Cress Tremayne was not a young man to waste time. He had a quick and eager mind, and once this birthday trip to Europe was over, he’d be shortly entering into a law firm in Sacramento with a first-class honours degree from his college.
With their mutual legal interests, he and his cousin Justin had discovered they had much in common. It was good to know it, but he still had to make his peace with the others he’d upset so much in the past.
Cress had never forgotten the shock and pain he’d brought to their young lives, when he’d so innocently blurted out the truth of their parentage and background. He thought he’d have been able to put it behind him. But the older he got, the more the thought of it had weighed on his mind. And that troubled him.
He wanted to see them all, and to put the record straight. And his first call was going to be at Albert’s studio in Truro, where he hoped to see Albert and Primmy at the same time. They were the most involved, after all, along with Walter.
His expensive riding boots rang on the cobbles as he tethered his horse to the hitching post outside the studio alongside the Truro River. The smells of the river were neither unpleasant nor unknown to him, for although their huge Californian mansion and estate was in the heart of the gold country, his expensive college had overlooked the wide river where his father’s gold shipments were carried to all corners of the globe.
There were some aspects of his own background, and that of these clayfolk, that were not so very different, he thought.
And he hoped to God he wasn’t being snobbish in thinking it, for it was the last thing he intended.
He rang the bell at the studio, and the door was opened by a young woman with long, carelessly combed black hair, and a fragile air about her that was almost otherworldly. Her eyes were very blue in her exquisitely beautiful face, despite the dark shadows beneath them. She was dressed in a loose bronze coloured gown that scorned the fashions of the day. There were brightly coloured ribbons braided around her waist and around her throat, and on her face, tiny star shapes glittered at the sides of those glorious eyes.
‘Good morning, Ma’am,’ Cress said, stunned by this vision. ‘Is it possible to see Mr Albert Tremayne? I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment.’
Primmy’s face filled with heat. She knew him immediately. She hadn’t seen him in ten years, and he wasn’t remotely like the idiot who had gone away, but his voice and his looks gave him away. He obviously didn’t recognize her, and she knew it wasn’t only the fact that she had grown into a woman that prevented that recognition. In her casual mode of dress, she knew she looked nothing like the daughter of a prosperous businessman, and the look was quite deliberate.
She struggled with the idea of turning the caller away and saying that Albie was unavailable, but what was the point? They were obliged to meet very soon at Justin’s party, and they might as well get it over with. But she wasn’t yet prepared to say who she was.
‘I’m not sure if Mr Tremayne’s available,’ she murmured instead. ‘I’ll have to see if he’s free. Will you please come inside?’
‘Thank you,’ Cress said with a smile. ‘I apologize if it’s an inconvenience, but perhaps you would tell him I’ve come on a personal matter.’
He removed his hat and followed the girl inside. She had a trim, slender shape, and she walked with a natural and easy grace that reminded him of his Aunt Morwen. So did that glorious hair, and those fabulous eyes…
Cress caught his breath, knowing what he should have known straight away.
‘Primmy,’ he said softly. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’
She stopped walking towards the door leading to the inner sanctum, and stood quite still for a moment before she slowly turned around. Cress had the feeling she would much rather have got through that door before she had to face him again. When she did so, she looked as if she was about to say something, and then he saw her eyelids flicker, and she paused while she took in his appearance properly.
‘Yes,’ she said at last, in a wobbly voice. ‘And I know who you are.’
Cress didn’t waste words. ‘You know who I was, Primmy. But I very much hope you’ll want to know me as I am.’
She wasn’t used to this sort of talk. It was too frank, too embarrassing, too colonial, and too soon.
‘I’ll go and see if Albie’s free,’ she said quickly, and fled.
Albert looked up quickly from cleaning his brushes as his sister slammed the door shut behind her and leaned with her back against it.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said at once.
