A Cornish Girl

by Gloria Cook

  ‘Yes, I think you should.’ He had the right to be interested in his new family. ‘Perhaps you could come this time next week. Come for luncheon, Mr Howarth.’ She nearly went on to say, ‘And meet some of the family.’ But that was inappropriate. A week would give time for some enquiries to be made about the Howarth Shipping Line; if it was a real and successful enterprise there would be business connections at Falmouth. A few select members of the family round the dining table could make up their minds about him, and she would have time to consider if he really was a threat.

  ‘Thank you. I shall look forward to it.’

  Tempest opened the door. ‘Eula, dear, Mr Howarth is ready to leave. Please see him to the door.’ She smiled at Eula and then at the man she knew as Charles Howarth, to show her daughter his visit had not worried her.

  ‘I can see you’re eager to see him again, Mama,’ Eula said minutes later, when she and Genesis and some others were gathered in Tempest’s sitting room. ‘But are you sure your judgement isn’t clouded because he reminds you of Sol?’

  ‘I admit I am confused about my thoughts concerning Charles, but if he’s genuine I have done him a terrible disservice by becoming hysterical after a simple dream.’

  ‘It was hardly that, Mama.’

  ‘But we don’t know all the mysteries. We should at least get to know him a little better.’

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ Genesis said gravely. ‘There was something about him. He looked at us as if we were a bad smell under his nose. Other times he was edgy, strange. And another strange thing – one of the boys was sure he saw Sarah talking to him by the gate just before he rode down. She hasn’t been near us since the day Titus died. What was that all about, then?’

  Tempest shook her head. The shivering prickling of dread was creeping over her again. She ignored it. She found herself wanting Charles Howarth to be misunderstood and no threat at all. ‘I don’t know, but we should find out. I think someone should pay a call on Sarah.’

  Tara was returning home from church, alone in the carriage except for Rosa Grace, and after being subjected to an afterservice sherry at the vicarage. The former vicar, a doddering old second cousin to Joshua, had died last year, and the new incumbent, the Reverend Oswald Hobden, quite young, dull and monotonous, was devoid of social wit. His childless wife was equally boring, with a tendency to retell the same stale anecdotes. Tara had only accepted the invitation today because there was an empty house waiting on her return, its morale at the lowest. Her request to Joshua to leave Poltraze with her daughter had been met with rage.

  He had stormed into her boudoir, unforgivably scruffy, flinging out the hand holding her letter and sending a vase of silk roses crashing to the carpet. ‘What the hell is this all about?’ Quivering in agitation, his whole face gleaming ferociously, he had balled the paper in his palms and thrown it at her feet. His forehead and chin showed bruises clearly above the discoloration of his temper. ‘You dare to ask me for money so you can leave me? Have you no shame, woman?’

  ‘Shame?’ Tara’s shock had gone in a flash and she had leapt up off the couch to defend herself. ‘Leave you? You are the one given over to a life of shame and it was that shame that made me turn to your brother. And as for money, my marriage settlement brings in three thousand a year. I ask not for what is yours but what is morally mine for you have been no husband to me and never will be!’

  ‘I had no choice but to take you to wife any more than you had to marry me. My despicable father and your conniving bitch of an aunt saw to that. And what life did you have before my father recalled your greedy aunt out of exile to continue as his wife? She had left him and plunged you both into near poverty.’

  ‘I’d rather have that life than this except for—’

  ‘For your bastard spawn?’ Joshua hurled. ‘If you want to leave you can ask her father, my lazy brother, to provide you with the means. You’ll find he’ll give you nothing more than his seed, and you don’t even get that nowadays. He’s too busy bedding the gatekeeper’s wife, did you know? As it is, you will stay here and you can rot for all I care. If I must stay then so will you!’

