Chapter Twenty-Two
It was late afternoon, and I was cleaning the kitchen and beginning to consider dinner, when Leona came in from the taproom. She looked flustered and a little befuddled, and once she was through the swinging door she stopped and leaned against the wall.
“Oh, my,” she said in a faint voice.
I gave her an inquiring look. “What’s wrong?”
“There is—a man just walked in and he is—I swear, Kellen, he is the most attractive man I have ever seen.” She straightened up and began fooling with her auburn hair, pulling it down from its habitual bun, then rewinding it and pinning it back in place. “I couldn’t even speak to him. I went to ask him if he wanted dinner, or beer or wine—and I said weer or bine! A glass of bine! What an idiot! I can’t go back out there.”
I was laughing. “Well, do you want me to take his order?”
“Yes. And tell him I’m—tell him I’m—well, don’t mention me. Maybe he didn’t even notice.”
I dried my hands and smoothed down my vest and headed out to the taproom. The new arrival was sitting in one of the side booths, studying his menu intently. “Afternoon, sir, could I take your order?” I asked. But when he looked up at me, I was almost as dumbfounded as Leona. Handsome, yes, with a fair head of curls and melting brown eyes. But it was not just his good looks that had me gaping. “Chase? Chase Beerin?”
His face grave, he scanned me. “Yes, that’s my name. But I don’t—wait, you do look familiar, but I—”
“Kellen Carmichael,” I said helpfully. “You stayed at my mother’s house in Thrush Hollow—oh, three years ago. You went with me to see my friend Gryffin to take a look at his legs—”
Now his expression changed, his whole face lightening as he smiled. “Kellen! Of course I remember! I have thought of you often since that day—you and your friend both. What are you doing in Wodenderry?” He glanced at my attire. “Still dressed as a boy, I see.”
I slid into the booth on the opposite bench. We were usually too busy to fraternize with customers, but there were only a couple of other diners in place at the moment, and Chase was special. “Oh, the costume seemed easier to keep when I came to Wodenderry,” I said dismissively. “But no one here knows the truth! So don’t let on.”
“All right,” he said, amused. “But what brought you to the city? And how is Gryffin? Still suffering or much improved?”
“You don’t know?” I demanded. “You haven’t figured it out?”
“I suppose not, since I have no idea what you mean.”
“Gryffin! He’s the Dream-Maker! He came to Wodenderry a year ago and now lives in the palace with the queen!”
Chase collapsed back against the booth, clearly astonished. “No! I realized that the Dream-Maker was a young man with limited use of his legs, but I—what a marvelous thing! I am so pleased for him.” Then he sat up straighter and frowned a little. “Although—haven’t I heard that the Dream-Maker is confined to a wheeled chair? Is he worse, then? For when I saw him, I thought he showed some promise of significant improvement.”
“He had a setback,” I said carefully. “His legs were injured. Again. The pain is severe enough these days that it keeps him from even trying to walk very much.”
“That’s a shame,” Chase said. “Has he seen a practitioner?”
“I think the royal physician treats him.”
From the expression on Chase’s face I gathered the impression that he did not think so highly of the queen’s medical man. But all he said was, “I am sorry to hear of his condition.”
“But tell me about you!” I exclaimed. “You came to the royal city to study medicine, you said. Have you been successful?”
He nodded. “Yes, I am almost through with my studies, and I have been seeing patients for the past six months. I love the work, Kellen. I feel like I have found my calling. But I’m so busy! I can’t remember the last night I went out for a night of fun with my friends. In fact, today I sat in my office and realized that I practically have no friends, and if I didn’t make some effort to retain the one or two fellows who still speak to me, I would soon have none at all.”
I thought of Leona, blushing in the kitchen. “So I don’t suppose you’ve had time to get married,” I said offhandedly.
He laughed. “No! But now that I know Gryffin is the Dream-Maker, I will presume on past friendship and go seek him out. And that’s exactly what I’ll ask for. Dream-Maker, I’ll say, can you find me a wife?”
