Chapter Three

Ceri led me on a whirlwind tour. I counted twelve bedrooms, most of which were not in use at all. The stale scent of age and mysterious shapes shrouded in protective covers held a promise of exploration to be savoured another day. My room, I learned, was directly below the clock tower, the door to which remained firmly locked at all times. Ceri said her uncle had warned her against going up there, explaining that the spiral staircase that led to the top was dangerous and in need of repair. If you applied that principle to the whole house, I thought grimly, we’d be locked out of every room.

Downstairs the faded beauty of the family rooms was even more melancholy in daylight. A huge dining room, with oak panels that covered both floor and ceiling, housed a table fit for a king’s banquet. But the damask velvet embroidery on the chair seats was threadbare, and the stained glass panels on the windows had been dulled by years of grime. Several elegant salons led one from the other, and Ceri called them by the long-ago colours of their furnishings. “The green salon, the blue parlour, the crimson drawing room…” She rattled off the names as I dutifully admired the immense proportions of each. And all the while, the mouldering grandeur and wasted beauty tugged the barometer of my spirits lower.

“The house was built a hundred years ago by my great grandfather, Dyffed Taran.” Gethin emerged from the study and joined us. I sensed Ceri draw slightly closer to me. “There was an older house here, an Elizabethan manor, with parts that dated back even further. But it was destroyed by fire. Hence the rebuilding project.” We stepped outside and I dutifully followed his gaze up at the imposing facade. “Prior to the fire, the old house had been plagued by stories of ghosts and spirits and, before the first stones for the new house were laid, Dyffed was determined to rid the site of this supernatural plague. A veritable army of clergymen were brought in to remove the various entities which laid claim to the place.” His tone was light. “Stories abound of the battles that raged between the forces of good and evil. The exorcists apparently emerged successful, up to a point. The shades that once inhabited the house were driven up onto the mountains and were promptly captured by the wild huntsmen of the higher ridges. They are said to be imprisoned within what are now known as the Taran lights.” I gave a little start of surprise, but he didn’t appear to notice. A glance down at Ceri’s face showed me a troubled expression descending over her delicate features.

“It’s not very…” I paused, tactfully searching for a word that was not too damning. That was difficult. What I wanted to say was that the whole atmosphere of the house was as rank as the breath of a demon. “Welcoming, is it?” I asked, and Gethin laughed.

“It’s one of those places,” he said, and his gaze softened. “You either love it or loathe it. But if you love it, it holds on to your heart with ferocious tenacity.” He seemed rather embarrassed that he had allowed me such a poetic glimpse of his feelings and, excusing himself, he left Ceri to finish showing me around.

The wings I had spied from the road were the stable block on one side and outhouses on the other. Both were almost completely ruined now. The imposing clock tower must, I decided, have spectacular views across the whole valley, particularly of the rocky cirque known as the chair. There was an identical clock face on all four sides of the square tower, each, sadly, showing a different time. None of the decorative hands indicated the right time. On either side of each clock there was a long, narrow strip of lead-trimmed window. Three of these were broken, and I suspected this fact, in addition to the damaged staircase, might be the reason for the locked door. A fall from that height would mean certain death. The cupola was of beaten green copper, and an ornate ironwork filigree of vines and leaves wound its way around the whole structure. It was a beautiful, whimsical feature. But looking at it made me feel curiously uneasy.

* * *

“You’d not catch me spending a night in this valley, miss! Not for all the tea in China! That’s for certain sure.” Gwladys shuddered as we gazed down the sleepy dale. She was a moon-faced girl with an eager-to-please manner that was directly at odds with Mrs Price’s unfriendly approach. In daylight, her words had the power to surprise me. My second day at Taran House was bright with dewy promise. Last year’s leaves still lay like golden feathers scattered on carpets of emerald. Nature was investing all her wealth in a jewelled spring, turning the secretive vale into an enchanted grotto. Tree-lined labyrinths and faerie glens glistened with morning diamonds, birds floated home on gentle breezes and shy, droop-headed flowers nodded their approval.

Behind us the house slumbered in its tired grandeur. By the light of day it had more decaying beauty than night-time’s doomed promise. Poppies had claimed the yellowed lawn like splatters of scarlet paint flung onto an aging canvas. Daisies peeped their shy faces between them. Ivy sneaked surreptitious fingers along the lower floors and house sparrows had claimed the eaves for their new nests. Nature was staging a stealthy coup, and the house was putting up only a token resistance.

