A Stranger's Secret

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Grandmama would be happy to find Mihal there. Indeed, she likely expected him to be there, and her desire to play parlor maid stemmed more from a desire to see her great-grandson than a cup of tea.

  Glancing back, she noted Grandpapa’s eyes fixed on her, and realized Grandmama had absented herself to leave Morwenna to him.

  She sighed. “What is it?”

  “Your guest.” Grandpapa was not a man to prevaricate. “We think you should move him to our house now.”

  Morwenna planted her hands on her hips. “No.”

  “Morwenna, Jago wants to ask you to marry him—”

  “He knows better. Conan—”

  “Is nearly two years in his grave. It’s past time you considered his son’s future.”

  “I am. I’m speaking with investors—”

  “Who won’t touch those mines if you sully your reputation again.”

  Morwenna moved her hands from her hips to grasp her upper arms. The hall was freezing, and she had left her shawl somewhere. The flame inside her was sure to heat her well enough, and she wouldn’t air this disagreement in front of Jago. Not that he wasn’t probably listening from the library.

  She took a step closer to Grandpapa and lowered her voice so it wouldn’t carry fifty feet down the corridor. “I’d rather sully my reputation than see an injured man suffer as Mr. Chastain would with a move.”

  “Would you?” One of Grandpapa’s silvery eyebrows formed a question mark. “And will he thank you with enough to buy mine engines?”

  “I doubt he has that much.” Morwenna tapped her toe and sought arguments without speaking of the wreck or the medallion.

  “You’re already in danger with this second wreck on your beach,” Grandpapa said before she formed her words. “There’s talk, and with this man off the ship at your house . . .”

  “What? They think I saved him from the wreck I caused and nursed him back to health? That makes no sense.”

  “It does if you want to ensure he doesn’t talk.”

  CHAPTER 4

  AS NICCA ENTERED THE CHAMBER, VOICES ROSE FROM the foot of the great staircase, Morwenna’s throaty voice and the basso of a man past his prime, but nonetheless still powerful in his speech, an oddly familiar voice, though David could not have heard it before. He knew no one in this part of Cornwall, unless one counted his unwilling acquaintance with those who had attacked him and left him to die.

  With that in mind, wondering if perhaps he could identify them, David motioned for Nicca to leave the door open, then he slid from the bed onto a floor that could have served as an icehouse beneath his bare feet and padded to the opening into the corridor. Clean neglect in the form of faded wallpaper and a threadbare carpet runner met his gaze. Those voices met his ears as clearly as though they were being spoken into a speaking trumpet.

  They might as well have been. The staircase was wide but not open. As an engineer, David knew about how sound could funnel upward or outward with the shape of construction. This staircase had been designed in such a manner, possibly by accident, probably on purpose so that anyone upstairs could hear what was going on in the hall below as a form of protection or warning.

  The words he heard told David he had been given a warning. Oh, Lady Penvenan denied the accusation that she was keeping David to protect herself. But of course she would. Any sensible person would deny such a claim. But the possibility that the accusers were right lay heavily upon David’s shoulders. It simply made too much sense to deny.

  When a second lady’s voice joined those of the other two and the three moved away, David trudged back into the bedchamber past the stolid Nicca. Instead of crawling into the bed, despite his body aching in every limb, David sank onto the rag rug before the fire. Cold seeped into him from the skin to his marrow.

  You’re not a prisoner, he told himself. You can leave anytime you like.

  Except his money had been stolen and her ladyship had gotten rid of his clothes; he was as weak as a newborn cat, and Nicca stood between him and the exit. David wasn’t a small man. A lifetime of working in the boatyard had developed his muscles, and he was taller than most men. Nicca, however, was bigger and around David’s own twenty-five years. In a bout of Cornish wrestling, David wouldn’t bet on himself, were he a betting man. His best option was to stay and regain his strength, accept the lady’s kindness, even if she held ulterior motives, and learn what she was about.

