A Stranger's Secret Page 6

  Nicca cocked his head. “You might be hungry.”

  “No, why the new clothes and bath now?”

  “The squire’s coming.” Nicca departed before David could ask more questions.

  So he availed himself of the luxury of a bath. The soap stung his still healing cuts and scrapes, but he didn’t mind. Being clean was too delightful to concern himself with a little discomfort.

  The clothes were a surprisingly good fit, sober garb, though the silver buttons proclaimed the clothes were not intended for mourning, and the fineness of the linen shirt and wool coat and breeches had surely been bespoken for a gentleman of means. He would have preferred boots to the thin leather shoes, but boots would have been more difficult to size. The soft leather, fit for dancing, stretched around his larger feet. They, too, sported silver hardware in the form of buckles large enough to have been costly, but small enough not to be ostentatious, just like the buttons on the coat. The clothes of a gentleman indeed.

  No one had thought to provide a ribbon for his hair, so he employed the brush left for him to make it as neat as possible and, a little shaky, returned to the armchair by the fire a moment before Nicca burst into the room and began to drag the tub away. “Squire’s coming.”

  The open door allowed the rumble of voices to drift into the room, the murmur growing to a rumble of distinct voices—Lady Penvenan’s and that familiar, yet not familiar, man’s rich timbre.

  “You should allow the man to have his dinner, Grandfather.” Lady Penvenan sounded agitated. “This is unkind to confront him on an empty stomach.”

  “It’s already dark out. I don’t want to stay out much later.” So the man was her grandfather, not someone David would have met before. Not someone he had heard of before this unwanted sojourn onto the north coast of Cornwall.

  He rose to meet the man standing, hoping he would be taller to give himself some advantage.

  When the man strode into the chamber, the only advantage David felt was his youth. The Trelawny patriarch was at least David’s height, despite a slight stoop of age, and still vigorous in build. No question as to whose clothes David wore. Trelawny wore similar garb—with fine Hessian boots.

  “You’re looking well, Mr. Chastain.” Her ladyship nodded to him, then turned to her grandfather. “David Chastain.”

  No “Mr.” Neatly put in his place.

  David bowed, though he felt like perhaps he should tug at his forelock like a scullion. “Honored,” he murmured.

  “Hmph.” Trelawny swept a glance up and down. “You didn’t tell me he was so young, Morwenna. All the more reason to get him out of here.”

  “He isn’t strong enough to travel.” Her firm, round chin was set. “And now his mother might be on her way here. I know I would be.”

  “I expect she is, if she’s gotten your letter.” David flicked his gaze back to Trelawny. “To what do I owe the . . . privilege of this call, sir?”

  “Sit down before you fall down, and we’ll talk.” Trelawny stalked to a chair, sat, and pulled out a pipe.

  “You’re not smoking that in my house.” Lady Penvenan reached for the pipe.

  Trelawny snatched it out of her grasp. “I won’t light it, but let an old man have his indulgence.” He stuck the stem between his teeth, then removed it and pointed it at David. “I said sit.”

  “I’m perfectly all right standing, thank you.” David couldn’t take his eyes off that pipe. Surely he had seen it before, if not this pipe, then one similar, the stem a pointer, the bowl scattering ash as a man talked . . .

  Her ladyship snorted. “As long as Mihal doesn’t find his way in here and run into you. You’d go over like a tree in a storm, from the look of you.”

  “No room for pride when you’re beaten to a pulp.” Trelawny stuck the stem between his teeth again.

  “If her ladyship sits . . .” He needed to show these people that just because he grew up handling an adz when this man probably handled a silver rattle, didn’t mean he didn’t have manners. Father had been the third son of a country squire and Mama the sixth daughter of a baronet. She knew manners and insisted her children used them.

  Her ladyship’s lashes swept up for a second, then dropped. She ducked her head and flopped onto the edge of a chair. “I-I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “A bad habit of yours, Morwenna. You don’t think.” Trelawny rapped the bowl of his unlit pipe on the wooden arm of his chair as though calling a courtroom to order.

