A Stranger's Secret Read online

  Morwenna gazed into his eyes to discern whether or not he spoke the truth. They were rather fine eyes, gray-green like the sea before a storm, and direct, as she had noticed before. They went well with his longish dark hair spread out against the pillow slip like a cloud and the dark beard stubble that gave him a rather piratical visage.

  She remembered brushing her hand against the rasp of that stubble, and her fingers tingled with other memories, those few mornings she had awakened to find her husband still there beside her . . .

  Her chest tightened with a longing for what could never be, thanks to Conan’s own lawlessness. She stiffened her spine and tossed her mending into the basket she had lugged into the invalid room while she watched over the stranger, David Chastain. “What can you tell me?”

  “Why should I tell you anything?” No belligerence tinged his voice, deep and thick with the musical cadence of Somerset, the s’s almost sounding like z’s, the r’s as thick as clotted cream. “I don’t know you or anything about you.”

  “You know nothing of the Trelawnys or Penvenans?” She arched her brows in disbelief.

  He shrugged, winced, and shook his head. “Should I?”

  “I . . . don’t know.” Morwenna wished she still held her needlework so she would have a reason to duck her head and hide the heat she felt climbing into her cheeks. “I thought everyone knew about the Trelawnys at the least.”

  But then, why would a boatbuilder from Bristol? To her knowledge, none of them had ever been to Bristol and only in Somerset to perhaps visit Bath or on their way to London from Cornwall.

  “If they are the sort of people I should have heard of, then I don’t move in the types of places where I would have heard of them.” He flicked his gaze over her in a way too impersonal to be rude. “I suppose that refers to you as well, Lady Penvenan.” He emphasized the “lady” as though it were a barricade he were erecting. Then he grinned and tore the barrier down again. “Mama might have heard of your family, though, if you have family in London. She reads the gossip rags from there.”

  “My uncle is a member of Parliament. And a year and a half ago”—Morwenna rose and began to stride around the room—“my husband’s murder would have garnered some space even in London papers. He was, after all, a peer of the realm, even if he never did take his seat in Parliament. He couldn’t afford to stay in London for weeks on end.”

  But if he had, he might have made the sort of connections she wished she had, men with money to invest in two derelict mines whose flooding had put them out of business and dozens of men and women out of work. All they needed were mine engines to pump the water out. Engines that cost more than the sale of all the other lands could provide.

  She paused at the window and gazed upon the distant engine houses. The storm had blown off the rest of one roof, leaving the rusting and broken engine, one of Newcomen’s first built in the previous century, exposed to the sunshine and sea air. The rest of her son’s inheritance was crumbling before Morwenna’s eyes.

  She would halt the destruction spread out before her. She would stop it with her own efforts, not by taking her grandparents’ money or marrying one of the two men courting her.

  With that determination uppermost in her mind, she decided to tell this stranger the truth. Perhaps if she spoke, he would do so as well.

  She faced him again. “A vessel outbound from Bristol wrecks on my beach during a storm when they never should have been this close to land, and I find you battered by nature and man and left to drown on the sand at high tide. I need to know why.”

  “So do I.” He touched his neck where the chain should have lain but didn’t take his eyes from her. “That medallion was the last thing I had from my father, except for a letter that is likely now at the bottom of the sea.”

  “No, it’s in the library, though I doubt you can read it. I found it in your coat pocket and set it in the sun to dry.”

  He leaned forward, his hair swinging across his shoulder and catching a current of sunlight to show a hint of cinnamon blended with the coffee. “May I see it? Will you fetch it for me?”

  “Of course.” She left Mr. Chastain alone.

  Down the corridor, in the dressing room she used as a nursery because the rooms intended for children were just below where part of the roof had blown away years earlier and water had ruined all the furnishings and damaged the plaster, Mihal, Lord Penvenan, began to cry. She sprinted down the threadbare runner to snatch him out of his bed.