“It’s an evil place.” Gwladys’s whisper drew my attention back to her. I raised my brows, and taking this as a sign of encouragement, she nodded sagely, continuing. “The whole valley is haunted.” My thoughts turned unbidden to the pearly lights and spectral shades I had seen. “At times, so it’s said, the hounds that guard the pit of hell spill over from their world to ours and come to claim new flesh!” I shuddered slightly, a reaction that seemed to please Gwladys greatly. Warming to her role as teller of ghostly tales, she continued in hushed tones. “There are phantom lights—will o’the wisps—that dance up there on Taran’s great chair and the spirits of the undead are trapped within them.”

“But they are just the Northern Lights—the aurora borealis—nothing ghostly about them, Gwladys,” I assured her.

She gave me a pitying glance. “Oh, no, miss! Them aurory things, they are quite different. Our lights,” she said, her tone proprietary, “the Taran lights, they are the huntsmen who ride across the night sky with their horses and hounds to seek out the souls of the newly dead. Those they find are captured and doomed to a living death. Anyone may see the lights, but only some see the wild spirits within them.” I don’t know why, but I chose not to mention that I had already been one of the few. “Them that has the eye,” she finished grandly.

“The eye?” Really, it was just too nonsensical for words to allow myself to be spooked by this silly, superstitious girl!

“You know, miss, the eye into another world, the world of those who have passed over. My mam says the veil between their realm and ours is a thin one, and some people can see through it, while others can’t.”

“What about you, Gwladys? Can you see through the veil?” I asked, and she gave a little squeak of horror.

“Lord bless us! No, miss! Nor would I want to! It’s a gift and a curse, that’s for sure. And the spirits caught in the Taran lights, well, they are seen—can even, it is said, be summoned—by two different types. Those who are pure and will bring only good to the valley and those”—she cast a furtive look over her shoulder—“who are evil in both thought and deed.”

I looked back at the house. The clouds covered the sun now, changing the valley so that it became a shadowed, forbidden hollow. Taran House awoke and brooded in its mountainous lair. As I cast a doubtful eye over its once-again grim features, Gethin stepped out of the front door. He didn’t see us. Pausing, he lit a cigarette before sliding behind the wheel of his car. For some reason, my eyes were drawn from him and upward to the dark, watchful windows of the clock tower. The mood, that mere minutes ago had been benign, changed in that instant to one of malevolence. Admonishing myself for allowing Gwladys’s fanciful chatter to affect me so profoundly, I made my way back to the house to prepare for Ceri’s first full day of lessons.

It was later that day that the first near miss happened. Ceri asked if we could play hopscotch after lunch, so I had chalked out a grid on the paved path that flanked the house. We took turns to throw our stones and hop or jump along the grid. One minute Ceri was chastising me noisily for the wild inaccuracy of my throws. The next—looking back, I’m not quite sure what we were doing, perhaps retrieving my stone, which had gone wide of the grid—a two-foot coping stone fell from the rim of the clock tower and crashed into the middle of the hopscotch playing area. It smashed into a hundred pieces, exactly where Ceri had been standing mere seconds earlier. We stared at it in stunned surprise.

“What the devil?” Gethin came hurtling out of the house a few scant moments afterward, drawn, he explained later, by the noise. He followed the direction of my stunned gaze up to the clock tower.

“It spoiled our game,” Ceri said impatiently, surveying the debris with her hands on her hips.

“I’ll get someone from the village to come down and check the tower is safe,” Gethin said, his mouth grim. “Are you all right?” he asked me belatedly.

“I’m fine, nothing like a bit of brisk masonry-dodging to keep a girl active,” I said, hiding my shakiness behind flippancy. The thing was, as I took Ceri back into the house, I just couldn’t see, from any angle, where exactly the fallen stone had come from. There didn’t seem to be any gaps in the clock tower’s rim. Whichever way I looked at the situation, however, a near-fatal accident to my charge was hardly the most auspicious start to a new job.

* * *

Falling masonry aside, my first week at Taran House met with both triumph and disaster, and although I tried my best to treat those two impostors just the same, my mind was inclined to dwell more on the latter. Ceri was bright as a button but not particularly fond of academia. She had become highly skilled in the art of diversionary tactics. She would happily listen to my instruction, evincing every sign of interest and asking pertinent questions. When asked to actually do something herself, however, she was less keen. Urgent visits to the bathroom, pointing out objects outside the window, trying to get me off track and onto a different topic, tears and tantrums…all of these were used forcefully and with annoying regularity.