  Her face hardened to that of a marble statue. “I think we need to get this interview over with so Mr. Chastain can have his dinner and rest. He looks worn to a thread.”

  He felt worn to a thread and gladly released enough pride to sink onto a chair. “Your servant, sir.”

  “Hmph.” Trelawny narrowed his eyes, intensifying their dark stare. “You are either an excellent actor or have no idea who I am.”

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  “Sir Petrok Trelawny.”

  David chose his response with care. “Until I learned of my father’s death in Falmouth, I had never even heard the name Trelawny.”

  “Well, you are going to hear a great deal more of it, as we are moving you to our family seat at Bastion Point.”

  “No, Grandfather, you are not.” Lady Penvenan glared at her grandsire. “As you see, the man can barely sit upright for more than a quarter hour. How do you expect him to endure the drive over to Bastion Point?” She turned to David, her expression gentling. “The distance isn’t great on foot or by horseback, especially at low tide, but you can’t ride or walk, so would have to take a carriage around to the house. That is a five-mile drive over our road, which is in appalling condition.”

  “You cannot stay here, lad.” Trelawny ignored Morwenna and addressed David. “Her reputation cannot bear having a single young man staying here.”

  “Then I’ll manage the drive.” David inclined his head. “My mother would take a strop to me if she thought I willfully compromised a lady’s reputation.”

  Trelawny gave him an approving nod. “Glad to hear you are more sensible than my granddaughter.”

  “But, Grandfather, I have been waiting until he was stronger before I questioned him about the wreckers. If he’s at Bastion Point, I can’t do that.”

  “You can come visit. That would please your grandmother.”

  “I don’t recall anything about the wreckers, my lady.”

  If he was removed to Bastion Point, might he not put himself in worse danger than he might be here with her ladyship, a child, and two servants? After all, Bastion Point sounded like a fortress. At the same time, he couldn’t harm a lady’s reputation no matter how nefarious her actions toward him.

  “You may remove your household to Bastion Point if you like, Morwenna,” Sir Petrok suggested. “We’ve been wanting you to do so since those unfortunate events. It would calm the gossip.”

  “Or make it worse.”

  “It’s your heritage.”

  “And Penmara is Mihal’s heritage.” Her face worked as though she was about to burst into tears.

  David raised one hand, aching to reach out to her, take her hand, and comfort her. Only as he would have done for his sister or mother. As he had done for them when they received the news of Papa’s death.

  “I must stop these men to preserve it,” she added.

  Trelawny reached out his hand, spotted with age, but large and still strong-looking. He covered her hand where it gripped the arm of her chair. “My granddaughter, you won’t stop these men by compromising yourself more than you already have. Come to Bastion Point and . . .”

  What she could do once there, David didn’t hear. Trelawny’s words kept repeating themselves in his head as though he were in a cave with the phrases echoing off the walls again and again. “These men . . . These men . . .”

  David had heard those words spoken before in that voice, yet not that voice. A younger version of this voice and speaking to a lady. And in that moment, he knew that,
although he may never have met Sir Petrok Trelawny, the patriarch of the family, or any Trelawny, he had heard them in the boatyard office.

  One night when he stayed late in the workshop to complete a boat design, he heard voices in the office, then a light shone beneath the connecting door. More curious than concerned that Father would entertain midnight visitors, David moved to the door and lifted the latch. By the light of the ship’s lantern on Father’s desk, David caught a glimpse of a middle-aged couple, both the man and the woman with sun-bronzed skin. The man toyed with an unlit pipe. The woman wore several woolen shawls. They must have heard him, for they ceased talking. Not wanting anyone to see him in a day’s worth of sweat and grime, David slipped away and exited the workshop through the boatyard door. Two days later, Papa had departed, saying he was headed for Scotland, and a week after that, he was dead.

  “I believe,” David said, “I would prefer to remove myself to Bastion Point on the morrow.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THIS WOULD NEVER DO.

