But she was greeted so enthusiastically by the two of them when she went to the nursery that she assumed that all was well.
‘I thought we’d have an early tea and go to the beach,’ she said as Emma ran to her for a hug.
‘And I shall find some new shells for my collection,’ Emma said at once, clapping her hands.
‘I shall look for fossils,’ Luke said importantly. ‘Mammie, will Grandad Hal be turned into a fossil by now? Miss Pinner didn’t seem to know.’
Morwen mumbled something beneath her breath in answer. Then she hugged her daughter a little closer, hiding her face in the burnished dark hair, as her glimmer of laughter at such an audacious question threatened to spill over into tears.
Chapter Seventeen
Gillings drove them to the nearby little bay beneath the rocks, where the beach was golden, and the sea stretched endlessly towards America. To where Matt would shortly be returning with his family, Morwen thought with a pang, and taking Primmy with him… but she wouldn’t think of that now.
‘I’ll be back for ’ee in an hour or so, then, Ma’am,’ Gillings said, respectfully touching his cap.
‘That will be just right. The sun will be going down by then, and I don’t want the children to be chilled,’ Morwen told him. It was warm now, and the bay was sheltered, but there was always a cool wind from the sea. Emma was susceptible to minor ailments, and coughs and colds, and a summer cold could be just as debilitating as any other kind.
Besides which, there had been several cases of measles reported in the area, and the very thought of one of the children catching such an infection was enough to freeze Morwen’s bones. Dora, Walter’s natural mother, had died of the measles, and an epidemic could sweep through a close-knit community as quick as lightning.
‘So what do you think, Mammie?’ Luke said, when their driver had gone clattering away with the trap and left them to their poking about between rocks and into pools.
‘What do I think about what?’ she said, thankful to drag her thoughts back to the present from the uneasy place where they had gone.
‘Will Grandad Hal be a fossil by now, or does he have to moulder away in the grave for years and years before it happens?’ Luke said, ghoulishly anticipating the thought.
At his graphic words, Emma gave a little scream, and Morwen snapped at her wretch of a son. So much for moving away from gruesome thoughts.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Luke, and stop putting such ideas into Emma’s head. The two of you will be having nightmares tonight, and I shall speak seriously to Miss Pinner if she’s been teaching you such things.’
Luke scowled, and Morwen sighed, seeing the echo of his brother Bradley in his dark glower.
‘Well, Miss Pinner said that all dead things turned into fossils, so why is it so daft to ask if Grandad Hal will turn into one?’ he said defensively.
Morwen had no argument with the logic of it, though she could have wished the correct Miss Pinner to Kingdom Come at that moment. And, seeing that Emma was still shivering, she tried to lighten the moment.
‘Because Grandad Hal is my daddy, and I don’t like to think of him in any way except how I last saw him, laughing and talking and being happy with his family,’ she retorted, and then had to swallow the sudden lump in her throat at the sweet imagery of it all.
‘I don’t want to talk about Grandad Hal,’ Emma said shrilly. ‘I’m going to look for shells.’
She went scampering along the beach, scuffing her shoes into the sand to dig up the flotsam left by the tide. If she could, Emma would bury her head in it, rather than have to hear about unpleasant happenings, Morwen thought. Young as she was, she had the ability to shut herself off from reality when she chose, and Morwen wasn’t too sure that it was such a clever achievement.
Her brother Matt had once been considered a dreamer, but his feet had remained fairly firmly on the ground. But this aura that she sometimes felt surrounded her beautiful little daughter was different. This was almost an escape from the everyday world, as if Emma wasn’t truly meant for it, or that she was mentally being prepared for another. As if… dear Lord, where were her thoughts going? Morwen thought, as a great shudder ran through her.
‘Emma, don’t go too far away,’ she said, her voice suddenly husky.
‘I’m only just here, Mammie!’ the girl said, totally unaware of her mother’s momentary compulsion to snatch her to her breast and feel her heartbeat next to her own.