“Didn’t your teachers in Austria insist that you complete your work?” I asked in exasperation on the third day, when, after an hour, she had written three lines.

“Well, there were more people in the class, so they didn’t notice me. They just thought I was a bit stupid,” she confessed naughtily, peeping up at me through her long lashes. “Tell me about when you were a little girl,” she invited.

“No,” I said bluntly. “Not until you have finished this writing.”

“Oh, well,” she replied blithely. “I didn’t really want to know. I was just being friendly.” She picked up her pen and wrote a few words. “Can I call you Lilly?” she asked, placing the pen down again just minutes later. I groaned and she seemed to take that as acquiescence, since she called me by my first name from then on. I wasn’t sure her uncle would approve, but since he’d announced his intention of returning to London soon, I wasn’t expecting to see much of him. So it probably didn’t matter.

I discovered Ceri’s Achilles heel soon after that. She was fiercely competitive. As soon as I turned a lesson into a challenge, she would light up with determination. I have to admit, I exploited this character trait of hers quite shamelessly. A stopwatch became my best friend, and I only had to say the words, “I will win if you do not…” to have her full attention. From that point on, she was a pleasure to teach. I counted it as a triumph, but wished I could find an equally easy way to deal with the hurt, wary look in her eyes.

Mrs Price was, without dispute, one of my disasters. I regarded her as slovenly and lazy, and I could not like her. The house could have been so beautiful, and although it was undoubtedly too much work for her and Gwladys to manage the rambling place on their own, she made no effort. Such wilful negligence infuriated me.

My days developed a pattern. I would eat breakfast early with Ceri, and then we spent the morning on the three Rs. We took our lunch together, either in the nursery or, weather permitting, as a picnic. Our afternoons were devoted to humanities, arts and sciences. On Saturdays we roamed the surrounding countryside studying the flora and fauna and—since there was nowhere nearby that was flat—engaging in some fairly strenuous exercise. On Sunday mornings we would read and discuss a shared book. I still had plenty of free time, and I decided to offer my services to Mrs Price.

“I can give the rugs in the hall a jolly good scrub for starters,” I said, rolling my sleeves up and filling a bucket with hot, soapy water. The kitchen was a disgrace and my fingers itched to get a mop to the grimy red floor tiles. I suspected, however, that the surly housekeeper might not take kindly to such blatant interference.

Gwladys regarded me with interest. She did not strike me as a lazy girl, but she did have a woeful role model. “I’ll help you with that, miss,” she offered, and I smiled gratefully.

“That you’ll not, my girl!” Mrs Price told her sternly. “You’ve to go into the village and fetch the wool for my knitting, remember?” Gwladys rolled her eyes expressively at me behind her back, and I bit back another smile. Mrs Price regarded me with overt dislike. “What was it you said you did down there in London?” she asked rudely, looking me up and down. “You speak just like them posh ladies, but scrubbing carpets…well, that’s not suited to the gentry.”

“No indeed,” I said serenely, lifting my bucket and grabbing up a brush. I was annoyed now and wanted to shock the sneer from her sour face. “My papa was a vicar and my mama, the daughter of a judge, but my last job was in a burlesque club.” Her jaw dropped with a satisfying click. “You know, performing a striptease for the gentlemen customers. So you might say I’m a proper little scrubber!” I did an exaggerated bump-and-grind movement as I left the room, aware that I had only succeeded in compounding her dislike of me. And, of course, I’d given Gwladys something juicy to gossip about when she got home to her family that night. It would be all over the valley by morning.

Gethin stayed just two nights before making the journey back to London. We didn’t exchange more than a few short sentences in that time, and I couldn’t decide whether to feel disappointed or relieved as I watched the back of his car round the curve in the drive. He promised to be back in a week or two. I wondered if he would. Triumph or disaster? Only time would supply the answer to that conundrum.

* * *

The road up to the village was steep and narrow with grassy banks topped by grey, drystone walls rising tall on each side. The little settlement itself was neatly tiered to fit the contours of the mountains. Green hills, part hidden by spring’s soft shroud, climbed up to shyly kiss the unyielding crags beyond. It was a bleakly beautiful place with high, narrow cottages built from local slate and dolerite chimneys bleeding smoke into the midday sky. Sheep-flock clouds competed with the pewter plumes to see which could make the heavens seem bluer. Ceri and I bought ice cream wafers at the tiny post office and sat on a wall in the weak sunlight to eat them.

