‘I didn’t tell you everything,’ he said abruptly.
His voice made her ridiculously nervous. ‘Well, you didn’t have to. Really, Philip. I’m sure there were some things that were none of my business—’
‘I have a fiancée. Her name is Ruth, and she’ll be on the quayside to meet me.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’
He turned away with a frustrated gesture. ‘No, you don’t see. Any normal young woman whose delightful company I’ve so enjoyed on this voyage has a right to be angry at my keeping such a vital piece of information to myself.’
‘Then perhaps I’m not normal. I’m certainly not angry.’
A different emotion from anger surged around in her heart. She was unaccountably upset… shocked… feeling suddenly as if the bottom had just dropped out of her world as all the best penny-dreadfuls would have the jilted lover feel. But she wasn’t the jilted lover, and they had only shared one kiss. And she was damned if she was going to let him see how she felt. She had too much pride for that.
He still didn’t look at her. ‘May I tell you a little more, while there’s still time?’
‘If you like. If you must.’
They looked at one another then, and if ever expressions spoke far louder than words, Skye thought this was the time. Philip’s eyes were darker than usual, and she knew that hers must be as tortured as she felt deep inside. It was madness to feel this sense of betrayal because he hadn’t told her about his fiancée until the last moment. It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. But it did.
‘Ruth and I practically grew up together. Our parents were very close friends, but I hadn’t seen her for some years until she turned up at the university where I was teaching several years ago. We sort of drifted together—’
‘You don’t have to tell me this—’
‘It was because we shared a common background, and always had a lot to talk about, that people seemed to link us together. Before we knew it, we had suddenly become engaged.’
‘Nobody suddenly becomes engaged,’ Skye snapped, anger overtaking all other emotions at last. ‘You make it sound as if you didn’t have a mind of your own.’
She had to hit out to cover her misery. She tried to tell herself he was spineless to have drifted into an engagement in this way, but she just couldn’t believe that of him. There had to be something else, but right now she preferred to keep the anger uppermost.
‘I did and I do. But Ruth needed me.’
Something in his voice made her contain her anger.
‘Is there something wrong with her?’
The moment of confession, if that was what it was about to be, was lost, as various shipboard acquaintances crowded around them to say goodbye. If he’d really been going to tell her anything more about Ruth, Skye knew he’d be too loyal to say the engagement had been a mistake. Even if it had. And what right did she have to even think such a thing? Unless it was that fey, Cornish sixth sense her mother always spoke about. The sense that was telling her – no, shrieking at her – that this was not destined to be a marriage made in heaven.
But there was no more time for discussions or questions, because the ship was docking at the Falmouth quayside to a fanfare of hooters and noise. And Philip Norwood was pressing her fingers tightly in a brief hand-shake of goodbye.
‘Be happy, Skye. Perhaps our paths will cross again one day. I certainly hope so.’
‘It’s possible,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘I’ll be visiting relatives in Truro sometime. If I see you across the street I’ll be sure to say hello.’
She knew it was practically a snub, but somehow she couldn’t stop herself. Short of saying how much she longed to see him again, it was better that they should part like this. Still friends, and no harm done, even if he had virtually told her he’d wanted to make love to her last night.
She had wanted it too… no matter how wicked it might have been, she had felt a passion for him that was as new and exciting as being reborn. And if she had the slightest smidgin of common sense about her now, she’d forget it. And him.
* * *
She had slipped away from him long before the passengers began crowding off the ship, and she didn’t see him leave, nor the woman meeting him. She couldn’t have borne that, even though she was still asking herself how it was possible to feel so intense about someone she had only known for five days!
But you could know some people for a lifetime, and yet you still didn’t really know them at all. And there were others, who just walked into your life, and seemed to have always been a part of you…
‘Stop it,’ she told herself severely. ‘He doesn’t belong to you and never did, so just be thankful you had the sense not to do anything stupid.’