  Morwenna yanked one of her three dresses off its hook in her armoire and flung it in the vague direction of the bed. She could not go live with her grandparents. She was a woman grown, a widow, a mother, the mistress of a derelict estate. She must not look as though she were abandoning Penmara, or the men who considered investing in her mines might withdraw their support.

  Yet if she did not retreat to Bastion Point, she couldn’t learn anything from David should he remember.

  Should he choose to remember.

  He remembered something. While Grandfather spoke, she had watched David’s face from the corner of her eye and seen his expression change, grow cold and remote. That was the sort of expression a man took on when he acquired knowledge that was not good news for someone.

  Her or himself? Or intertwined.

  Yes, their lives were intertwined. She didn’t know why, but she suspected from the moment she rescued him from drowning in the surf, she needed to keep him close.

  So she would submit to Grandfather’s authority and return to Bastion Point.

  “Ridiculous.” She yanked a hat off the top shelf of the armoire.

  Grandmother insisted she wear a hat to church. Grandmother would likely insist she have new clothes. More than once she said that going on two years was more than enough time for mourning a husband. She didn’t seem to understand that Morwenna’s continued mourning bore as much to financial restraints as it did respect for her deceased spouse.

  “You could become a wealthy woman if you remarry.” Grandmother had spoken the words more than once in the past six months since official mourning ended.

  Lately, she had been adding, “If you married Jago Rodda or Tristan Pascoe. You know we would love that.”

  Morwenna should love it too. The Roddas and Pascoes were wealthy. Tristan was handsome and educated, but he was a second son, not the heir to anything. Despite his intelligence and charm, he seemed to have no purpose in life besides visiting friends from university and flirting with Morwenna. Jago was the Roddas’ only child. Jago was handsome and intelligent as well, and looked at her as though she were a meaty bone and him a hungry hound.

  “The hounds!” Morwenna flung open the bedchamber door and raced down the corridor to the back steps, calling for Henwyn or Nicca. They should be in the kitchen having their breakfast with Mihal, as they would be staying at the house to keep it from being empty.

  “The dogs.” Morwenna shoved open the kitchen door. “I can’t leave the dogs here.” She glanced around. “Where are they? Where are Mihal and Nicca?”

  “All of them are in the garden.” Henwyn set a newly washed cup on the sideboard. “With Mr. Chastain.” She gave Morwenna a sidelong glance. “He cleans up right nice, don’t he?”

  “I hadn’t noticed.” Morwenna tried to avoid Henwyn’s eyes, failed, and shrugged. “All right, yes, he is a fine specimen of a man on the outside. Who knows what he is on the inside.”

  Henwyn nodded and smiled. “Good to hear you haven’t had your head turned. You’re needing better than the likes of him, being a ladyship and all.”

  “I didn’t deserve to be a ladyship.”

  She hadn’t deserved Conan. With Conan, everything changed except for her past behavior, and she would pay for that for the rest of her life. Good girls like her cousin Elizabeth got what they wanted. Morwenna got what she deserved.

  She would never live up to the standards her grandparents expected. Jago Rodda and Tristan Pascoe might want to marry her, but it was only for her looks—and her dowry. It had always been her looks with Jago. He had lusted after her since she was fifteen and he somewhere around twenty fresh back from university. Many would say she wasn’t good enough for Jago even if she was a Trelawny and now a Penvenan. As for Tristan? Tristan was too young to take seriously as a suitor, let alone consider as a husband.

  But saying any of this aloud, even what she had admitted, was inappropriate to speak of with a servant.

  She refocused her mind on the dogs. “I can’t leave the dogs here with you and Nicca, and I can’t take them to Bastion Point.”

  “You can leave them here with us.” Nicca pushed through the back door, carrying Mihal. He set the child inside a pen made of chairs. “I’ll take fine care of them, you know.”

  “And they’ll be protection for me alone in this pile of a house.” Henwyn began to dry the washed dishes.

  “Dog.” Mihal spoke from the far end of the kitchen where he had settled himself amid a sea of tumbled blocks. “Dog.”

  “He’ll miss them.” Morwenna looked at her son.