“When your uncle spoke about the Taran lights, you looked worried,” I said. She gave a little start of surprise. “You shouldn’t let old ghost stories frighten you, you know.”

Her eyes were downcast, so I couldn’t read her expression. “But Gwladys said they come in search of fresh souls and gather up children while they sleep,” she whispered, with a surreptitious glance over her shoulder as though she expected a howling, shrieking cavalcade to bear down on us from behind.

“Gwladys talks utter rot sometimes,” I said, and Ceri laughed nervously.

“But,” she said, as though examining a thought, “I don’t just see the lights. I can see the hunters, as well—the figures inside the lights. They are on their horses, and they have dogs with them. Have you seen them, Lilly?”

“I have only seen the lights once. That was on my first night here,” I replied evasively.

“I meant the hunters.” Her steady gaze reproached me.

“Yes, I saw them, but they really are just tricks of the light.” I tried to reassure her as I would any child her age.

But Ceri was not like any other eight-year-old. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Lilly?” she asked, in her funny, young-old way. The solution dawned on me just before she could answer her own question. We said it together: “They are hunters.” Viscous, black nightmares poured into my mind, filling my soul and staining it with darkness.

I was recalled with some relief from my thoughts when a young man, probably just a few years older than me, with a slightly distracted air about him, came down the hillside toward us. As he drew level, the heavy pack he carried on his back broke loose and fell onto the ground nearby, clattering as its contents spilled out into the road. We rushed over to help, gathering up the classic rambler’s accoutrements and listening to his stammered thanks as he clumsily shoved everything back into place.

“Oh, I say, that’s awfully kind of you!” He exclaimed as I charged off down the road, giving chase to an enamel mug that threatened to roll down the steep slope and into a ditch. “I can’t think what happened there!” He gave me a shy smile as I handed the mug back to him.

He hauled the offending pack up onto the wall where we had been sitting, and we shook hands as he thanked us again.

“I’m Matthew Fisher,” he said, and I introduced myself and Ceri in return. “Do you live around here? Jolly picturesque, isn’t it? My home is in Chester, which is very pretty and historic, of course, but nothing compared to this. And, my goodness, when you spend every day cooped up in an office, poring over the books—I’m an accountant, you see—it does you good to get this mountain air into your lungs. I’ve been indulging myself with a well-deserved, extended holiday through the northern counties of Wales, and I liked this valley so much I decided to camp here so that I could do some rambling in the surrounding area.” It seemed natural for us to fall into step together as he talked. “I’d only been here a night when I had the most ridiculous accident involving my tent. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was burned to a crisp. Quite beyond repair. Fortunately, the landlord at the Slater’s Arms is a decent chap and he was able to recommend a room in the house next door that is clean, comfortable and reasonable, so I’ve been able to stay on without too much disruption to my plans.” He struggled to get his overloaded pack onto his shoulders as he talked. While Ceri came to his aid once more, I couldn’t help wondering how successful he was at rambling. Or accountancy.

Before long, we were accepting an invitation to join him for a glass of lemonade at the cafe. The tables in this tiny establishment were covered with blue-and-white checked cloths, and each had a jam jar full of wildflowers in its centre. Mrs Jones, the proprietress, greeted Ceri with pleasure and clicked her tongue sadly at me over the death of Mr and Mrs Taran. The conversation among the other customers was conducted entirely in Welsh, which, since they eyed me with interest as they talked, made me feel at a distinct disadvantage. I suspected that my foolish revelations to Mrs Price and Gwladys about my burlesque career may have provided fuel for the gossips.

“How are things down there?” Mrs Jones jerked her head in the direction of Taran House as she poured fresh homemade lemonade into three tall glasses. Ceri was chattering away in answer to a question Matthew had asked about the house, and I hid a smile. That would teach him to try to make polite conversation with an eight-year-old. “It must be awful hard on Mr Gethin, seeing the little girl and being reminded every day of her mam and what might have been.”

I tried to look wise, as though I knew exactly what Mrs Jones meant. “It’s been a difficult time,” I said. Hopefully that covered everything and didn’t reveal my ignorance.

