The Bride Sale

by Candice Hern

  “If you do, perhaps you ought to send her some of this,” James said, holding up the steaming mug. “It might help.”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  James crawled out of bed and settled into the business of washing and shaving. His thoughts drifted to Verity Osborne. Despite her cries in the night, she seemed to have settled in quite comfortably. The staff doted on her, possibly because of the recovery of the Chenhalls boy. As far as he could tell, she had been true to her word about instructing them in the preparation of her herbal remedies. He had often seen her gathering plants, though he made a point of keeping his distance. Those deep brown eyes and the long white column of her neck bedeviled him.

  But he studied her closely during the evenings when she took supper with him and Agnes. She never flinched during Agnes’s frequent taunts, never spoke out to correct the impression that she was his mistress. She sat silent and dignified, the prideful angle of her jaw a clear refusal to be intimidated. Perhaps it was merely false bravado, though, with no real strength beneath it. After all, she did have nightmares.

  When James had dressed and breakfasted, he made his way to the steward’s office to check on the progress of the winter threshing. Rufus Bargwanath was a rough character at best, but a decent steward. Old Tresco, steward since James was a boy, had left after the tragedy in 1812. It had been difficult to get anyone to work at Pendurgan after that. Bargwanath knew it, and took advantage of the situation by requiring a salary far beyond his worth. James paid it just the same. He had no choice.

  He found Bargwanath at his desk, his office in its usual disarray. James spent a half hour going over the stocking of fresh straw for the winter, and the progress of ditching and hedging.

  Satisfied that Bargwanath had it all well in hand, James took his leave. When he reached the office door, the steward called out to him.

  “I chanced upon that new warming pan o’ yers yesterday,” Bargwanath said. “You keepin’ her all to yerself, or what?”

  James spun around. “Watch your mouth, Bargwanath. Mrs. Osborne is a relation of mine and you will treat her with respect.”

  The steward gave a crack of laughter and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his neck. “You don’t expect nobody round here to fall fer that cousin story, do you? Hell, we all know how she come to be here. And what you paid for her. I just figured since you had her workin’ in the kitchen that she was fair game.”

  “How dare you!” James took a step toward the desk, reining in the fury that had him ready to throttle the man.

  “Looks to have a bit of spirit, she does. I like that in a woman, don’t you?”

  James placed both palms down on the desk and leaned forward. He fixed the man with a glare he’d honed to perfection in the army, a glare that had sent soldiers scurrying to do his bidding. “Keep your hands off her, Bargwanath,” he said, his voice edged with steel, “if you know what’s good for you. She has not been put ‘to work,’ as you call it. She is a guest at Pendurgan and I expect you to treat her accordingly. Do I make myself clear?”

  Bargwanath shrugged indolently. “Sure, sure. I was only askin’.”

  James held the man’s gaze for several long moments before Bargwanath lowered his eyes. He stormed out of the office, furious with the steward and his bloody impertinence. If he ever heard that Bargwanath had laid so much as a finger on Verity Osborne, he would kill the man with his bare hands. The very thought of him touching her twisted his gut into knots.

  Too keyed up to check on the work at Wheal Devoran, James decided to ride off his anger. Jago Chenhalls saddled Castor for him, and James took off for the moors.

  He’d ridden as far as one of the high tors before he slowed down. Caressing the gelding’s damp neck, James let him walk, guiding him carefully along the ridge of broken and balancing granite rocks, of deep horizontal joints and sharp protrusions. Ageless and inviolable, the place never failed to inspire him, to exert its inexplicable power over him. There was a spiritual quality to it, elemental and secret. It was a place of ancient tombs and stone circles, of ghosts and piskeys, of legend and lore.

  He led Castor slowly down the gentle slope of the rugged, boulder-strewn hill, allowing himself to absorb the spirit of the moor. Despite all the bad he’d seen and felt and wrought in his life, there was still this. There was still Cornwall.

  James continued down through dun-colored wastes dotted with the deep green of furze, and onto the sweep of upland where the transition from moorland to cultivated countryside was abrupt and dramatic. He was on Pendurgan land now.