‘Look what I’ve found!’ Luke shouted, brushing the sand away from something in his hand. He rushed across to Morwen excitedly, holding out a large ridged object in his hand. It was beautifully intact, the fossilized crustacean silvery and brittle.
‘What is it, Mammie?’
‘I’ve no idea. A mollusc of some sort, I suppose—’
‘It’s got a face,’ Emma said. ‘Look, there’s a face, and there’s hair as well—’
‘Don’t be so dippy, Emma,’ Luke hooted. ‘Fossils don’t have faces.’
‘Well, I can see one!’ she said crossly. ‘And the hair’s all pale-coloured, like the lady that came to the house that day.’
A cloud passed over the sun at that moment, sending a shadow across the bay.
‘What lady?’ Morwen said, though there was only one that she knew who could fit that description. And she was more than irritated to know that her heart was beating sickly.
Luke was more interested in his fossil than remembering the incident, but Emma spoke up at once.
‘We were looking out of the nursery window, until Miss Pinner said we weren’t to be nosy. But the lady was so pretty in her black dress, and her hair shone like silver.’
‘When was this, Emma?’
‘When you were staying at Grandma’s house. But we weren’t really being nosy, Mammie. We just wanted to look, that was all—’
‘I didn’t,’ Luke said.
‘Yes, you did, the same as me!’
As Luke began to taunt her, Morwen could see the angry red flush appearing on Emma’s face now, and guessed that she also feared a telling-off for staring at a visitor.
‘Never mind that now. Do either of you know who the visitor was?’
They didn’t, and they were obviously getting bored by the questioning, and Morwen gave up quizzing them. But it had to be Harriet Pendragon, of course. No one else in the district was striking enough to be remembered so clearly.
Morwen was torn by a mixture of emotions at that moment. It was insulting and outrageous enough that the woman had come calling at a time of mourning. But the thing that gnawed away at her most was that Ran had never mentioned it.
* * *
When they returned to the house and the children had gone upstairs to get ready for bed, she spoke to Mrs Enders.
‘Did my husband have any callers while I was staying at Killigrew House?’ she demanded to know.
‘Oh yes, Ma’am. We had quite a number of ’em after your father’s death, enquiring after your family’s health, and offering condolences. Mr Wainwright would have had all the visiting cards—’ the housekeeper said.
‘But was there anyone in particular?’
Mrs Enders stared at her, clearly not understanding the oblique remark. Fuming, Morwen knew she would have to be more precise, though she had no doubt in her mind who the pale-haired woman would be. Hadn’t she already tangled with her herself? But she still couldn’t believe that Harriet Pendragon had had the audacity to come here again, and she needed this confirmation.
‘Did Mrs Pendragon call on my husband, Mrs Enders?’
She saw the housekeeper go a dull red, and knew instantly that Ran had forbidden her to say so. That in itself was a shock, and she remembered vividly how the Pendragon woman had intimated that it wasn’t only Killigrew Clay that she wanted, but the virile man who was part-owner. She couldn’t have made it more obvious…
‘I don’t know what I should rightly say, Ma’am,’ Mrs Enders said unhappily. She began to wring her hands, and Morwe
n found herself thinking in a kind of detached amazement that it was true what was said in the penny-dreadfuls. People did wring their hands when they were in distress…
‘Your loyalty does you credit, Mrs Enders, but this is my house as well as my husband’s, and I’ve a right to know who enters it. Especially when it’s someone I’ve no wish to see.’
‘Oh, you’ve no need to fret yourself on that score, Ma’am! Mr Wainwright showed her the door good and proper, and gave orders that she’s never to be admitted here again!’
She clapped her hands to her mouth, knowing she’d given herself away now. Morwen’s mouth quirked slightly, knowing that if this was a cheap melodrama, then Mrs Enders was making all the right moves. For some reason, she couldn’t rid herself of the theatricality of the situation, and it made her even more angry.
