Bride of Pendorric

by Victoria Holt

  As for Roc, he was telling himself that my adventure in the vault had naturally upset me a good deal and that I should need time to recover.

  He treated me gently, and reminded me of those days immediately following my father’s death.

  Mabell, earrings swinging, was a wonderful hostess and there was an informal atmosphere about the party. Several of the local artists were present, for our scenery had made the district an artists’ colony; and I was gratified when one of them mentioned my father, and spoke with reverence of his work.

  From the other side of the room I heard Roc’s laughter and saw that he was the center of a group, mainly women. He seemed to be amusing them, and I wished that I was with them. And how I wished that there were no more doubts and that I could escape from my misgivings into that complete and unadulterated happiness which no one on earth but Roc could give to me.

  “Here’s someone who wants to meet you.” Mabell was at my elbow and with her was a young man. I looked at him for some seconds before I recognized him.

  “John Poldree, you remember?” he said.

  “Why yes. The ball …”

  Mabell gave him a little push towards me and then was gone.

  “It was a wonderful ball,” he went on.

  “I’m so glad you enjoyed it.”

  “And very sad of course that …”

  I nodded.

  “There was something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Pendorric. Though I don’t suppose it matters much now.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s about the nurse.”

  “Nurse Grey?”

  “M’m. Where I’d seen her before.”

  “And you remember?”

  “Yes. It was something in one of the papers. It came back to me. Then I remembered that I was in Genoa at the time and it wasn’t all that easy to get English papers. Having fixed the date I went and looked up old copies. She’s the one all right. Nurse Althea Stoner Grey. Nurse Stoner Grey, she was called. If I’d heard the double-barreled name I’d have remembered. But I couldn’t mistake the face. It’s rarely that you find a face as perfect as that one.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “I’m afraid I misjudged her. I’d got it into my head that she’d committed some crime. Hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression. All the same it wasn’t very pleasant. She was lucky to have a name like Stoner Grey. She could drop the first part and seem like a different person. After all Grey’s a fairly common name. Coupled with Stoner, far from it. She lost the case.”

  “What was the case then?”

  “She’d been nursing an old man and he’d left her money; his estranged wife contested the will. It was only a few paragraphs and you know how disjointed these newspaper reports can be.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “About six years ago.”

  “I expect she’s had a case or two in between that and coming to my grandfather.”

  “No doubt of it.”

  “Well, she must have brought good references to my grandfather, I imagine. He was the sort who would make sure of that.”

  “That wouldn’t be difficult for a woman like that. She’s got a way of getting round people. You can see that. She’s pretty hard boiled, I should think.”

  “I should think so too.”

  He laughed. “I wanted to tell you ever since I solved the mystery. I expect she’s far away by now.”

  “No. She’s still living fairly near us. She’s taking a little holiday and renting a cottage for a time. My grandfather left her a small legacy so she probably feels she can afford to rest.”

  “Must be a lucrative job—private nursing—providing you have the foresight to choose rich patients.”

  “Of course, you couldn’t be sure that they would conveniently die and leave a legacy.”

  He lifted his shoulders. “Smart woman, that one. I think she’d be the sort who’d choose with care.” He had picked up one of the pieces of pottery which were lying about the studio. “Good this,” he said.

  And for him the subject was closed; but not for me. I could not get Nurse Grey out of mind, and when I thought of her I thought of Roc.

  I was very quiet during the drive back to Pendorric.

  I noticed a change in Morwenna; there were days when she gave me the impression that she was walking in her sleep; and her dreams seemed to be happy ones, for at times her expression was almost rapturous. She was absent-minded, too, and I had on one or two occasions spoken to her and received no answer.

  She came up to our room one evening when we were changing for dinner.

  “There’s something I want to tell you two.”

  “We’re all ears,” Roc told her.

  She sat down and did not speak for a few seconds. Roc looked at me, his eyebrows raised.

  “I didn’t want to say anything to any of you until I was absolutely sure.”

  “The suspense is becoming unbearable,” commented Roc lightly.

  “I’ve told Charles of course and I wanted to tell you two before it became generally known.”

  “Are we soon to hear the patter of little feet in the Pendorric nurseries?” asked Roc.

  She stood up. “Oh … Roc!” she cried, and threw herself into his arms. He hugged her and then began waltzing round the room with her. He stopped abruptly with exaggerated concern. “Ah, we have to take great care of you now.” He released her and, putting his hand on her shoulder, kissed her cheek solemnly. “Wenna,” he said, reverting to his childhood name for her, “I’m delighted. It’s wonderful. Bless you.”

  There was real emotion in his voice and I was touched.

  “I knew you’d be pleased.”

  I felt as though I were shut out of their rejoicing; and it occurred to me how very close they were, because Morwenna seemed to have forgotten my existence and I knew that, when she had said she wanted to tell us first, she had meant she had wanted to tell Roc. Of course, they were twins and how true it was that the bond between twins was strong!

  They suddenly seemed to remember me, and Morwenna immediately brought me into the picture.