Though from all she had heard about some of her Cornish family’s reckless escapades, she doubted that any of them would be so surprised if she had. But maybe that didn’t include making love with a man who was already promised to somebody else. She didn’t want that on her conscience.
And since her Uncle Luke was a man of the cloth, she supposed she had best try to curb her natural high spirits to a certain degree, at least until she knew how these Cornish folk were going to receive her.
But even as she thought of it, she rebelled against it. It wasn’t in her nature to pretend to be something she was not. If the family couldn’t take her as she was, then she would simply move on somewhere else. She had a whole year to enjoy here, and she was going to make the most of it.
The first thing she was going to do was to find a small hotel where she could stay for a few days and acclimatise herself with Falmouth and the surrounding area. She was finding it extremely disturbing, as well as interesting, if she thought about it objectively, how you could look forward to something for so long, then when the moment arrived, you wanted to delay it a little longer. It was almost as if you were afraid the reality wouldn’t live up to the dream.
She stepped onto the quayside, her baggage being set down at her side by a ship’s steward, and looked around her uncertainly for a moment. Her hat was skewered on to her head with a silver hat-pin, but in the breeze from the shore, it felt perilously near to flying off, and she clutched at it involuntarily.
‘Miss Tremayne, I believe,’ she heard a male voice say. ‘Miss Skye Tremayne, newly arrived from New Jersey.’
She whirled around and looked right into a pair of eyes that could only belong to a family member. None of the Tremaynes were exact doubles of one other, but it was always the eyes that gave the connection away. A smile began to curve around Skye’s lips as she saw the man beam down at her.
‘Well, yes, I’m Skye Tremayne, but how did you know…?’ she said unnecessarily. He knew, the way she knew, but it was spooky, because they were still strangers.
The next second she was clasped in his embrace, and she knew a second’s panic at being hugged so fiercely by this large man. Then she heard a woman’s voice close by, amused, and slightly impatient.
‘For pity’s sake, Albie, let the poor girl breathe or she’ll think you’re accosting her and call the constables.’
Skye struggled out of the embrace, her face alight with pleasure now as she registered the name.
‘Albie? You’re Uncle Albie?’
Her breath caught with excitement. But of course, he had to be, and her heartbeat settled down. The family likeness was evident, and Albert Tremayne was so like her mother.
The woman laughed, answering for him.
‘We’re your Aunt Rose and Uncle Albie, my lamb,’ she said. ‘We’ve been watching the newspaper items for news of ships’ arrivals from America for days now, and we guessed this would be the one. And a fine summer morning it is to welcome you to Cornwall.’
She was buxom and asthmatic, but as she paused for breath, Skye knew at once that she could abandon her planned few days alone. It didn’t matter. After the awkward conversation with Philip that morning, she had begun to realise that time alone might be spent brooding, which
would do her equilibrium no good at all.
She needed company, and this friendly couple were just the right people to take away the first strangeness of being here. She rarely suffered from nerves, but for the first time, she decided it might be as well, too, not to have to meet the entire family all at once.
‘It’s lovely of you both to meet me like this,’ she said. ‘I had planned to spend a few days here in Falmouth to get my bearings before travelling on, but I’ll fall in with whatever you have in mind.’ Then she paused, for perhaps they didn’t have anything in mind for her at all.
Rose ushered her along with them, while Albert carried Skye’s baggage to their waiting motor along the quay.
‘If ’tis Falmouth you want to see, then ’tis Falmouth you shall see,’ Rose said in her deeply rural accent. ‘’Twill be no hardship for Albie to drive back home to pick up a few things for the two of us, and we’ll all stay in a hotel for a coupla days. ’Twill be a little holiday for we as well.’
‘Oh, but it sounds like a good deal of trouble—’
‘Course it’s not,’ Albert said. ‘If Primmy’s girl wanted to go to Timbuktu, I’d take her, and be glad to do it.’
