Holiday greetings, from me and the Bluestocking Belles, and welcome to our Follow Your Star Home blog hop. Read on for my story about the travels of the magic ring, and comment for an entry in our holiday prize. Then go to our blog hop page for links to the other Belles’ stories and for more information about the prize and the special price on all three holiday box sets for this week and next. The hop is running for the fortnight, so keep checking back to see if a new story has been posted.

The Reunion

Father was negotiating their passage in a caravan across Persia to the borders of the Turkish Levant. From there, they’d find ship to Constantinople, where Father planned to follow up the latest rumour.

For seventeen years, since he lost his wife shortly after Rus’s birth, he’d refused to believe she was really dead. But for seventeen years, every lead had evaporated, every story had proven false.

Not that Father spent all his time looking for his lost love. He’d also been the best father a man could be, and all the time he was making his fortune in the lands of the East.

Father was good at bargaining; much better than anyone Rus knew. In India, in Afghanistan, in Serendip, and now in this small port town on the Gulf of Persia, Father had the patience, the good manners, and the sheer intelligence to play the game of business with the locals, each action, every word, a step in a complex dance that left both parties satisfied and eager to do business again.

Father enjoyed the hours it took, but Rus was only seventeen, and the port was full of life and colour. He burned to capture the new sights on paper.

“Don’t go far,” Father said, when he begged leave to sketch. “Stay where I can see you from the verandah. And Rusty, wear your hat.”

He did better. He found a place under an awning that protected the fair skin he’d inherited from his father — skin that went with the hair that had won him his nickname. Even his hands would burn, though they were more weathered than his face. But when he began drawing he forgot time, ignored discomfort, saw nothing but whatever he was trying to reproduce in his sketch pad.

The Arabic dhows at anchor in the small harbour. The square shapes of the buildings. A sailor who took a coin to pose for a moment. Three camels in solemn procession, their noses as lofty as dowagers. He turned page after page, making brief notes in the margins about the colours he would apply when he had time to create a painting from the impressions he was absorbing.

A woman in western dress caught his eye, walking past in the direction of the small British naval garrison. Perhaps she was wed one of the British officers.

With a few brief strokes he captured the flow of her skirts, the bonnet that shaded and hid her face, the large man in desert robes that strode in her wake. A bodyguard, Rus guessed, since he stepped between her and a street pedlar with a basket of fresh dates.

The lady waved her bodyguard aside, and exchanged a few words with the pedlar. Rus was too far away to hear more than one or two words, but he saw her pass over a coin and receive a handful of dates in a little basket woven from palm fronds.

Rus turned the page and began another sketch on a fresh piece of paper. The lady stripped off one glove, and as she did he saw something flash as it flew from her hand. She didn’t notice, picking a date from the basket and moving off towards the harbour as she ate it.

Rus put his pencil and sketchbook down and hurried after her, searching the ground for whatever had fallen. There it was: a ring. He caught it up and examined it briefly. It was chunky and heavy; a seal ring perhaps, with a star engraved on the face. It was not what he’d expect a fashionable lady to wear.

While he’d been pondering it, she’d strolled further away, and he cast a glance back at the house where his father sat. Rus had better hurry to catch her before she moved out of sight of the verandah and forced him to break his promise.

“Ma’am,” he called as he ran after her. “English lady!”

She turned slightly towards him and he could see her face. She was older than he’d expected from her graceful carriage and light steps. Not really old. The age of his father or a little younger.

Rus ignored the bodyguard, and held out the ring. “You dropped this, ma’am.”

She took it in her hand, without taking her eyes off his face; haunted eyes in a face suddenly blanched of colour. “Who are you?” Her voice shook.

Rus whipped off his hat and bowed. “Cecil McInnes, at your service, ma’am.”

He straightened just in time to catch her as she crumpled.

The bodyguard roared, and Rus thought he was done for, but then Father arrived, and the merchant he had been negotiating with. Rus was dimly aware of the merchant calming the bodyguard as Father ignored everything around him, even Rus’s attempt to explain what had happened, and took the lady’s face between reverent hands. She was stirring awake even as Father smiled, tears pouring down his cheeks the while.

“Cecily? Cecily, at last!”

Cecily? Rus’s mother? As she took her weight on her feet again, straightening, she didn’t take her eyes of Father.

“Alec? But you’re dead. They told me you had died! Alec!”

She threw herself into Father’s arms, her own tears running disregarded as she and Father babbled their wonder at finding one another again, and then Father scooped Rus into their embrace.

“Come,” Father’s friend the merchant said once they’d calmed a little. “You shall favour me by accepting my hospitality while you speak of all that has happened since last you were together. You have entertained every dog and donkey enough, yes?”

Rus blushed as he realised that the entire street was standing still to watch the crazy Englanders in their emotional reunion, but his father and mother (his Mother!) had eyes only for one another. Still, they allowed themselves to be herded inside.

It was only later that Rus realised that he and Mother had dropped the ring again, and by then it was nowhere to be found.

Cecily McInnes is the other woman in my contribution to the box set, Paradise Regained.

Divided sweethearts seek love and forgiveness in this collection of seasonal novellas.

Forged for lovers, the Viking star ring is said to bring lovers together, no matter how far, no matter how hard.

In eight stories covering more than a thousand years, our heroes and heroines put this legend to the test. Watch the star work its magic as prodigals return home in the season of goodwill, uncertain of their welcome.