Gillings drove them to the nearby little bay beneath the rocks, where the beach was golden, and the sea stretched endlessly towards America. To where Matt would shortly be returning with his family, Morwen thought with a pang, and taking Primmy with him… but she wouldn’t think of that now.
‘I’ll be back for ’ee in an hour or so, then, Ma’am,’ Gillings said, respectfully touching his cap.
‘That will be just right. The sun will be going down by then, and I don’t want the children to be chilled,’ Morwen told him. It was warm now, and the bay was sheltered, but there was always a cool wind from the sea. Emma was susceptible to minor ailments, and coughs and colds, and a summer cold could be just as debilitating as any other kind.
Besides which, there had been several cases of measles reported in the area, and the very thought of one of the children catching such an infection was enough to freeze Morwen’s bones. Dora, Walter’s natural mother, had died of the measles, and an epidemic could sweep through a close-knit community as quick as lightning.
‘So what do you think, Mammie?’ Luke said, when their driver had gone clattering away with the trap and left them to their poking about between rocks and into pools.
‘What do I think about what?’ she said, thankful to drag her thoughts back to the present from the uneasy place where they had gone.
‘Will Grandad Hal be a fossil by now, or does he have to moulder away in the grave for years and years before it happens?’ Luke said, ghoulishly anticipating the thought.
At his graphic words, Emma gave a little scream, and Morwen snapped at her wretch of a son. So much for moving away from gruesome thoughts.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Luke, and stop putting such ideas into Emma’s head. The two of you will be having nightmares tonight, and I shall speak seriously to Miss Pinner if she’s been teaching you such things.’
Luke scowled, and Morwen sighed, seeing the echo of his brother Bradley in his dark glower.
‘Well, Miss Pinner said that all dead things turned into fossils, so why is it so daft to ask if Grandad Hal will turn into one?’ he said defensively.
Morwen had no argument with the logic of it, though she could have wished the correct Miss Pinner to Kingdom Come at that moment. And, seeing that Emma was still shivering, she tried to lighten the moment.
‘Because Grandad Hal is my daddy, and I don’t like to think of him in any way except how I last saw him, laughing and talking and being happy with his family,’ she retorted, and then had to swallow the sudden lump in her throat at the sweet imagery of it all.
‘I don’t want to talk about Grandad Hal,’ Emma said shrilly. ‘I’m going to look for shells.’
She went scampering along the beach, scuffing her shoes into the sand to dig up the flotsam left by the tide. If she could, Emma would bury her head in it, rather than have to hear about unpleasant happenings, Morwen thought. Young as she was, she had the ability to shut herself off from reality when she chose, and Morwen wasn’t too sure that it was such a clever achievement.
Her brother Matt had once been considered a dreamer, but his feet had remained fairly firmly on the ground. But this aura that she sometimes felt surrounded her beautiful little daughter was different. This was almost an escape from the everyday world, as if Emma wasn’t truly meant for it, or that she was mentally being prepared for another. As if… dear Lord, where were her thoughts going? Morwen thought, as a great shudder ran through her.
‘Emma, don’t go too far away,’ she said, her voice suddenly husky.
‘I’m only just here, Mammie!’ the girl said, totally unaware of her mother’s momentary compulsion to snatch her to her breast and feel her heartbeat next to her own.
‘Look what I’ve found!’ Luke shouted, brushing the sand away from something in his hand. He rushed across to Morwen excitedly, holding out a large ridged object in his hand. It was beautifully intact, the fossilized crustacean silvery and brittle.
‘What is it, Mammie?’
‘I’ve no idea. A mollusc of some sort, I suppose—’
‘It’s got a face,’ Emma said. ‘Look, there’s a face, and there’s hair as well—’
‘Don’t be so dippy, Emma,’ Luke hooted. ‘Fossils don’t have faces.’
‘Well, I can see one!’ she said crossly. ‘And the hair’s all pale-coloured, like the lady that came to the house that day.’
A cloud passed over the sun at that moment, sending a shadow across the bay.
‘What lady?’ Morwen said, though there was only one that she knew who could fit that description. And she was more than irritated to know that her heart was beating sickly.
Luke was more interested in his fossil than remembering the incident, but Emma spoke up at once.
‘We were looking out of the nursery window, until Miss Pinner said we weren’t to be nosy. But the lady was so pretty in her black dress, and her hair shone like silver.’
‘When was this, Emma?’
‘When you were staying at Grandma’s house. But we weren’t really being nosy, Mammie. We just wanted to look, that was all—’
‘I didn’t,’ Luke said.