  She lifted the baby into her arms. He had grown so much in the past three months, growing nearly too heavy for Morwenna to carry far or for long. She figured she would do so as long as she could manage at all. Hugging him to her, wet diaper and all, she pressed her cheek against his dark curls. “I’ve got to make you prosperous, my little one. No way will you grow up to live and die as did your father.”

  “Ma.” He squirmed in her hold. “Go.”

  “All right. Let me change you.” She set him on the table she had set up for such a purpose. “Will you lie still for me?”

  “Go.” Which was as good as saying he would not.

  He was too much like his father, too much like her—dissatisfied with sitting still. And if she were honest, rebellious. If she told him to sit still, he would wiggle about like a hooked fish. If she told him to be quiet, he would yell at the top of his lungs. If she asked for a hug, he would push her away.

  She hugged him anyway. He would not grow up with parents—a mother—he saw when convenient for her. With her own parents, that had been every three to five years. Now she hadn’t seen them for six. They were probably dead in some South American jungle, killed by nature or strange peoples, while they pursued their dream of unearthing a hidden gem mine.

  The instant she let Mihal go on the table to reach for the supplies she needed to wash him, he rose on hands and knees and headed for the wall. From experience, she knew he intended to use the wall to pull himself up. She caught him around the middle, flipped him onto his back, and began to tickle him by way of a distraction. He convulsed with giggles, wriggling and flopping and forgetting he would rather be ambulatory than lying on his back.

  One accidental jab with a pin had taught him to lie still as she gave him fresh cloths and a dry petticoat. His stockings were all right, and she pulled on the little shoes she had commissioned for him in Truro at a shocking expense. Then she lifted him down and took his hand. “Let’s go visit Henwyn in the kitchen and get you something to eat.”

  “Eat.” He used another favorite word. “Eat. Eat. Eat.” He yelled the word past Chastain’s room.

  Morwenna considered taking food up for him, then decided to send Nicca up with a dinner tray. Nicca wouldn’t talk much and would be in a hurry to get to his own dinner. Being left alone now that he seemed more awake would incline David Chastain to talk.

  Morwenna hoped.

  David Chastain with a Trelawny medallion and the wrath of the wreckers upon him. He claimed to be a boatbuilder and was built like a man who could carry the strakes for a ship-of-the-line all by himself, step masts without assistance, and hold them while others rigged the ship . . . All right, so she might be exaggerating, but he was certainly on the side of large and muscular. She wasn’t certain of height, not yet having seen him standing. Next to her, anyone was tall. She hadn’t even reached Conan’s shoulder, and he wasn’t more than a whisker above average in height, strong, but not overly so. He’d been so gentle . . .

  David Chastain seemed gentle enough, but his will seemed formidable. Despite his pain and days of mostly unconsciousness, he managed to guard his tongue. She knew all too well when a man was lying by omission, and David Chastain was certainly not telling her everything he knew.

  “I’ll worm it out of you, sirrah.” She lifted baby Mihal to carry him down the steep back staircase. “Mmm. What’s Henny cooking for dinner?”

  “Ma.” Mihal patted her cheek where a tear had escaped to slip over her lower lid.

  “Silly Mama.�
� She tipped her head to wipe the wetness onto the collar of her dress.

  Too late. Mihal had puckered up, eyes squeezed shut in that grimace portending his own vociferous tears. “Tears are pointless. You’ll learn that when you get older.”

  Mihal wailed, the sound magnified in the stairwell.

  “Soon, we’ll get you some dinner soon.” Morwenna pitched her voice loudly enough to rise over the sobs, more for Henwyn’s sake than Mihal’s. She didn’t want her maidservant to think she had set the child to weeping. From the day of his birth, she had sought to be joyful for him, only show her delight in his presence and life. Most of the time she succeeded. He was the joy in her life, the remaining part of his father, and easy to distract with tickles and kisses, a toy or a song.

  But not always. Sometimes the tears flowed without warning, and he had learned they meant Mama was unhappy.

  “Not with you.” She paused on the landing to cradle his head against her shoulder. “Never you.”

