“Who’s taking my name in vain?” Annie demanded, placing her basket on the counter with a thud and pulling off her headscarf to release her springy grey curls.
“We were just talking about your mackerel pâté,” Merryn explained. “You’re today’s special.”
Annie gave him an arch look. “I’m every day’s special, aren’t I? Still, there’s enough in here to feed an army.” She patted the basket. “Tom’s boat had a good catch yesterday. You should have a word with him. He’s looking for crew.”
Merryn shook his head. “No thanks. I’m more than happy doing my own thing.”
Annie looked as though she was going to argue. She’d taught Merryn at the local high school, Lucy recalled, and often said privately that his being expelled was a complete balls-up.
“He was bright as a button, that one,” was her usual take on it, “and totally let down by all the adults in the equation, as per bloody usual. He shouldn’t be wasting his time tripping on a boat. He could do anything.”
Lucy fully agreed. It was abundantly clear how clever Merryn was, especially when it came to all things mechanical. He’d single-handedly kept her old Citroën going for the past year and all the fisherman called on him when their trawlers had problems. On the other hand, there weren’t many people who appeared as contented with their lot in life as he was, and from a purely selfish point of view she would miss him dreadfully if he ever did decide to leave. Or, as she was starting to fear, if this Nessa Penwellyn wanted her inheritance all to herself.
Luckily Merryn’s charm was enough to pre-empt a lengthy lecture from Annie.
“As much as I’d love to stick around and sample your latest batch, I need to catch the tide.” He picked up his battered rucksack, pulled it onto one shoulder and gave Lucy an encouraging smile. “Good luck with everything today. I’ll be thinking of you.”
“Thanks,” said Lucy. Her cheeks felt a little warm at the idea of Merryn thinking about her, however platonically, which made a nice change from the cold lump of dread in her stomach. “I’m sure it’s all going to be fine.”
Annie, already unpacking ingredients and lining them up on the counter in rigid rows like pupils in the classroom, snorted. “I’m afraid I’m not so convinced, not after what I’ve just been told.”
“What’s does that mean?” asked Merryn, pausing in the doorway. “What have you heard?”
“Is it about the castle?” Lucy asked. Her hands were trembling, so she tucked them into her apron pocket. This was not the time to go to pieces.
Annie nodded. “It is indirectly, I suppose. I’m not sure if it means anything, but I bumped into our Val this morning when I went down to the quay to buy the mackerel from Tom. Val works at the hotel, remember?”
Lucy did remember. Working as the hotel receptionist meant Val Brown was party to some very interesting information and was none too discreet about who she shared it with either. If Lucy ever had a secret love affair, highly unlikely she knew, the last place she’d go to conduct it would be the Island View Hotel.
“Tom said he’d give me a ride over on the boat, so Val came too because there was something she thought we should know,” Annie continued, clearly enjoying having their full attention. She paused for dramatic effect and Lucy found she was holding her breath. After all, not much went on in St Pirran that Annie Luckett didn’t know about. Apart from having taught most people here under the age of fifty, she was related to several of the key families in the town, including the local solicitor. All this, added to the top-secret fact that the old school teacher had been instrumental in helping Lucy trace the whereabouts of Nessa Penwellyn, made the possibilities for her knowing about any impending disasters endless.
“Go on then, what did you hear?” demanded Fern.
Annie leant heavily on the counter and regarded them all with bright boot-button eyes. “I don’t like to spread gossip but on this occasion I’ll make an exception because knowledge is power, after all. Val told me that yesterday she checked Nessa Penwellyn into the hotel – and upgraded her too because she mistook her for an American.”
“She’s American?” Lucy was confused. She’d thought Nessa had been born in Cornwall.
“No, she’s British but apparently she has an American accent which is what threw Val - although to be fair that doesn’t take a great deal,” said Annie tartly.
Fern’s eyes were wide. “Oh my God! What does she look like?”
“Does her appearance bear any relevance to this issue?” Annie asked.
