Ross left London with Clowance and the Enyses on the 7th February and they reached home on the evening of the 12th. Demelza was expecting him, for a letter written after the ball had reached her telling her of their plans. All the same, travel was so imprecise that she could not be sure of the time – or even the day – until the horses came clattering over the cobbles.
Demelza wondered if there would come a time when, obese, warty, and dulled by age, she would fail to react to the sight of her husband standing in the doorway, when her hands would not tingle and her stomach not turn over. If so, it hadn’t arrived quite yet. There he was, tall as ever, and gaunter for his hard mission, a little greyer, paler of face from the Portuguese influenza, staring at her unsmiling staring at her, while Gimlett took in the baggage and Jeremy helped Clowance down.
‘Well, Ross … I was hoping it would be tonight.’
‘You had my letter?’
‘Oh yes, I got it.’
She took a few steps towards him and he a few towards her. He took her hands, kissed her on the cheek, then almost casually on the mouth. She kissed him back.
‘All well?’ he asked.
‘Yes … All well.’
He looked round, reaffirming his memory of familiar things.
‘We’d have been earlier, but the coach broke an axle at Grampound. We were delayed two hours.’
For a few moments they were strangers.
‘Isabella-Rose?’
‘Asleep.’
‘She’s well?’
‘Yes. You’ll find her grown.’
‘So’s Clowance. Grown up, anyway. I couldn’t believe at that ball.’
‘Did she look nice?’
‘Lovely. You – didn’t want to go to London with her?’
‘I was afraid we might miss each other – you going one way, me the other.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. I’m sorry to have been away so long.’
‘Yes. It’s been a long time.’
He released her. Jeremy and Clowance hadn’t yet come in. He wondered if it was tact.
‘Have you supped?’ she asked.
‘A little. It will do.’
‘It need not. Clowance is sure to want something.’
‘All right then. It will be a change to eat your food again.’
‘I hope not a poor one.’
‘You ought to know that.’
There was a pause. She smiled brightly. ‘Well, I’ll tell Jane, then.’
‘There’s not that much hurry.’
She stopped. He came up behind her, put his face against her cheek and sniffed her, took a deep breath.
‘Ross, I…’
‘Don’t speak,’ he said, and just held her.
Supper was quite talkative but at first it was only Jeremy and Clowance who chattered, chiefly Jeremy, airily, with news of the mine and the farm, as if nothing else much was of importance. Effie, their middle sow, had had nine piglets last week; Carrie, the old one, was due any day. On Monday they had turned the end of the corn rick and found scores of mice. With his dislike of killing he had quickly absented himself, but Bella, the little horror, had stayed all through and seemed to enjoy it. They should have finished ploughing by now but both Moses Vigus and Dick Cobbledick had been laid low with influenza and Ern Lobb with a quinsy.
In the middle of this inconsequential talk Jeremy broke off, glanced from one to the other and then fell silent.
‘And you met Geoffrey Charles, Father?’
Ross told them.
It was the beginning of new conversation in which Ross did most of the talking – about the Battle of Bussaco, about Lisbon, about his return and the crisis of the King’s madness. All was listened to, commented on as a family – just like old times. The only thing missing was personal conversation, communication between Ross and Demelza. It was as if they were still frozen, embarrassed in each other’s presence. It would take time to go.
Once – just once – Ross looked in a different way at Demelza and she thought: do our children know, are they speculating what will happen when we go upstairs? Do I know myself? Is it the same with him as it always was?
Later, much later, almost in the middle of the night, when it was all right between them and when they were both still awake, she said:
‘These absences try me some hard, Ross. They do really. I have slept in this bed so many nights, so long so lonely. I have felt what it must be like to be a widow.’
‘And then the bad penny turns up again after all … Oh, I know. Don’t mistake but that I feel the same … At least, there are the pleasures of reunion. Tonight…’
‘Oh, I know too. I have been so happy tonight. But is there not a risk – just a risk – that someday absence may not make the heart grow fonder?’
Ross said: ‘Unless it affects us now, let’s meet that problem when it comes…’
There was still a candle guttering in the room. It would burn perhaps ten minutes more if the end of the wick didn’t fall over into the hot wax.
