Page 5 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
Then Bristol couldn’t leave. Her father was lost without her mother. She had been the sun rising in his mornings and the moon whispering him to sleep at night. He couldn’t move forward. His paintings remained unfinished.
She thought a lot about forward movement these days—and standing still. Sometimes, even if you were pedaling for all you were worth down the road, it was hard to tell if you were getting anywhere. But every day she told herself she was making this work. Shewouldmake this work. For Harper, for Cat, and even for herself. She kept her dreams small, so they were reachable. Today she would pay the electric bill.
She was only a short distance down the highway, the whir of wheels and wind humming in her ears, when rock by rock, the memorial was restored to its former height and the silk flowers were returned to their position on top of the pile. They waved in the breeze at Bristol’s back, like a hand beckoning her to return.
CHAPTER 4
The Willoughby Inn had been abandoned for years. Structurally, it wasn’t sound, and weeds wove their way through the clapboards like fingers working to tear it down. Do Not Enter signs were posted at every entrance, but those were the first things to go. The shabby furniture left behind was quickly spruced up, the curling, stained wallpaper returned to its former glory, and a sparkling gleam was added to the wooden floors.
“Flowers,” Esmee chirped, surveying the parlor. “There should be flowers. I’ll take care of it.” She picked some wild weeds crowding the front porch and worked her magic to transform them into stunning arrangements.
Olivia blew pinches of dandelion and lavender powder toward the four corners of the room to sweep away the mustiness and create an alluring atmosphere of trust.
Freda brought books from the library and arranged them on a shelf, saying they, too, would help create tranquility.
The inn was indeed transformed.
Still, Eris was uneasy. What if—
“Don’t worry,” Ivy said as she adjusted drapes across a window. “If this one doesn’t work out, Cully says the recruit from Longforest is showing promise, and the others are coming along.”
Eris heard a low rumble from Melizan across the room.Coming alongwas not nearly good enough. He eyed Tyghan’s sister. She was a powerful woman with plenty of duties of her own. Why was she here helping to put spit and shine to a broken inn?
“Did Tyghan send you?” Eris asked.To spy on mewas left hanging in the air, but she understood the implied question.
She nodded stiffly. “Tygh spies on us all.”
“But he’s not coming, correct?”
“That’s why I’m here,” she growled.
Melizan’s method of dealing with problems tended to be swift and deadly. Her frustration was not unlike her brother’s at having her hands tied. Neither one liked having to go through the proper steps. Neither did Eris, but he didn’t make the laws of the world. As counselor, his job was to find the best way to use them—or find ways around them—which took time and patience. And this young woman was different. She wasn’t just any potential recruit, not with her family history. They needed her. At least he hoped they did. He was running out of options.
Eris laid out the artwork on the large dining room table. His inquisitors had learned she was well schooled in art history; in fact, it was the only history she was ever taught, which didn’t surprise him. The rest of her education was just as uneven, qualifying her for university credit in several subjects—French, Spanish, English literature, and world history—an exceptional student in many respects, but she had to take remedial courses in other subjects. Apparently Kierus and Maire hadn’t bowed to all the laws of their new lives. When he searched through her file, her academic advisor found her to be a paradox and wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.
But Eris knew what to do. He was counting on her knowledge of art to close the deal for them that day. He had brought half a dozen sketches for her to choose from—similar to the one stolen from the Epona Conservatory. Priceless art. And she would know it. It reeked of age and wonder and rare magnificence.
In her circumstances, she’d be a fool not to take it.
A gift, a bargain, an agreement. Her willing compliance. That was all they needed for this to work. But it was all for naught if she didn’t show.
Squeeze her.
This was his last-ditch effort. Eris left the inn for town.
Nothing could be left to the capricious whims of the world—or the fleeting fancies of this young woman.
CHAPTER 5
Bowskeep was a town in search of an identity. Maybe that was what Bristol liked most about it. She understood its casting about, trying to find its best self—an identity hard to nail down. With a population just over four thousand, it wasn’t exactly a small town, nor a large one either. Something in between, like her. But artists, farmers, clerks, students, and shopkeepers were slowly growing the town together into something. Into what? She wasn’t sure even they knew, which she found oddly reassuring.
But living anywhere for more than two months was a miracle for the Keats family, and Bristol became intrigued with seeing mere ideas grow and come to fruition. Seeing trees, landscapes, even people transform with the seasons, flourish, watching them become one thing, something else, and then turn back again. It was a strange circling rhythm most people took for granted, a continuity that was slightly sobering. Life wasn’t always about change but sometimes about sameness. And sometimes sameness made you look beneath the surface, look at the bones that held it all together—and the flaws that could be its undoing. Change was a distraction. Sameness demanded reflection. Bristol wondered if it was the sameness that drove her mother away. That it made her see things she didn’t want to see.
The town lay in the distant shadow of Kestrel Cove, the much larger and flashier resort town eight miles west on the coast. That was where Cat worked as a barista because jobs were more plentiful there. Until a decade ago, Bowskeep was mostly just a potty and gas stop for tourists heading to the seaside. But it was “coming into its own,” as Mayor Georgie Topz liked to say. She was a Little Person with inventive ideas, and Bowskeep was eager to follow her lead. Bristol admired that about the mayor, that she was a smart businesswoman who made fresh starts seem possible. One of her first moves as mayor was to propose three new stop signs on the main highway so Bowskeep wasn’t just a blur for tourists passing through. She also orchestrated a facelift for Main Street with colorful paint and flower boxes. The pièce de résistance of her marketing campaign was her chickens—Rhode Island Reds, Silkies, Faverolles, Orpingtons—the mayor’s pride and joy, which roamed freely on the sidewalks. It wasn’t just tourists who loved them. The merchants on Main Street gave them names. Fern was Bristol’s favorite, a leghorn who had more attitude than a Mack truck.
Another creation of the mayor’s was the Menagerium—a monthly street fair that filled the wide center parkway. That was how the Keats family came to be there. Merchants of every kind came to the Menagerium to sell their goods, from painters to potters to local farmers. The sheer variety at the Menagerium gave it an energy no other festival had—and Bristol had worked more than she could remember.
With Main Street blocked at either end on festival days, it meant more deliveries for Bristol. Sal paid her a wage of course, but tips made all the difference, and festival days were rife with them.