‘Thank you for not lying to me, Mrs Enders. And providing you do as you were told, we’ll not mention it again. Please return to your duties.’
The woman gave a small bob and scurried out of the drawing room. And Morwen wilted onto the sofa, wondering what devil was possessing her to make her treat a respected member of the household staff as if she were no more than a skivvy.
But she knew the devil, of course. She knew its name and recognized its evil. It was jealousy, raw and searing.
* * *
She was still sitting on the sofa in the darkening dusk when Ran returned home. By then the children had come to say their good-nights and Morwen had promised to go and tuck them in. But she hadn’t stirred, and they would probably be asleep by now. Mrs Enders had come and lit the fire to cheer the room, glancing at Morwen’s marbled expression in a troubled way, and tiptoed out again, saying nothing and closing the door tightly behind her.
And Morwen continued to stare blankly into the leaping flames, seeing nothing but the gloating, sensual face of Harriet Pendragon. As she made a small, involuntary movement, she heard her husband’s startled voice.
‘Morwen! Good God, you made me jump. What the devil are you doing, sitting here in the gloom like that?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll light the lamps—’
‘No, don’t. Leave them,’ she said sharply.
He came to sit by her side and took one of her hands in his own. The fire warmed the room, and it was midsummer, but her hands were still as cold as ice, and mistakenly, he thought he knew the reason for her apparent misery.
‘Darling girl, you know your father wouldn’t want you to spend your life in mourning. Didn’t he always say that life is for the living?’
She turned towards him, her eyes dark and luminous in the firelight. ‘And is that what you think, Ran?’
She saw him frown. ‘Well, of course it is. It’s a fact of life that we all have to die, honey. We all lose people who are dear to us. You know it more than most.’
‘Oh yes, I know it. I’ve just lost my daddy. And a long time ago I lost my best friend, and then I lost my brother Sam, and Sam’s wife. And I lost my husband. You make it sound as if I’ve carelessly put them all down somewhere, and they’ll turn up again at any minute.’ She stopped abruptly, as misery swept over her.
He didn’t speak for a moment, and then he leaned forward and kissed her cold cheek.
‘You lost your husband, but you found another,’ he said gently. ‘Or have you forgotten?’
She felt his hand move softly to caress her breast, and she flinched as if she had been stung. He was so unused to this reaction that he paused.
‘Maybe I’m not the one who’s forgotten whose husband you are,’ she muttered.
His hand dropped away from her at once, and from the stiff set of her shoulders he knew she wasn’t sitting here in the dark out of any sense of grief.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘You had a visitor while I was staying with my mother,’ she stated.
‘I had plenty. Some days the house seemed crammed with them. So what? It’s the natural thing after a death. It shows respect. You’ve seen the visiting cards—’
‘Not all of them.’
‘What?’
‘I said I haven’t seen all of them. I was never shown Harriet Pendragon’s. Why was that, I wonder?’
She turned her head slowly to face him, and in the flickering firelight she imagined she saw guilt, embarrassment and shame written all over it. In return, Ran read the silent accusation in hers, and his eyes flashed angrily.
‘Since you seem to have decided the reason for yourself, there seems no point in my saying anything more about it,’ he said shortly.
‘Oh, but there is,’ Morwen said, hot with anger. ‘I want to know what that woman was doing here in my absence, and why you were so underhand as to keep the visit from me.’
‘Dear God, Morwen, you surely don’t think—’ Ran said in exasperation.
‘I don’t know what to think. But I’ve seen her for myself, and I know that she – she—’
‘She what?’ he said, yielding nothing as she floundered.
Her head lifted and her chin was tilted high. Ran had seen the movement many times before, when all seemed lost, and the survival instinct in Morwen Tremayne was strong enough to overcome it all. He hardly realized that in his mind at that moment, he’d thought of her as Morwen Tremayne, when he’d never known her as such. Nor why she should think she had anything here to overcome…
‘I don’t trust her,’ she said passionately. ‘And I don’t want her to have anything to do with my family.’