Ross said: ‘Life is all balance, counterbalance, contrast, isn’t it. If that sounds sententious I’m sorry, but it happens to be true. By an action voluntarily taken one gains or loses so much, and no one can weigh out all the profit or loss. When I was wounded at the James River in 1783 and they got me into hospital, such as it was, and the surgeon, such as he was, decided not to saw off my foot for the first day or two, he put me on a lowering diet. No food at all, bleedings, purges, a thin watered wine to drink. After five days when no fever had developed he decided I was not going to mortify and could begin to eat again. They brought me first a boiled egg. It was nectar … Like no other I’d ever tasted. You see, the very deprivation …
‘I think I see what you mean,’ said Demelza. ‘You mean tonight I’m your boiled egg.’
A shaking of the bed indicated that Ross was laughing.
‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘you’re my chicken.’ He put his fingers through her hair. ‘All fluffy and smooth and round…’
‘If I hatched out when I think I hatched out, I’m an old hen by now and my comb has gone dark for lack of proper husbandry.’
‘Well, it shall not for a while now, I promise; I swear, we shall cleave and be of one flesh –’
‘Very uncomfortable.’
He picked up her hand. ‘Am I a morbid man?’
‘Yes, often.’
‘Why should one feel morbid, sad, at such a reunion as this?’
‘Because it has been too good?’
‘In a manner, yes. Perhaps the human mind isn’t adapted to complete contentment. Had tonight been partial in some way, as it so easily might have been, as at first – one didn’t know…’
‘You felt that?’
‘Earlier, yes. But then…’
‘But then it wasn’t.’
‘It wasn’t. So – perversely – one feels a choke of melancholy.’
‘Let’s be melancholy, then.’
He stirred beside her. ‘When I was staying with George Canning I picked up a book of poems – a man called Herbert – I’ve remembered one bit: “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, the bridal of the earth and sky…”’ He watched the flickering candle. ‘There’s been nothing cool and calm about us tonight, but I think there’s been both the earth and the sky…’
She said lightly, covering the emotion: ‘Dear life, I believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘Oh no, there must be others…’
‘There have been others. I keep them all in a special box in my memory, and when I’m feeling neglected I take them out and think them over.’ She stopped and was quiet.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘What you say’s true, though, isn’t it. It’s not natural – what has been happening between us tonight. It should have cooled off into something else by now. But instead I feel just the same about you as the first time you took me to bed in this room. D’you remember, I was wearing your mother’s frock.’
‘You seduced me.’
‘It didn’t feel like it by the time it was over. You lit an extra candle.’
‘I meant to know you better by morning.’
She was silent again. ‘So perhaps it is right to be melancholy … That happened twenty-four years ago. Now we have grown children and should know better than to be making love like lovers after all this time. I am prone to bad spells –’
‘And I have a lame ankle –’
‘How has it been?’
‘Neither better nor worse. And your headaches?’
‘I was praying to St Peter that you didn’t return last week.’
‘Well, he answered, didn’t he. So there’s a good two and a half weeks ahead before we need worry again.’
‘After tonight you should be exhausted.’
‘I am … But do you not think I also have memories when I am away?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Don’t you think I remember the night we came back from the pilchard catch in Sawle? Then it was different. That was the night I fell in love with you. Instead of just the physical thing … Without emotion there’s nothing, is there. Nothing worth recalling. A shabby exercise. Thank God it’s never been that between us since.’
‘Let us thank God we are not as other people are.’
‘You been reading your Bible?’
‘I remember the Pharisees.’
‘There’s a lot to be said for the Pharisees.’ Ross held her hand up to the side of his face.
After a few moments she said: ‘Are you listening for something?’
He gurgled with laughter. ‘You see – you deflate me. Yes – I am listening for something – the beat of your heart.’
‘That’s not the best place to listen.’
He bent slowly and put his head under her left breast. ‘It’s still there.’ He released her hand and took her breast in his fingers.
‘The candle’s going out,’ she said.
‘I know. Does it matter?’
‘Nothing matters but you,’ she said.
Much later still when the moon had risen and was lighting the sky with a false dawn he said:
‘I’ve so much to tell you.’
‘Tell me. I don’t intend to sleep at all tonight.’
‘Before I met Geoffrey Charles…’
‘Well…?’
‘I came across an old friend, an old flame of yours. Captain McNeil.’
‘Judas! That all seems so long ago. Was he well?’
‘Yes, and a colonel by now.’
‘Geoffrey Charles … You didn’t say much about him tonight.’
‘I didn’t want Jeremy to feel I was praising or admiring him too much … He’s lost a little piece off his face. But he looks no worse for it.’