  “You’ll think we’re crazy, Favel.”

  “No, of course not. I think it’s wonderful news. Congratulations!”

  She clasped her hands together and murmured: “If only you knew!”

  “We’ll pray for a boy,” said Roc.

  “It must be a boy this time … it must.”

  “And what does old Charles say?”

  “What do you think! He’s rapturous. He’s already thinking up names.”

  “Make sure it’s a good old Cornish name, but we don’t want any more Petrocs about the place for a while.”

  Morwenna said to me: “After all these years. It does seem marvelous. You see, we’ve always wanted a boy …”

  We all went down to dinner together and after the meal Roc proposed the health of the mother-to-be, and we all became quite hilarious.

  Next day I had a talk with Morwenna, who had become more friendly, I thought; I liked her new serenity.

  She told me that she was three months pregnant and had started to plan the child’s layette; and she was so certain that it was going to be a boy that I was a little afraid for her, because I realized how disappointed she would be if it should be a girl.

  “You probably think that I’m behaving like a young girl about to have her first baby,” she said with a laugh. “Well, that’s how I feel. Charles wanted a boy so much … and so do I, and I always felt I was letting him down in some way by not producing one.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t feel that.”

  “Charles is such a good man. He would never show resentment. But I know he longed for a son. I’ll have to be careful nothing goes wrong. It did about five years ago. I had a miscarriage and was very ill, and Dr. Elgin, who was here before Andrew Clement, said I shouldn’t make any more attempts … not for some time in any case. So you see how we feel.”

  “Well, you must take the greate
st care.”

  “Of course one can take too much care. Some people think you should carry on as normally as possible for as long as possible.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be all right; but suppose it should be a girl?”

  Her face fell.

  “You’d love it just the same,” I assured her. “People always do.”

  “I should love her, but it wouldn’t be the same. I long for a boy, Favel. I can’t tell you how I long for a boy.”

  “What name have you decided to give him?” I asked. “Or haven’t you thought of that?”

  “Charles is insisting that if it’s a boy we call him Ennis. It’s a name that’s been given to lots of Pendorrics. If you and Roc have a son you’ll call him Petroc. That’s the custom; the eldest son of the eldest son. But Ennis is as Cornish as Petroc. It’s rather charming, don’t you think?”

  “Ennis,” I repeated.

  She was smiling and the intensity of her expression disturbed me.

  “He’s certain to be Ennis,” she went on.

  I turned to the book of baby patterns which was lying on her lap and expressed more interest in it than I really felt.

  So even Morwenna’s news added to my uneasiness. Ennis was a family name; and the boy on the moor had the looks as well as the name; Morwenna had taken Rachel away and Roc had been at hand to help make arrangements; he had visited them during their sojourn abroad, and Deborah had been afraid that Roc was going to marry Rachel.

  I thought I was controlling my suspicions but I couldn’t hide them from Roc.

  One day he announced that he was going to take me out for the day. I mustn’t imagine I knew Cornwall just because I had seen our little corner; he was going to take me farther afield.

  There was an autumnal mist in the air when we left Pendorric in the Daimler, but Roc assured me that it was only the pride of the morning; the sun would break through before long; and he was right.

  We drove onto the moor and then turned northward and stopped at a country hotel for lunch.

  It was over the meal that I realized Roc had brought me out to talk seriously.

  “Now,” he said, filling my glass with Chablis, “let’s have it.”

  “Have what?”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “On my mind?”

  “Darling, innocence, in this case, is unbecoming. You know perfectly well what I mean. You’ve been looking at me for the last week or so as though you’re wondering whether I’m Bluebeard and you’re my ninth wife.”

  “Well, Roc,” I replied, “although you’re my husband and we’ve been married quite a few months, I don’t always feel I know you very well.”

  “Am I one of those people who don’t improve on acquaintance?”

  As usual he caught me up in his mood; and I was already beginning to feel gay and that my suspicions were rather foolish.

  “You remain … mysterious,” I told him.

  “And it’s time you began to clear up the mysteries, you’re thinking?”

  “As you’re my husband I don’t think there should be secrets between us.”

  He gave me that disarming smile which always touched me deeply. “Nor do I. I know what’s disturbing you. You discovered that I haven’t lived the life of a monk before my marriage. You’re right in that. But you don’t want details of every little peccadillo, do you?”

  “No,” I told him. “Not every one. Only the important ones.”

  “But when I met you I realized that nothing that had happened to me before was of the slightest significance.”

  “And you haven’t taken up the old way of life since you married me?”

  “I can assure you that I have been faithful to you in thought and deed. There! Satisfied?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “So you’re not?”

  “There are people who seem to regard you in a certain way and I wondered whether they realize that any relationship which existed between you is now … merely friendship.”

  “I know. You’re thinking of Althea.”

  “Well?”

  “When she first came to look after your grandfather I thought her the most beautiful woman I had even seen. We became friends. The family was always urging me to marry. Morwenna had been married for years and they all implied that it was my duty to marry, but I had never felt that I wanted to settle down with any woman.”