  She would miss the hounds as well. They had been such a comfort to her when she was incent and exiled to a cottage in the woods. In those achingly lonely days, days of terror, she longed for her grandparents to allow her to move back to Bastion Point for the safety of her unborn child, yet she dared not break her word and give them the information they insisted she divulge, if she wanted them to accept her back into the fold.

  Anger and bitterness over that time twisted in her belly, an acidic roil.

  “Could you bring them over for visits?” She crossed the room to join Mihal on the floor, a much better activity, building up the blocks, than packing to return to Bastion Point. “I know you are occupied here keeping things clean and trying to keep the roof on.”

  “And I’m working on plowing up more land for the garden by planting time.” Nicca grinned, proud of his work.

  “I think I should go with you,” Henwyn said. “You need someone loyal to you, and who’ll be watching the boy?”

  “Grandmama has twenty servants. If I am occupied—”

  “Which you will be, if I know Lady Trelawny,” Henwyn broke in.

  “Then one of them can see to him. Miss Pross will adore having him about.”

  Miss Pross was her cousin Elizabeth’s former companion, chaperone, lady’s maid, but hadn’t wanted to leave with Elizabeth when she married. Grandmother had offered the middle-aged spinster a position as her companion, and Pross had stayed, quiet, efficient, and good at listening, offering insight when appropriate.

  Unlike Henwyn, who had grown outspoken in the two years she had served as Morwenna’s maid of all work and, for much of that time, only companion.

  “I don’t like you there alone with all those people.” Henwyn slammed a copper pot onto the table. “And that man there like he’s an honored guest. Don’t know why you can’t stay here.”

  “I need to be near him in the event he talks. I need to know—something. If one more wreck happens on my beach . . .” Morwenna turned her attention to Nicca. “We’ll arrange to have you bring the dogs over every day, weather permitting. Perhaps a run on the beach during low tide. The Bastion Point beach is so much better than ours.”

  Not nearly as rocky and inhospitable. Ships didn’t go aground accidentally or on purpose in Halfmoon Cove.

  “I’ll send a note—” Morwenna broke off, remembering that neither Nicca nor Henwyn could read. “I’ll
send a servant over.” She picked up Mihal, much to his objections, kissed him on the cheeks, then set him amid his blocks again. “I’ll pack now.”

  “You’d best be about it then. The carriage is coming in a quarter hour.” Henwyn stomped across the room to where a kettle of hot water perpetually simmered on the hearth when the fire was lit. “Will you be taking some tea up to Mr. Chastain?”

  “He’s gone on up to his room to rest,” Nicca said.

  Henwyn sniffed. “He shouldn’t be doing all that climbing. He still looks as weak as a kitten for all his size.”

  “He’ll eat better at Bastion Point.” Morwenna couldn’t help the disloyal thought that so would she. No fish stew. No fish at all if she said she didn’t want it.

  For a moment, her heart rebelled against taking anything from her grandparents. Doing so felt like treachery. Thirty pieces of silver in exchange for her pride, her dignity, her promise to her husband. She stacked up one more tower of blocks for Mihal, replaced the chair that kept him from crawling toward the fire when no one was looking, and crossed the kitchen to fetch a tray from a hook on the wall. “I expect Grandmother has real sugar.”

  “Honey’s as good as all that,” Nicca muttered. “Proud of my bees.”

  “And thankful we are to have them.” Morwenna spread a worn and mended serviette onto the tray. She had embroidered over the darns to give it some elegance for when she had callers, but her needlework, other than knitting, was rather awful.

  “It’ll give him strength for the journey.” Henwyn ducked into the pantry and returned with a pot of honeycomb. She tapped a generous portion into the steaming mug, then set cup and spoon onto the tray. “Come back down, m’lady, and I’ll fix you a cup for yourself.”

  “I’ll take mine now, too, and I must finish packing my things. Mihal’s are all ready.”

  “You need to be sitting down when you drink it, not sipping here and there while it grows cold.” Despite her grumbling, Henwyn prepared a second cup of tea, this one in one of the few pieces of china left to the household. “So you don’t forget that you are a lady of your own manor while you’re over there.”