Elaine
Mr. Kemp sat astride a tall bay he reined to a halt. “It’s my understanding that freckles are not in fashion at the moment.”
She gave him a dip of her head. “Mr. Kemp.” It was long past time for the miners to be at work. Perhaps not today though, for he was dressed quite well for mine work.
“Miss Cardinham.” He tipped his hat. “Where are you going?” By the direction of his gaze, he’d already guessed the answer.
“Out for a morning amble.”
“Amble?” One of his eyebrows went up. “Alone?”
This was her home. Gareth knew better than anyone that she was well acquainted with the territory.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Polkreath.”
“Alone?”
He laughed. “Not quite the same, though, is it?” He looked very fine and every bit the gentleman perched atop his horse in his stylish suit, his unruly dark hair trying to escape his top hat. His easy laugh brought a smile to her face.
“Never one for being told what to do.”
His eyes softened, holding her gaze until she realized she was staring back.
“I do not doubt your skills at navigating the countryside. You were always the best climber of us.” He grinned broadly. “Remember when you scaled Gull Top and told John you couldn’t get down. Lured him up, I should say. He climbed up to rescue you, but by the time he reached the top, you’d already come down.”
Elaine remembered the event very well. “He was stuck up there half the day.”
“And you and I ran off and spent the afternoon wandering the hedges, eating the brambles.”
“My fingers were blue for days.”
“And your lips,” he said softly.
Her fingers went straight to her mouth because he was staring at it.
Gareth gazed down the lane for a few moments. “I must congratulate you on your upcoming wedding,” he said.
She looked at his boots, polished and shiny, tucked into the stirrup. The whole parish now knew, after Sunday’s reading. She’d tried to tell Gareth in person but had failed miserably.
“Elaine,” he said.
She dragged her eyes slowly upward.
“I am happy for you.” His hazel eyes had a blueish tint this morning from his coat and the clear sky.
Gareth Kemp was a good man. Miss Tippet would be lucky to have him. Elaine had never really found the right time to tell him why she’d refused him. She’d turned on her heel and walked away, leaving him alone in the cave. Foolish girl that she was.
She took a step closer. “I am sorry that . . . ” After all this time, she still did not have the words.
“Don’t. There is no need.” He urged his horse into the lane. “Lord Chiverton is a lucky man. I’m glad you are happy.”
“Thank you.” She curtseyed again. “Good day, Mr. Kemp.”
“Elowen, wait.”
She paused.
“There have been smugglers in these parts. Unsavory ones. Truly, you shouldn’t be out alone.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kemp.” He should not be calling her by her old pet name. Especially not in public. “I assure you I’m quite safe.”
He opened his mouth to speak but seemed to think better of it. Then he said, “Good day, Miss Cardinham.” He clucked to his horse.
Elaine watched him ride away, staring after him and his gentle sway as the horse walked on.
She half hoped he would’ve offered to accompany her. Though if Lord Chiverton had been here, that would be preferable. Perhaps it was simply wistfulness that yearned for a stroll along the beach with Gareth Kemp. Searching for sea potatoes, exploring the tide pools and coves, both of them with shoes and socks off, wading about in the rocky pools. Her with her skirts hefted up. She blushed to think of it. No wonder he’d gotten the wrong idea.
He turned in the saddle and caught her staring. Again.
She spun around and strode off, determined not to think on him for the rest of the day.
She reached the top of the castle headland and the steep path that led to the beach below. Beyond that, Merlin’s cave.
She began the descent. The steepness never ceased to give her a rush of excitement—accompanied by a good dose of fear. Nearly straight down. If she lost her footing, it was quite a ways to the rocky bottom.
Several times her half boots skidded along the dirt, but each time, she managed to regain her footing. When she reached the beach below, she glanced around for any signs of the woman who had called herself Gwen. Though it would be ridiculous for her to still be here. The tide would soon be in, flooding the cave. It was not a likely place for a woman in trouble to take refuge.
Gareth had not believed her about the woman, but Elaine had seen her with her own eyes. Something strange had happened that day, and Elaine meant to get to the bottom of it.