‘Do you care for Geoffrey Charles more than you do for Jeremy?’
‘Of course not. It’s quite different.’
‘But you and Geoffrey Charles seem to have an affinity…’
‘We often seem to think the same, to feel the same.’
‘And Jeremy?’
‘Well, Jeremy’s so much younger.’
She waited for Ross to say more but he did not. In spite of his assurances she could sense the things unsaid, the little reserve.
‘And Clowance?’ Ross said. ‘I hear she has been in some travail about a young man.’
‘Who told you?’
‘She did. On the way home. The night we spent in Marlborough. I gave her a little more wine and she came up to my room and sat on my bed.’
‘Perhaps she told you more than she told me.’
‘I doubt it. Clowance is nothing if not honest – with us both.’
‘I think she’s involved, Ross. Sometimes then it’s not possible to be truthful with other people because you don’t know what is the truth yourself.’
‘She said she’d talked to you and you had advised her to go away for a few weeks.’
‘I put it to her, like. She agreed. I think she was afraid – I know I was – that it would go too far too soon.’
‘You don’t like him?’
Demelza stirred. ‘Not that. Not as positive as that … Maybe I have a peasant’s suspicion of a “foreigner”.’
‘What a strange way of describing yourself! Is this a new humility?’
For once she didn’t rise to the bait. ‘He came – out of the sea, almost dead; Jeremy and Paul and Ben picked him up. He said first he was in his own ship when it was struck by a storm. Later he said that wasn’t the truth; he was gunner on a privateer that had been caught between two French frigates and sunk, the captain killed. He –’
‘That does not sound like the truth either,’ said Ross.
‘Why not?’
‘French frigates don’t sink privateers. They capture ’em and take them into a port as a prize. The French captains are not going to be such fools as to lose their prize money.’
‘… Even if they were fought to the end?’
‘Nobody fights to the end. Not since Grenville.’
A seagull, awakened by the moon, was crying his abandoned cry, as if hope were lost for ever.
Demelza put her head against Ross’s arm. ‘You’ve gone thin. Was it the influenza? It has been widespread down here.’
‘A few pounds. Nothing. Your cooking will soon give me back my belly.’
‘Which you never had. You always fret your weight away.’
‘Fret? I might fret if I thought Clowance had fallen in love with a rogue.’
‘I don’t think he’s that. I’m almost sure not. Howsoever, perhaps we shall not need to be anxious.’
‘Why not?’
‘He has disappeared – almost as sudden as he came. He said the privateer he was on had captured a small prize and left it in the Scillies, and he asked Jeremy and Paul and Ben to take him there in Nampara Girl. So they did – and Paul and Ben came back in Nampara Girl, while Jeremy helped Stephen Carrington bring in his prize. But they made for Mevagissey because Stephen wanted to sell it there, but there was a storm and they came in at a cove in, I believe, Veryan Bay. There they were embayed – is that the word? – for a day, and then Stephen Carrington sent Jeremy off overland alone and he sailed away in the prize. No one has heard or seen anything of him since.’
‘Does Clowance know?’
‘I reckon Jeremy will have told her by now.’
‘So perhaps she went away to good effect.’
‘Maybe. Of course, he might turn up again any time.’
Sleep now was coming to their eyelids.
Ross said: ‘Clowance made quite a conquest in London.’
‘In London? Who?’
‘Lord Edward Fitzmaurice. Brother of Lord Lansdowne, a very rich and talented peer. I think the younger man is talented too, though perhaps not so much in politics.’
‘So what occurred?’
‘They met at a party given by the Duchess of Gordon. He seemed to take a fancy to Clowance and invited her to tea to meet his family.’
‘And then?’
‘She declined.’
‘Oh. Wasn’t that a pity?’
‘Caroline thought so. Indeed she carried on in such an alarming way when she knew, saying it was simply not socially acceptable to refuse such an invitation, that Clowance was quite subdued into believing her. Of course I don’t think it true! Caroline was up to her old games.’
‘Well?’
‘Caroline insisted on sending a message on the following day to the Lansdowne residence in Berkeley Square saying that she would wish to call on Lady Isabel Petty-Fitzmaurice herself, and might she bring Miss Clowance Poldark? The request was acceded to.’
Demelza let out a gentle breath. ‘It’s all a long way from the Clowance we know – galloping across the beach on Nero with her long hair flying…’
‘It is.’
‘And did you allow her to be so bullied?’