As always, his thoughts went to what he thought of obliquely as her ‘trouble’. He’d finally felt obliged to banish their old friends from the place now, and they were openly resentful. At the back of Albert’s mind was always the fear that they’d betray what had been going on here for some months, either to the wretched newspaper or the constables.
Primmy moved forward quickly, to put her arms around him. She knew his anxiety was for her, but this time it wasn’t her trouble. Besides, she was over it. She knew she was. It had been madness, but it was over… and she hadn’t been so sucked into its depths as Albie had feared.
‘For God’s sake, Primmy, who was at the door?’ Albert said urgently, as she seemed to be struck dumb.
‘It’s him,’ she whispered. ‘Uncle Matt’s son. He wants to see you.’
‘Cresswell, you mean? That’s his name, isn’t it?’
She hadn’t even been able to say it. All the hurt had come flooding back, and she didn’t want anything to do with Cresswell Tremayne. Yet she knew that the healing process and the exorcism could only truly begin by facing up to a problem. She had already proved that.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s got a damn nerve, coming here unannounced. All right, I’ll see him, Primmy, but I don’t have to be sociable. You stay here and I’ll soon get rid of him.’
‘No.’ She spoke slowly. ‘Albie, I admit it was a shock when I realized who he was, but I think we do have to be reasonably sociable. He’s our cousin, and besides, you’ve already agreed to do his portrait. He’ll have to sit for you. And I think – well, I think it’s best if we hear him out, for Mother’s sake.’
She avoided his eyes, hardly knowing why she was defending the American cousin. But the visitor in the reception room wasn’t the little snot who had hurt her so. This was a handsome, well-adjusted young man, and the flamboyant Primmy Tremayne, who scorned all the things that other fond mamas wanted their daughters to be, found herself wishing she was wearing one of the pretty gowns her mother kept buying her, and which were mostly unused, except when she was obliged to show a more conventional façade for her public performances.
She felt Albert’s arms tighten around her. She was once so fragile he’d been afraid she would break if he acted this way, but in the last days the colour had returned to her cheeks, and he began to believe the nightmare was truly over.
‘If that’s what you want, then we’ll hear him out,’ he said, but still somewhat suspicious of this unexpected appearance of their foreign cousin. ‘I’ll close the studio for an hour or so, since there are no appointments until this afternoon.’
‘Invite him up to the sitting room, and I’ll make some tea while we talk,’ Primmy said.
Mentally, she stood back from herself, feeling a little weird, and as if she was in danger of admitting there could be another side to Primmy Killigrew. It was almost as if there were two people inside her slender body, and the one she didn’t know was a vibrant, chaperoned young lady, in the process of inviting a handsome young man to take tea with her and her brother.
The very thought of it shocked her. It was extraordinary that she could even think such a thing! Cresswell Tremayne was nothing to her except through circumstance. And never likely to be.
By the time Cress left the studio it was midway through the afternoon, and Albert’s next appointment was imminent. After the first crackling awkwardness between them, the American’s frankness and his freely-given apology for the errors of the past, had gradually won them over completely.
When Albert and Primmy were on their own again, they agreed that it was amazing how compatible they had turned out to be. Albie even unbent enough to say that Cress was a Cornishman at heart, if ever he saw one, and nobody could pay him any greater compliment. And Primmy had fallen in love.
While her brother was busy with his next client downstairs in the studio, Primmy went dreamily to her wall closet, fingering the silk gowns her mother had provided so hopefully, and which she rarely saw her daughter wearing. Primmy had had no thoughts of wearing anything other than her usual attire to Justin’s party in three days’ time, but now, there would be a certain somebody there for whom she wanted to look beautiful. Someone whose blue eyes matched her own, and who spoke in a particularly attractive accent, and who was so intelligent that she knew she had better look to her laurels to keep up with him.
She caught her breath, knowing she was letting her imagination soar away with her, and wondering if being in love was slightly akin to madness. But she’d had no thoughts of falling in love before, and the respect accorded her from her piano playing skills had been fulfilment enough.