She picked her way across the beach and into the cavern.
“Hello?” she called, not quite sure whether to hope for an answer.
She walked in, stepping out of the warmth and into the cool damp. The cave smelled as it always did: of seaweed, must, and wet rocks. She continued on.
“Hello?” she called again.
The most likely event was that Gwen had been recovered by family or friends and was now convalescing in comfort at her home.
A scuffling sound brought Elaine to a standstill.
“Gwen?”
Nothing.
Gareth’s ridiculous musings wouldn’t leave her alone. She called again. “Gwenevere?”
Rocks clattered, only for a moment, then the distant din of the waves and gulls returned. Elaine crept deeper into the cavern until she reached the place where she’d found Gwen the first time.
There on the ground lay her shawl, folded and resting carefully on a rock large enough to keep it out of the water should the tide come in.
Elaine glanced around, trying to see who had left it here.
She took the shawl from its resting place and carefully navigated the rocks toward the other end of the cavern where it opened back up to the coast. She couldn’t make it all the way because the water filled that part of the cave.
Then she heard the sound of laughter coming from the entrance. She turned and hurried forward.
Silhouetted by the bright sun were two boys tossing a cricket ball back and forth. Barefooted and dressed in rags, they were naught but cages of bones. They must be children of the miners.
The moment they caught sight of Elaine, they froze like rabbits catching the scent of a fox.
“Hello there,” she said.
“Hello,” one of them said. A fair-haired lad with a shaggy mane the color of sun-bleached flax and a rather prominent black eye. A mishap of youth or the work of another?
Elaine did not recognize these boys, but she had been gone a long time, and if they were local lads, they would have been only four or five when she had left. Not that she’d known all the families, by any means. But there were a few who lived close by that were known to her.
She motioned to the lad’s darkened eye. “Are you all right? That looks painful.”
“I’m fine, mum.” They looked at her as if any moment she might pounce.
“I used to come here to play when I was your age too,” she said. This seemed to relax them a little. “Do you come often?”
They glanced at each other, then down at the sand. The other boy, a redheaded, freckled lad, shrugged his shoulders.
“I wonder,” Elaine said, “if in the last few days you’ve seen a woman about.”
They both stared at her.
“Other than me.” Clearly they thought she was mad. “This woman has long dark hair hanging down her back and bright-green eyes. Probably wearing a green dress and a small gold crown.”
The flaxen-haired boy shook his head. “Nay, mum.”
They both watched her with large eyes resting above the pink cheeks of boys who were not yet on the voyage to man. Quite charming, even in their rags and with mussed hair.
“That is a lovely ball you have there. Where did you get it?”
No answer—as she’d expected. More than likely lifted from the house of someone living under better conditions.
“May I see it?”
The redhead held it out with a grim look on his face.
Elaine took it, tossing it back and forth from hand to hand, gauging its weight. “Very nice. I’ll bet this can really fly.”
“It can!” the flaxen-haired lad said. “’Cept we ain’t got a proper bat to ’it with.” His little chest fell.
Elaine leaned forward to put herself at eye level. “I’ll tell you what. My name is Miss Cardinham. I live at Havencross, the big house down the way. Do you know it?”
They nodded in unison.
“I have a bat, proper and strong. You come by anytime, and you can use it. Yes?”
Another set of nods.
“Now tell me your names so I know who to look for.”
At this, they gave each other another furtive glance. The flaxen-headed lad elbowed his mate, and the red-topped boy glared at him before looking up at Elaine. “William, mum. And ’e’s William too. But everyone calls ’em Willy White-Top.” The redheaded William grinned with great satisfaction.
Redheaded William got another elbow in his ribs. “Well, everyone calls ’em Sandy Will on account of it looks like ’es face got covered with sand.”
“Shut yer oozle,” Sandy Will said, giving him an elbow back.
“You shut it,” Willy White-Top said.
“All right, then,” Elaine straightened up. Many’s the time John had used that same phrase on her. “Willy White-Top and Sandy Will. You come to my place when you need a proper game of cricket, and in return, you promise me you’ll keep an eye open for the woman I just described. Yes?”
