A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) Deanna Raybourn (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📖

I glanced to the sign above the door, the lascivious mermaid with her hands cupping her breasts and beckoning the weary traveler. “I wonder if you ought to go alone,” I suggested. “Mother Nance might be susceptible to your masculine charms. You could ask her about Rosamund and perhaps unearth a little local gossip.”

He laughed. “For all your knowledge of men, you still haven’t discovered that we are by far more prone to gossip, only we call it telling tales. I will put on my manliest demeanor and speak to the fishermen in the taproom. You can convene a coven meeting with the old woman and discover what she knows.”

He turned to open the door and I put out my tongue behind his back. He would enjoy a few pints of the delicious and potent local cider and some decidedly manly talk while I was forced to sit by the hearth and engage in ladies’ prattle. I longed to be amongst the men, but I understood his point. He was one of them, work roughened and stalwart for all his elegant vowels and good breeding. They would talk to him where they would not to a woman, no matter how engaging she might be.

Mother Nance welcomed me into her parlor with no sign of surprise. “I’ve just put the cider on to warm. The lads drink it cold, but I think a bit of warmth is just the thing on a day like today. Put a little heat in your bones, it will,” she promised. I looked to the hearth, where two copper tankards were standing expectantly.

“You anticipated company?” I asked as I took the seat she indicated.

She slanted me a look that might have been chiding under other circumstances. “I anticipated your company, my dear.”

I made no reply to that—there seemed no possible reply to make—so I sat in silence until she had warmed the cider. She snapped a cinnamon stick in two, dropping a piece of the bark into each of the tankards, followed by a pair of cloves she cracked upon her teeth. When the cider was sufficiently hot, she poured it carefully over the spices and added a slender thread of dark golden honey.

“From our own St. Maddern’s Isle bees,” she told me as she handed me one of the tankards.

I took a sip and nearly choked. “This is not cider,” I protested as I wheezed.

“Of course it is,” she told me, taking a great swallow of the stuff and smacking her lips appreciatively. “With a bit of rum in it.”

“How much rum, Mother Nance?”

“No more’n half a teacup in each,” she promised.

Half a teacup. At this rate I would be drunk as a lord by the time I finished our little chat. I made a note to myself to drink slowly.

“Did you hear there was a bit of excitement up at the castle?” I ventured. “Some say Rosamund’s ghost has appeared, just as you said.”

She shook her head, her expression inscrutable. “I did indeed say it.”

“You are a canny woman, Mother Nance. What do you think happened to her?”

She shrugged. “Who can say? Perhaps the merfolk have come at last to take one of their own home.”

I suppressed a sigh and took another drink. “A faery tale,” I told her. “You do not really believe that merfolk came ashore and dragged Malcolm Romilly’s bride to her death.”

Her look was pitying. “’Twouldn’t be death, lovey. Not to go to the merfolk. Going home, more like.”

This line of questioning was clearly unproductive, so I tried a different tack. “The whole business has been terribly upsetting for the master of the island. Surely the rest of you would like an answer for his sake.”

She said nothing but merely sipped at her cider, and it occurred to me that an unsolved mystery with ghosts and a missing bride and perhaps a few merfolk thrown in for good measure was bound to be good for business. Travelers and curiosity seekers and other ghouls would be lured from miles around.

“I suppose he shall simply have to reconcile himself to being a tragic bridegroom,” I said.

“Like your Templeton-Vane,” she said, darting me a sly glance over the top of her tankard. I lifted a brow at her and she laughed. “Of course, the question is, which one?” she added.

“They are neither of them mine,” I told her.

She peered at me suddenly, her curious gaze searching my face. “I’d not have thought you blind, my dear. But there’re none so blind as they that will not see.”

I gave her a thin smile. “Perhaps we might get back to the subject of Rosamund,” I suggested.

She flapped a hand. “You’re a thruster, you are.”

“A thruster?”

“Pushing in where there is no place for you and making one,” she explained. I opened my mouth to object, but she held up a hand. “I don’t say it’s a bad thing, so settle your feathers, my dear. You’ve had to do it, haven’t you? All your life. Ever since you were born under a shadow.”

“Born under a shadow?”

“’Tis the sight,” she explained. “I know when a person has been born in sunlight and when they’ve been born in shadow. You are a child of the moon, poppet. That darkness never leaves you. It is your constant companion, and it always will be. And you know it, don’t you?”

“Mother Nance,” I began patiently.

“Ah, you don’t want to talk about it, do you, love? Mother Nance understands. ’Tis a hard thing for a child to know she isn’t wanted. It gets into her blood and bones until she knows that she must always find her own way, for none will smooth her path. But that sort of thing makes a woman strong, you know. Have you ever broken a bone?” she asked me suddenly.

“Yes,” I told her, my mind whipping back to the summer I was eight and I fell from an apple tree. “My arm. When I was a little girl.”

She put out her hand and I