  She squeezed back more tears and descended the second flight to the kitchen passage. Whiffs of fish stew and onions drifted over the flagstones. Morwenna’s stomach cramped. If she never saw another pilchard preserved in salt it would be too soon, but the preserved seafood was cheap and a quantity had been stored in the cellar. She couldn’t waste what little income she possessed buying bacon or beef. Any beef they procured, usually dried and tasteless as leather, they saved for broth for when a body was ill.

  Of course, her grandparents would give her all the food she, her miniscule staff, and any number of guests—especially Jago Rodda and Tristan Pascoe, suitors for her hand—could eat. All she had to do was ask them.

  She would not ask them. The last time she asked them for help, they said only if she compromised her principles, a promise to her husband. Though the need for that silence had changed, her grandparents had not. They would have more conditions for her to meet. Cousin Elizabeth had faced that. If she could stand strong against their form of loving dictatorship, then Morwenna could stand stronger.

  Lack of sleep was robbing her of strength. For too many nights she had sat up watching over David Chastain, spooning laudanum and broth down his throat, listening to him cry out and moan in pain every time he moved. Yet he never said anything as people often did when under the power of an opiate and spirituous medicines, though she had been weaning him off of those for the past few days. He didn’t rave. He told her nothing.

  Waking, he told her nearly as little.

  Her son suddenly too heavy for her to hold, Morwenna let him down. At once, his crying ceased, and he raced ahead in that side-to-side gait, rolling like a drunken sailor on a heavy sea. His palms slapped the kitchen door and shoved it open. “Ma!” He shouted the name as though practicing to announce someone of importance.

  Henwyn jumped and dropped her spoon into the stew pot. “Don’t be doing that.” She glared over her shoulder at Morwenna. “One of these days I’m going to—what have you been weeping about?” Her face changed from annoyed to concerned. “Has that man been upsetting you?”

  “Not at all. He’s polite.”

  Except he had a rather bold glance from time to time.

  “Weariness is all.” Morwenna dashed her sleeve across her eyes.

  “And hunger,” Henwyn added.

  “No, just some bread—”

  Henwyn used another spoon to fish the first one out of the pot, then scoop some of the thick broth into a bowl. “You’ll eat this whether you like it or not. Many a miner’s wife would be happy to have half so much.”

  “Then take it to them.” Morwenna took the bowl to set on the deal table scrubbed so often it was nearly white. “Come, little one.” She scooped up Mihal and set him on her lap. Spoons lay on the table and she retrieved the smallest one, a half-sized spoon made of silver that had fed Penvenan heirs for at least a century. “Let’s eat up all the fishies.”

  Mihal was happy to gobble up the stew thick with turnips, onion, and bits of salted pilchards. Despite Henwyn glaring at her from across the table, Morwenna managed a mouthful or two, but her stomach contracted around each bite and each thought of what the man upstairs had to do with her family.

  A Trelawny medallion.

  Were she inclined toward superstition, as most Cornish natives were, she might think it had found its way home, but from where? Bristol? Nonsense. Bristol was not the sort of town to which Trelawnys ventured. It wasn’t picturesque like Falmouth or important to the navy like Plymouth. It was not on the way to anywhere important—

  “Go.” A hunk of bread in one hand, Mihal struggled to have her release him.

  Morwenna set him on his feet and rose, brushing crumbs from her skirt. “Henwyn, I’m leaving him for you to watch. I need to get Nicca—”

  “Nicca has already gone up to see that man.” Henwyn opened the lid to a box of toys Morwenna had rescued from the schoolroom—blocks and tin soldiers, their paint faded—that her husband must have played with. “You go to your estate work. And you, little man, come help me build a house.”

  Mihal was more likely to build towers he could knock down, but the blocks kept him occupied for long stretches, enough for Henwyn to knead bread or roll out dough for pasties.

  Morwenna headed for the one room in the house that was well-appointed—the library. Paneling had been polished, the floors covered with a fine Axminster carpet in burgundy red and blue, and the furnishings were new. During the rare occasions she entertained callers, she was grateful to have this one chamber that didn’t put her to shame.