At that exact moment, Leona stepped back into the taproom, carrying a tray. She had a studiedly casual expression on her face, and she crossed the room with a rather stately step that I knew was intended to cover her slight trembling. “I see one of your friends has joined you,” she said to Chase. She hadn’t looked at me, because she couldn’t take her eyes off the handsome doctor. “I brought a selection of bread and beer for you to enjoy while you peruse the menu.”
“Thank you,” Chase said in his earnest way. “You are most kind.”
Now she did look my way, and she almost dropped the tray when she saw who was sitting there. “Kellen! What are you doing? Why are you—” She glanced from me to Chase and back to me.
I jumped up. My smile was so wide I thought my whole face must have disappeared behind it. “Leona. Let me introduce you to Chase Beerin. He did a kindness for a friend of mine once, and I have always wanted a chance to repay the favor. Won’t you sit here and talk to him until his friends arrive? I’ll go make him a special dinner.”
I was no Dream-Maker, of course, and I would not have called myself a matchmaker, either, but it was obvious by the end of that first dinner that Chase found Leona as delightful as she found him. He stayed at the tavern long after his friends left, and Leona snatched maybe a dozen free moments during the course of the evening to pause at his table and exchange a few more words. Every time Sallie came into the kitchen she gave me a significant look, and I made more than my usual number of trips out into the taproom to check on the situation for myself. Chase stayed through the cleanup process, even helping us carry dirty plates and glasses into the kitchen. He and Leona were once again sitting in the booth, talking, when I finally went to bed.
He was back the next evening. And the next. He missed two nights, but was back at the tavern for the next three. Pretty soon we began to expect him to be present four days out of five, and Leona stopped looking so nervous when he first stepped through the door. The smile on her face remained, however.
Oddly, it was several weeks before Gryffin and Chase were at Cottleson’s on the same evening. Of course, I had told Gryffin the very next day about our old friend suddenly returned to our lives.
“Chase Beerin. I remember him as the kindest man I’ve ever met,” Gryffin said. We were having breakfast in the royal conservatory, where the windows were steamy with heat. Outside, it was damp and chilly.
“Yes, and I don’t think he’s changed,” I replied. “I’m hoping he and Leona will fall in love! They seem very interested in each other, and he’s at the tavern almost every night, but I can’t be sure the story will go as I want it to.” I folded my hands before me in a supplicant’s clasp. “Please, Dream-Maker, make this wish come true.”
He waved his hands grandly. “Poof! It is so.” Then he gave me a rather stern look. “How many times do I need to tell you not to waste dreams on other people? You’re supposed to offer your own hopes to the Dream-Maker.”
I scooped up another piece of fruit. Imported during this season and very expensive. “Why can’t I make wishes for my friends if I want to?” I said. “I think half the wishes I’ve ever spoken in my life have been for other people.”
“Because what if you’re wrong about what they desire?” he replied. “You think they want to travel to Wodenderry to see the queen, when all they really want is to stay home with their familiar circle of friends.”
I ate a bite of pastry and thought this over. “Did you wish for me to come to Wodenderry?” I said at last
. “And did you think I might have come against my will?”
“I’m the Dream-Maker,” he said. “I can’t make my own dreams come true.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” I said. “And it also doesn’t answer my question.”
He shrugged a little, and then he smiled. “I wanted you to come here so much,” he said. “But it was so long before you arrived. And then I found you had been here for weeks without telling me. And you’re still not here as yourself. You’re dressed as a boy—you’re in deep disguise. And I wonder if all these things, taken together, mean you didn’t really want to come. And if they mean you wish you weren’t here.”
His hand lay on the table between us. I covered it with my own. “Gryffin. Of all the things you might need to worry about, that’s the one thing you can cast aside. I’m in Wodenderry because you’re here and because I want to be where you are. I’m in disguise because I thought it would be easier to move into my new life this way.”
“But you’re in your new life,” he said. “Time to be yourself.”