  Tara’s temper rose to a ferocity that threatened to bring the house down and shatter it to its uninspired foundations. In two smart steps she flung back her hand and slapped it across his cheek, adding another mark to the ugly bruises on his chin. ‘How dare you speak of my child in that vile manner? I will never forgive you for that. Rosa Grace’s existence has served you well, remember, masking your deviance. And you do not have to stay here. You have no desire to rebuild your gardens, so why not take your money and your corrupt and dangerous lover and go somewhere far away? Michael is more than capable of filling your shoes. He is lazy about the estate but he would find a way to rebuild something of it. I don’t care who Michael sees, our association is over and I’m glad. All I care about is Rosa Grace, and come what may I shall find a way to get her and myself away from this desolate place.’

  Joshua had not listened to the end of her tirade. ‘What do you mean by Laketon being dangerous? Why do you say that?’ He was embarrassed and seemed afraid.

  Tara viewed him dispassionately. He was a man brought down, and until his terrible insult about Rosa Grace, she would have been sympathetic, for he had once been kind and thoughtful, someone who did not readily seek to hurt another. Laketon Kivell’s obsessive jealousy and controlling ways, and then the devastation of his plants, had just about destroyed him. ‘Is he not dangerous, then?’ It was her turn to curl her lip.

  ‘I asked you why you said the word dangerous.’ Joshua’s attempt at authority was betrayed by the jitters in his once-confident frame, the nervous licking of his dry pale lips.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Impatience was on her now. ‘Only an imbecile would not notice how frightened you are of him. I’m frightened of him and so are Michael and the servants. It can’t always be a coincidence that bad things happen to anyone who crosses him. There was the woodcutter whose axehead flew off and cut into his body after he’d ignored Kivell. And the well water of the tenant farmer fouled by a dead fox after he’d been rude to Kivell, after Kivell had complained about his sheep delaying him in the lane? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he didn’t poison your precious plants. It’s inexplicable why some of them died suddenly and why some of the same species have remained untouched. He did not allow you to call in experts to discover the cause. It’s obvious he beats you, and now he’s not even bothering to keep the evidence of his brutality unseen. Wake up, Joshua, the man is dangerous. Rid yourself of him before he’s the end of you.’

  It was as if she had watched her husband fragment one tiny piece at a time. None of her words had rung hollow to him. With his head bowed to his chest he turned as disjointedly as a puppet. ‘How am I to do that?’ he whispered to himself.

  ‘We could work together.’ Tara did not want to be his ally but she grasped at a way out for her and Rosa Grace to start afresh.

  Joshua turned back and raised his head and stared at her as if she was mad. Then he shuffled around again and shuffled out of the room.

  Tara had informed the Reverend Hobden that the squire was indisposed to explain his lack of attendance at church for the first week of Advent. Where Michael was only he knew, and his girls and their governess had travelled to the church and back in the trap. It was probably true that Joshua was ill, suffering from a hangover somewhere, or he was lying abed, more or less a prisoner in Kivell’s cottage – ironically the beast had renamed it Paradise Cottage.

  She had another problem concerning Joshua. His valet had suffered a stroke through the night and was no longer fit for service. Would Joshua want a replacement? It was hardly necessary. He spent so little time at the house and even then had rarely sought the valet’s services. If he did require a new valet he would do nothing about engaging one himself. Why should she care? But Joshua growling about the house like an angry bear if one of the footmen wasn’t up to the task was not a prospect she wanted to en
tertain. She’d ask Fawcett to procure a suitable valet. He was good at that sort of thing.

  The carriage was jerking over the lesser byway of Bell Lane. A fallen tree had blocked the main route to Poltraze. ‘I like this way better, Mama,’ Rosa Grace said, her sweetheart face pressed to the window, while clinging to the door strap.

  ‘I certainly don’t. There’s too much jostling. Sit back properly beside me, darling, before you are thrown over.’ Because she’d had a rigidly restrained childhood, Tara indulged her daughter. Her love and affection, her careful protection, meant Rosa Grace was a bright, unharried child.

  ‘We’ll be passing that strange place again soon. Do you really think it’s true Burnt Oak got its name long ago from witches being burnt at a tree?’

  ‘I suppose so. But it’s not a pleasant topic, Rosa. Oh!’ There was a shuddering lurch and Tara reached out just in time to prevent her daughter being hurled to the floor. ‘Sit beside me, young lady, and stay still.’