  She opened the door and started back. A man crouched before the hearth coaxing a tongue of flame into a full-blown fire. He glanced up at Morwenna’s entrance, then returned to his fire.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded of Jago Rodda.

  And why hadn’t the dogs barked a greeting and alerted her to the presence of a visitor?

  Because they lay in the corner of the room behind the massive desk, each gnawing on a bone. Looking at the canines gnawing away set off an alarm in her head, something she should remember. But it eluded her, and she focused her attention on Jago.

  “You bribed my dogs to be quiet and not notify me of your arrival?” Morwenna heard the shrillness in her query and took a breath to calm herself. At the same time she glanced at the desk.

  Good. She hadn’t left papers pertaining to the mines laid out. Since wind off the sea had made the chamber chilly, she doubted he had been there long enough to open drawers.

  “I didn’t want them to bark and wake up the baby.” Jago gave one more puff of the bellows and rose, one hand extended. “Or perhaps you. You look as though you should be asleep.”

  “At least you’re not flattering me unnecessarily.”

  “No flattery of you would be unnecessary, my lady. Surely your mirror tells you that.”

  “I don’t bother with mirrors.” Rather glad she must look a frump in her gray dress and sloppily knotted hair, Morwenna rounded the desk but did not sit, forcing Jago to stay standing. “To what do I owe this honor?” She didn’t bother to keep the irony of the word honor out of her tone.

  A tightening of the corners of Jago’s smile told her he noticed, but he forced the smile even wider. “To see you, of course. You’ve been scarce for days.”

  “You saw me in church. Other than that, I’ve been preoccupied.” Morwenna moved one foot over to give the nearest hound an affectionate rub. He responded with a thump of his tail, his jaws never ceasing their chewing.

  Jago’s smile slipped off his face. “I heard. You’re taking care of some derelict stranger from the wreck.”

  “I wouldn’t call him derelict. His clothes were fine enough. But he lost everything.”

  “Then how will he pay you for your care?”

  In information, she hoped. She shrugged. “If he does, he does. If he does not, it’s charity.” She leaned down and scratched Pastie behind one ear. “And what may I do for you?”

  “Do I need a reason to call?”r />
  “To make it proper, yes.”

  “If you’re concerned about proper, you shouldn’t be keeping a man in your house.”

  Morwenna shot upright, banging her hip on the corner of the desk. She glared at Jago. “What was I supposed to do with him? Leave him on the beach to drown?”

  “You should have had him carried to Bastion Point.”

  “And lose more blood than he did coming up here? I think not.” She folded her arms across her bosom. “And if that is your only reason for coming to call, then you may take your leave. I have work to—”

  The dogs sprang up and raced for the door. Morwenna headed after them, reaching the front hall just as the knocker sounded on the great door. Jago hadn’t followed. When she opened the door to see her grandparents, she understood why.

  “This was planned.” Not a polite greeting, so she held out her hands.

  The dogs, wagging their tails, shouldered their way in between, their welcome far warmer than had been their mistress’s.

  “They’re hoping you brought them more meaty bones.” Morwenna clasped her grandparents’ hands. Grandpapa’s was still strong, but Grandmama’s felt frail, the bones fragile, and her conscience pricked her for not being more gracious.

  She tried again. “Come in from the cold. The sunshine is deceiving.” She stepped back so Sir Petrok and Lady Trelawny could enter the house, the dogs nudging them forward over the threshold as though they were sheep and the dogs, collies.

  “Go on with you.” Grandpapa bent to scratch Oggy under the chin.

  Pastie sat before him, her own chin raised in expectation.

  Despite herself, Morwenna chuckled. “Bribing my dogs won’t help them guard us very well.” She sobered and glanced from grandparent to grandparent, her lips thinning. “To what do I owe this honor of three guests in one afternoon?”

  “Ah, Jago is here already.” Grandpapa nodded.

  “Shall I go to the kitchen and help Henwyn make us some tea?” Hefting a substantial-looking basket, Grandmama headed in that direction before Morwenna could speak.