  He saw a rider coming his way. When the familiar figure of Alan Poldrennan drew closer, James brought Castor to a halt and awaited the approach of the only man in the world he could rightly call his friend.

  “Harkness! Well met,” Poldrennan said as he reined in the bay mare. His genial smile was a welcome distraction. “Are you on your way home?”

  James looked up at the darkening sky and realized he had been out on the moors for hours. “Damn,” he said. “I hadn’t realized it was so late. I must have lost track of time.” A look of concern flickered in Poldrennan’s eyes. James sighed. “It’s all right, Alan. I was just wandering the moor, deep in thought.”

  Poldrennan smiled. “And so are you expected at home, or would you care to follow me to Bosreath and share a bottle with me? A bottle and a bird, perhaps?”

  “By God, I think I will,” James replied.

  “Splendid!”

  The two men turned their horses to the west toward Poldrennan’s neighboring estate. “I haven’t seen you in over a sennight.” Poldrennan slanted a look at James. “I believe there have been changes at Pendurgan. Was it those changes that kept you so deep in thought you lost track of time?”

  “I suppose you’ve heard the whole sorry tale?”

  “News travels swiftly around here,” Poldrennan replied. “I suspect there are few who have not heard some version of the tale. I’d be interested to hear what really happened.”

  As they rode toward Bosreath, James told his friend about the auction.

  “What made you do it?” Poldrennan asked. “Were you thinking perhaps that she might…that you would…Well, dammit, I suspect it’s been a while since you were with a woman. Was that why you bought her?”

  James bristled. “No! No, of course not. That’s not it at all. At least…at least I don’t think it is.” He slapped his thigh angrily. Castor misunderstood and set off at a gallop. James reined him in, crooned an apology in his ear, and waited for Poldrennan to catch up. “Damnation,” he continued as though there’d been no interruption to their conversation. “Don’t you think I’ve been asking myself the same question for the last week? Why? Why did I do it?”

  “And?”

  “And I still don’t know.” He flung up a hand in a vague gesture of frustration. “All I can tell you is that something inside me could not bear to see that poor woman handed over to Big Will Sykes. It made my stomach turn to think of it. And before I knew what I was doing, I’d bought her myself.”

  “Sykes, eh?” Poldrennan shuddered and began to chuckle. “I suppose I might have done the same,” he said. “The man’s disgusting.” They rode on in silence for a few moments before Poldrennan spoke again. “And so it was not merely an impulse, but your honorable instincts that drove you to do it. To rescue her from a worse fate.”

  “Ha! I do not believe honor had anything to do with it. I suspect it was something much more base at work.” He cast his friend a sheepish glance. “She’s a frightfully good-looking woman.”

  “And yet I gather you have not acted on these baser instincts?”

  “No.”

  “You see? You are honorable after all.”

  “No.”

  “But she’s frightfully good-looking.”

  “Yes.”

  “And so what do you intend to do?”

  “Stay away from her.”

  “Sounds honorable to me.”

  “Not honorable
. Cowardly.” James gave a disdainful snort. Poldrennan knew the depths of James’s cowardice. He’d been in Spain. He’d been in Cornwall six years ago. He knew the truth. “I can’t trust myself around her,” James went on. “What if…what if during…Well, what if I harmed her? How could I live with that again?”

  Poldrennan reined in to a halt. When James had done the same, Poldrennan reached over and placed a hand on his arm. “You must stop punishing yourself, Harkness. That was over six years ago. And it has not happened again.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. So do you. It will not happen again. She is safe with you.”

  James flicked the reins and urged Castor into a gallop along the path to Bosreath. “I wish I could believe that.”

  “All right, Gonetta. I am ready.”

  The girl flashed Verity a brilliant smile, adjusted her bonnet, and reached for one of the large baskets they’d prepared. She walked toward the scullery door with a bounce in her step. When she realized Verity was not following, had not in fact moved, Gonetta turned, smiled again, and raised her eyebrows in a sign of encouragement.

  Verity needed all the encouragement she could muster.

  “C’mon, then,” Gonetta said and headed out the door.

  Verity took one last deep breath and followed. Was she making a horrible mistake? Should she stay behind?