But in a few short hours of knowing Cress Tremayne, she knew it wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough again. And for the first time since they’d set up their living and working establishment together, she had a secret she didn’t share with Albert.
Cress came again the next day for the first of the preliminary sittings for his portrait. Albert made a series of rough charcoal sketches, so as to become familiar with the shape of Cress’s head, the way his hair grew from his forehead, the elegant profile and the broad set of his shoulders. All of which his sister could have described to him in detail, in lyrical terms that were in every way comparable with the most flattering likeness.
‘Have you seen the rest of the family yet?’ she asked him, in the soft, husky tones that were so like Morwen’s.
‘I called on Walter and Cathy when I got to St Austell,’ Cress said cautiously. ‘Their baby’s a fine boy, and I think it was a fairly successful visit.’
‘I’m glad,’ Primmy said simply. ‘And what of Uncle Jack and Aunt Annie? Didn’t you visit them while you were in Truro too?’
‘I certainly did,’ Cress said with a smile. ‘They’ve surely got two lively daughters now, and I don’t even recall seeing young Sammie before.’
For the first time in her life Primmy felt the pangs of jealousy as she heard Cress refer to her twin girl cousins. She knew it was stupid, but she didn’t want Cress thinking of anyone else but her.
‘The girls are going to London soon, to nursing college,’ she said, glad to be reporting their imminent departure.
‘Is that so? I’d say it’s pretty progressive of their parents to let them go so far away.’
Albert laughed. ‘Oh, we do have some progressive ideas on this side of the water, Cress,’ he said. ‘It’s not all left to our colonial cousins.’
But the banter was good-natured, and Primmy was warmed by the fact that they were all getting along so well. It was just so frustrating to know that it couldn’t last. Cress would only be here for a couple of weeks before his mother took him off to visit the glories of Europe. Primmy had never had any interest in such things herself, but she could see how instructive it would be to see the great museums of Paris, and the statues in Rome, and to hear the music – oh, the wonderful music – in Vienna.
‘What are you dreaming about, Primmy?’ she heard Albie’s voice say teasingly, and she realised she’d been staring into space for the last few minutes.
‘Nothing that I intend to share with you!’ she said airily.
She dared to glance at Cress, and he was staring at her now, as if he’d seen something special in her face. As if he’d been able to penetrate that dreaming look and know just what lay behind it, with the uncanny sixth sense that was supposedly so Cornish… but since his father was Cornish too, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have inherited it.
Primmy knew she was discovering a new existence these days. The nightmare days were over, and Albert had been so right in banishing those others from their place. It had been torment for several weeks, but she had seen it through, with her usual determination. And now she was in a very different, bemused state of mind – the far lovelier one of being in love, without having yet fully declared the feeling, either to herself or her beloved, and certainly not to anyone else.
Morwen recognized it at once. She knew it as soon as her son and daughter arrived at Killigrew House for Justin’s party, and with the rest of the family, she gaped at the lovely vision Primmy presented. Gone were the shapeless clothes and the tangled hair, and the freakish adornments on the face.
Instead, here was a young lady of quality, with her dark hair stylishly piled into gleaming curls on top of her head, with silver combs to keep it in place, and soft tendrils framing her cheeks. Her gown was the latest exquisite peach silk creation Morwen had had made especially for her, and in which Primmy hadn’t seemed in the least interested. She wore it like a princess now, and Morwen knew there was only one reason why she should do so at a family gathering, with her eyes seeking out one particular person.
Morwen caught her breath. As Justin had wished, there were few outsiders here. There was Charlotte’s young man, Vincent Pollard, in whom she was so besotted; there was the elderly Daniel Gorran, and it certainly couldn’t be him for whom Primmy had such doe-eyes! And there was Cress Tremayne.
‘You look a real picture, my lamb,’ Bess exclaimed as soon as she saw Primmy. ‘Don’t she, Hal? Don’t she look the most beautiful girl in the county tonight?’
