“Please, Irina,” Lydia begged as Chase joined them on the bridge. “Give it back to me if you don’t believe what I am saying. The coin’s worth is in its magic. Other than that it is only a trading coin. Alexei investigated it completely. You know he would not have left me with anything of such value when he could have used it to build the business.”
Irina’s agitation lessened as she considered what Lydia said. Finally she held up the coin, a sneer twisting her pretty face. “Here is what I wish for, that you and your idiot lover find exactly what you deserve.”
“Now give it back to Mrs. Chernov,” Chase said with that cold edge to his voice that always made Lydia shiver.
“Or what? You will run me through with your sword stick?”
Lydia glanced at Chase, not because she was afraid that he might do just that, but at the admission, however unintentional, that Irina had spoken to Nesbitt—for how else could she know about the sword stick?
Irina shrieked then and threw the glowing coin away from her. “The damn coin burned my fingers!”
The coin flashed in the afternoon sun, and the three of them watched it as it arced into the air, splashed into the water, and was swept away by the current.
Silence, complete silence settled around them. Chase was convinced. He wondered if Irina was.
“A magic coin. You charlatans. What did you treat it with so that it would burn my hand?”
She would never be convinced, Lydia realized and, really, it didn’t matter anymore.
“Leave right now, both of you, or I will send the servants to oust you.” Irina left them and ran toward the house while both Chase and Lydia stared at the stream, the coin nowhere to be seen. Chase offered Lydia his arm.
They walked back around the house to where the carriage waited. They sat very close this time.
“I wonder what will happen to the coin,” Lydia speculated. “Do you think it’s lost forever?”
“I’m not sure it matters. Even if it is found, who will think to wish on it without some guidance?”
“What a waste of good fortune.”
“We have all we need, though.” Chase took her hand and kissed it. “I love you, Lydia.”
“But my past—” she began.
He spoke over her protests. “Has made you the wonderful woman you are. Your family failed you, Alexei failed you, but somehow that has only strengthened your generous heart. Of course I love you. Never, ever doubt that.”
“All right,” she agreed, smiling at him.
“And I will marry you,” he said pointedly, then added, “when you are ready.”
“Oh, Chase,” she whispered, her lips close to his. “It would make the secret wish of my heart come true.” Marriage, children, and a life with someone who loves me.
They kissed and there was silence in the carriage for a very long time.
As the conveyance passed the Bull Ring and made a turn onto the street that housed Chernov Drapers, Lydia and Chase helped each other smooth their clothes and put their hats back on.
“It may be vindictive of me, but I wish Irina truly knew that she gave her wish to us, though I suppose there is no way to convince her.”
“No. I think not. Besides, she is out of your life for good, I hope.”
“I expect so. I cannot imagine Grandmama will still consider a business merger with Mr. Allerton after the way Irina lost the coin. But when Grandmama dies, Irina will inherit the shop and the dye recipe. Until then, I do not need to see her ever again.”
“Good. We have no need of her ill will. Nor does your grandmama need her temper tantrums.”
“Chase, that wish she made.” Lydia faced him fully as the carriage drew up in front of the shop. “To use her words, what do you think we deserve?”
He kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks and pulled her into his arms. Home. Right here, right now, he saw the start of the first true family he had ever known. “What do we deserve, Lydia? Why, to live happily ever after, of course.”
EPILOGUE
The fisherman threw the line in the water again. Mr. Arbuthnot was tired and hungry, but this was the first dry day in a week and he hated fishing in the rain.
He pulled the line across the bottom of the river and came up with a nail and a coin. But not the coin he was fishing for.
His charge was clear: to care for the coin, to share its magic. It was a charge he took seriously. Mr. Arbuthnot put the nail and the coin on the pile of items his magnetized “hook” had caught that day and was about to toss out the line again when a man came by.
He was well dressed. A successful business owner of some kind, Arbuthnot guessed. Not inclined to believe in magic. But he could be wrong.
