see that no apology would be necessary.
“What shall I wear?” Tomas asked Neal, then broke into laughter. “The better question is—what shall you wear? Grandpa’s Hessians will pair strangely with your London kit.”
“I didn’t pack much in the way of London kit.” Neal’s gaze wandered back to Muriel. She’d done up her own hair into a bright crown. “Do you have a pair of Grandpa’s pantaloons and a frock coat? I’ll go as a historical figure.”
He addressed Muriel. “Is it a fancy-dress ball, by any chance?”
Smiling, she descended to the bottom stair. “It’s eclectic, really. Wear what you like. Within limits, of course.” She swept him with her eyes to make sure he understood that his present pitch-stained attire was thoroughly out-of-bounds.
Did she think him that much of a boor? He preferred mountaintops to mansions, yes, but had no trouble navigating either. If Muriel Pendrake wanted a man who could dance, she didn’t need to take herself back to London, or Paris. He would suffice. More than suffice.
“All right, lads,” he said to Davy and Tomas. “We’ve got our marching orders. Let’s fall to it.”
He bowed to Muriel. “I, for one, wouldn’t dream of missing the first quadrille.”