Skye glanced at Rose at this declaration of loyalty to his sister, and didn’t miss the slight pursing of Rose’s lips.
‘I’m sure I won’t want any such thing,’ she said quickly. ‘It was just an idea to look around the town, and one night will probably be enough. I’m dying to see St Austell and the clayworks, and Granny Morwen, of course. And Truro.’
Her natural enthusiasm came bubbling to the surface again as she spoke, right up until she mentioned the word Truro.
Truro was where Philip Norwood was going to be working for six months, and where a woman called Ruth had arranged to meet him after they had spent a year apart. Not just any woman, she reminded herself. His fiancée. The woman he was going to marry.
Albert Tremayne drove off at a leisurely pace from the quay. There was no hurrying in a town like Falmouth, with its quaint cobbled streets and steep, narrow steps between the crowded buildings. On the harbour, fishermen were mending their nets and loudly discussing their catch, and the air was heavy with a pungent mixture of salty smells. Skye had never seen anything quite like it, and she pushed everything else from her mind save the delight of absorbing new sights and sounds.
‘We’ll stay one night then,’ Albert said. ‘’Twould probably be best, for your granny will be impatient to see you, and she’ll start thinking we’m hogging your company.’
‘You don’t think it will be too much for her, my being here, then?’ Skye said anxiously.
Rose hooted. ‘The day any of us young ’uns tire Morwen Tremayne out will be a red letter day indeed!’
Skye hid a smile. These particular “young ’uns” were around sixty years of age, but what really struck her was how Rose referred to Morwen as Morwen Tremayne. Not Morwen Killigrew, as she had once been when she’d become the wife of the heir to Killigrew Clay; not Morwen Wainwright, as she had become when she wed her handsome American husband.
Rose had referred to her as Morwen Tremayne still, bearing the same proud moorland name as theirs, and hers. Curious. And Skye was sure it said something for the esteem in which they still all held Morwen Tremayne.
She put the intriguing snippet to the back of her mind, becoming more interested in the congested traffic now, a hotch-potch of raucously hooting motors, horse-drawn vehicles and bell-ringing bicycles, as Albie steered his own car away from the harbour and through the town.
‘It’s so busy, and so old!’ Skye exclaimed. ‘I’ve never seen such tiny buildings all cramped together as if they’re trying to reach the sunlight.’
‘You wait ’til you see the moorland cottages above St Austell, my dear, then you’ll know what small is.’ Albie said the name of the town as if it was all one word.
‘Falmouth has always been an important shipping place, Skye,’ Rose told her. ‘And it has some connection with the old Killigrews, of course—’
‘Now don’t be filling the maid’s head with nonsense, Rose,’ Albie said lazily. ‘The Killigrews of them far-off days had nothing to do with we St Austell folk. Killigrew’s a well-known Cornish name, see, girl, and you’ll find plenty of folk sharing it. Just like the Tremaynes.’
‘All the same,’ Rose said, glowering at the back of his neck from where she and Skye occupied the rear seats of the motor, ‘I daresay Skye’s interested in more of our history than just that of the clayworkers.’
‘Oh yes—’
‘Well then,’ Rose rushed on. ‘’Twas Sir Walter Raleigh himself who came to the town and persuaded them in authority to develop it. Until then, there was only one other dwelling here besides the Killigrew mansion, as it was then.’
‘My goodness,’ Skye said, trying to be impressed.
But she was starting to find Rose’s constant chatter irritating, and was thankful they had decided to stay just one night in the town after all. Everything had changed, anyway.
Her plan had been to spend a little preliminary time on her own, to find her bearings and acquaint herself with this strange new country in a relaxed and casual way. But plans could still be altered, and Rose had inadvertently given her a different idea.
‘You did say Uncle Albie would have to drive to Truro and back to fetch your things for a night’s stay, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, don’t trouble your head about that, my dear.’