‘That’s so,’ Hal agreed, ‘along wi’ Charlotte and Morwen and all the rest on ’em, o’ course. You’d best not show favouritism, dar.’
Bess looked up guiltily, but no one else had heard her. Besides, what did it matter? She had never seen her granddaughter look so dazzling before, and she was entitled to her opinion in her own home! Then it occurred to her that she wasn’t the only one thinking that Primmy looked a picture.
From the far side of the room, young Cress couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and didn’t Primmy know it! Bess wasn’t so old that she couldn’t see what Morwen had seen, and as soon as she could, she drew Morwen aside.
‘What’s going on?’ she said bluntly. ‘What’s Primmy playing at?’
‘I don’t think she’s playing at anything, Mammie,’ Morwen said. ‘She’s not one for games. No matter how she looks, what you see is the real Primmy.’
Morwen followed her mother’s troubled gaze to where Primmy was by now looking up into Cress’s eyes, and where he was leaning down towards her as if to catch every word, and she didn’t pretend to misunderstand when Bess continued.
‘It can’t happen. You know it can’t happen. Theym cousins. It has to be stopped.’
‘How? You tell me that. And why should it?’
Primmy had never shown any interest in a young man before, and Morwen was annoyed that her mother was taking on so. It needn’t mean anything… although she knew she was burying her head in the sand for thinking so.
Primmy had a creative, passionate temperament, and when she turned that passion onto a young man…
For one searing moment then, Morwen envied her so much. She envied her those mind-shattering, wondrous days of learning to love, of longing for the beloved, and speaking his name at every opportunity. Of touching him and glancing at him, and glorying in the kisses that sealed their belonging and promised a golden future…
She caught Ran looking her way, and their smiles caught and matched across the room. Oh yes, she had known those glory days, she thought, her throat catching, and they weren’t only reserved for the young…
‘’Tis bad for the future,’ Bess said delicately, still intent on discussing Primmy and Cress.
‘You mean for any future children a related couple might have, I suppose?’ Morwen said, less inhibited on such matters than her mother. ‘It didn’t trouble the Queen and Prince Albert, did it? They were cousins, and they produced a fine brood of children between them, Mammie!’
‘Maybe ’tis different for royalty,’ Bess muttered, ‘but I don’t want to talk of such things,’ she added, just as if she anticipated the comment brimming on her daughter’s lips that royalty and peasants were all built the same way, and that there was only one way for producing children.
But there was no point in worrying over something that might never happen. Morwen turned her attention instead to where young Vincent Pollard was offering Charlotte the dish of sweetmeats, and being so heartbreakingly attentive. Now there was a potential love-match, Morwen thought, despite their tender ages. But they were not too young to be in love, and she and Ben had been much the same age when they had first set eyes on one another. Those wonderful, halcyon days…
Justin was the star of tonight’s party, and rightly so, but Cress too had his share of congratulations and birthday gifts, and the welcome from the Cornish family to the American cousins now was warm and spontaneous. And later on, Primmy was asked to play for them.
To Morwen’s surprise, she pinked up at once. She wasn’t normally reticent over such a request, and she had performed magnificently in public concert halls in front of influential people. But tonight she would be playing for Cresswell, and that would make all the difference. Morwen saw how nervously she smoothed down her silken skirt, and how a pulse beat noticeably fast in the low neckline of her gown.
Cress moved to her side and said softly that he had no intention of leaving English shores until he’d heard her play. Morwen was just near enough to hear her choked reply.
‘I’m not sure I want to play then, if it means I hasten your going away.’
‘But I’ll always come back to you, honey, and that’s a promise. You know that, don’t you?’
Morwen swallowed. It was an intensely intimate little conversation, said under cover of the general merriment, and she began to wonder just how close they had already become. It was one thing to argue with her mother about the ethics of their relationship. It was quite another to wonder if they were already lovers. But that couldn’t be. They had hardly met more than a few times…
As Primmy began to play, and the music flowed from her creative fingers, she knew that if it hadn’t happened already, it surely would. There was a subtle seduction in the romantic pieces Primmy chose to play, and a less than subtle reaction in the way Cress leaned on the piano facing her, his gaze never leaving that lovely flushed face. Dear God, thought Morwen, everyone must see it soon!