They nodded again.
“If you see her, you come to Havencross and tell me straightaway.” Elaine gave them back the cricket ball.
Willy White-Top grabbed it. He gave Elaine a quick bow, and then Sandy Will did the same. They scurried from the cave on bare feet as light and fast as if they’d been born right here on these very rocks. Little creatures of the sand and stones and cliffs.
Elaine followed them, picking her way around the slippery rocks and the pools of salt water with ease.
She soon reached the top, shawl clutched in her hand. When she rounded the stone walls of the ruined castle, she caught sight of movement coming from across the field, along the clump of tangled and windblown hawthorns.
It was a man on horseback. Beaver firmly atop his head and wearing a coat of dusky blue. She could have sworn it was Gareth Kemp.
He quickly disappeared into the grove. He was watching her though. She felt it by the prickling on her nape. He thought he was so stealthy, but he’d not slipped her notice.
Smugglers about, dangerous ones, he’d warned. She grinned. He was checking up on her. He’d told her not to go to the cave, but he knew her too well. And then he’d followed her to make sure she was safe.
She lifted her hand to shade her eyes from the morning sun and peered after him. It had been Gareth, hadn’t it? Who else could it be? In the distance, she caught sight of the two Williams disappearing behind a hedge wall. Odd that the lads were not at work. Boys that age more often than not had to work in the mines or the fishing docks to help support the family. Or attend school, if they were lucky. Even the poor families sent what children they could spare to the parish school.
From their ragged clothes and gaunt faces, Willy White-Top and Sandy Will did not look like boys from families who could spare wage earners for school. More like the lads down the mines, hauling the water bucket or smashing ore above ground with the bal maidens.
Gareth worked at a mine. If that had been him hovering in the hawthorns, perhaps he’d sent the boys down to the cave to check on her, if he was truly that worried for her safety. She turned back and gazed into the woodland, though the horse and rider were gone.
Perhaps he didn’t despise her as much as she thought. Or perhaps he was better at forgiving than she thought. Or, more likely, he cared enough not to want her murdered by smugglers.
She could not continue to think on Gareth Kemp. She loved Lord Chiverton, and next week, when he returned from Plymouth, she would not have to wander the heath alone.
The morning was wearing on, and she must get back. The hedges teemed with life on this warm, clear day. A badger scurried across the lane in front of her, darting from one hedge to the other. Butterflies danced over the blooming blackthorn like golden-winged fairies.
She entered the house through the kitchen door. “Good morning, Cook,” she said to Mrs. Hale as she slipped a piece of hot bread fresh from the oven off the cutting board. With a slab of butter from the crock and some of last summer’s preserves, she grinned at Mrs. Hale.
The butter melted into the warm bread, dripping onto her chin as she took a bite. They should’ve taken Cook with them to London. No one made bread like Mrs. Hale. Elaine laughed, licking her fingers. She would eat bread and jam every meal for the rest of her life if she could. But her governess had told her time and again that man cannot live by bread alone—and neither can little girls. Then she’d been forced to eat her greens before she could go outside and run wild with John and Gareth. To this day, every bite of spinach brought back the face of Miss Bassett.
With her free hand, Elaine turned the knob and pulled open the door to the drawing room. She took another bite of the warm bread, slurping to keep the sticky goodness from dripping.
“Someone’s been in the kitchen, I see,” came a rather unexpected voice.
Elaine looked up to find an extra face in the room. Lord Chiverton’s.
Her feet melted to the floor. She never seemed to be able to make a respectable presentation to him. First wet and muddy, wearing Gareth’s coat. And now a thick slice of bread dripping buttery jam onto the floor.
She’d not abandon her breakfast, not even for the earl. She licked a drip from the back side and curtseyed. With a quick gulp she said, “Lord Chiverton. What a wonderful surprise.” He was a week early.
Elaine glanced at Aunt Rose, who was pressing a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. Her mother scowled at her. Clearly she’d raised Elaine to be more of a lady, but how was she to know this would be the exact moment Lord Chiverton would show up after his trip to Plymouth? It was not her fault he’d returned before schedule.