  Rosa Grace giggled, but she was not wilful and she obliged. The carriage came to a sudden stop, which threw the pair forward and then slapped their backs against the buttoned back rest. ‘Goodness,’ Tara cried. ‘We must have a loose wheel.’

  The coachman, thickset, a nasal breather, with watery eyes in a foxy visage, and in need of a shave, pulled open the door. ‘Sorry about that, ma’am. There’s a village woman lying in the road. The ponies nearly ran her over. The boy’s gone to see if she’s ’live or dead.’

  ‘Poor creature,’ Tara said, vexed he should be so blunt in front of Rosa Grace. ‘Report back to me, Sampson.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He closed the door with a clumsy bang. Since Joshua’s plunge into depression some of the servants showed less care and respect.

  If Joshua or Michael were here, uncaring of the locals, they would have ordered the poor unfortunate, no matter what her condition, to be dragged to the verge and for someone to be fetched to remove her.

  ‘If she’s hurt, Mama, we should help her. Like the Good Samaritan in this morning’s sermon?’ Rosa Grace said seriously, crossing the carriage and peering out of the glass.

  ‘Of course we shall,’ Tara replied, glad her daughter had not inherited her ‘father’s’ or her real father’s uncaring trait.

  Sampson returned. ‘’Tis a young woman, ma’am. She’s up already. Said she was running and plunged down but not really hurt. She’s standing back. Boy’s back up top. We can go on now, ma’am.’

  ‘Bid her come to the door, Sampson.’

  An insolent irritation crisscrossed Sampson’s sharp hide. He paused before sighing, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He made to bang the carriage door before plodding off.

  ‘Leave it open!’ The underling was eager to get back to the stables and his pipe. He’d order the stable boy to unhitch the ponies and brush them down and oil the carriage and stow it away. ‘And Sampson, do not present yourself for your duties in such an ill-kept manner again.’ Afraid in her anger she would display a red face, Tara alighted to the uncivil ground. The coachman might have no heart but she did. She would hold them up all day if it pleased her. ‘Rosa Grace, stay inside.’ Her strident tone ensured her daughter obeyed. She strode the few yards to the woman in a shabby cloak waiting, with her head bowed, for the carriage to pass by.

  Tara recognized the muddied person at once. ‘Sarah! It was you. What happened? Are you hurt?’

  Sarah wanted only to get home to Tabbie and tell her about the encounter with Titus’s younger lookalike. The fall to the ground from running too fast had knocked all the breath out of her. Conveyances along this road were rare, indeed only Kivells and the odd tenant farmer used it, and she had taken a moment to get up. That decision had nearly proved to be her last, so the foul mouth of the fuming coachman had told her. ‘Miss Tara… .’ She dipped a hurting knee in a curtsey. ‘I mean Mrs Nankervis. I apologized to the coachman.’

  ‘There was no need for that,’ Tara said softly, looking her over, noting the blood on her palms, a graze on her nose and chin and a rip in her skirt. Sarah had retained her haunting Arthurian beauty, and Tara expected to find her remote and dejected. It was a surprise she should be shot through with some kind of uneasy energy, and a surprise that she should be in the vicinity of Burnt Oak. Seeing the girl who had been as close to Amy as she had been made Tara miss her friend once more. She had no one to turn to and she had reached a time when her life couldn’t get much worse. If she had made a friend of Sarah too, perhaps they could have been some sort of comfort to each other. ‘Sarah, are you sure nothing is wrong? If you ever need help … Would you like to get into the carriage and come to Poltraze with me to have those grazes tended to?’

  ‘You’re very kind to offer but I have to get home.’ Sarah saw Tara’s sad-eyed eagerness. Amy’s genteel friend must be very lonely to make a gesture that her husband would hate and her servants think totally wrong.

  ‘Yes, of course. Sarah, if I can ever help you please don’t hesitate to come to Poltraze.’

  Tabbie woke from a nap. The fire was burning nicely, she was warm and content. Sarah had been a different girl for the past thirty-six hours, full of spirit, a determined bounce in her step. She talked about the mine and why people were speaking to her now, and even sharing their croust with her. She had even taken to singing cheerful folk songs and hymns; she had a sweet singing voice.

