She caught her breath, knowing she was letting her imagination soar away with her, and wondering if being in love was slightly akin to madness. But she’d had no thoughts of falling in love before, and the respect accorded her from her piano playing skills had been fulfilment enough.
But in a few short hours of knowing Cress Tremayne, she knew it wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough again. And for the first time since they’d set up their living and working establishment together, she had a secret she didn’t share with Albert.
* * *
Cress came again the next day for the first of the preliminary sittings for his portrait. Albert made a series of rough charcoal sketches, so as to become familiar with the shape of Cress’s head, the way his hair grew from his forehead, the elegant profile and the broad set of his shoulders. All of which his sister could have described to him in detail, in lyrical terms that were in every way comparable with the most flattering likeness.
‘Have you seen the rest of the family yet?’ she asked him, in the soft, husky tones that were so like Morwen’s.
‘I called on Walter and Cathy when I got to St Austell,’ Cress said cautiously. ‘Their baby’s a fine boy, and I think it was a fairly successful visit.’
‘I’m glad,’ Primmy said simply. ‘And what of Uncle Jack and Aunt Annie? Didn’t you visit them while you were in Truro too?’
‘I certainly did,’ Cress said with a smile. ‘They’ve surely got two lively daughters now, and I don’t even recall seeing young Sammie before.’
For the first time in her life Primmy felt the pangs of jealousy as she heard Cress refer to her twin girl cousins. She knew it was stupid, but she didn’t want Cress thinking of anyone else but her.
‘The girls are going to London soon, to nursing college,’ she said, glad to be reporting their imminent departure.
‘Is that so? I’d say it’s pretty progressive of their parents to let them go so far away.’
Albert laughed. ‘Oh, we do have some progressive ideas on this side of the water, Cress,’ he said. ‘It’s not all left to our colonial cousins.’
But the banter was good-natured, and Primmy was warmed by the fact that they were all getting along so well. It was just so frustrating to know that it couldn’t last. Cress would only be here for a couple of weeks before his mother took him off to visit the glories of Europe. Primmy had never had any interest in such things herself, but she could see how instructive it would be to see the great museums of Paris, and the statues in Rome, and to hear the music – oh, the wonderful music – in Vienna.
‘What are you dreaming about, Primmy?’ she heard Albie’s voice say teasingly, and she realised she’d been staring into space for the last few minutes.
‘Nothing that I intend to share with you!’ she said airily.
She dared to glance at Cress, and he was staring at her now, as if he’d seen something special in her face. As if he’d been able to penetrate that dreaming look and know just what lay behind it, with the uncanny sixth sense that was supposedly so Cornish… but since his father was Cornish too, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have inherited it.
Primmy knew she was discovering a new existence these days. The nightmare days were over, and Albert had been so right in banishing those others from their place. It had been torment for several weeks, but she had seen it through, with her usual determination. And now she was in a very different, bemused state of mind – the far lovelier one of being in love, without having yet fully declared the feeling, either to herself or her beloved, and certainly not to anyone else.
* * *
Morwen recognized it at once. She knew it as soon as her son and daughter arrived at Killigrew House for Justin’s party, and with the rest of the family, she gaped at the lovely vision Primmy presented. Gone were the shapeless clothes and the tangled hair, and the freakish adornments on the face.
Instead, here was a young lady of quality, with her dark hair stylishly piled into gleaming curls on top of her head, with silver combs to keep it in place, and soft tendrils framing her cheeks. Her gown was the latest exquisite peach silk creation Morwen had had made especially for her, and in which Primmy hadn’t seemed in the least interested. She wore it like a princess now, and Morwen knew there was only one reason why she should do so at a family gathering, with her eyes seeking out one particular person.
Morwen caught her breath. As Justin had wished, there were few outsiders here. There was Charlotte’s young man, Vincent Pollard, in whom she was so besotted; there was the elderly Daniel Gorran, and it certainly couldn’t be him for whom Primmy had such doe-eyes! And there was Cress Tremayne.
‘You look a real picture, my lamb,’ Bess exclaimed as soon as she saw Primmy. ‘Don’t she, Hal? Don’t she look the most beautiful girl in the county tonight?’
‘That’s so,’ Hal agreed, ‘along wi’ Charlotte and Morwen and all the rest on ’em, o’ course. You’d best not show favouritism, dar.’
Bess looked up guiltily, but no one else had heard her. Besides, what did it matter? She had never seen her granddaughter look so dazzling before, and she was entitled to her opinion in her own home! Then it occurred to her that she wasn’t the only one thinking that Primmy looked a picture.
From the far side of the room, young Cress couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and didn’t Primmy know it! Bess wasn’t so old that she couldn’t see what Morwen had seen, and as soon as she could, she drew Morwen aside.
‘What’s going on?’ she said bluntly. ‘What’s Primmy playing at?’
‘I don’t think she’s playing at anything, Mammie,’ Morwen said. ‘She’s not one for games. No matter how she looks, what you see is the real Primmy.’