“Shocking, it was, when she went off with Mr Bryn.” Mrs Jones shook her head. “Mr Gethin loved the ground she walked on and she…” Her lips tightened. “Well, no good comes of speaking ill of the dead. But she was a flighty madam, if you ask me! Aye, and she saw the pound signs because the house and the money came to Mr Bryn. And the baby conceived on honeymoon, they said, and then born a month early.” Her expression invited me to add my own interpretation to her words. “But what good did it do her in the end? Dead in a ditch in a foreign country. But Mr Gethin…” She shook her head and piled biscuits on a plate. “I don’t think he ever got over her, not really. It must be terrible hard on him, having her daughter forced on him.”

Damnably inconvenient…Gethin’s words came back to me, and I looked across the room at Ceri’s animated little face. That invisible cord that drew me to her tightened painfully.

Matthew Fisher was handsome in a conventional way, with dark blond hair and regular features. There was an endearing clumsiness about him that seemed to explain the problems that all too frequently beset him. His blue eyes, when they rested on me—which I flattered myself they did quite often—were openly approving. It was pleasant to be admired, but, I decided regretfully, it was a complication I could do without. Until I managed to unravel my feelings for my enigmatic employer, I should probably steer clear of any other romantic entanglements. Nevertheless he was an easy, charming companion, and the hour we spent in his company temporarily drove thoughts of phantom huntsmen and dark dream stalkers from my mind. When we parted, he asked if I would meet him at the cafe again in a few days. I agreed.

We walked out of the cafe together, and Matthew stopped, looking up toward the mountain. “I say, have you heard some of the stories they tell about this place? Enough to curdle your blood! They say anyone who spends the night up on that part they call ‘the chair’ will wake up the next morning either as a poet or a madman.”

Ceri, keen to show off her superior knowledge, elaborated further. “And they also say that if more than one person stays up there overnight, one of them will not come down at all. He or she will be dead,” she explained helpfully.

“Nonsense, of course,” Matthew said. “But I’ll take jolly good care not to get stuck up there at night, all the same!” With a cheery wave, he set off for his lodgings.

Ceri skipped along beside me as we commenced the downward journey back to Taran House. “He liked you,” she informed me slyly, watching my face.

“Stop matchmaking, miss!” I grabbed her and tickled her until she squealed for me to stop.

“Is it normal for people to have the same dreams?” Ceri asked with an abrupt return to our earlier conversation. She trailed a hand through the fronds of bright green fern that peeped between the stones of the wall.

I debated how to answer her. She had an understanding that was far beyond her years. I had to strike a balance between honesty and reassurance. “I’ve never heard of it before,” I said. “So I expect that means it doesn’t happen very often. It makes us special. I think we should be glad we have each other.”

She stopped, and her little face was troubled. “I’ve always known I was different. But I couldn’t tell anyone. Until now…” Her voice trailed off, but she smiled and I gave her a quick hug. We walked along hand in hand, and it was just as we were about to enter the tree-lined drive that a large, ungainly figure emerged from the bushes and loped over to us.

He was a pitiful excuse for a dog, a bag of bones covered with mangy fur. I made a movement to put Ceri behind me, but she evaded me and the mutt ambled up to her, shoving a friendly nose into her hand. She giggled delightedly, her eyes shining, and I looked at the godforsaken creature in a new light. He was black as midnight and, when he had some flesh on him, must have been a formidable sight. He allowed Ceri to scratch behind his scarred and balding ears, and sighed happily as she did. When we turned back along the lane to return to the house, he obligingly accompanied us.

“Well, he can’t come in,” I said in what I hoped was a forbidding tone. “Mrs Price will have kittens.”

“It’s not her house. It’s mine,” Ceri reminded me. “And if I want Shucky to come in, he can come in.”

“Shucky?” I asked, regarding the ill-favoured animal with dislike.

“He just looks like a Shucky,” she replied cryptically. The newly christened member of the household lolled his tongue and wagged his tail. If I didn’t know better, I could almost have imagined the wretched hound was laughing at me.

* * *

I lay back in the steaming water with a contented sigh and closed my eyes. A tiny part of me, still scarcely acknowledged, felt warm and restored. Through my blossoming relationship with Ceri, old wounds were maybe—just maybe—beginning to heal. And the house was…I searched for the right words. To say it felt like home would be going too far. Taran House and I were starting to get used to each other.

A slight noise disturbed my reverie, and I opened my eyes in an attempt to locate its source. It was the faint, but distinct, scratching of tiny claws scurrying across wooden boards. It came from the attic above me. Mice! With a sigh, I sat up and, trying to ignore the relentless shuffling sounds, hurriedly finished my bath and returned to my room. The nursery was upstairs, and I didn’t want any rodent infestations in Ceri’s territory. I would speak to Mrs Price but—given the housekeeper’s staggering inability to do anything to actually keep the house in good order—I thought there was a strong possibility I would end up setting traps myself. The thought made me grimace.

