Chapter 18 Rhys
Rhys
Rhys stood outside the door listening to the stirring music.
The song’s melancholy wrapped its arms around him and would not let him go.
Magellan was playing a well-known sonata by the famous composer in Vienna, Beethoven, who had died a few years ago.
She was playing without sheet music. Of course she was.
She must have studied her whole life to become this masterful.
Everything about her fascinated and flummoxed him.
Since her arrival he had abandoned all his duties and left the house party’s entertainments to his mother and Vivianne.
Feeling guilty, he headed outside to find the guests.
They were in the middle of an enthusiastic game of croquet.
Rhys pretended to watch, sipping on a glass of lemonade and cordially making the rounds to visit.
He was informed that Lady Fauna and her family had left early after the lady’s unfortunate fall off her horse.
Rhys should have been affronted by the slight since they had gone without a personal farewell, but he was in fact relieved.
The entire house party had become a plague.
He checked the time and called for tea to be brought to the library along with food. Ever since Magellan had told him of the affliction she faced by going too long without eating, he made sure trays were brought to her regularly.
He set out for the conservatory with a determined stride.
She’d had more than enough time to play.
Alone. When he neared the conservatory, the music wafted down the hallway.
She was playing a vibrant piece by a composer he did not recognize.
One of the conservatory doors was half open.
He stepped inside to discover his mother and Lord Erickson sitting in the chairs.
Seeing them hit Rhys with a jolt of irritation.
She had allowed them a private audience but not him? He tamped down his resentment, knowing he was being irrational. It wasn’t as if she could have kicked the countess out if she had asked to sit. He pasted a serene smile on his face and joined them in the front row.
Magellan’s eyes darted to him without missing a key. She had color in her cheeks that had been missing before, and he realized playing for an hour had indeed rejuvenated her.
He sat back to watch, letting the music ease his ire.
Everything about her as she played was beauty in motion.
When the song finished, his mother sprang up from her chair.
“Zis room has never had such talent. You must give a concert! I insist! Have you zeen my husband’s collection of instruments?
” She went to the mirrored panels and pressed on one.
It clicked open to reveal an enormous hidden closet full of instruments. “He brought zhese back from Vienna.”
Magellan jumped up in excitement and went to join her. The cabinets contained a whole treasure trove. His father had collected every kind of instrument, another one of his eccentricities. He even had a set of ancient bagpipes that supposedly came from Egypt.
Magellan picked up a small wind instrument from the shelf, brought it to her lips, and played the loveliest folk song sounding straight from the Highlands.
His mother clapped along in delight. Rhys could only watch in awe as Magellan’s fingers flew over the little pipe’s six holes to conjure the most amazing tune, and in that moment he fell a little bit more in love with her.
She brought the song to a close with a laugh and a blush on her cheeks. “Sorry, I’m afraid I got carried away. This is a beautiful little penny whistle.”
“You are quite the maestro, Miss Brighton,” Lord Erickson complimented, his eyes keen. “How did you learn to play such a variety of instruments?”
Magellan looked uncomfortable by the question, her smile dimming. “It just comes naturally, I suppose.” She placed the whistle back on the shelf.
That was when Rhys saw her hands were shaking and then she swayed, no doubt from fatigue. He jumped up in alarm, announcing, “I’m afraid Miss Brighton is taxed and must return to her room. She is in no state to be up and about.”
“But the pages—” Magellan tried to protest.
“I will have them brought up right away with your tea tray.”
To his relief, she relented. “Thank you. Yes, maybe that would be best.”
Rhys escorted her to the stairs, where she was met by Polly. He asked for a tea tray with food to be sent to her immediately.
With Magellan now escorted to her room, he headed to the library to finish translating the diary. For the sooner he did, the sooner she would confess and he could put all the fanciful notions about her to rest.
He worked hard for hours, noting Gwynedd’s story was beginning to take an even more fantastical turn with her, Merlin, and Taliesin’s travels to Stonehenge. In the diary Gwynedd called the three of them a powerful triad.
Two comets and a North Star.
In recorded history, Rhys knew Merlin and Taliesin would go on to become the most famous Bards in antiquity, and Gwynedd would be married and become the queen of Strathclyde.
Rhys did not understand how real history fit into the puzzle of this memoir.