Morwen followed her mother’s troubled gaze to where Primmy was by now looking up into Cress’s eyes, and where he was leaning down towards her as if to catch every word, and she didn’t pretend to misunderstand when Bess continued.
‘It can’t happen. You know it can’t happen. Theym cousins. It has to be stopped.’
‘How? You tell me that. And why should it?’
Primmy had never shown any interest in a young man before, and Morwen was annoyed that her mother was taking on so. It needn’t mean anything… although she knew she was burying her head in the sand for thinking so.
Primmy had a creative, passionate temperament, and when she turned that passion onto a young man…
For one searing moment then, Morwen envied her so much. She envied her those mind-shattering, wondrous days of learning to love, of longing for the beloved, and speaking his name at every opportunity. Of touching him and glancing at him, and glorying in the kisses that sealed their belonging and promised a golden future…
She caught Ran looking her way, and their smiles caught and matched across the room. Oh yes, she had known those glory days, she thought, her throat catching, and they weren’t only reserved for the young…
‘’Tis bad for the future,’ Bess said delicately, still intent on discussing Primmy and Cress.
‘You mean for any future children a related couple might have, I suppose?’ Morwen said, less inhibited on such matters than her mother. ‘It didn’t trouble the Queen and Prince Albert, did it? They were cousins, and they produced a fine brood of children between them, Mammie!’
‘Maybe ’tis different for royalty,’ Bess muttered, ‘but I don’t want to talk of such things,’ she added, just as if she anticipated the comment brimming on her daughter’s lips that royalty and peasants were all built the same way, and that there was only one way for producing children.
But there was no point in worrying over something that might never happen. Morwen turned her attention instead to where young Vincent Pollard was offering Charlotte the dish of sweetmeats, and being so heartbreakingly attentive. Now there was a potential love-match, Morwen thought, despite their tender ages. But they were not too young to be in love, and she and Ben had been much the same age when they had first set eyes on one another. Those wonderfu
l, halcyon days…
* * *
Justin was the star of tonight’s party, and rightly so, but Cress too had his share of congratulations and birthday gifts, and the welcome from the Cornish family to the American cousins now was warm and spontaneous. And later on, Primmy was asked to play for them.
To Morwen’s surprise, she pinked up at once. She wasn’t normally reticent over such a request, and she had performed magnificently in public concert halls in front of influential people. But tonight she would be playing for Cresswell, and that would make all the difference. Morwen saw how nervously she smoothed down her silken skirt, and how a pulse beat noticeably fast in the low neckline of her gown.
Cress moved to her side and said softly that he had no intention of leaving English shores until he’d heard her play. Morwen was just near enough to hear her choked reply.
‘I’m not sure I want to play then, if it means I hasten your going away.’
‘But I’ll always come back to you, honey, and that’s a promise. You know that, don’t you?’
Morwen swallowed. It was an intensely intimate little conversation, said under cover of the general merriment, and she began to wonder just how close they had already become. It was one thing to argue with her mother about the ethics of their relationship. It was quite another to wonder if they were already lovers. But that couldn’t be. They had hardly met more than a few times…
As Primmy began to play, and the music flowed from her creative fingers, she knew that if it hadn’t happened already, it surely would. There was a subtle seduction in the romantic pieces Primmy chose to play, and a less than subtle reaction in the way Cress leaned on the piano facing her, his gaze never leaving that lovely flushed face. Dear God, thought Morwen, everyone must see it soon!
‘Let’s have something livelier now, Primmy,’ she said quickly, when the burst of applause from the first selection of pieces had died down. The younger children jumped up and down, calling for their favourites. And Primmy laughed, and played a selection of nursery tunes, then a couple of jigs, and finally her favourite classical piece of Mozart.
‘You’re so incredibly versatile, Primmy,’ Cress said, his voice so obviously admiring. ‘You have a rare talent in those slender fingers.’
And in front of everybody, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. The family gave a little cheer, thinking it no more than a gallant gesture in the continental style, but as their eyes met above her fingers, Primmy felt her heart begin to soar. And she wondered now, how she could ever bear to let this beautiful young man go out of her life.
* * *
The party went on into the early hours, although the company had thinned out considerably by then. Bess and Hal had retired long ago, and Morwen’s two youngest children were asleep in one of the guest rooms, while Bradley tried desperately to stay awake and listen to the grown-up conversations.
Jack and Annie had gone home with their brood, and Justin had decided to stay the night in town at his grandparents’ house, rather than go back to New World and return again later in the morning. He would soon be taking up his living accommodation above Daniel Gorran’s legal Chambers, and he was patently eager to establish himself as a responsible partner there.
Albert and Primmy lingered as long as they decently could, but once everyone else said they were leaving, they too made their reluctant goodbyes.
‘I’ll see you both tomorrow,’ Cress said to them, but his eyes and his words were only for Primmy.
As the brother and sister prepared to leave, Cress turned to his parents, as if it was almost too much for him to have to keep making these platitudes with this wonderful girl and not take her in his arms.