  Gonetta had told her that the villagers would be grateful for her knowledge of homemade remedies for common ailments, but Verity doubted the girl’s confidence in the villagers’ reception. These were small, close-knit communities who did not take well to strangers. Not only was she a “foreigner,” but one who’d come to Cornwall under peculiar circumstances. What sort of welcome could she truly expect from these cautious, insulated people who likely believed her to be Lord Harkness’s mistress? What if some of them had been at the auction and seen her? What if some of them had been among the kettle-banging, surging crowd that still haunted her dreams?

  But this was old ground. Verity had been over it and over it in her mind before finally agreeing to Gonetta’s enthusiastic invitation. Besides, she had become restless. Even with Pendurgan’s extensive grounds and gardens, she felt confined. A small part of her welcomed this excursion, regardless of its outcome.

  And so here she was on her way to call on some of the good people of Pendurgan’s village of St. Perran’s.

  Leaving the formal grounds of Pendurgan, Verity was comforted to find the lane flanked on both sides by green fields crisscrossed with hedgerows. It seemed so very normal. So very English. What had happened to all that bleak granite moorland they’d passed through on their way to Pendurgan? She looked right and left, but saw only lush countryside.

  She caught Gonetta’s puzzled glance. “Wot ’ee lookin’ fer, then?”

  Verity smiled and shrugged. “I was just remembering all that granite wasteland we drove through on our way to Pendurgan. Did I imagine it?”

  Gonetta stopped, took Verity by the shoulders, and swung her around toward the house. “See there?” she said and pointed to a hill beyond Pendurgan. Higher even than Pendurgan’s own hill, it was crowned with great rock outcroppings weathered into all manner of fantastic shapes and littered with masses of fallen rock.

  “That do be the High Tor,” Gonetta said. “It do be a kind o’ trick o’ the landscape, Pa says, the way ’ee can’t see it at all from Pendurgan. But from here it do loom up big in the distance. That do be what ’ee seen comin’ from Gunnisloe.”

  “It’s amazing,” Verity said. “I was beginning to think I’d dreamed it.”

  “The moor do be a queer place,” Gonetta said. “It do play tricks on ’ee. Or the piskeys do. Lots o’ folks get piskey-led on the moor, clean lost in land they been walkin’ fer their whole lives. They’ll run ’ee in circles, the piskeys will. But this lane to St. Perran’s, it do be straight and clear. No odd turns for piskeys to hide in.”

  Verity smiled at the girl’s perfectly serious notion of faeries. At least she assumed that was what a piskey must be. “And what’s that?” Verity asked, pointing to two tall, slender structures rising from the stone rubble at the base of the western slope.

  “Them stacks? Why, that do be Wheal Devoran.”

  “The mine?”

  “Aye, one o’ his lordship’s copper mines.”

  Gonetta stood patiently while Verity studied the odd structures, starkly elegant amid the rough landscape. A thin stream of smoke, or perhaps it was steam, rose from one of the chimneys and drifted toward the desolate tor.

  “Wheal Devoran do be where most of the menfolk round here work,” Gonetta said. “Them as don’t farm. Most o’ the girls, too. I do be one o’ the lucky ones, workin’ up at big house. Better’n a bal-maiden at mine.”

  So the mysterious lord of the manor not only provided farms for his tenants to work but also employment for the rest of the population. “If Lord Harkness employs most of the local people,” Verity wondered aloud, “why is he so disliked? I know he is called Lord Heartless. Why?”

  Gonetta’s face went blank as an egg. She shrugged, then continued walking down the lane.

  The girl’s guarded attitude toward Lord Harkness caused all Verity’s earlier doubts and fears to swirl momentarily like a sinister fog in her brain. What was the mystery of the lord of Pendurgan, the mystery that only Agnes Bodinar dared speak of?

  “C’mon, then,” Gonetta said, and Verity turned to follow her, more curious than ever about the black-haired man with the penetrating blue eyes.

  In this direction, toward the village, they were once again surrounded by fields of green. What a study in contrasts was this strange land. And its people.

  She could see the village in the near distance. As they grew closer, Verity began to feel very much a foreigner. Here was no familiar warmth and charm of the wold villages of her youth, or even those of Berkshire where she’d spent the last two years. There were no whitewashed cottages and no thatched roofs. No timber framing or vine covered walls.