It was as if Gwynedd was sharing the secret shadows of their lives as she recounted her magical discovery of music, her time at Stonehenge, and her growing love for the great Bard Taliesin.
Up until now Rhys had dutifully translated every word.
Even when Gwynedd explained in some detail how music connected all living things in the world.
How a musical scale contained twelve notes.
How the heavens were divided into twelve houses.
How our bodies had twelve pairs of rib bones to protect the heart.
Gwynedd had written it wasn’t accidental time was measured by the number twelve, or that the day ended when the sun was below the horizon by twelve degrees.
For within the connection between math and music lay the answers to the mysteries of the universe, because one single musical note could be divided into an infinite number of them.
Her treatise on the mystical nature of music was heady, and as Rhys worked, he couldn’t help but notice the similarities between Gwynedd and Magellan.
Magellan could play music quite magically too.
She had arrived wearing a medieval dress and a ring on her finger similar to Gwynedd’s, although he hadn’t gotten a close look at it.
Then another thought occurred to him. A much darker one.
Did Magellan already know Gwynedd’s story and was trying to act out her own fantasy? The ring on her hand, her being talented in music as well, and now in the diary, Gwynedd was falling in love with a Bard who had a mastery with words.
Had Magellan come here for her own love story?
Young women often had overactive imaginations from being trapped in their cloistered lives, which is why these kind of romantic tales enticed them.
Even he had become captivated with Gwynedd’s story.
Even he had had a moment of whimsy and contemplated Magellan being Gwynedd—or the woman from his father’s painting.
Fortunately, he knew the difference between fantasy and real life. He only hoped Magellan did too.
Now that Gwynedd had arrived at Stonehenge and shared what happened with Garesh, Rhys took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.
Oh lud.
The story had completely veered into pure make-believe.
“Is that more of the translation?”
Rhys glanced up to find Lord Erickson approaching, and he struggled to keep his displeasure from showing on his face.
The baron truly was becoming another thorn in his side.
The tedious man had been asking repeatedly to view the library’s collection and the diary.
Rhys had finally relented and shown the man last night.
He had watched with unease as Lord Erickson traced his fingers over the diary’s leather cover and remarked, “What a glorious triskelion.”
In that moment Rhys had wanted nothing more than to swat Erickson’s hand away.
Erickson had read the letter to Sir Thomas Malory with his quizzing glass, then turned his attentions to Rhys’s translation with a sniff of approval.
“You can read Old English. I’m impressed.
” He glanced up, a wolfish grin on his face.
“If this diary is in fact authentic . . .” He trailed off and went back to reading.
Rhys knew what he was implying. The Druids were notoriously secretive, and Gwynedd had written about her Druid tutelage with Merlin, breaking the Druid code.
If it was real. The more Rhys translated it, the more he doubted it. Now, after this last bout of translation, he was sure it was pure fiction.
“We will have to conduct a careful study,” Erickson said, and Rhys tried to hide his ire at the “we” as the baron went on.
“This could likely be a fabrication by an imaginative nun in the 1100s, when it became quite popular to write about mythical figures of antiquity. Though I cannot make an informed decision as of yet.”
Rhys did not like seeing the baron handling his translation or the diary. He was feeling quite possessive of the little book—and every other book in the library. He would have to make his apologies to the baron and send the man home empty-handed.
At this point he didn’t know how he was going to save the estate.
His house party was a failure, and he was back to where he started.
Luftmensch was the Yiddish word for someone who was an impractical dreamer with no business sense.
It seemed he had inherited that trait from his father.
What a horrible Liron he was turning out to be.
Now Lord Erickson was back to read more of the translation, and Rhys could find no excuse not to let him.
Erickson greedily took the pages and sat down.
When the baron finished, he handed them back with a sincere, “Fascinating,” and then proceeded to quiz him about Magellan’s father, who he assumed was the owner of the diary.
“I look forward to meeting Miss Brighton’s father when he arrives. Perhaps he will wish to sell the book.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve never met Miss Brighton’s father. Only my father seems to have known the man. He was safekeeping the diary for the family.” Rhys still had not solved the mystery surrounding Magellan, her family, or why his father had the book. But he would demand the answers from her tomorrow.
Feeling resolute, he wiped his ink-stained fingers. He would send these last pages up with her dinner tray, but come the morning, he would refuse to tell Magellan one more word of this lunatic story until she told him hers.