“Good morning, Elaine. Please, do not let me stop you.” He motioned to the bread in her hand.
As possibly the most unladylike thing she’d ever done, Elaine stuffed the last of the soggy bread into her mouth, filling it so full she could not speak for some time. The room was silent as she untied her bonnet and removed it from her head, set it on the sideboard, then lowered herself into a chair.
She swallowed with difficulty. “Lord Chiverton. How was your trip?”
He did well to keep a straight face, though not well enough to keep all the mirth from leaking out of his silky brown eyes.
“I was not wholly satisfied with the harbormaster there. Seems I lost a portion of my shipment to smugglers. I believe I might need to find another place to put in. But that is the way of shipping and also very boring. I’m much more interested in hearing about where you’ve been on this lovely morning.” He pointed at her mulberry-colored spencer. “I see you’re wearing your own coat. Am I to assume you’ve not been taking in clandestine meetings with another man?”
Elaine couldn’t help a guilty glance in her mother’s direction. Of course he was teasing, but he’d landed a little too close to the truth. She would never tell about her meeting with Gareth, nor of the way he’d followed after her.
“I went for a morning walk, that is all.”
He watched her, expecting, she supposed, some kind of elaboration on her outing.
“I hope you have not been waiting long.” Between Gareth, Gwen, and the two Williams, she was unwilling to provide any details of her excursion.
“Only a few minutes.” He winked. “In truth, your timing was quite spot on.”
Good to know he hadn’t been trapped with her mother and Aunt Rose for too long. Uncle Charles must be with her father.
“No swimming, then, this morning?” he asked.
Her mother gave a horrified look.
“Just walking the lanes, is all.” Elaine smiled at him. “Rather uneventful and also very boring.”
“You should be careful, Elaine,” he warned. “I’ve heard from more than one local that these paths are dangerous. Smugglers, I’ve been told. Must be a plague of them. Walking alone may not be advisable.”
Everyone in her life assumed she was some delicate flower. Did they not see the stout and windblown trees this part of the country raised?
“You are too kind. But you forget I grew up here. I know this area well. It’s quite safe. We do get smugglers, but they are never violent. We leave them alone, and they leave us alone. I know how to watch the wall as well as anyone. I can assure you I’m perfectly safe.”
Her mother leaned forward. “My dear, you should heed Lord Chiverton’s advice. Have you not heard of the terrible incident only six months ago?”
Elaine shook her head. She’d not heard anything.
“A man was killed by smugglers,” her mother announced. “He was walking home from the mines when he came upon them moving their goods, they say. They beat him to death.”
Elaine had never heard a word about this. “Here, in Camelford?”
Her mother nodded. “Almost in our own backyard.”
“How awful,” Aunt Rose said. “Anyone we know?”
Her mother nodded again, this time with a touch of real sadness in her eyes. Elaine’s heart thudded. She’d never wish such an awful end to anyone. Not even Broken Betty.
“It was Mr. Kemp. Remember young Gareth, who used to come around? His father.”
Elaine stared at her mother. Gareth’s father? Why did he not say? The poor man. He’d been very close to his father. To lose him in such a violent way must have been a crushing blow. If only he’d said something, at least Elaine might have been able to offer some small comfort—as an old friend.
No wonder he’d been so concerned about the smugglers. They’d taken his own father. And how easily she’d dismissed him. Good heavens.
It seemed only yesterday she was sitting in the Kemps’ kitchen listening to Mr. Kemp play his fiddle while Gareth and John fought their way through a game of chess. Now he and John were both gone.
“Elaine?” Her aunt was watching her. Everyone was watching her.
“This is shocking news,” Elaine said. “Such a thing has never happened before.” She tried to pull her thoughts off Gareth and back into the drawing room, but the sadness of what had happened to his father, to his family, would not leave her.
“How dreadful.” Lord Chiverton set the cup he’d been sipping tea from on the end table. “Was this a person you were close to?”
“He is our neighbor,” her mother said.
“He was the foreman of Polkreath Mine,” Elaine added.