“You know, my good man, there are no fish worth catching this time of year.”
“Yes, but then I am not trying to catch a fish.”
The man gave him the kind of look that implied he was crazy, and Mr. Arbuthnot took pity on him. “I lost something very important and I am hoping that the magnet at the end of this line will bring it home to me.”
“Huh,” the man said. “How do you know where you lost it? The river is running high right now. It is playing havoc with the waterwheel at the mill I own.”
“I can see it flash every now and again,” Arbuthnot explained as he congratulated himself on the accuracy of his identification of this man.
The mill owner stared at the river and then took a step closer to the edge. “There, right there!” He pointed to a place not two feet offshore. “I saw something flash.”
Arbuthnot trailed the line over the spot and, sure enough, he caught something. Afraid to breathe, he pulled the line in and slowly, slowly dragged the catch to within reach.
Sure enough, it was the coin. The very coin that had been minted in 1808 and sent to India, only to sink with the ship just off the coast of England. He took the coin, sparkling gold, and dried it with a handkerchief.
The man stood beside him, smiling and nodding as though he had saved the day.
“Sir, I thank you. I thank you and give you this coin if you will listen and believe what I say.”
“No, it’s your coin.” The man stumbled back and made to leave.
“It’s yours now. If you will accept that it’s a magic coin and will grant one wish. The trick is the coin will only grant the wish it feels is right. You will know it is the right wish when it glows bright and feels hot, just as it is at this moment.”
Arbuthnot held out his hand. Indeed the coin glowed and felt warm, as much a sign to Arbuthnot that he was doing the right thing as it was to the man.
“Sir, bear in my mind, the wish is yours alone to make. Once you have made one, you can pass it on.”
The man, who did not need more money, reached out and then hesitated. “I don’t know what to wish for.”
“The coin knows,” Arbuthnot repeated.
The man nodded and took it. “I’m not sure I believe you, but even if it’s a joke I will still take it. My nephew collects foreign coins and this will be a fine addition to his collection.”
“Aha, but do wish on it first before you give it to your nephew, and then pass it on, please. It is not meant to be in a collection. If you will not share it, I must keep it.”
The mill owner was obviously used to bargaining. “I’ll tell you what. If I do win what I wish for, I will pass it on. If not, it will go into my nephew’s collection.”
“Very well.” Arbuthnot nodded. “But bear in mind that the coin may interpret your wish in a way different from what you construe.”
“All right,” the man said and smiled. “I will be careful what I wish for.”
Arbuthnot decided he had to be satisfied with that. Gathering his other finds and his fishing rod, he prepared to leave.
“Good night, sir, and thank you,” the man called out to him.
“No, thank you,” Mr. Arbuthnot called back. “You have made my task much easier.”
Mr. Allerton shrugged his shoulders and walked b
ack to find his nephew, who was skipping rocks along the bank farther down the path.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Stories with continuing characters have always been a favorite theme of mine both as a writer and a reader. I had no idea when I wrote “Poppy’s Coin” in our first anthology, Bump in the Night, that the coin would be the element that continues in each novella.
If you go to my website, MaryBlayney.com, you will find a chronology of the coin in each of the novellas in which it has appeared.
The coin I call “Poppy’s coin” does exist, though I have never seen it do its magic. The Admiral Gardner, a ship bound for India, left England in 1809 carrying a load of freshly minted coins. The ship sank just off the Goodwin Sands. Between 1984 and 1985, an authorized treasure-hunting diving syndicate recovered the cargo. My good friend, writer Lavinia Kent, gave me one of them, and it inspired “Poppy’s Coin.”
There are still some stories untold. What did Martha Stepp wish for? She is the maid who is fired in the second novella, “Amy and the Earl’s Amazing Adventure” in Dead of Night, and Martha appears again as the baby’s nurse in “The Other Side of the Coin.”
