Song of the Spirits by Sarah Lark Read Free Book Online Page A

and perhaps even finer and curlier than Fleurette’s or Gwyneira’s. Ruben had passed on his placid gray eyes and his brown hair to his sons alone. Stephen in particular was “just like his father.” His youngest, Georgie, was the adventurous one. By and large they fit together wonderfully: Stephen would follow in Ruben’s footsteps with regards to jurisprudence, while Georgie dreamed of opening branch offices of the O’Kay Warehouse. Ruben was a lucky man.
    “There was a scandal involving William Martyn,” Fleurette remarked casually as she set a casserole on the table. They were having the same thing for dinner as the guests at Helen’s hotel, since Fleurette had asked Mary and Laurie to make her a dinner to take home.
    “Where did you hear that?” Ruben asked as Elaine almost dropped her fork in surprise.
    “What do you mean by ‘scandal’?” she mumbled.
    A glow passed over Fleurette’s still-elfish face. She had always been a talented spy. Ruben could still recall all too well how she had once revealed to him the secret of the O’Keefe and Kiward Stations.
    “Well, I visited the Brewsters this afternoon,” she said offhandedly. Ruben and Fleurette had known Peter and Tepora Brewster since they were children. Peter was an import-export merchant who had once built up the wool trade in the Canterbury Plains. But then his wife, Tepora, a Maori, had inherited land in Otago, and the couple had moved there. They now lived near Tepora’s tribe, ten miles west of Queenstown, and Peter directed the resale of all the gold extracted there across the globe. “They are entertaining visitors from Ireland at the moment. The Chesfields.”
    “And you thought this William Martyn would be well-known throughout all Ireland?” Ruben inquired. “Where did you get that idea?”
    “Well, I was right, wasn’t I?” Fleurette replied mischievously. “All joking aside, of course there was no way for me to know that. But Lord and Lady Chesfield belong unmistakably to the nobility of English origin. And based on what Helen had already found out, the young man comes from similar circles. It’s not as though Ireland is all that big.”
    “And what has Lainie’s sweetheart been up to?” Georgie asked inquisitively, grinning impishly at his sister.
    Elaine exploded. “He’s not my sweetheart!” She swallowed any further remarks though. After all, she, too, wanted to know what scandal clung to William Martyn.
    “Well, I don’t know the specifics,” Fleurette said. “The Chesfields only dropped a few hints on the subject. In any event, Frederic Martyn is quite a powerful landlord. Lainie was right about that. William, however, does not stand to inherit anything. He’s the younger son. And the black sheep of the family besides. He sympathized with the Irish Land League—”
    “That speaks rather well for the boy,” Ruben interjected. “What the English are doing over there in Ireland is a crime. How can you let half the population starve while sitting on full grain stores yourself? The tenant farmers work for starvation wages, and the landlords grow fat. It’s wonderful if the young man is advocating for the farmers!”
    Elaine beamed.
    Her mother, however, looked concerned. “Not when that advocacy degenerates into terrorist activities,” she remarked. “And Lady Chesfield hinted at something along those lines. William Martyn is supposed to have taken part in an assassination attempt.”
    Ruben frowned. “When was this? As far as I know, the last major uprisings took place in Dublin in 1867. And there has been nothing in the
Times
recently about individual actions by Fenians or similar groups.” Ruben received English newspapers, though mostly with a delay of a few weeks, and he read them attentively.
    Fleurette shrugged. “It was probably thwarted in time. Or it was only planned, what do I know. This William fellow isn’t sitting in prison, after all. No, he’s publicly courting our daughter using his