  Instead, it was a miniature version of the frightful Gunnisloe. Graceless, squat cottages of rough granite with slate roofs were scattered haphazardly along random dirt paths branching off the main lane. Boxy, utilitarian structures with no character and little individuality, they stood colorless, drab, and uninviting.

  On a slight rise at the far end of the cluster of cottages stood the church. Built of the same slate and granite as the cottages, it was only slightly more refined. The square tower was topped with four finials that looked like rabbits’ ears from a distance. The few trees in the village seemed to be clustered near the church.

  “Here do be the Dunstan cottage,” Gonetta said. “We’ll stop here first.” She lowered her voice and leaned close to Verity. “Jacob Dunstan do work one o’ the pump engines at Wheal Devoran. It do make his wife think they be better’n some since he don’t have to work a pitch like most of t’others. She do put on airs, sometimes. Afternoon, Miz Dunstan,” she added in a louder voice.

  A stocky dark-haired woman in a plain blue dress and white apron stood in the doorway of the stone cottage. She did not reply to Gonetta’s greeting and eyed Verity suspiciously.

  “I brung Miz Osborne to meet ’ee, from up to Pendurgan. She do be a cousin of his lordship’s come to stay awhile.”

  The woman gave a muffled snort that told Verity how much she believed the cousin relationship. Verity braced herself for an uncomfortable afternoon. Gonetta ignored the woman’s rudeness and turned toward Verity. “This here do be Ewa Dunstan, ma’am. Her husband, Jacob, he do work up at Wheal Devoran.”

  “Above ground,” Ewa Dunstan was quick to add, “in the engine house.”

  Verity reached out a hand. “How do you do, Mrs. Dunstan? I am pleased to meet you.”

  The woman looked momentarily abashed, but finally took Verity’s hand. “How do ’ee do?” she said.

  “Ma baked an extra batch of fuggan and asked me to bring some,” Gonetta said. She reached into her basket, p
ulled out one of the wrapped cakes, and offered it to Ewa Dunstan. “I been tellin’ Miz Osborne how Ma’s fuggan cakes be the best in district. Can ’ee credit it? Miz Osborne never had no fuggan before she do come here. Guess they don’t have it where she do come from.”

  “Indeed?” Ewa said. “And where do ’ee come from, ma’am?”

  “I grew up in Lincolnshire,” Verity said in as pleasant a tone as she could manage, determined to rise above the scorn of a miner’s wife. “But I have grown very fond of Mrs. Chenhalls’s fuggan. They are delicious.”

  “Brought some more stuff, too,” Gonetta said. She pulled out one of the muslin packets they had prepared, and regaled Ewa Dunstan with tales of Verity’s knowledge of herbs. Verity interrupted a lengthy discourse on Davey’s miraculous recovery.

  “I understand the local physician is still away,” she said, “and so I thought perhaps to distribute these packets of herbs to the village families. They can be used to make an infusion for common head colds that are bound to strike as winter approaches.”

  Verity proceeded to give Ewa Dunstan directions in how to make and dispense the infusion, and the dour woman began to unbend slightly.

  “I been bothered with the toothache,” she said. “Don’t s’pose ’ee got somethin’ to help fer that?”

  Verity told her that she could indeed recommend a gargle and would prepare the ingredients and deliver them tomorrow. She took out a small notebook and pencil and scribbled a note to herself.

  Grateful, Ewa went so far as to invite Verity in for a dish of tea. Gonetta replied before Verity could say a word.

  “That be right kind o’ ’ee, Miz Dunstan,” she said, “but we do got to deliver these here cakes and pouches to rest o’ village. Miz Osborne, she made up a special tea, though, that I do be hopin’ we can convince Old Grannie to brew up. Come on down to her cottage in a while and try some.”

  Gonetta had spoken of Old Grannie Pascow as a sort of matriarch of the village, and Verity was anxious to make a good impression on the elderly woman. As they left Ewa Dunstan, Verity asked Gonetta if it was quite proper to invite someone to Mrs. Pascow’s without the old woman’s consent. Gonetta laughed.