Ross laughed. ‘I allowed her to be so bullied. Saving yourself, Caroline is the strongest-minded woman I’ve met, and after an initial rejection of the idea, I came to the conclusion that Clowance could come to no harm with such a duenna and that it would broaden her experience to take tea in such refined company.’
‘Which I hope it did. Did you hear what happened?’
‘Tea was taken.’
‘No, Ross, it’s too late to tease.’
‘I think in fact Fitzmaurice was offended by Clowance’s refusal; so honour was satisfied all round. His aunt clearly did not dislike our daughter, and Fitzmaurice suggested that, as they would be spending some weeks at their family seat at Bowood in Wiltshire this summer, perhaps Miss Poldark would care to visit them there – suitably escorted, of course.’
Demelza began to wake up. ‘I hope you wouldn’t want me to escort her! Dear life!’
‘Who better? But from what Clowance said at Marlborough, she is not sufficiently taken with the idea to accept the invitation even if it is remembered and was not a polite expression of the moment.’
Demelza walked around this in her mind.
‘I think if she is asked she should accept … Don’t you? Caroline would say so.’
He kissed her shoulder. ‘Sleep now. The cocks are abroad.’
‘Oh, well … yes…’
Silence fell.
‘And the war?’ she asked after a while.
‘Will continue now – as I said at supper – thanks to the complete turn about of the Prince Regent.’
‘I wonder what made him change at the last minute in such a way?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Do your friends have?’
‘They speculate, of course.’
After a few more moments Demelza said: ‘Were you involved in some way?’
‘What ever makes you ask that?’
‘Just that you kept on putting off coming home – I don’t think you would have stayed up there just to vote and I have a sort of – sort of feeling in my bones that you might have done something. What with your visit to Portugal and…’
Ross said: ‘If I know those feelings in your bones they’d probably elevate me to being personal adviser to Wellington.’
‘I’m crushed,’ said Demelza.
‘No, you’re not … So far as the Prince’s change of mind is concerned, it was probably because of an accumulation of things – of causes … Of course, he might switch back at any time … But I have a reasonable hope that he won’t now for a little.’
‘You want the war to go on?’
‘I want peace with honour. But any peace now would be with dishonour.’
‘So Geoffrey Charles cannot come home to his inheritance yet.’
‘He could come any time. He told me he had leave due; but I question that he’ll take, it. The casualties have been heavy.’
‘That is what I am afraid of,’ said Demelza.
Ross lay on his back, hands behind head, looking out at the lightening windows.
‘Father,’ Jeremy said, ‘do you know the Trevanions?’ They were walking back from the mine together, Ross having paid his first call at Wheal Grace since his return.
‘Who? Trevanions?’ Ross was preoccupied by what he had seen and heard and by his examination of the cost books.
‘Over at Caerhays.’
‘I have met John Trevanion a few times. Major Trevanion. Why?’
‘When Stephen Carrington put me ashore, it was near their house. They kindly invited me in…’
Ross said after a moment: ‘He was Sheriff of Cornwall at some early age – Trevanion, that is; then a member of parliament for Penryn, though he soon gave it up. I came to know him better a couple of years ago. There were meetings at Bodmin and elsewhere in favour of parliamentary reform. He spoke in favour of it. We were in accord in this.’
‘You liked him?’
‘Yes, I liked him. Though he has the high arrogance of many Whigs that make them seem so much haughtier than the Tories.’
‘He wasn’t there,’ Jeremy said, ‘but his – his family invited me in – greatly cared for my comfort, and loaned me a horse. Their house is a huge place, isn’t it. A castle!’
‘I’ve never seen it.’
‘D’you remember taking us to Windsor five years ago? Well, this house at Caerhays reminds me of Windsor Castle.’
Ross said: ‘I remember de Dunstanville telling me the young man was building some great pile – with an expensive London architect under the patronage of the Prince of Wales … It all seems a little grand for Cornwall.’
‘It is certainly grand.’
Ross stopped and took a breath, looked around. On this grey February day the natural bareness of the land seemed much more barren because nature was at its lowest ebb. He was dizzy from lack of sleep and excess of love. He would have been completely happy today except for what he found at the mine. But that was how life ran. One scarcely ever threw three sixes. And this morning Jeremy did rather go on about things that were of no importance.
‘How often have you been down while I’ve been away, Jeremy?’
‘Grace? Twice a week, as you told me.’