“If she’s hot it might,” grinned Merryn. “That was a joke, Annie!” he added quickly when the older woman shot him her best teacher look.
“Well, you might not be laughing in a minute,” Annie said darkly. “Still, to answer your question, Fern, Val said she’s very pretty with long red hair and green eyes.”
Lucy gasped. Her uncle Armand had possessed a thick mane of red hair when he was a boy, and his brothers too. The portraits in the castle’s Small Hall showed all three as young men with bright red hair. This gene had bypassed her and Jamie, but to learn that it lived on in this unknown cousin thrilled her. There was a link! Heritage! Surely Nessa would feel it?
“So pretty, in fact, that within a few hours of arriving at the hotel she was seen having dinner on the terrace with a man,” Annie continued, disapproval written clearly across her hawklike face.
Fern rolled her eyes. “What a crime. Shall we tar and feather her now? Or maybe burn her alive, the slapper?”
Annie ignored this remark, just as she must have ignored countless silly comments in her classroom. “There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and neither is there anything wrong with her walking along the beach with a man. She’s an adult. The problem is that it wasn’t just any man she was with and, from what Val says, they’re clearly very close. Val thinks he’d arranged to meet her there, since there’s absolutely no other reason for him to be at the hotel, not when he’s got a holiday home and owns half the town.”
Fern and Merryn were looking confused but Lucy experienced a horrible moment of clarity. Oh God. She really hoped she was wrong.
“It was Max Reynard, wasn’t it?” she whispered, and Annie inclined her head gravely.
“I’m afraid so,” she said. “I very much fear we’ve invited a viper right into our bosom and it appears she hasn’t wasted any time hatching plans with the enemy. We’d better all be on our guard with Nessa Penwellyn. She is not to be trusted.”
Chapter 8
When she woke up, Ness’s mouth was dry and her head was pounding. The evening before seemed like a strange dream. Had she really kissed a total stranger on the beach?
It must have been the jet lag and all that wine on an empty stomach, Ness decided as she showered and pulled on last night’s rather crumpled white jeans, the bottoms of which were dusted with sand – proof that the moonlight and a change of time zone hadn’t caused her to hallucinate. So it had happened, and what a kiss it had been too. Ness felt a blush cover her cheeks as she recalled how his mouth had strayed from her lips to her neck and down to her collarbone while her stomach had collapsed in on itself with longing. If Val hadn’t interrupted them when she did, who knew what might have happened next? Would they have broken apart and said goodnight so that she could get the early night she needed, or would she have taken his hand, led him up the twisty stairs and invited him into her suite?
Her heart fluttered beneath her ribs because deep down she knew the answer to that question, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Besides, she felt rather stupid now. Max couldn’t have raced away from her any faster. What was that all about?
Then she groaned because it was obvious: he was married and the whole business about “the New York office” having called was nothing but an elaborate charade, a code he’d dreamed up with the hotel staff. Of course it was. Why would anyone in New York be urgently needing to talk to an artist? Ness was willing to bet her entire and very new inheritance that Max Reynard was a player.
He probably hung out at the hotel all the time on the prowl for silly single women with empty stomachs and even emptier heads, because this was exactly what men like him did – she’d seen enough of such behaviour in the Caribbean. It had been Stephen’s modus operandi too.
“Honestly, Nessa Penwellyn,” she said out loud. “Don’t you ever learn?”
Well, from now on she’d be on her guard, Ness told herself as she tugged a brush through her wild curls and bullied them into a messy topknot. She’d make sure she gave Max Reynard a wide berth in future no matter how bone-meltingly sexy he was. Handsome artists were bad news – she’d mopped up enough of Addy’s girlfriends’ tears to know that much.
And talking of Addy, Ness had far more important things to worry about than the mysterious Max Reynard. Today was the day she was going to cross the causeway and see her father’s former home. She’d also be meeting the family. Would they be pleased to see her or would they be seething with resentment that a stranger had turned up to claim the family home?