‘I’m ready to go whenever the rest of you are,’ he said, and as he spoke a small whirlwind leapt up from the sofa and threw itself past him and into Freddie’s arms.
‘I want to go back with you and Aunt Venetia tonight. Can I, please? I won’t be any trouble—’
‘Don’t be silly, Bradley, you will either go to bed here like the others, or you’ll be coming home with us,’ Ran said shortly.
At once, Morwen saw the mutinous brows on her son’s face darken. It would be too awful if this lovely evening ended with Bradley flying into one of his tantrums and shrieking at everyone. It would be shaming for her too, if he showed himself up so badly in front of his American relatives.
She put a hand on her husband’s arm before he could say anything more, and pressed it lightly.
‘Where’s the harm in it if Freddie and Venetia don’t mind, Ran? Besides, it’ll be a novelty for us to have the entire house to ourselves for once, won’t it?’
‘You know we don’t have any objection, Morwen,’ Venetia said at once. ‘We’d love to have Bradley come back with us tonight.’
Ran was clearly torn between the delightful thoughts his wife had put into his head, and his need to discipline his unruly son. In the end, Morwen’s soft, inviting eyes won.
‘Oh, take him then,’ he said, his ungraciousness coming more from the surfeit of drinks he’d imbibed that evening than from anything else. ‘For two pins I’d say why don’t you take him off to Ireland with you as well! Maybe the schools there can curb his wildness!’
He hadn’t meant it seriously, but Morwen’s heart pounded at the sudden glorious expression on Bradley’s face. It should probably hurt her to see him so excited by the thought of leaving his parents, but it didn’t. She loved him, and she understood him, and if his heart was with Freddie and Venetia and their horses, and all that such a life had to offer, then she was prepared to let him go. Letting him go seemed to Morwen the greatest love she could give him.
By tomorrow, she knew Ran wouldn’t see it that way, if he ever could. But he’d done the unretractable now. The words had been said, and couldn’t be unsaid. Whether or not they were acted upon, was yet to be seen. One thing was for sure, though, Ran wouldn’t give in to his own words without putting up a fight.
Chapter Eleven
Their house was all in darkness by the time Ran and Morwen arrived home from St Austell. There was little to disturb the beauty of the night at this hour, no robbers or vagabonds roaming the byways, and no moorland animals wandering abroad. The air was very still; the cobalt blue of the sky was crystal clear; and the full moon lit their way almost as brightly as if it was daylight. All around them were the fragrant, earthy scents of the moors and the hedgerows, enhanced by the cobwebby April mist that covered the ground like delicate baby’s breath.
Morwen leaned comfortably against Ran in the carriage. She felt the mellow, expansive glow that told her everything was right with her world. However temporary such a feeling might be in their tempestuous lives, she wasn’t one to refute it. While it lasted, it was heaven-blessed.
She would remember this evening for many reasons, not least for the heady memory that Ran had put into words what she herself had not yet dared to say. Letting Bradley go to Ireland with Freddie and Venetia would probably be the making of him, and solve a lot of problems.
And she had seen the dawning of two love matches. Morwen’s romantic heart soared because of it. Her girls were in love… and while she was filled with the lovely dreaming realization, she intended to ignore the thought of anything standing in their way. Charlotte’s position in the Pollard household might be considered by some to be a servile one, and Primmy and Cress were related by blood… but love took no account of such difficulties. Love was more powerful than any of them.
She gave a deep sigh as the carriage came to a halt at the door of New World. Before they alighted to go into the house, Ran took her in his arms.
‘That was either a troubled sigh, or one of pure contentment, dar,’ he said softly.
‘I’m sure you know which it was,’ she said huskily, her lips finding his, and moving softly against them as she spoke. ‘You know me well enough to sense my moods.’
The touch of his mouth on hers deepened to a kiss of barely restrained passion.
�
�And you know mine,’ Ran said. ‘And there are far more comfortable places than this to put my thoughts into deeds.’
She could hear the desire in his voice, and knew that it matched her own. The passion for each other they had always known was still there. It was sometimes subdued by the needs and anxieties of everyday living, and by the demands that other people put on them; but it was still there.
They walked into the house still holding each other, as if unable to bear being apart. Ran kissed her every step of the way, and by the time they mounted the stairs and reached their bedroom, his hands were feverishly unfastening buttons and laces on her clothes, and she was returning the actions.
The moonlight shone through the uncurtained windows, throwing patterns of light across carpet and furnishings. To Morwen, it all added to the romantic aura, transforming the room into a place of enchantment. As Ran caressed her, his hands moved over the pearly softness of her skin as if every part of her was new to him, and she caught her breath, all her senses alive and wanting him.
‘I may not say I love you often enough these days, Morwen,’ he said in a voice thick with passion. ‘But God knows that I do.’
‘He knows it, and I know it, dar,’ she said softly. ‘And if you don’t say it in words, you say it in every other way, and I know that too.’
He gave a smothered groan of pleasure as her fingers sought and found him, and then he lifted her in his arms and carried her to their bed, and the rest of the night belonged to them.
Family Shadows Page 14