  He tried to rise on his own to return to the comfort of the bed. His back protested, and he slumped onto the hearth again.

  “Let me help you, sir.” Nicca picked him up beneath the arms as though David weighed no more than the sleeping child her ladyship sometimes brought into the room with her, a sure sign he could in no way leave here.

  “I got you some fish stew,” Nicca said. “It’ll help set you right.”

  David didn’t care much for fish stew, but it wasn’t so bad. The bits of pilchard floating in the thick broth, along with potatoes and turnips and onions, tasted better than the thin gruel they had been feeding him. He felt stronger afterward, strong enough to shave himself as Nicca held the mirror and balanced the basin. He donned a clean shirt and then his limited strength departed, and he fell into a deep sleep from which he didn’t wake until morning light poured through the window. Considering the time of year, he guessed the time must be near eight of the clock. He had slept nearly sixteen hours.

  He had been drugged. He must have been to sleep like that. The stew. Someone had dropped laudanum in the stew, where the strong flavor of fish and onion would drown the bitterness of the drug.

  And her ladyship stood by his bed bearing another tray of food.

  David fixed his gaze on her face, met and held eyes so dark he could scarcely make out the pupils nor read any of the thoughts behind them. “Why?” He tried to ask the question, but his throat was so dry he couldn’t manage more than a croak.

  “Why?” Her already wide eyes widened farther, the lashes just about touching her eyebrows. “Why what?”

  “Laudanum? Another opiate in the stew?” That came out better.

  She set the tray on a table beside the bed. “I put nothing in your food or drink, Mr. Chastain. Nor did I order it done.”

  Then her servants had acted on their own? Either that or she was lying.

  Proceed with caution, Chastain.

  “You slept well, though.” Morwenna fussed with the items on the tray. “Perhaps that means you’ll be up and about soon.”

  “I hope so.” He did feel a bit stronger today.

  “You look better.” She drew something from her pocket. “This is your letter. I opened it in an effort to preserve it, but I assure you I could not have read it.” She handed him a wrinkled and splotchy sheet of foolscap. “Would you like a cup of tea first? It’s strong. My husband was a smuggler, and the cellars still hold a keg or two of leaves, so this is a luxury we can still afford.” Her tone was breezy, too breezy, as though she didn’t want to show any emotion regarding her poverty.

  Poverty, a good reason to wreck ships for their cargo. If smuggling had proven too dangerous, wrecking or stealing ore from mines were substitutes.

  David took the letter, smudged and wrinkled, maybe with a word or two showing, and set it aside as though its contents didn’t matter. He reached for the teacup she held out to him, heavy earthenware crockery that didn’t go with her slender hand.

  Nor did the redness of her skin, a redness that came from lye soap and hot water, as though she had been doing laundry or scrubbing floors. He considered the cleanliness of his room and the corridor beyond, and his heart twisted.

  Those red hands were a good reason for her to lure ships to their doom on her rocky beach. She must carry a heavy burden.

  “How old are you?” He blurted out the question without thinking of its rudeness, but once out, he didn’t bother to take it back.

  She laughed, more a snort than a bubble of humor. “I am two and twenty. I look older, do I not?”

&nb
sp; “Oh yes, ma’am, at least three and twenty.” He smiled at her over the rim of the thick, white mug.

  Her lower lip quivered and for a moment, he thought she would smile. Then she turned away. “You look at least three and twenty yourself, now that I can see your face.”

  “Add two years.” He sipped the tea, hot, strong, and sweetened with honey. The very smell gave him strength. The warmth going down his throat felt like an elixir of life. “I’m the youngest.”

  “Youngest? You have siblings?”

  “Two brothers and a sister.”

  “But they sent you out after your father?” She shot him a dubious glance.

  “I’m the only one left at home who can get away. One brother is at sea, one is running the boatyard, and my sister is . . . er . . . expecting an interesting event any day now.”