  “Until you met Althea Grey?”

  “I hadn’t actually come to that conclusion. But shall we say the idea occurred to me as a possibility.”

  “And then my grandfather asked you to come and have a look at me, and you thought I was the better proposition?”

  “That sounds a little like your grandfather. There was no question of ‘propositions.’ I had already decided that I did not want to marry Althea Grey, before your grandfather suggested I should come out and look at you. And when I did see you, it happened. Just like that. You were the only one from then on.”

  “Althea couldn’t have been very pleased.”

  He lifted his shoulders. “It takes two to make a marriage.”

  “I begin to understand. You must have come very near to being engaged to Althea Grey before you changed your mind. And what about Dinah Bond?”

  “What about Dinah? She’s assisted in the education of most young men in the district.”

  “I see. Not serious?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “And Rachel Bective?”

  “Never!” he said almost fiercely. He filled my glass. “Catechism over?” he asked. “Favel, I’m beginning to wonder whether you aren’t somewhat jealous.”

  “I don’t think I should be jealous … without reason.”

  “Well, now you know there is no reason.”

  “Roc …” I hesitated, and he urged me to go on. “That boy I saw at Bedivere House …”

  “Well?”

  “He’s so like the Pendorrics.”

  “I know; you told me before. You’re imagining that he’s the living evidence of my sinful past, Favel!”

  “Well, I did wonder who he was.”

  “Do you know, darling, you haven’t enough to do. At the weekend I want to go to one of the properties on the north coast. Come with me. We’ll be away a couple of nights.”

  “That will be lovely.”

  “Something else on your mind?” he asked.

  “So many things are not clear. In fact when I go back to the first time I saw you … it seems to me that that was when everything began to change.”

  “Well, obviously things couldn’t be the same for either of us after we’d met. We were swept off our feet …”

  “No, Roc. I didn’t mean that. Even my father seemed to change.”

  He looked grave suddenly; and then he seemed to come to a decision.

  “There are certain things you didn’t know about your father, Favel.”

  “Things I didn’t know?”

  “Things he kept from you.”

  “But he didn’t. He always confided in me. We were so close … my mother, he, and I.”

  Roc shook his head. “For one thing, my dear, he didn’t tell you that he had written to your grandfather.”

  I had to agree that this was so.

  “Why do you think he wrote to your grandfather?”

  “Because he thought it was time we met, I suppose.”

  “Why should he think that was the time when for nineteen years he hadn’t considered it necessary? I didn’t want to tell you, Favel. In fact, I’d made up my mind not to … for years. I was going to wait until you were fifty. A nice cozy grandmother with the little ones playing at your knee. Then it would have seemed too far away to be painful. But I’ve come to the conclusion … in the last half hour … that there shouldn’t be secrets between us.”

  “I’m certain there shouldn’t be. Please tell me what you know about my father.”

  “He wrote to your grandfather because he was ill.”

  “Ill? In what way?
”

  “He had caught your mother’s disease through being with her constantly. She wouldn’t go away from him, nor he from her; they wanted to pretend that there was nothing wrong. So they stayed together and he was her only nurse until she was so very ill. He told me that if she had gone away she might have lived a little longer. But she didn’t want to live like that.”

  “And he too … but I was never told.”

  “He didn’t want you to know. He was very anxious about you. So he wrote to your grandfather telling him of your existence. He hoped that your grandfather would ask you to Cornwall. He himself would have stayed in Capri; and when he became really ill you wouldn’t have been there.”

  “But he could have had attention. He could have gone to a sanatorium.”

  “That’s what I told him. That’s what I believed he would do.”

  “He told you all this … and not his own daughter!”

  “My darling, the circumstances were unusual. He knew of me, and as soon as I turned up at the studio he knew why I had come. It would have been too much of a coincidence for a Pendorric to arrive only a month or so after he had sent off his letter to Polhorgan. Besides he knew your grandfather’s methods. So he guessed at once I had been sent to look round.”

  “You told him, I suppose.”

  “I had been asked by Lord Polhorgan not to, but it was impossible to hide it from your father. However, we agreed that we would say nothing to you, and that I should write and tell him what I had seen; then he would presumably write to his granddaughter and invite her to England. That was what your father hoped. But, as you know, we met … and that was enough for us.”

  “And all the time he was so ill …”

  “He knew that he was on the point of becoming very ill. So he was delighted when we said we were going to get married.”

  “You don’t think that he was made a little uneasy by it?”

  “Why should he be?”

  “You knew that I was the granddaughter of a millionaire.”

  Roc laughed. “Don’t forget he’d had some experience of your grandfather. The fact that you were his granddaughter didn’t mean that you would inherit his fortune. He might have taken an acute dislike to you, and me as his son-in-law, in which case you would have been ‘cut off with a shilling.’ No, your father was delighted. He knew I’d take care of you; and I fancy he was happier to think of you in my care than in your grandfather’s.”