‘The north floor is almost bottomed out.’
‘I know.’
‘The workings are still in ore, but the grade is scarcely worth the lifting.’
‘Well, it’s done us proud, sir.’
‘Oh yes. Thanks to it we’ve lived so well. And because of it I have a variety of small but useful investments in other things … If Grace closed we should not starve.’
‘I would not want that to happen,’ said Jeremy.
‘Do you think I would? Apart from ourselves, more than a hundred people depend on it. God forbid I should ever act like the Warleggans; but once a mine begins to lose money it can eat up capital so rapidly.’
‘We need a new engine, Father. Big Beth works well but she is mightily old-fashioned.’
Ross looked at Jeremy. ‘I’ve no doubt there are improvements on her we could still make. Your suggestion that we should steam-jacket the working cylinder by using a worn-out older one of larger size has been a great success. The loss of heat has been dramatically less. But, as an engine, Beth has really no age – twenty years?’
‘We could sell her. This would help defray part of the cost of a new one.’
‘If the prospects at Grace were better I might agree. But as it is there’s nothing to justify the extra outlay.’
‘Not even to justify improvements to Beth?’
‘Oh, it would depend on the cost.’
‘Well, to begin, a new boiler of higher pressure would greatly increase the engine duty.’
‘With extra strain on the engine.’
‘Not with some money spent on improvements there – the whole pump could be made smoother-acting with less consequent strain on the bob wall – and of course far less coal used.’
Ross said: ‘If you could get someone to work the cost out I’d be willing to look at it.’
‘I could work the cost out myself,’ said Jeremy.
Ross raised an eyebrow but did not comment. They walked on.
‘I hear Mr Trevithick is back in Cornwall, Father.’
‘Is he … Well, you could ask his advice. Unfortunately he only designs engines, he doesn’t discover lodes.’
‘And there’s another man just come – from London, though I think he’s of Cornish birth. Arthur Woolf. He advertised in the Gazette last month. He has a fine reputation and I believe a deal of new ideas.’
They stopped for a few moments to watch two choughs fighting with two crows. In the end, as always, the crows won and the choughs retreated, flapping their wings in defiant frustration.
Ross said: ‘This interest you’re showing in the practical side of the working of engines may well be good. But in this instance, looking at Grace only, it is putting the cart before the horse. The most efficiently worked mine in the world is not successful if there is no ore of a respectable grade to bring up.’
Jeremy gazed across at the sulky sea.
‘Wheal Leisure never had an engine?’
‘No.’
‘Wasn’t it copper?’
‘Red copper mainly. High quality stuff. But it ran thin and the Warleggans closed it to get better prices at their other mines.’
‘Does it still belong to them?’
Ross glanced at the few scarred and ruined buildings on the first headland on Hendrawna Beach.
‘It may do. Though there’s little enough to own.’
Jeremy said: ‘The East India Company have offered to take fifteen hundred tons of copper this year. It’s bound to put the price up.’
‘Not to them. They’re getting it at lower than market value. But I take your meaning. Yes … demand may exceed supply. Copper has a better future than tin.’
Demelza was in her garden and she waved to them. They waved back. After a suitable pause Jeremy reverted to his former topic.
‘This Trevanion family…’
‘Yes?’
‘Major Trevanion must still be young, I suppose. He has recently lost his wife and there are two young children. Also a brother and – and two sisters. And a mother too. A Mrs Bettesworth. Perhaps she has married again.’
‘No … As I remember it, the male side died out. A surviving Trevanion girl married a Bettesworth; but that was a couple or more generations ago. The present owner – the one with such high ideas about his residence – was born a Bettesworth but changed his name to Trevanion when he came of age. I imagine the others will all be called Bettesworth still.’
‘One isn’t,’ said Jeremy. ‘One of his sisters. She’s called Trevanion too. Miss Cuby Trevanion.’
She had said to him: ‘Well, boy,’ and his life had changed.
She scrutinized him, with eyes that were a startling hazel under such coal-dark brows. Her face, round rather than oval and pale like honey, was befringed with darkest brown hair, straight and a little coarse in texture. She was wearing a purple cloak over a plain lavender frock, and the hood of the cloak was thrown back. Her expression was arrogant.
She had said: ‘Well, boy’; and he had climbed quickly to his feet trying to brush some of the wet mud and sand from his clothing.
He stretched to see over the wall but could not. ‘Thank you, miss; that was most kind.’