I laughed a little. “But what will I say to Leona? And Sallie? What will they think of me when I reveal who I am?”
“We all have to do that at some point,” he said. “We all have to reveal our true natures to the people we’ve come to trust. A disguise is all very well in a cold and hostile world, but when you come to a place of warmth and safety, you have to risk being yourself.”
“I know. Maybe. You’re right, but I—I don’t know that I’m ready yet. Leona trusts me so much! I don’t know if I want to see her face when she realizes I’ve lied to her.”
His fingers tightened over mine. “I wish you would,” he said, his voice very close to a whisper. “I want everyone to see you for who you are.”
So that was unsettling, but in a somewhat thrilling way. I spent the next two days trying to decide how to tell Leona, what exactly to confess. I know you thought we were close as kin. I know I told you I had no more surprises…. It was hard to find the words to explain such a deception, no matter how necessary the trick had seemed when it was first embraced.
Luckily for me, bigger events were unfolding. It was easy to set aside the need for my own confession.
As Wintermoon grew even closer, Phillip started to haunt the tavern, arriving at odd hours—very early or very late—sometimes not entirely sober. I gathered that whatever venture he wanted the money for would be set in motion upon the new year, and so he was starting to grow desperate for funds. More than once, I saw shadowy figures lurking just outside the back door—Barney, I assumed, and some of his confederates—as Phillip came in to wheedle and threaten Leona. More than once, Chase and a couple of his friends offered to throw him out in the street, though Phillip usually backed off before it came to violence.
“Maybe I should just do it,” Leona said tiredly one day after Chase had kicked Phillip out again. “Maybe I should just sell the tavern.”
A chorus of “no”s came from Sallie and Chase and me—and a new voice, raised at the front door. “No,” the voice repeated, and we all spun around to see Raymond Lemkey taking a pose at the threshold. He looked very dapper, in fine clothes and a top hat, and his shoulders were covered with a glittering dust of snow. “No, I don’t believe it will come to that,” Raymond said, stepping inside with a hint of a swagger. “Leona, you might want to invite your brother back in. I have news for you both.”
“I’ll get him,” Chase said, and pushed his way out the door.
It was mid-afternoon on a cold, snowy day, and there were very few patrons on hand. Most of them were long-standing customers who had some interest in the outcome of this struggle, so Leona didn’t mind if they stayed as Phillip came snarling back in, Chase at his heels.
“So? What is it? You’ve found a way to settle my claim?” Phillip demanded.
“Sit, sit, sit,” Raymond said, and soon we had all disposed ourselves around one of the center tables. Sallie and I had pulled up seats alongside everyone else, since we figured the outcome of the lawsuit would affect us almost as much as Leona.
Raymond pulled a pair of spectacles out of his pocket and unfolded a piece of paper with many elaborate flourishes. “In my role as legal counsel to Leona Cottleson, I have carefully examined the few documents left behind by Eric and Nettie Cottleson,” he began in a very formal style. “Birth records, marriage records, rental leases at properties in towns throughout the kingdom, purchase agreements for this tavern, that sort of thing. I have investigated in every town where they once had residence. There was no formal will.”
“Right,” Phillip said, hitching his chair closer. “And Barney says that when a will is missing, the heirs get to split the property in two. That’s what Barney says.”
“Indeed, and Barney is most well informed. Yet there is a little-known provision of the royal code—in effect in Wodenderry for two hundred years, ever since Queen Lirabel’s great-great-grandfather signed it into law—that pertains to situations like this. It is called the ‘intent by action’ statute by which we may infer that one conveys through one’s activities exactly what one plans to do.”
We all stared at him a moment. “What?” Leona said faintly.
Raymond waved a hand. I caught a glimpse of a lace cuff beneath his jacket sleeve. “Your actions, Leona, have been to work diligently in the tavern since your father’s death, demonstrating your intent to make it a profitable and prosperous business. Phillip’s actions have been to show no care or interest in the business at all, demonstrating his intent to live a life unburdened by responsibility. Going by this measure, Leona has proved her claim to the property and Phillip has not. The tavern is yours, free and clear.”