‘Yes, you did, the same as me!’
As Luke began to taunt her, Morwen could see the angry red flush appearing on Emma’s face now, and guessed that she also feared a telling-off for staring at a visitor.
‘Never mind that now. Do either of you know who the visitor was?’
They didn’t, and they were obviously getting bored by the questioning, and Morwen gave up quizzing them. But it had to be Harriet Pendragon, of course. No one else in the district was striking enough to be remembered so clearly.
Morwen was torn by a mixture of emotions at that moment. It was insulting and outrageous enough that the woman had come calling at a time of mourning. But the thing that gnawed away at her most was that Ran had never mentioned it.
When they returned to the house and the children had gone upstairs to get ready for bed, she spoke to Mrs Enders.
‘Did my husband have any callers while I was staying at Killigrew House?’ she demanded to know.
‘Oh yes, Ma’am. We had quite a number of ’em after your father’s death, enquiring after your family’s health, and offering condolences. Mr Wainwright would have had all the visiting cards—’ the housekeeper said.
‘But was there anyone in particular?’
Mrs Enders stared at her, clearly not understanding the oblique remark. Fuming, Morwen knew she would have to be more precise, though she had no doubt in her mind who the pale-haired woman would be. Hadn’t she already tangled with her herself? But she still couldn’t believe that Harriet Pendragon had had the audacity to come here again, and she needed this confirmation.
‘Did Mrs Pendragon call on my husband, Mrs Enders?’
She saw the housekeeper go a dull red, and knew instantly that Ran had forbidden her to say so. That in itself was a shock, and she remembered vividly how the Pendragon woman had intimated that it wasn’t only Killigrew Clay that she wanted, but the virile man who was part-owner. She couldn’t have made it more obvious…
‘I don’t know what I should rightly say, Ma’am,’ Mrs Enders said unhappily. She began to wring her hands, and Morwen found herself thinking in a kind of detached amazement that it was true what was said in the penny-dreadfuls. People did wring their hands when they were in distress…
‘Your loyalty does you credit, Mrs Enders, but this is my house as well as my husband’s, and I’ve a right to know who enters it. Especially when it’s someone I’ve no wish to see.’
‘Oh, you’ve no need to fret yourself on that score, Ma’am! Mr Wainwright showed her the door good and proper, and gave orders that she’s never to be admitted here again!’
She clapped her hands to her mouth, knowing she’d given herself away now. Morwen’s mouth quirked slightly, knowing that if this was a cheap melodrama, then Mrs Enders was making all the right moves. For some reason, she couldn’t rid herself of the theatricality of the situation, and it made her even more angry.
‘Thank you for not lying to me, Mrs Enders. And providing you do as you were told, we’ll not mention it again. Please return to your duties.’
The woman gave a small bob and scurried out of the drawing room. And Morwen wilted onto the sofa, wondering what devil was possessing her to make her treat a respected member of the household staff as if she were no more than a skivvy.
But she knew the devil, of course. She knew its name and recognized its evil. It was jealousy, raw and searing.
She was still sitting on the sofa in the darkening dusk when Ran returned home. By then the children had come to say their good-nights and Morwen had promised to go and tuck them in. But she hadn’t stirred, and they would probably be asleep by now. Mrs Enders had come and lit the fire to cheer the room, glancing at Morwen’s marbled expression in a troubled way, and tiptoed out again, saying nothing and closing the door tightly behind her.
And Morwen continued to stare blankly into the leaping flames, seeing nothing but the gloating, sensual face of Harriet Pendragon. As she made a small, involuntary movement, she heard her husband’s startled voice.
‘Morwen! Good God, you made me jump. What the devil are you doing, sitting here in the gloom like that?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll light the lamps—’
‘No, don’t. Leave them,’ she said sharply.
He came to sit by her side and took one of her hands in his own. The fire warmed the room, and it was midsummer, but her hands were still as cold as ice, and mistakenly, he thought he knew the reason for her apparent misery.
‘Darling girl, you know your father wouldn’t want you to spend your life in mourning. Didn’t he always say that life is for the living?’
She turned towards him, her eyes dark and luminous in the firelight. ‘And is that what you think, Ran?’
She saw him frown. ‘Well, of course it is. It’s a fact of life that we all have to die, honey. We all lose people who are dear to us. You know it more than most.’