‘Well, please explain yourself, or my kindness may not last.’
He smiled. ‘Those men. They were after me. I did not wish them to catch me.’
She studied his smile, but did not return it. ‘I trust it doesn’t surprise you to know I’d already come to that conclusion. What is your name?’
Stephen had said not to give it, but this surely was different. ‘Poldark. Jeremy Poldark.’
‘Never heard of you,’ she said.
‘No, I am not from these parts.’
‘Well, what were you doing in these parts, Jeremy Poldark? My brother would not commend me if I were to hide a miscreant – wasn’t that the word Parsons used? – a miscreant who has been brandy-running and assaulting Preventive men in the discharge of their duties. And where are your five fellow miscreants? Would you point out the shrubs that conceal them?’
‘Not five but one. And he’s not here, miss. We parted company among those trees fifteen minutes ago. The men chose to pursue me, so I’d guess he has made his escape.’ She brushed some hair behind her ear. ‘You speak like a gentleman. I guessed as much before you opened your mouth. How did I guess? Perhaps it was the hair. Although most of the gentlemen I know have the good manners to shave.’
‘It’s three days since I left home and we have been at sea most of the time since then. My friend … he wished to pick up this lugger in the Scillies.’
Jeremy went on to explain. He was caught anyway if she chose to hand him over to the authorities, so she might as well know the truth. He was aware that he was not making a good job of the explanation, but the reason was every time he glanced at her his tongue stumbled, words not becoming sentences in the easy way they should.
She waited patiently until his voice died away and then said: ‘So now you’ve lost the brandy and the lugger. It’s the result of being too greedy.’
‘Yes, indeed. And but for your extreme kindness I’d now be in custody.’
‘And that’s not pleasant, Jeremy Poldark. The Customs men are a small matter short-handed, which makes them a small matter short-tempered with those they catch. Even magistrates today are not so lenient as they used to be.’
‘Which makes my obligation to you all the greater.’
‘Oh, don’t jump to the conclusion that you are free! You’re in my custody now.’
‘I’m happy,’ said Jeremy, ‘to be at your – your complete disposal.’
The words came out – half joking, meeting her at her own game – but when spoken they took on a serious intent. He felt himself flushing.
She looked away from him, distantly, through the gate. After what seemed a long pause she said: ‘Was your lugger brown with red sails?’
He took a few steps until he could see the beach. The Philippe was sailing close hauled – and close in – along the beach, only just out of reach of the muskets of the two Customs officers who stood staring at it in anger and frustration.
‘He must have doubled back!’ Jeremy said. ‘Given them the slip and got aboard! Thank Heaven the wind is dropping. But he’s looking for me!’
‘If you show yourself,’ said Miss Trevanion curtly, ‘there is nothing more I can do to save you from your just deserts.’
The lugger went about and came back along the beach. Though single-handed, Stephen was managing well. A puff and a crack announced that one of the Customs men had fired. As the lugger reached the eastern end of the beach Stephen changed course again, heading out to sea. It must have been plain to him that even if Jeremy could see him there was no way of his getting aboard without the unfriendly attention of the gaugers.
The sea crinkled like silver paper under the winter sun. The lugger receded.
Jeremy turned. ‘Miss Trevanion, my home, as I explained, is on the north coast. There’s no coaching road nearer to it than seven miles. But if you could give me my liberty, to walk the total distance from coast to coast can hardly be greater than twenty-five miles and I could do this easily in a day…’
‘Mr Poldark, my name is Cuby Trevanion. Having gone so far in frustrating the law, I feel I can deserve no worse by helping you a little more. My brother is away, so I may do this with less risk of his displeasure. In our kitchens there should be food – are you hungry? you look it! – and no doubt in the stables I can find you a nag of sorts. Would you follow me?’
‘Certainly. And thank you.’
As she went ahead she added: ‘My other brother is away also. We even might be able to lend you a razor.’
Up rising ground by a gravel path he followed her, cutting through part of a wood which had recently been felled and the ground excavated. ‘To give us a view of the sea,’ she explained.
As they approached, the house took on more and more the appearance of a fairy-tale castle, with turrets and bastions and serrated parapets and rounded towers. Jeremy would have been impressed but for the fact that he had really no time for or interest in anything but the scuffing of a skirt in front of him and the appearance and disappearance of a pair of muddy yellow kid ankle boots. Totally lost, like someone hypnotized, he would have followed those boots to the end of the earth.