All of us exclaimed in pleasure—except Phillip, who slammed an open hand down on the table. “I don’t believe you!” Phillip shouted. “I want my day in court!”
Raymond nodded. “And you shall have it, if you like. I will argue your sister’s claim. You—or perhaps one of your estimable friends—can argue yours.” He adjusted a cuff link, then glanced up to give Phillip a piercing look. “I suppose you know I have not lost a case in the past year. And I have argued dozens.”
Phillip pounded a fist down, then jumped to his feet and took three rough strides around the room. I saw Chase watching him, ready to take him on in a fight if the young man turned ugly. But most of my attention was on Phillip, whose headlong motion came to a sputtering stop as he halted in the middle of the room and stared back at all of us. His face had changed so rapidly from anger to despair that, for the first time, I actually felt sorry for him.
“It’s not fair,” he said, his voice low and a little shaky. I remembered again that he was really only a boy—my own age, or thereabouts. “I’m to get nothing? He was my father, too.”
Leona came to her feet, though Chase caught at her arm as if to keep her from going to her brother. “You have a home here anytime you want,” she said steadily. “And a job, if you want to work. I would never turn you out of the tavern. But I won’t give it up for you. I won’t let you take it from me. I’ll share it, if you like.”
“No!” he shouted, and he balled up his hands at his sides. “I want—what I want—I don’t want this. I want to take my inheritance and turn it into something else.”
“Not a bad idea, but you don’t have an inheritance,” Raymond said. “Your sister’s offer is a good one. If you work beside her for three years, putting in the same kind of hours she does, the ‘intent by action’ statute will apply to you as well. At that point the court might have to reconsider—”
“But I don’t want to work here! I want—you don’t understand what I want!” he cried, and his voice was so pitiful that I continued to feel sorry for him, even though he was behaving so abominably. “To be stuck here—trapped in Wodenderry—I have other places to go, things I want to do! I can’t—it would be death to me, staying at this place all the time.”
“Well, then,” Raymond said, “this place will never be yours.”
<
br /> Phillip stared at him for a moment, stared at Leona, then flung himself out the front door without another word. A smattering of applause came from the other patrons of the tavern, as well as a few calls of, “That’s the way, Leona!” and “Good job! Congratulations!” The rest of us sat there a few more moments, a little stunned.
“Well,” Leona said finally. “That was certainly dramatic. I’m so relieved that I’m a little numb! Raymond, how can I ever thank you?” She laughed. “Besides paying your bill, I mean.”
Raymond adjusted the set of his suit jacket. “I think, one of Kellen’s admirable dinners will be all the additional thanks I require,” he said. “And perhaps, now and then, if you have a friend who needs legal advice, you might mention my name.”
“That I will certainly do,” Leona replied.
I hurried into the kitchen to make Raymond’s meal—and, indeed, begin preparations for all the other dinners I would be serving that night. I was completely delighted for Leona, of course, and yet I found myself feeling a great deal of sympathy for the thwarted and disappointed Phillip. He was rather a wretched boy, but then, I had never seen him engaged in any enterprise that interested him. Tavern-keeping certainly did not, and why should it? He had his own dreams to pursue; he did not need to be tied to his father’s. I found myself wishing that Gryffin had been present during one of the moments Phillip had dropped by the tavern to make another of his threats. Maybe the alchemy of the Dream-Maker’s magic would have turned his ill-natured demands into impossibly delicate dreams. Maybe Gryffin would have known how to make even Phillip’s desires come true.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The day before Wintermoon, a package arrived from my mother. I had sent her an inexpensive Wintermoon gift—and one for Georgie, as well—and I expected the rather small box to contain something as slight and frivolous as the lace collar I had mailed to her. Indeed, there was nothing very special about the gloves she had enclosed, though she had knitted them herself, but the letter that accompanied them almost made me faint to the kitchen floor.