  “And your mother?” Lady Penvenan removed the teacup from his hand and replaced it with a tray across his legs. It held a bowl of porridge and a slice of toasted bread spread with bramble jelly. “I wrote to her.”

  “Thank you.” The sweet, tangy aroma of the dark berry jelly reached his nose, and he closed his eyes, seeing Mama standing at the stove in their big, sunny kitchen, stirring and stirring and stirring and telling them all they needed to do to help or they would get none of her preserves. “Don’t be surprised if she arrives instead of a letter.”

  “She’s welcome, although—” A hint of pink touched her cheeks. “There’s nowhere here for her to stay. The roof leaked and most of the rooms are uninhabitable. But my grandparents have more than enough space.” She turned toward the door. “Grandfather sent over some clothes for you. You may wish to start getting dressed so you can regain your strength.”

  Not the words of a woman who wanted to keep him close. And yet, he was certain she had drugged him the day before. Or someone had.

  He glanced at the cup of tea. He had swallowed half of it. If it had been tainted, he had already ingested a drug. Or maybe it was in the porridge. He could refuse to eat it, and yet it was nourishment he badly needed.

  He had to risk it.

  He ate the porridge and finished the tea. When the overwhelming fatigue didn’t come over him, he considered he had gone without anything unnatural in the food and climbed from the bed. With the coverlet wrapped around him for warmth and modesty, he made himself pace across the room, then back again. The chill of the floorboards kept him alert, kept him moving. The bedposts, a wardrobe, a desk gave him support on his perambulations when his head swam. The pain from his back felt more like stiffness than screaming pain now. The quiet felt like his upper-floor room was a dungeon despite daylight coming through the window. He only needed to open that door to remind himself he wasn’t truly a prisoner. If her grandfather had sent over clothes, they were somewhere in the house. He could find them. And be gone.

  But she had brought the letter, not his purse.

  He had forgotten about the letter in his need to regain his strength. He snatched it from amid the bedclothes and moved to the hearth and the chair her ladyship occupied when watching over him—or guarding him.

  As if a lady who couldn’t weigh more than eight stone could guard him. In another day or two, he could simply pick her up and move her out of his way if she tried to stop him from going anywhere and the massive Nicca wasn’t around. The notion of her keeping him prisoner was ludicrous. He could tell her nothing of the wreck. She hadn’t even asked him what he might remember.

  “So what will you tell her if she does?” He asked the question of the polished reflection of himself in the grate.

  Nothing. He would tell her nothing.

  He lifted the poker and coaxed the fire into a greater blaze, for the room held no warmth in the dampness of the house. The blaze was still small, the coal supply minimal. The flames were enough to warm his ice blocks of feet, though, and he leaned back to hold the letter to the light.

  He had read it before. He had read it half a dozen times. He even remembered whole sentences from it. Still, it made no sense then, the words sounding more like the ramblings of a man out of his head with drink. Except Papa didn’t drink spirits. The illness must have been upon him. One thing that was clear in the letter was that Papa knew he was dying. The word “dying” had shown up at least four times.

  Now, it didn’t show up at all. Most of the ink had run or been washed away. David tried to recall the words that fit into the random letters still clear on the cheap paper.

  D G S R B V F Y g Y N and, finally, the word that had been protected by the seal of wax: Trelawny.

  The name had meant no more to David than the family crest on the missing pendant. But now it meant a great deal. The lady who had rescued him was a Trelawny. This was Trelawny territory, she had explained. Everyone in Cornwall knew the family and apparently farther afield. But the name hadn’t been unfamiliar to his father. It was important enough for Papa to have written it in his last message to the family, a ramble of regrets, predictions of his imminent death, and an explanation of something that was no explanation at all beneath the pen of a feverish man.

  David let the letter slip from his fingers. It fluttered to the floor. His head drooped, but he beat his fist on the arm of the chair. “Why? Why? Why?”

  Father had disappeared a month ago with every penny in the boatyard safe. He had told them he was going after a possible commission from a company in Edinburgh, Scotland. A week later, they received word of his death in Falmouth, Cornwall.