‘Oh yes, I know it. I’ve just lost my daddy. And a long time ago I lost my best friend, and then I lost my brother Sam, and Sam’s wife. And I lost my husband. You make it sound as if I’ve carelessly put them all down somewhere, and they’ll turn up again at any minute.’ She stopped abruptly, as misery swept over her.
He didn’t speak for a moment, and then he leaned forward and kissed her cold cheek.
‘You lost your husband, but you found another,’ he said gently. ‘Or have you forgotten?’
She felt his hand move softly to caress her breast, and she flinched as if she had been stung. He was so unused to this reaction that he paused.
‘Maybe I’m not the one who’s forgotten whose husband you are,’ she muttered.
His hand dropped away from her at once, and from the stiff set of her shoulders he knew she wasn’t sitting here in the dark out of any sense of grief.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘You had a visitor while I was staying with my mother,’ she stated.
‘I had plenty. Some days the house seemed crammed with them. So what? It’s the natural thing after a death. It shows respect. You’ve seen the visiting cards—’
‘Not all of them.’
‘What?’
‘I said I haven’t seen all of them. I was never shown Harriet Pendragon’s. Why was that, I wonder?’
She turned her head slowly to face him, and in the flickering firelight she imagined she saw guilt, embarrassment and shame written all over it. In return, Ran read the silent accusation in hers, and his eyes flashed angrily.
‘Since you seem to have decided the reason for yourself, there seems no point in my saying anything more about it,’ he said shortly.
‘Oh, but there is,’ Morwen said, hot with anger. ‘I want to know what that woman was doing here in my absence, and why you were so underhand as to keep the visit from me.’
‘Dear God, Morwen, you surely don’t think—’ Ran said in exasperation.
‘I don’t know what to think. But I’ve seen her for myself, and I know that she – she—’
‘She what?’ he said, yielding nothing as she floundered.
Her head lifted and her chin was tilted high. Ran had seen the movement many times before, when all seemed lost, and the survival instinct in Morwen Tremayne was strong enough to overcome it all. He hardly realized that in his mind at that moment, he’d thought of her as Morwen Tremayne, when he’d never known her as such. Nor why she should think she had anything here to overcome…
‘I don’t trust her,’ she said passionately. ‘And I don’t want her to have anything to do with my family.’
Ran didn’t speak, but her ragged breathing told him all he needed to know. Ignoring her stiffness, he gathered her into his arms, and smoothed her tangled dark hair as he would have done Emma’s.
‘By your family, I presume you mean me. And since I guess you’ve discussed all this with Mrs Enders—’
‘She didn’t want to tell me. I got it out of her—’
‘I can imagine,’ Ran said, with a hint of a smile in his voice that he quickly smothered. ‘Well then, you’ll know that the woman was sent packing on my orders. I don’t trust her any more than you do. But how about me?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Morwen said, her voice muffled against his chest.
‘Do you trust me, honey? Or do you think I’m weak enough to be swayed by the first woman who looks invitingly in my direction?’
She lifted her head away from his chest and looked into his eyes. Typically, she responded to the only words of importance, and ignored the rest.
‘Then you admit that she looked invitingly at you, as you so quaintly put it?’
The closeness Ran had been striving to re-establish between them was instantly shattered. She felt his hands grip her shoulders as he glared stonily down at her.
‘My God, you don’t have any faith in me at all, do you? As for admitting anything, there’s nothing to admit. And I’ll tell you this, Morwen. There’s more than one man who’s been driven into the arms of another woman by being so falsely accused, so you might think about that!’
‘Are you threatening me?’ she said, her voice shrill.
‘No. Just making an observation,’ Ran said coldly.
Morwen knew she was practically screaming at him now, but she couldn’t seem to stop. ‘Then I’ll make one as well. I’d remind you that I know full well what the Pendragon woman was here for. She wants Killigrew Clay, and she wants you, but as long as there’s breath in my body, I swear to you that she’ll get neither of them. Do you hear me?’
‘I should think the whole bloody house can hear you,’ he snapped. ‘Stop behaving like a demented fool and get to bed. You’ve had a bad day, even though you came out of it better than your brothers, but I’m sure everything will look clearer in the morning.’
She stared at him in shock as he strode across the room, poured himself a glass of brandy from the decanter, and downed it in one angry swallow before pouring himself another. Her head was throbbing, and on top of all the emotion generated by the reading of her father’s will, her husband was turning to the demon drink again, she thought savagely.
She moved quietly to the door, and paused beside it. Unknowingly, she reminded Ran of the way Harriet Pendragon’s silk-clad fingers had so sensuously caressed the doorhandle, and he gave a smothered oath, and swallowed the second glass of brandy in one gulp.
‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’ she said woodenly, unaware of his anger.
He took refuge in sarcasm. ‘Oh, I think not, my dear. No, I intend to stay here and drink myself into a stupor, and when I think I’ve had enough, I doubt that I shall disturb your slumbers by my crassness. One Ben Killigrew in your life was undoubtedly enough. If I make my way up the stairs at all, I shall spend what’s left of the night in a guest bedroom.’
He turned his back on her, and she heard the clink of glass against glass as he replenished his drink. Morwen bit her lips until she was in danger of splitting them with her teeth, and then she turned swiftly and left him, slamming the door behind her and shaking from head to toe.
Tonight, of all nights, she needed his strength and the familiar comfort of his body beside her in their large bed. Tonight, of all nights, she needed their quiet, habitual bedtime discussions in the soft darkness of their private sanctuary. And tonight, of all nights, as she undressed and crept shiveringly into bed, she felt bereft and alone, and willed this traumatic and hurtful day to come to an end.
When she went downstairs to breakfast the next morning, her head feeling as though a thousand bees still buzzed inside it, she discovered he had gone. The children were already there, their breakfasts nearly finished, and chattering loudly enough to make her wince with their exuberance. When she had greeted them, she spoke quietly to Mrs Enders as she refused all but the strongest coffee and toast.
‘Did my husband leave a message for me?’ she asked, knowing that a wife who was so unaware of her husband’s movements was as good as admitting that there was a rift between them.
‘He said nothing to me, Ma’am,’ the housekeeper said, still stuffy with her. Morwen sighed. Sometimes it seemed as if the whole world was against you, she thought wanly. She gave a nod as if she had just remembered, even while she hated the subterfuge.
‘Oh, I recall it now. He was meeting up with Walter and going to the clayworks with him.’
Her head was too muddled to know if he had really mentioned the fact, or if it was merely guesswork. She knew Ran had already gone to prepare the way yesterday. But it was a fair bet that today the two of them would show a united front to the clayworkers. The two present partners, solidly standing together… and she was the third.
‘You children hurry along now and go to the nursery,’ she said. She felt as if she spoke quickly, but in reality she heard how her words dragged. She had spent such a miserable and wretched night. And if Ran had drunk himself stupid, then God only knew what his head would be like this morning, she thought. Her own was still aching and woolly, and she needed to breathe some fresh air into her lungs.
Luke and Emma needed little persuading. They were still full of importance from the things they’d collected on the sea-shore yesterday, and eager to win Miss Pinner’s praises. Each of them kissed her dutifully, and went off, still chattering like magpies.
‘They’m good children, Mrs Wainwright,’ Mrs Enders said for no reason at all. ‘They were no trouble at all while you were staying at Killigrew House.’
‘I’m sure they weren’t, Mrs Enders, and I never doubted that they would be well cared for in my absence,’ she said, lest the woman thought otherwise.
‘That’s all right then. Just so long as you know.’
As she went out of the dining room, Morwen resisted the urge to salute her stiffly retreating back. She stifled an unexpected giggle, which was something of a relief after feeling as if she were slowly being constricted, when the old Morwen had so revelled in being a wild child of nature.
But even as the thought struck her, it sobered her. She was no longer a child, and a responsible woman in her forties should have more sense than to yearn for such youthful recklessness. She left the dining room, and went upstairs to change into a suitable garb for riding. What she needed now was fresh air, and to feel the strength of a horse’s galloping gait beneath her. And she too, would put in an appearance at Killigrew Clay, to explain the new order of things to any who wanted to hear it. It was her right, every bit as much as the men’s.
The air was as clear and sharp as wine on the moors today. It was the kind of morning her daddy always said was spruced up and polished to a green and golden lustre, with the glittering, silvery clay mounds the jewels in the crown.
She reined in her horse when she had ridden him hard across the moors, keeping away from the clayworks until her head had cleared. Until that happened, she wasn’t ready for the undoubted curiosity from those who wouldn’t be backward in asking Hal Tremayne’s daughter what was what.
She steadied the horse to a trot, and squinted her eyes against the bright June sunlight. Nearly July now, she remembered, thinking how quickly the weeks were moving forward. Matt and his family would be going back to California very soon, and taking Primmy with them. She pushed down the sadness at the thought, knowing it was what her girl wanted so much. Knowing that she wanted to be with Cresswell.