  Sarah had mentioned she did not expect the vision of doom to materialize. Tabbie wasn’t so sure about it now either. The vision might have solely been one of those things where the bad had worked for good, like it said happened in the Good Book. Sarah had been purged of her hero-worship of the evil Titus Kivell, she had resumed her maiden name and she was at last planning a life for herself. Tabbie was sure she would tell her about her plans by and by. She could die a happy woman now.

  Suddenly dread slammed into her, consuming her every last particle. She saw Sarah as if she was actually standing in the room, surrounded by blackness, with her clothes torn off, her beautiful hair ripped out of her head and blood on her face. Someone was trying to strike the life out of her, someone not unknown to her. The vision had been right after all.

  Tabbie reached out towards this new vision. ‘Sarah …’ Her cry was no more than a gasp. Her heart stopped beating and her body slumped down in the chair.

  Six

  Joshua watched from the cast-iron tester bed as Laketon Kivell preened in front of the wardrobe mirror in the main bedroom of Paradise Cottage. It was a plush room, enlarged by the removal of the wall to the next room. It was well ventilated with the register fireplace allowing a healthy through draught, and with tiles at either side depicting peacocks. Highly patterned carpet covered the floor. The ceiling beams and supports were painted white and festooned with china plates painted with flowers and fruit, bearing their Latin names. A fussy room, with screens and embroidered fabric in the Eastern style, but one fit for the squire to sleep in, and all done to Laketon’s precise requirements. Thanks to his unending demands, Laketon had an enviable wardrobe and today he was wearing a pleated shirt, check trousers and a check cravat. His thick hair was curled about his face and the sideburns and small beard circling his chiselled jaw were faultlessly neat. Black was popular for men’s coats but he put on one of light blue with dark-blue frogging. The final flourish was a generous splash of rich French cologne.

  ‘Anyone would think you were slipping away to an assignation,’ Joshua muttered sourly, wrapped up in the bed linen.

  Lifting his chin, Laketon peered into the smug reflection of his own black eyes. He was exactly how he looked, a selfish man of stealthy properties. He was more distinguished in appearance than his male kin but there was an insidious roughness about him also. People got the chills just by receiving an under-eyed glance from him. He strutted about the estate, arrogant in the knowledge that it was he who really was in charge. ‘I can make myself presentable without a valet,’ he mouthed in a polite voice, but it carried an accusation. Then he snapped, ‘I can’t abide yo
u looking like a vagrant any longer. Get up to the house and try out your new valet. He starts work today. I won’t have him idling his time ravishing the maids.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about him. He might not be fast and loose.’ Joshua took a shot at his lover – he must try to keep his superior position – but he threw back the covers and started to get dressed. He was sweaty and itchy all over. He would welcome a bath and shave and clean clothes. Hopefully, the new man would be good at his job. He’d allow himself to be pampered and try to relax, try to forget his miseries. Pulling on his shirt he knocked a bruise on his upper arm. He had bruises on his back and thighs too. ‘What will he think of these marks?’ He would be embarrassed to strip before a total stranger.

  ‘Explain that you’re a clumsy bastard,’ Laketon puffed impatiently. ‘Your skin would be as clear as marble if you were more acquiescent to me. Wouldn’t it?’

  It rubbed insult into indignity for Joshua to be forced to admit he was to blame for the harm done to him. ‘Yes, Laketon.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious about where I’m going?’ Laketon lit a Turkish cigarette, and showed his white teeth in the manner Joshua knew was deriding him.

  ‘It’s obviously not somewhere in the immediate locality. To Redruth? To Truro?’ Joshua wished he’d go out and never return. He had deeply loved the handsome Kivell, after meeting him years before his marriage, when Laketon had been trespassing in the grounds, there to admire the rare plants. Joshua had thought they would last a lifetime. But Laketon was not his soulmate; rather, his intense jealousy and underlying malice, and perhaps even a touch of madness, were destroying Joshua’s soul. There were times Joshua wished him dead, or himself. A death seemed the only way out of this increasingly one-sided relationship.