At the end of “The Other Side of the Coin” in The Other Side, Miss Lucy Bright is left with the coin and knows exactly what she will wish for, but so far she has not told me what that is. I’m not sure how Alexei Chernov worded his wish, but it’s the reason he never came back from his trip abroad.
I do know what Mr. Allerton wishes for: that someone will love him for himself and not for his money. His wish is granted when his selfish, feckless wife, Irina, eventually bears a son, and later a daughter. The two children love their father dearly and care for him all his life.
The coin interprets the wish as it sees fit. So, yes, be careful what you wish for.
Finally, a little history of purple dye. Before the chemistry of dyeing was perfected, purple dye came from mollusks. Discovered around 1600 B.C. on the Levantine coast, the process required twelve thousand shellfish to recover 1.5 grams of dye, making it the most expensive color to produce, and thus, the color of royalty. Who knows how the Chernovs developed their mollusk recipe, but it was, even in 1816, a very valuable commodity.
Yes, people used magnets in the early nineteenth century, though the relationship between magnetism and electricity had yet to be demonstrated. And yes, there were women who owned and managed shops then, mostly widows, just as Lydia pretended to be.
If you have any other questions, please let me know. My email address is [email protected].
DEAR ONE
PATRICIA GAFFNEY
To everybody. Thanks for everything.
ONE
“Hm?” Charlie Worth said the first two times his grandson, Oliver, asked him about the credit card bill. If he feigned deafness indefinitely, Oliver might give up and leave him alone. Although such a thing had never happened before.
“Grandfather.”
A chair scraped on the kitchen floor. Charlie kept his binoculars focused on the insipid view, three floors below, of a flock of geese and an old lady pushing a walker around one of the bean-shaped lakes at The Lakes at Cartamack, Vibrant Living for Active Seniors.
“Grandfather,” Oliver said at his elbow.
Charlie gave up. “What?”
“What’s this?”
He squinted. Maybe he could feign blindness.
“Here.” Oliver tapped a line on the bill. “I’m sure it’s a mistake. It says you spent over four hours on the phone this month to a 900 number, something called ‘M. Romanescu.’ For a total of $780.39.”
Stalling, Charlie pulled back his lips, trying to mimic his grandson’s amused, incredulous smile. “M. Romanescu. M. Romanescu.” He said that a few more times, then fell back on “Hm.”
Gradually Oliver stopped smiling. At the moment his eyes went wide with shock, Charlie realized what Oliver was thinking.
“It’s not phone sex!”
“Of course not. Of course not.” Oliver actually blushed—Charlie hadn’t seen that happen in twenty years. It diverted him until Oliver said, “What is it, then?”
Charlie opened and closed his mouth. This wasn’t going to go over well. He got that cornered-kindergartner feeling Oliver was so good at provoking. “Hey, you’re the one always telling me to get out more, do this, do that, mingle with the peeps.” The best defense was a good offense. “And look what happens when I do—the third degree!” He retreated to the kitchen.
“Grandfather,” Oliver said, following. Who called his grandfather “Grandfather”? Nobody but Oliver. “This is one 900 number. One peep. What, or who, is M. Romanescu?”
“You hungry? I got doughnuts.”
“Who is M—”
“Romy, her name’s Romy, and she’s a friend of mine, okay?” He started rummaging in the pantry. “Chocolate, I got glazed, I got sprinkles. . . .”
“Romy?”
“Madame Romanescu to you. We could split a cruller.” He heard a thump—Oliver falling back against the counter.
“A psychic. My God. A telephone psychic.”
“What? I can’t have a friend? We talk, that’s all. She tells me things.”
“I bet she does.”
“Real things. Stuff she couldn’t know!”
Oliver made the pained face that always made Charlie, who was seventy-seven, feel like seven. “We talked about this, Grandfather. We agreed. You said you’d stick to the new budget—no more shopping channel, no catalogs, no online poker.”
“This is different. I’m being sociable.”