Her heart suddenly jolted. She had come farther than she realized, and ahead of her was an old standing stone with a great hole in the centre, as if some gigantic mystical hand had forced its way through. Such a pagan memento of a long-forgotten past was a familiar feature on these moors. But this stone was special. It was their stone, hers and Celia’s.
Morwen shivered. She hadn’t been this way for years, and it was probably a mistake to be here now. Ghosts of the past were opening up old memories, and she didn’t want them. She didn’t want to remember how she and Celia had danced so wantonly around this stone, chanting the words the old witchwoman had suggested to them, each hoping to see the face of their true love through the stone.
But she couldn’t deny the warm and pleasurable feelings stealing through her now, remembering how she had seen the face of Ben Killigrew. She could still remember how her heart had leapt with such unbridled joy at the magic of it all. And she had known, even then, that he was the only one for her, no matter how unlikely it might seem for a bal maiden to wed the boss’s son.
And Celia had seen the leering face of Jude Pascoe, Ben’s cousin, who had been the cause of her bitter downfall, and so much agony.
‘Be ’ee seein’ ghosts, me dear?’ came a shrill, cackling voice close behind her, and Morwen jumped so much that she almost stumbled and fell. She felt the snatch of a claw-like hand reach out to save her, and she twisted away fearfully as she turned and faced the old woman.
‘Zillah,’ she whispered hoarsely, her face white. ‘I thought you were dead.’
The cackling laugh rang out again, chilling Morwen through. Dear God, she wasn’t really seeing a ghost, was she? And especially not this old hag of a woman, with her wispy grey threads of hair and her wizened old face. If she was still alive, she must be nearing a hundred years old by now…
‘There’s many a fool thought that, after my cottage burned down, dearie. But you can’t kill couch-grass, no more’n you can kill a body who ain’t finished wi’ the world yet.’
Morwen licked her dry lips. ‘I must go—’
‘Why must ’ee? Be ’ee too fine now to spare the time o’ day wi’ a body that was once of help to ’ee?’
Morwen fumbled in her skirt pocket for a few coins.
‘Maybe this will help to repay you, Zillah. I’ve got no more with me at the moment—’
‘What do I want wi’ your money?’ the old crone wheezed. ‘No. ’Tain’t me who’s wanting summat, be it, girl?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, ’tweren’t just chance that brought you here today. You came for a purpose, and you’d best say what it is, afore old Zillah can help ’ee.’
Morwen gave a forced laugh. ‘I certainly did come here by chance. I was out for a ride to clear my head—’
‘Oh ah. And is it cleared now?’
Morwen realized that it was. It had cleared from the moment she’d seen the standing stone. Dear God, had she really been in the grip of this old woman’s magic these last minutes? She tried to dismiss the idea, but Zillah had proved herself in many ways before now. She’d concocted the love potion that had produced the images of hers and Celia’s future lovers… and she had brewed the bitter mixture that induced Celia’s miscarriage, and instructed them what to do with what she had so poignantly called ‘the waste’.
‘And I see that you ain’t forgetting old Zillah’s help,’ the old woman wheezed again. ‘So say your piece, my fine lady, and let me get back to my cats.’
Morwen dragged her thoughts together, pushing this madness out of her head with a great effort.
‘I want nothing from you,’ she said forcefully. ‘I just want to live in peace.’
The old hag’s eyes seemed to look into her very soul at that moment, and the throbbing headache was instantly back again. But Morwen stared her out, trying desperately not to show how very afraid she felt. She was Cornish-bred, and she knew that there were more things born of mystery than could ever be explained.
But, finally, Zillah seemed satisfied by what she saw in Morwen’s face. She nodded, pursing her thin lips together until they were all but absorbed into her leathery cheeks.
‘Peace, is it? It’ll come to ’ee in due course, me dear, but I’d say you’ve a way to go yet afore you reach it. Your daddy’s found it, but not you—’
‘My daddy’s dead!’ Morwen said, her heart lurching with fright. ‘I’m not asking to die, nor for anyone else in my family to die!’
‘I know all about yon Hal Tremayne,’ Zillah said, turning to hobble away across the moor in her ancient boots. ‘And you ain’t fit for joinin’ ’im yet, girl. Peace will come to you in other ways, you mark my words.’
Her voice faded as she disappeared into a dip in the hillside, seeming to vanish into thin air. And Morwen almost fell over the back of her horse, as she urged him on. She was suddenly frantic to get away from this place as fast as she could, feeling as young and vulnerable as the two young girls who had once ventured here at midnight with such eager, ill-advised, romantic hopes.