She was good at directing Albie, thought Skye. And he seemed ready enough to let her do it. After all that her Mom had told her about him and their early days, she was sure he was no milksop, but Rose certainly liked to wear the trousers.
‘But now that we’ve driven through here at such a snail’s pace, and I’ve seen something of the place,’ Skye went on doggedly, ‘I believe I’d prefer to go straight to Granny Morwen’s house as soon as possible after all. Am I being an awful pest? I shall see if I can arrange for a hire vehicle to take me.’
She left the words hanging in the air, knowing they would be picked up at once.
‘You’ll do no such thing, and I confess I shan’t be sorry to get away from Falmouth. The port’s always too full of foreign seamen for my liking,’ Albie said now. ‘You’ll stay with us in Truro tonight. Then we’ll take you on to New World tomorrow. You’ll want to see the studio where your mother and I lived, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, yes! And I shall know it right away. Mom has always kept the painting you gave her as a going-away gift on the bedroom wall above her bed, and I never tired of looking at it. I always knew I’d get to see the real thing one day.’
She was the one to prattle on now, suddenly aware of a chill in the air. Once, Aunt Rose’s face must have been very pretty, Skye thought, but when she frowned, as now, there was a definite look of discontent about her thin mouth.
But what had she said, for pity’s sake? Just that remark about her Mom keeping Albie’s painting above her bed. And what was so wrong with that, when the brother and sister had been as close as two peas in a pod?
And how could a middle-aged wife and mother be jealous of a closeness that had ended so many years ago, when Primmy sailed away to America to become Cresswell’s wife?
Thank goodness she had, Skye thought practically now. Because if it hadn’t happened, then she wouldn’t have been here at all. Nor Sinclair.
Thinking of her own brother for a brief moment before she forgot him again, she remembered just in time not to ask about her Truro cousins. Albert and Rose’s son had died at Mafeking. It was a long time ago, but it was best not to mention it unless they did.
And perhaps it was that loss that had changed Rose Tremayne from the laughing girl whose image she had seen in one of the family portraits Albert had sent them, to the easily-irritated woman she sensed her to be now.
‘So we’ll go on to Truro,’ Albie said comfortably, clearly not as aware of Rose’s displeasure as his niece.
Which was odd, reflected Skye, since
he was a true child of Cornwall, and she was only an imported one.
‘And how was the voyage, my love? Did you meet any interesting travelling companions?’ he went on, sending her instantly and momentarily dumb.
* * *
Truro had long been home to Albert Tremayne, and Skye would be staying in the same room her mother had occupied when she and Albie had shared the accommodation above the studio. And Truro was where Philip Norwood was. She wished she could stop thinking about it, but the thought seemed determined to stay in her head, no matter how much she tried to kick it out.
What would he be doing right now, she wondered? She hadn’t even had the chance to ask any more about Ruth. Did she live in Truro permanently, or was she just visiting, and staying in an hotel to be near Philip for a while? Or was she a university person too, so that they would be together on the campus, sharing their days… sharing their nights…
Skye was furious at her own thoughts. It wasn’t seemly to let such wanton, reckless thoughts enter her mind. But she was a passionate woman with passionate ideas and a vivid imagination, and it was impossible not to visualise them together. Philip, and the shadowy woman who loved him …
She tried to dismiss those thoughts the minute she set foot inside the studio. This place had been so real to her for years, that she felt she already knew every room, every corner of it. She knew how it would smell, with that mixture of turpentine and paint and oils that made up an artist’s creative world. Even the undefinable scent of the new canvases were evocative to her nostrils, and she simply stood and breathed it all in.
Being a part of it at last. Being Skye. Being Primmy. In that moment she had the extraordinary feeling that they were one and the same.
‘Welcome home,’ Albie said softly.
And she opened her eyes, startled, without being aware that she had even closed them.
He was standing, watching her, while Rose had gone on upstairs to the living quarters to make some tea. She saw him shake his head slightly as if he was looking at a ghost.
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