I used to read the series about once a year, but I started reading it before O'B had written the later books, and I never liked the sequence starting with Clarissa Oakes quite as much as the earlier books. My wife and I run a business and have a kid, so my time to read has been less than usual, but for some reason I picked up "The Wine-Dark Sea" to take on vacation.

I remember why I don't read those books too much-- the Chile-Peru-Sam Panda-etc plotting has never completely appealed to me -- but I haven't read this since becoming a dad, and the scene where Stephen meets Brigid hit me like a ton of bricks:

“Very well indeed, my dears,' she replied, kissing them. She shook Padeen's hand, and although they had not agreed very well when they sailed together in the Nutmeg the travellers now felt much drawn to a well-known face and a familiar voice in these utterly strange and foreign surroundings. Not only was the country strange - nothing of shipboard about it, nothing of the pleasures of a port, filled with unknown people who might fly out at you - but this particular house was quite outside their experience. It was in fact an unusual building, tall, gaunt and cold, one of the few large old houses that had not been altered in the last two centuries, so that the great hail ran right up the whole height to the roof, sombre indeed on such an evening and by the light of a single lantern.

Clarissa led them slowly, almost as it were reluctantly, quite through its length and then turned right-handed into a carpeted room with candles and a fire. A small girl was building card-houses on a table near the grate.

Clarissa murmured 'Do not mind if she does not speak,' and Stephen could feel the controlled anguish in her voice.

The girl at the table was lit by the fire and two candles: she was three-quarters turned towards Stephen and he saw a slim fair-haired child, quite extraordinarily beautiful: but with a disquieting, elfin, changeling beauty. Her movements as she handled the cards were perfectly coordinated; she glanced at Stephen and the others for a moment without the least interest, almost without ceasing to place her cards, and then carried on with the fifth storey.

'Come, my dear, and pay your duty to your father,' said Clarissa, taking her gently by the hand and leading her, unresisting, to Stephen.

There she made her bob, standing as straight as a wand, and with only a slight shrinking away she allowed her face to be kissed. Then she was led to the others; their names were clearly stated; they too made their bobs and Brigid walked easily back to her card-house, unconscious of their smiling black faces, though she did look straight up into Padeen's for a moment.

'Padeen,' said Clarissa, 'will you go down that long corridor, now? The first door on your right hand' - she held up her right hand- 'is the kitchen, and there you will find Mrs Warren and Nellie. Please give them this note.

Stephen sat in an elbow-chair away from the light, watching his daughter. Clarissa asked Sarah and Emily about their journey, about Ashgrove and about their clothes. They all sat on a sofa, talking away readily enough as their shyness wore off; but their eyes were fixed on the slight, wholly self-possessed, self-absorbed figure by the hearth.

Edit I should probably clarify, I mentioned "The Wine-Dark Sea" above but this passage is actually from "The Commodore." I just kept on after WDS was unexpectedly better than I remembered.