I had just finished dressing when another noise—a loud, ungodly wailing—from within the house itself, drew me hurtling full tilt from my room. Mrs Price was standing in the centre of the hall, clutching a very ugly hat in one hand and a matching, somewhat mangled, bow in the other. Gwladys stood nearby, wringing her hands and casting worried glances about her. She saw me on the gallery and hailed me with relief.

“Oh, miss! Thank the Lord! Poor Mrs Price has had such a nasty shock. Have I to fetch the brandy?”

I hurried down the stairs and Ceri, who had also been drawn by the sound, caught up with me, slipping a timid hand into mine. “My new hat! My best hat!” The housekeeper whimpered pitifully, holding out the object toward us.

“Is that what all this fuss is about?” I made the mistake of allowing a note of laughter to enter my voice. “I thought someone was being murdered at the very least!”

Mrs Price’s already sunken eyes narrowed further, like currants pressed too far into a bun. “Aye, that’s it, Miss High and Mighty! You look down your nose! Go ahead and mock a poor working woman when one of her precious possessions is wilfully ruined. Aye, wilfully! That devil dog you brought into this house has done this!” She shook the hat at me. “Well, the accursed creature will have to go, and if I had my way, I would have it shot.” She covered her face with her hands. Gwladys patted her shoulder ineffectually, while casting pleading eyes in my direction.

“He is not a devil and he is not going anywhere!” Ceri cried out, fury on behalf of her precious new friend lending her confidence. Letting go of my hand, she stamped her foot, bravely squaring up to Mrs Price. “He’s my dog, and I’ll decide what happens to him!”

Mrs Price had, by this time, worked herself up into a frenzy of emotion that craved an outlet. Her face twisted with fury and she took a step toward Ceri, her hand instinctively lifting ready to give the little figure before her a backhanded slap.

“Mrs Price.” My cold, clear voice stilled the older woman’s forward motion. She turned to look at me. “Don’t you dare raise your hand to her.” I amazed myself with my calm. Ceri, recognising a protector in me, scurried back to my side.

“I’ll not be taking any orders from the likes of you! No better than you should be and boasting of it to a God-fearing woman like myself!” Mrs Price rounded on me with the indignation reserved for those who consider themselves righteous. “You want to get back to taking your clothes off for money, my girl, and leave running a gentleman’s house to your betters!”

“Miss Ceridwyn is in my care, and, as long as that is the case, I am responsible for her. Nobody else has the right to chastise her and anyone who lays a finger on her will have me to answer to.” I said, drawing myself up to my full height and standing my ground. “And if you don’t like it, you know where the door is!”

To my eternal surprise, she took me at my word. Turning on her heel, she grabbed up her hat—minus its pitiful bow—screwed it onto her head and, without a backward glance, stalked out of the very door I had just pointed at.

Ceri danced around me in delight. “You sent her packing,” she squealed joyfully. “Oh, Lilly, you are the best governess ever!” I had a lowering feeling that her uncle was most unlikely to agree with her assessment of my skills. And what were we to do now? My culinary accomplishments were limited even in comparison to those of Mrs Price. And Gwladys, who was watching me with an expression of mingled awe and commiseration, was not, I imagined, going to be much help in that department. “But why on earth did she want you take your clothes off?” Ceri’s face was a picture of bewilderment.

Shucky wandered in a few minutes later, wet from a frolic in the river, and shook himself vigorously so that we were all sprayed with droplets of muddy water. Then, with a heavy groan, he threw himself down onto the silk-upholstered couch that I had painstakingly cleaned that very morning and ecstatically rolled on it.

“You are a horrible creature and a disgrace to dogs everywhere,” I told him crossly as the three of us dragged him back out into the yard to dry off. “Look at the trouble you have caused!”

If truth be told, however—given a choice between Shucky and Mrs Price—I believed we had emerged with the better bargain.

As time went by, Shucky and I reached an uneasy understanding. His manners still left much to be desired. We had many a lengthy stand-off about where his bones should be buried and who owned the bed in my room. But his devotion to Ceri was touching. She was certainly a much happier child when the strange, awkward animal was around and, oddly enough, I found my own measure of comfort in his company.