“You’re being—” Oliver pinched the bridge of his nose, making a big show of summoning patience. “I know it’s been rough on you the last couple of years. Losing Nana, moving here—”
“Shoulda stayed where I was. Perfectly good house, should never’ve listened to you. Should never’ve . . .” He trailed off, didn’t say “given you my goddamn power of attorney.” He’d lose that argument, but only because Oliver didn’t play fair. He liked to bring up things that ought to be water under the dam, couple of unfortunate little financial incidents, could happen to anybody. Water under the dam.
“You haven’t given this place a chance,” Oliver was saying in his tolerant voice. “All the activities—”
“I hate activities.”
“—and golf, you haven’t even tried your new clubs.”
“I hate golf.”
“You don’t. You used to love golf.”
“Used to. Now I hate it.” He stuffed a doughnut hole in his mouth.
“Look,” Oliver said, glancing at his expensive wristwatch. Always with the schedule. He started cleaning up the bills, the Medicare and Social Security forms, all the stuff he brought over once a month for Charlie to sign. Or explain. “I have to go, Grandfather, I’m sorry. I’ve got a thing this evening, but before—”
“ A party!” Charlie pounced. “Some job you got. Wish I had that job.” That always got to him. Oliver was some kind of big-deal energy lobbyist on Capitol Hill, but all he did was go to cocktail parties—or so Charlie liked to needle him.
“But before I go, I want you to promise me you’ll quit calling this psychic. I mean it, Grandfather, this has to stop. You know better.”
“What? What do I know better?”
“That it’s bogus! A scam. These people prey on the elderly, the—well, frankly, the gullible. It’s what they do.”
“Romy’s not like that.”
“Promise me.”
“Or what, you’ll cut off my allowance?” He would, too; he’d done it before. “You don’t take after me,” Charlie said testily. “I don’t know who you take after. Nobody in the family I can think of. I think it’s very likely you were adopted.”
Oliver just looked at him.
“All right. All right! Christ almighty, what a wet blanket. Talk about a killjoy.”
“Sticks and stones,” Oliver said, smiling again. He got his suit coat off the back of the chair, where he’d put it so it woul
dn’t wrinkle. The fact that he was wearing a suit hadn’t tipped Charlie off that he had somewhere else to go this afternoon because Oliver always wore a suit. He probably took a shower in his suit. He put all the papers in his snazzy briefcase, put the briefcase under his arm, and threw his other arm across Charlie’s shoulders, presumably to show there were no hard feelings. “You know,” he said, oh so casually as they walked to the front door, “they’ve got a full-time staff person here at Cartamack—I saw it in the newsletter. Somebody, counselor type, you could talk to. If, you know, you wanted to.”
A shrink? Oliver wanted him to go see a shrink? Charlie said, “Hm?” pretending not to hear, and Oliver didn’t follow up. Hard to say which of them was gladder to drop the subject. Worth men didn’t go to shrinks.
Although, come to think of it, Oliver might’ve gone to one after the accident, for all Charlie knew. How many years ago was that, five, six? Change that, then: Worth men didn’t go to shrinks and talk about it.
Oliver paused, as he usually did, to look at Charlie’s collection of Western bronzes on the glass shelves by the front door. He picked up his favorite, the biggest, heaviest one: five mustangs in full gallop. Charlie picked up his own favorite, a cowboy whipping his muscle-bound horse with his hat, hair blowing back in a realistic headwind. Thirty years ago, he and Oliver used to roll around on the living room rug in Charlie’s house, making up games about posses and ambushes, cattle drives and gold rushes. Love of a mythical Old West was the main thing they’d had in common in those days. Probably still was.
Even now, just holding the heavy bronze horses had the effect of putting them back in favor with each other. “Got any shirts for the cleaners?” Oliver asked, and Charlie said no, not this week, thanks. They talked about Charlie’s 401(k), whether he ought to renew his AARP membership. They exchanged their traditional manly, one-armed hug, and Charlie thought it went on a second or two longer than usual.
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