  Scotland had been rare, but not unheard of. They had never done business in Falmouth. They had never done business with the Trelawny family.

  Except his father must have, or at least intended to. But if that were the situation, why not Truro or even this village instead of the other side of the county?

  David rose and began to walk again. Shuffle was more like it, but he was moving upright, blood flowing to his limbs, his brain. With it came a chill deeper than the cold rising from the floor and into his bare feet.

  Morwenna, Lady Penvenan, was a Trelawny. Maybe her interest in him lay beyond his potential information about the wreck. He didn’t believe for a moment she hadn’t read what was left of his letter. She would have seen the Trelawny name. She had seen the pendant. She might hold the medallion in her possession. That first day, she had been far more interested in why he possessed it than she had about his being a survivor of the wreck . . .

  His head began to spin and he considered returning to the bed, but as he turned toward the four-poster, a knock sounded on the door and it opened to show the lady herself, a small boy clinging to one of her hands and her other arm cradling a pile of worn leather-bound books.

  The child spoke first. “Eat.” He grinned, released his mother’s hand, and ran forward. “Go.”

  “His favorite words.” Lady Penvenan glanced down at the child, her face softening, becoming even more beautiful, if that were possible. “Dog completes the list.”

  “You have—” The boy slammed into David’s legs and clung to the coverlet for balance. David scooped him up beneath the arms and held him dangling in the air.

  The boy giggled and kicked his legs.

  David leaned back against a bedpost for balance. “You’re a sturdy lad, aren’t you?” He grinned at the glowing dark eyes so like his mother’s, including the lashes. “Looks like you’ve had plenty to eat.”

  “Go. Eat.”

  “How about please?” David spoke the word with exaggerated care. “Please.”

  “Puh-lee,” the boy parroted.

  David laughed and set him down. “It’s a good start. Remember to say that to your mama.”

  He straightened with a wince to meet the surprise on her ladyship’s face.

  He shrugged. “I have nieces and nephews. We all live in the same house.”

  “I think I’d probably go mad if I lived with my family.” She held out the books. “I heard you pacing and thought perhaps you are bored up here and might like some books. It’s a selection . . . I didn’
t know what you would like or if—um—well, there’s no obligation to read any of them. I don’t have a great deal of time for reading and was a terrible student, so I understand if . . .” She turned off, this time her face turning positively strawberry in hue.

  David’s stomach hurt from trying not to laugh at her fumbling way of trying not to say she didn’t know if he could read. He cleared his throat twice before he knew he could speak without his amusement shaking his voice. “I was much better at mathematics and geometry, but have read a novel or two.” He took the books. “My mother was a schoolmistress before she met my father. She taught us our letters, and my father taught us our maths.”

  “I wouldn’t have learned anything if not for my cousin Drake and my husband.” She bent to scoop up her son as he headed toward the hearth. “We all grew up together, the Penvenans, my two cousins . . .” She spun toward the door so fast her skirt swung out and revealed tiny feet in knitted booties rather than proper shoes. “Nicca will be up shortly with the clothes and a bath.” She left, not even shutting the door behind her in her haste to depart.

  Regretting telling him too much about herself? Cousins and Penvenans suggested at least four other people. Her husband was dead, but where were the rest? Deceased as well?

  Each encounter with the lady brought more questions than answers, including why clothes and a bath in late afternoon . . .

  He’d put the question to Nicca when he arrived within the half hour. David spent the intervening time perusing the books. They were a motley selection of sermons, poetry, and one entertaining novel satirizing a previously published popular novel of nauseating virtue. He started to read Joseph Andrews, and then Nicca arrived with clothes flung over one shoulder and a bucket of steaming water in each hamlike hand.

  “Be back with the tub.” He set the buckets down, tossed the clothes onto the bed, and departed. With two more trips the bath was ready and Nicca started to leave. “Get your dinner.”

  “Why?” David asked.