She’d know soon enough, Ness thought as she checked her watch, because David Brown was picking her up as soon as the tide was far enough out for the causeway to clear. Unknown and potentially unhappy relatives aside, she’d be stepping into a world that had been her father’s, and her mother’s too.
Ness shivered. Addy had barely spoken about her mother and Ness had never pressed him, partly because she’d been too small to remember Beth or miss her, and partly because she could always see how hard he found it to talk about the past. All she knew was that her mother had drowned and Addy had taken their daughter, little more than a baby, away from Cornwall to start again. Sometimes Ness had caught him looking at the faded few pictures he’d kept, and as she’d grown older he’d said she looked like her mother, but the conversations had rarely gone any further than that. She had no idea how Beth Penwellyn had come to drown or why Addy would cut off all contact with his family, but she was determined to find out. As far as she was concerned, the chance to uncover the truth about her past was the most important thing she’d inherited. Coming here was already raising so many questions about Addy, and Ness hoped the answers wouldn’t prove too hard to hear.
Wearing a long-sleeved blue tee shirt with the Caribbean hotel’s Dive into Paradise! emblazoned right across her chest, Ness made her way to the dining room. She noticed that the tee shirt seemed to be attracting some faintly disapproving looks from the guests of this rather more genteel Cornish hotel. Finding an empty seat in the restaurant window, she stared across the bay at the island. Whereabouts had the icy water swallowed Beth? By those rocks maybe? Or had she been swimming in a hidden bay and fallen foul of a current? Ness had no idea. Today the sea was oily smooth and it was hard to imagine that it could ever be anything but gentle, but Ness knew that the ocean had a habit of taking people by surprise.
Somebody in St Pirran would be bound to know what had really happened; this was a small town and people in small towns had long memories. Maybe her cousins would be able to help?
The thought of today’s events was so daunting. Ness ordered a lunch she knew she had no appetite for, and picked up her phone. She was hoping for a friendly message from Mel, but there was nothing except a short text message from David Brown saying that he would meet her by the causeway at half twelve. Until then there was nothing to do but sip coffee and try her best to eat the obligatory Sunday lunch. It was going to be a long day and probably best faced on a full stomach, Ness decided, but it was hard to eat when it felt as though you were waiting for the dentist.
Ness pushed her food around the plate and watched the tide ebb. Cobble by cobble the causeway was exposed, gleaming in the sunshine and fringed by acid-green weed as it traced its curving path across the bay to the island. Jagged rocks, invisible before, rose from the shallow water to reveal bright rock pools that mirrored the blue sky. Within a matter of minutes people were crossing, the first few wading to begin with while the sea teased the path with a few last waves before it finally parted to allow access for a steady stream of holidaymakers. The way was clear and there was no point delaying the inevitable; the time had finally come for her to meet David and go across. This was it. She took a deep breath, then stood up and made her way outside.
“Good afternoon!” David was waiting in a dark blue Freelander and reached across to open the passenger door. “Are you ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” said Ness, hopping in. “Will I make it through in one piece, do you think, or will somebody toss me from the battlements?”
“It’s a difficult situation for everyone but I’ll do my best to make it as painless as possible,” David replied. He let up the clutch and the car crept forward onto the causeway. Although the vehicle was well sprung, every cobble made it jolt. Ness noticed that the solicitor’s hands were clutching the wheel so tightly that his knuckles glowed chalky white through the flesh. A frown traced a line between his brows as though he was worried about something.
She was being silly, Ness told herself sharply. Of course David was tense. He wasn’t chilling out on a Caribbean beach anymore, drinking cocktails and floating over the possibilities of this odd bequest, but on home turf and faced with the reality. No doubt the other Penwellyns weren’t quite as happy about the state of affairs as she’d been, and her flippant remarks probably weren’t helping.
“They’re expecting you,” he continued as the car crept forward and Ness’s nervousness intensified. “We’ll get the introduction and the formalities done first and then Lucy will show you around. After that it’s over to you.”