Ran didn’t speak, but her ragged breathing told him all he needed to know. Ignoring her stiffness, he gathered her into his arms, and smoothed her tangled dark hair as he would have done Emma’s.
‘By your family, I presume you mean me. And since I guess you’ve discussed all this with Mrs Enders—’
‘She didn’t want to tell me. I got it out of her—’
‘I can imagine,’ Ran said, with a hint of a smile in his voice that he quickly smothered. ‘Well then, you’ll know that the woman was sent packing on my orders. I don’t trust her any more than you do. But how about me?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Morwen said, her voice muffled against his chest.
‘Do you trust me, honey? Or do you think I’m weak enough to be swayed by the first woman who looks invitingly in my direction?’
She lifted her head away from his chest and looked into his eyes. Typically, she responded to the only words of importance, and ignored the rest.
‘Then you admit that she looked invitingly at you, as you so quaintly put it?’
The closeness Ran had been striving to re-establish between them was instantly shattered. She felt his hands grip her shoulders as he glared stonily down at her.
‘My God, you don’t have any faith in me at all, do you? As for admitting anything, there’s nothing to admit. And I’ll tell you this, Morwen. There’s more than one man who’s been driven into the arms of another woman by being so falsely accused, so you might think about that!’
‘Are you threatening me?’ she said, her voice shrill.
‘No. Just making an observation,’ Ran said coldly.
Morwen knew she was practically screaming at him now, but she couldn’t seem to stop. ‘Then I’ll make one as well. I’d remind you that I know full well what the Pendragon woman was here for. She wants Killigrew Clay, and she wants you, but as long as there’s breath in my body, I swear to you that she’ll get neither of them. Do you hear me?’
‘I should think the whole bloody house can hear you,’ he snapped. ‘Stop behaving like a demented fool and get to bed. You’ve had a bad day, even though you came out of it better than your brothers, but I’m sure everything will look clearer in the morning.’
She stared at him in shock as he strode across the room, poured himself a glass of brandy from the decanter, and downed it in one angry swallow before pouring himself another. Her head was throbbing, and on top of all the emotion generated by the reading of her father’s will, her husband was turning to the demon
drink again, she thought savagely.
She moved quietly to the door, and paused beside it. Unknowingly, she reminded Ran of the way Harriet Pendragon’s silk-clad fingers had so sensuously caressed the doorhandle, and he gave a smothered oath, and swallowed the second glass of brandy in one gulp.
‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’ she said woodenly, unaware of his anger.
He took refuge in sarcasm. ‘Oh, I think not, my dear. No, I intend to stay here and drink myself into a stupor, and when I think I’ve had enough, I doubt that I shall disturb your slumbers by my crassness. One Ben Killigrew in your life was undoubtedly enough. If I make my way up the stairs at all, I shall spend what’s left of the night in a guest bedroom.’
He turned his back on her, and she heard the clink of glass against glass as he replenished his drink. Morwen bit her lips until she was in danger of splitting them with her teeth, and then she turned swiftly and left him, slamming the door behind her and shaking from head to toe.
Tonight, of all nights, she needed his strength and the familiar comfort of his body beside her in their large bed. Tonight, of all nights, she needed their quiet, habitual bedtime discussions in the soft darkness of their private sanctuary. And tonight, of all nights, as she undressed and crept shiveringly into bed, she felt bereft and alone, and willed this traumatic and hurtful day to come to an end.
* * *
When she went downstairs to breakfast the next morning, her head feeling as though a thousand bees still buzzed inside it, she discovered he had gone. The children were already there, their breakfasts nearly finished, and chattering loudly enough to make her wince with their exuberance. When she had greeted them, she spoke quietly to Mrs Enders as she refused all but the strongest coffee and toast.
‘Did my husband leave a message for me?’ she asked, knowing that a wife who was so unaware of her husband’s movements was as good as admitting that there was a rift between them.
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