‘Let’s have something livelier now, Primmy,’ she said quickly, when the burst of applause from the first selection of pieces had died down. The younger children jumped up and down, calling for their favourites. And Primmy laughed, and played a selection of nursery tunes, then a couple of jigs, and finally her favourite classical piece of Mozart.
‘You’re so incredibly versatile, Primmy,’ Cress said, his voice so obviously admiring. ‘You have a rare talent in those slender fingers.’
And in front of everybody, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. The family gave a little cheer, thinking it no more than a gallant gesture in the continental style, but as their eyes met above her fingers, Primmy felt her heart begin to soar. And she wondered now, how she could ever bear to let this beautiful young man go out of her life.
The party went on into the early hours, although the company had thinned out considerably by then. Bess and Hal had retired long ago, and Morwen’s two youngest children were asleep in one of the guest rooms, while Bradley tried desperately to stay awake and listen to the grown-up conversations.
Jack and Annie had gone home with their brood, and Justin had decided to stay the night in town at his grandparents’ house, rather than go back to New World and return again later in the morning. He would soon be taking up his living accommodation above Daniel Gorran’s legal Chambers, and he was patently eager to establish himself as a responsible partner there.
Albert and Primmy lingered as long as they decently could, but once everyone else said they were leaving, they too made their reluctant goodbyes.
‘I’ll see you both tomorrow,’ Cress said to them, but his eyes and his words were only for Primmy.
As the brother and sister prepared to leave, Cress turned to his parents, as if it was almost too much for him to have to keep making these platitudes with this wonderful girl and not take her in his arms.
‘I’m ready to go whenever the rest of you are,’ he said, and as he spoke a small whirlwind leapt up from the sofa and threw itself past him and into Freddie’s arms.
‘I want to go back with you and Aunt Venetia tonight. Can I, please? I won’t be any trouble—’
‘Don’t be silly, Bradley, you will either go to bed here like the others, or you’ll be coming home with us,’ Ran said shortly.
At once, Morwen saw the mutinous brows on her son’s face darken. It would be too awful if this lovely evening ended with Bradley flying into one of his tantrums and shrieking at everyone. It would be shaming for her too, if he showed himself up so badly in front of his American relatives.
She put a hand on her husband’s arm before he could say anything more, and pressed it lightly.
‘Where’s the harm in it if Freddie and Venetia don’t mind, Ran? Besides, it’ll be a novelty for us to have the entire house to ourselves for once, won’t it?’
‘You know we don’t have any objection, Morwen,’ Venetia said at once. ‘We’d love to have Bradley come back with us tonight.’
Ran was clearly torn between the delightful thoughts his wife had put into his head, and his need to discipline his unruly son. In the end, Morwen’s soft, inviting eyes won.
‘Oh, take him then,’ he said, his ungraciousness coming more from the surfeit of drinks he’d imbibed that evening than from anything else. ‘For two pins I’d say why don’t you take him off to Ireland with you as well! Maybe the schools there can curb his wildness!’
He hadn’t meant it seriously, but Morwen’s heart pounded at the sudden glorious expression on Bradley’s face. It should probably hurt her to see him so excited by the thought of leaving his parents, but it didn’t. She loved him, and she understood him, and if his heart was with Freddie and Venetia and their horses, and all that such a life had to offer, then she was prepared to let him go. Letting him go seemed to Morwen the greatest love she could give him.
By tomorrow, she knew Ran wouldn’t see it that way, if he ever could. But he’d done the unretractable now. The words had been said, and couldn’t be unsaid. Whether or not they were acted upon, was yet to be seen. One thing was for sure, though, Ran wouldn’t give in to his own words without putting up a fight.