Ness nodded. Now that she was almost at the island it was becoming clear just what a huge deal her uncle’s bequest was. The place was simply breathtaking, but the closer they got the more she began to realise just what a state it was in. The causeway was cracked in some places, which gave it a rather pockmarked appearance and forced David to steer around the gaps as best he could. Once they were on the island, the causeway petered into a path which initially bore to the right and hugged the quayside for a few hundred metres, before curving left and climbing a grassy slope that was peppered with picnic tables.
“That’s the island’s tea room,” David said, following her gaze to a wooden building tacked onto a thick wall. “It’s in the old stables and very popular. Lucy runs it with some local help.”
Ness was craning her neck and trying to take it all in. Below her, the grass rolled away down to the small quay and the rocks, while above her grey stone walls towered into the blue. The castle felt organic, as though it had sprung to life from the island of its own accord, as much a part of the landscape as the rugged cliffs and calling gulls.
“This is the Pilgrim’s Gate,” David said as they drove through a gateway in what must once have been an impressive castle wall. “There used to be a chapel just to the right here, but it was torn down in the Reformation and never rebuilt. The family are buried in the churchyard on the mainland now.”
His words hardly registered; Ness was too distracted by the scenery around her. They were crossing a big courtyard and heading to the foot of a tower that looked as though it had come straight out of a Disney film. Grasses swayed in the breeze and ivy’s fingers clawed the stonework. Set in the middle of the tower’s base was an enormous wooden door, complete with gigantic black hinges and oversized locks. Weeds choked the cobbles here, daisies clustered in swathes at the top of overgrown banks and the gaps in the walls were even more apparent, as though giant stone-eating moths had been having a picnic. Across the courtyard were ruined towers, linked by precarious walls and crumbling battlements that still had echoes of past magnificence. Through the chinks in these walls were glimpses of the sea, blue and bold in the sharp light. All around, seabirds and swifts darted in and out of nooks and crannies.
“It’s beautiful,” Ness whispered, but her heart sank because although this was true it was also dilapidated. Ness had struggled enough to afford to rent a one-bedroomed apartment in St Antonia. Ho
w much would a place like this cost to maintain? All of a sudden the solicitor’s warnings about death duties and empty bank accounts felt very ominous indeed. This place couldn’t have been touched for years and Ness wouldn’t have been surprised to find Sleeping Beauty inside catching a few zeds.
“That’s the ruined area, in case you hadn’t guessed. The family live in another part of the castle, which is more intact,” David explained.
Ness was glad to hear it. For a moment she’d imagined her cousins camping out in tents within the ruins, Famous Five style.
“Did my uncle never want to sell? It can’t have been easy getting old here, and I bet there are lots of people who’d love to buy it,” she mused as David drove past the castle door and through a large gap in another wall, before pulling up in an inner courtyard.
He looked at her askance. “Of course there are but Armand loved this place. He would never sell it to a developer. That’s up to you now, however, if that’s what you’ve decided. There are several companies who would be most interested.”
“I wasn’t saying I want to sell,” Ness said, stung by how quickly he’d jumped to this conclusion. She hadn’t seen the castle yet or explored the island, but already her pulse had quickened in much the way it had when Max Reynard’s hard mouth had captured hers on the beach last night. This place could take a serious hold on her heart.
But it wasn’t just her heart involved of course and this knowledge was really troubling Ness. She might have an American lilt when she spoke but her sense of fair play was one hundred percent British.
“What about Lucy Penwellyn? Shouldn’t the inheritance have gone to her?” Ness was worried. “It doesn’t seem right I inherit all this when she looked after our uncle and this is our home.”
“I don’t think that it’s your choice,” David said. “It was Armand’s decision to make. Believe me, if he’d wanted Lucy to inherit then he would have made sure that was exactly what happened. He wanted Pirran Island and the castle to be left to you.”
The Island Legacy Page 9