Jo Beverley Read Free

why it was hidden, and the powers it possessed.
    Seven years since Meg had found out that she had the horrible gift of using the wishing stone.
    Not all the women of the line did. Her Aunt Maira had lacked the skill, and had resented the fact that Meg’s mother had refused to ask it for wealth and rich suitors. Apparently, when Walter Gillingham had fallen in love with Meg’s mother and swept her away, Aunt Maira had believed she’d used the stone for herself.
    That was the cause of the split. It was not something she could have told Sir Arthur.
    How could she tell anyone about the sheelagh —pagan magic and improper as well?
    The ancient stone figurine was of a woman, a naked, grinning woman. Between her spread legs, she held herself—her intimate self—wide as if she wanted to swallow up the world.
    According to Meg’s mother, these sheelagh-ma-gigs had been placed in the walls of Irish churches, which Meg found rather hard to accept. She’d refuse to believe it, except that her generally light-hearted mother had been deathly serious when talking about the wishing stone. She’d said some sheelaghs still sat in church walls near the door, and that people still touched them for luck when going in to pray to the Christian God.
    Most had been removed, however, by people trying to get rid of pagan influences, or just out of decency. Usually they were smashed, but some had found their way into private hands. Meg’s mother had had no idea whether they all had powers as this one did.
    This sheelagh-ma-gig was a wishing stone, and to the women of the family gifted with the power, it would grant wishes.
    At a cost. Always at a cost.
    One cost was the unpleasantness of the process—a sickening pain which usually caused a faint. That discomfort was brief, however, and could be borne. The othercost came because it was a mischievous stone which always granted the wish with a sting in the tail.
    The classic story was of the young woman who wished for beauty. She received what she asked for, and found herself shunned by her jealous friends, pestered by ardent men, and unable to be comfortable ever again.
    Another woman asked the stone for a particular man as husband, seeking to steal him from a friend. Her wish was granted when her parents arranged the match, but he never stopped loving the other, and eventually they ran off together to the distress of all three families.
    Meg’s mother had explained it all to her not long after she’d started her woman’s courses. That, apparently, was the time when the magic would appear if it appeared at all. She’d insisted Meg try it, at least once.
    Even at that age, Meg had been wary of such a thing, and already disturbed by its palpable power. She’d searched for an innocent wish, a harmless wish, and in the end she’d asked for a special cherry cake that the local baker made.
    It came within the hour, but in the hands of the baker’s pimply son who brought it as a courting gift. Too kind to just dismiss him, especially when she had in a sense summoned him, Meg had had to endure his doting company for months before she convinced him that she was bookish and boring, and he went off to pursue another.
    So now she studied the stone warily, wondering what she should ask for, and if it was possible to avoid the sting.
    Money?
    That’s what they needed, but it could come in many unpleasant ways.
    Security?
    A charity school or even the workhouse could provide that. Even Sir Arthur might, for a while at least.
    To make the stone do her bidding she had to form her wish exactly as it should be.
    The future of her siblings. That’s what she wanted. Their future as the children of a gentleman. Especially seventeen-year-old Jeremy with his gifted mind, who should already be at Oxford or Cambridge.
    She framed a wish and went over and over it. It seemed too much to wish for, an impossible wish, but it was what they needed, and she