“Ah,” Lord Chiverton said. “Unfortunate indeed.”
“So now Gare—Mr. Kemp has taken over as foreman?” Elaine asked.
“My dear,” her mother said with some surprise. “You did not know? He recently bought Polkreath and is now the owner.”
“Owner?” That explained his fine suit of clothes and his leisurely pace at getting to the mine this morning.
Her mother nodded. “Yes. I’m told the father had set it all in motion before he died.”
This was news indeed. Gareth owned Polkreath Mine.
He was very good at keeping secrets. Too good. This was her punishment for not sitting with the tongue-tabbies who came calling on her mother. Had she spent more time in the drawing room and less on the coasts and in caverns, she might have known all this.
Polkreath was one of many lucrative mines marking the West Country. He would be a rich man. He should have told her as much.
Lord Chiverton studied her for a moment before asking, “Do you often get smugglers here?”
Elaine shrugged. “There are always some creeping about, hidden in plain sight. Not like they do down south though. Lizard. Mousehole. They get the worst of it.”
“Or the best of it,” Lord Chiverton said.
All heads turned to him. How could he say such things? Especially after learning the fate of poor Mr. Kemp.
“Depending on your point of view,” he explained. “For many folk, smuggled goods are the only kind they can afford. For others, it means food for their family. A man works all day in the fields doing back-breaking labor and makes what? A few shillings a week. That same man works only one night running cargo and earns nearly double. He can easily bring home two or three times the coin to support his family.”
“They are breaking the law,” Aunt Rose pointed out. “Not only that, they are supporting the enemy, buying goods from France, taking money out of England’s pocket. Those same families could be helped by charitable funds obtained from the crown in a lawful way.”
Lord Chiverton shrugged. “Perhaps. But have you ever seen those funds reach the hands of those who truly need it? The fishwives. Children of the miners condemned to a life underground or on the freezing clifftops when they should be going to school.”
Lads like Willy White-Top and Sandy Will. Certainly they could benefit from any funds the crown might be willing to allot to caring for the poor. Though it did seem unlikely those funds would reach this forgotten piece of the country.
There were plenty enough scraping together the meanest of lives in the streets and gutters of London. One need not travel all the way to Cornwall to find starving children and mothers suckling their babes with empty breasts.
Lord Chiverton leaned forward. “The smugglers supply goods at a fraction of the cost, and the people reap the benefits.”
“I doubt very much the smugglers are in it for the benefit of the people,” Aunt Rose said, shaking her head. “Especially since the majority of the funds taken in go to the wealthy man financing the scheme. A man who most certainly is not a starving waif nor a child condemned to the mines.”
Aunt Rose also made sense. What portion of the operation did help the people? Certainly one could purchase tea or cloth for several shillings less from under the counter, but those few extra coins saved were not worth the life of a man like Gareth’s father. With so many people involved in the smuggling rings, it must be a greater boon to the locals than she’d considered.
Lord Chiverton gestured in the general direction of London. “There would be no need for smugglers and privateers in the first place if parliament would only remove the tariffs that make imported goods impossible for the common man to afford.” His voice rose with his conviction.
Aunt Rose huffed. “How can you say such things? A man may not agree with every law, but that does not give him the right to go against his king and country. Such disregard for order would make us no better than France.”
Lord Chiverton set his jaw. “France—”
“I wonder,” Elaine’s mother said, “if we ought to have Mrs. Kemp and her son over for dinner. Now that he is a gentleman, so to speak. And she is our nearest neighbor.”
The conversation careened into a brick wall—driven there purposely by her mother. And now she wanted to bring Gareth here to Havencross for a dinner party.
Lord Chiverton leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs with a soft chuckle. “Excellent notion. You are very thoughtful, Mrs. Cardinham.” He grinned. “I would be very interested to hear his opinions on the smuggling situation.”
“I daresay you won’t like them.” Aunt Rose folded her arms across her chest.
Elaine was inclined to agree with her aunt. After they killed his father, Gareth’s opinions would not at all be generous toward the smugglers.
Her mother beamed at them. “’Tis settled, then.”