Page 25

For several minutes, silverware clinked, silvery notes against the background of pounding feet. Davy bumped Muriel as they reached for their glasses.

“It’s my curse,” he said with a grin. “Click-handed.” He waggled the fingers of his left hand. Muriel looked at him blankly.

“Left-handed,” hissed Emmeline. “Click-handed means left-handed.”

Tomas laughed, leaning forward. “Mrs. Pendrake, you can settle my mind on something. Are the Chinese as deuced difficult to understand as the Cornish?”

“I should say not.” Muriel reached again for her glass. “I spent years in China, however, and I’ve only just come to Cornwall.”

“You speak Chinese, then?” Tomas lifted his eyebrows at Neal.

“Perfectly,” said Muriel, sipping. “I speak Mongolian as well. And the languages of the Malay archipelago. Oh, and Latin of course, but only with plants.”

Neal felt his own eyebrows lift. She’d mentioned her facility with language in her “Recollections,” but he hadn’t realized the extent of it. No doubt it had given her and her husband the edge over the collectors who had to rely exclusively on translators.

Impressive. A welcome reminder of what he already knew: the pampered-miss routine belied her depths. It was the showy, quivering high note. Distracting from the lower, richer, more resonant music that swelled beneath.

Tomas shook his head admiringly. “That puts the rest of us to shame. Even Neal. What did you learn over there in the Argentine?”

“Some Spanish.” Neal smiled. “Some Mapuche.”

Tomas shrugged, dismissing the relatively partial accomplishment. He raised his glass to Muriel. “How do you say to your health in Chinese?”

“Oh, you don’t. It’s considered bad luck.” Muriel put down her glass. Her eyes met Neal’s. Their expression could have meant anything.

“Well then, we’ll do it in Cornish,” Tomas said. All around the table, glasses lifted and clanked together.

“Fish, tin, and copper!” Davy crowed, and swilled his beer.

“We’re so happy to have you here.” Kelyn beamed at Neal before turning to include Muriel in her warm regard. Muriel paled, her throat working. Then a new kind of smile crept across her face, tentative and impossibly beautiful. Neal felt some subtle, answering movement inside his chest. He’d have to remember to ask Perran if the heart was capable of smiling. Of course, Perran, overserious, would denounce him as a dunce and drag out an anatomy book. He never tired of lecturing his chuckleheaded younger brother. And Neal never tired of giving him cause.

“Tell us, Mrs. Pendrake, do you have brothers and sisters?” asked Loveday.

“Not a one.” Muriel glanced at her, the smile still playing over her features.

“Neal must have told you about his sisters,” said Loveday. “Nessa and Jenni. They’re also intellectual women.”

“When we were growing up, I thought their house was built of books,” Alice interjected as she spooned peas from a tureen. “You couldn’t see the walls. That’s what I always noticed, the books, and those horrible stuffed seagulls and owls in Uncle Digory’s study.”

Fascinating, what caught in other people’s memories.

“You thought Julius the owl was horrible?” Neal asked with interest.

Alice groaned. “You didn’t name the thing!”

“Oh, Aunt Heddie’s collection of skulls put the taxidermy to shame.” Tomas sawed at a chop, grinning hugely.

Loveday turned back to Muriel. “Did your parents encourage your scientific pursuits?”

“My mother prefers hats to skulls,” said Muriel with a dryness that increased the general mirth. Only Emmeline scowled. Neal leaned back in his chair, grinning. Society had supplied Muriel with the affectations of a spoiled girl, but it hadn’t spoiled her.

When his mother had looked him in the eye on Christmas Day and said she wanted nothing more than to see him settled down at last, she had meant with a woman like Muriel Pendrake.

“The hats did sometimes incorporate gull wings.” Muriel was smiling around the table. “Although birds of paradise were the favorite ornament.”

“Truly horrible.” Loveday’s eyes had widened. “Scientific taxidermy is one thing. But the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of birds of paradise for their skins, millions of birds murdered yearly for accessories . . .” She shuddered. “Jenni formed a society, the Society for the Protection of Plumage. She campaigns against bird hats.”

“She’s winning in Cornwall,” said Davy. “I’ve never seen a bird on a hat, not a dead one anyway.”