“Are you here for the fête tonight, sir? There’ll be drink and music and dancing. For another shilling, I can make sure you have some tempting partners. The girls won’t mind that you’re elderly.” He leaned towards Henry and confided in a low voice, “You see, they’re all mad in love with me and will do what I tell them.”
“I’m sure they’re very tempting. And I’m also sure they wouldn’t like to hear you’re selling their dances to old men,” Henry said flatly. “And, no, I am not coming to the fête.”
Even though Miss Beasley might be there.
The whippersnapper grinned again and strolled away, tossing his shilling in the air, not chastened in the least. Henry walked on towards the farrier’s forge, passing the busycoaching inn and the coaching inn’s sign in the shape of a swan.
The swan stopped him, and he stared.
The swan was green. Brightly, proudly green. The sign had not once been a white swan that had turned color from the growth of lichen over it. This was a deliberately green swan.
How Tommy Treadwell changed the green swan back into an elven prince.
If only Henry’s own life were a storybook with chapter titles that would assure him of the happy ending.How Henry Delamere discovered Augustus Puddlewick and granted his granddaughter’s wish.
Nym was ready for Henry and the ride back to Sutton Hall, but the farrier waved Henry’s coins away.
“Sir John’s man’ll see me right.”
“Very well. I’ll tell him he owes the farrier next to The Green Swan.”
“The Swan.”
“The sign is a green swan.”
The farrier shrugged. “Inn belongs to the Greenways. Inn’s next to the green.”
Henry hesitated. “I wonder if you know of a man who writes books.”
“My father. Dead now.”
Even if Tommy Treadwell hadn’t been lurking in every corner of Much Wemby, even if an enchantress hadn’t charmed Henry, it was a strange village that boasted a farrier with a father who wrote books.
“And his books were about . . .”
“Not books. One book.”
Only one book. Not Augustus Puddlewick, then.
Henry nodded, mounted Nym, and set out for Sutton Hall. He would take the shortest way back since the sun was high in the sky, and he didn’t want the D’Oylys to worry. Yes,he would take the shortest way even though it would not take him past the church again.
That was for the best. After all, Miss Beasley might still be cutting grass in the churchyard, and Henry might be ensorcelled by her all over again.
Five
Her king asked the concubine if someone could join them in their bed.
“Only if he has an enormoustalpeniscockphallus,” she said, hiding the roil of her jealous rage behind a sweetly false smile.
“He does,” her king said and opened the door to allow his favorite hound into the bedchamber.
—The Concubine and Her King.Unpublished MS.
The butler met Henry at the front door of Sutton Hall. “My lord, Sir John is in his study, Lady D’Oyly is resting, and Miss D’Oyly and Miss Charlotte D’Oyly are in the drawing room with Miss Gulliver, a neighbor.”
In the four days Henry had been a guest at Sutton Hall, Sir John D’Oyly had spent almost all of his waking hours in his study, preparing his answer to the marchioness. As a result,Henry had often found himself in the company of Lady D’Oyly and the baronet’s two daughters.
Very quickly, Henry came to suspect the D’Oyly daughters were the real reason his aunt had chosen him to carry her letter. There had to be more fitting messengers than Henry, but two birds, one stone. A message delivered and a match made, all in one blow.
