David looked away and caught Lady Trelawny gazing upon him. “She is an extraordinary beauty, and we hope she will consider an alliance soon.”
An alliance with one of these men of her own class.
David understood. “Perhaps I should excuse myself.”
“Nonsense.” Morwenna held the cat before her like a shield against the two other men. “You know Jago and Tristan.”
Pascoe bowed to the ladies and gave David a friendly smile. “My father speaks highly of you, Mr. Chastain.”
“Mine does not.” Rodda tried to take Morwenna’s hand.
Five needle-sharp claws shot out and slapped the reaching fingers.
“Tamsyn, you mind your manners,” Morwenna crooned to the feline.
“Joseph,” Lady Trelawny said, addressing one of the footmen, “take her back to the kitchen.”
“I will.” David did not want to remain amidst these people with one rudely hostile to him.
“But you haven’t eaten your nuncheon,” Morwenna protested.
“I expect the cook will have mercy on me?” David tried to smile.
Jago laughed.
“Sit down, Mr. Chastain.” Lady Trelawny’s tone demanded no disobedience. “Morwenna, give the cat to Joseph.”
They both obeyed with reluctance. Morwenna played hostess, passing around plates of pasties and cakes and cups of tea, and talk began. It was talk about people David couldn’t possibly know. Then talk about the storm and damage. Finally, talk turned to Penmara and the mines.
“I may have another investor for you, Lady P.” Pascoe leaned forward, his face eager. “I didn’t get the opportunity to tell you last night, but I was in Truro on some tin business for my father two days ago, and fell into conversation with two men from Falmouth up to buy tin. They said they can use a stake in the ore here, so I told them about Penmara.”
“Two more investors. I shall soon have enough.” Morwenna plucked a candied violet off the top of a cake and licked it with the tip of her tongue. “Perhaps they will join us when we meet other potential investors in Falmouth.”
“When is that?” Rodda asked.
“As soon as Mr. Chastain is well enough to ride. He has business there as well.”
“We’ll all go,” Pascoe said. “Make a party of it. Is that where you hail from, Chastain?”
“Bristol,” David said.
“Can’t you tell from his speech?” Rodda’s upper lip curled. “He builds rowboats or something.”
“Occasionally.” David couldn’t keep his eyes off Morwenna licking that violet. “If you want to call a cutter a rowboat. It does, after all, have oars.”
Pascoe guffawed. “He got you there, Jago.”
“I guess he did.” Rodda laughed without humor.
Morwenna finished with the violet, and David managed to return to his pasty, succulent meat and onions inside flaky pastry. He could have eaten the entire plateful, but restrained himself, sipping tea and nibbling at savory and sweet refreshments while the talk flowed, arrangements for the journey to Falmouth were set for the next week, and the gentlemen departed. David figured he should also excuse himself, retreat to the library or his room. Suddenly, however, he couldn’t move. His legs felt as though they were overcooked carrots incapable of holding him up, and he was cold, so very cold.
“Was there something you wanted to ask me before we were interrupted, Mr. Chastain?” Morwenna seemed not to notice David’s fogginess as she gathered up cups and plates. “We can go into the library or one of a dozen parlors—”
“You exaggerate, child. We do not have a dozen parlors.” Lady Trelawny’s voice sounded a hundred feet away.
“Mr. Chastain?” Morwenna set the dishes on a table with a bang and rattle. “David?” She dropped to her knees before him and grasped his hands. “Are you all right?”
“I think,” he said, managing to speak through lips that had grown numb, his voice slurring as though he had consumed spirits and not tea, “I’ve been drugged again.”
CHAPTER 11
MORWENNA FLUNG HER ENTIRE WEIGHT INTO STOPPING David from sliding to the floor. “He’s unconscious,” she shouted. “Run for the apothecary. Someone, help me.”
Grandmother joined Morwenna holding David upright while issuing her own orders before turning her bright gaze on Morwenna. “What is wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. I gave him laudanum at Penmara the first day or two because he was in such pain, but nothing since.”
Except he had accused her of drugging him. She denied it. She had stopped. Laudanum wasn’t safe to take for long. Everyone knew that. And he couldn’t have drugged himself then or here. He didn’t have access to opiates. Yet no one lost consciousness so quickly unless he was drugged, inebriated, or suffering from something far, far worse.
Had some lingering effect of one of his injuries caught up with the passage of time? He seemed to be healing well. And yet . . .
She rested her hands on his shoulders, holding him upright in the chair, and looked into his face. His eyes were closed, his face slack. He wasn’t intoxicated. She would smell that and, again, he had no way to procure spirits in this household where cordials were the strongest drink to be had. “Mr. Chastain.” She spoke his name sharply. “David, open your eyes.”
He didn’t move. His lids didn’t flutter. His lips didn’t part. He seemed—
She released one shoulder and pressed two fingers to his throat to feel for a pulse. His cravat interfered. She yanked it off and unbuttoned his shirt. The placket opened.
“Morwenna.” Grandmother looked shocked.
“His isn’t the first male chest I’ve seen.” Morwenna pressed her fingers against the base of his throat again.
He had a pulse—barely. She moved her hand to his lips and felt no breath. Just like on the beach. This time, no one had been assaulting him.
Not on the outside, but somehow on the inside, he had taken in a dangerous substance.
“Grandmama.” The childhood name slipped from her lips on a wail of desperation. “He’s not breathing.”
And now she couldn’t feel his pulse.
“I think he’s-he’s—” Her throat closed. Tears blurred her eyes. “David,” she choked out.
Grandmother slapped his face. “Wake up, sirrah.”
Nothing happened.
Morwenna worked hard to keep her own breath coming in regular exhalations. She reached for the tray and picked up the silver teapot. Its surface shone clear of spots. She held it to his face. In a moment, a moment that felt like an hour, a feather of fog marred the pristine surface of the silver.
She dropped to her knees and laid her head against his chest. Faint and quiet, his heart fluttered beneath the broad, muscular surface. The scent of vetiver rose from the warmth of his skin. “Thank you, God.” She glanced up to see several shocked faces surrounding her—her grandparents’ and two footmen’s. “I didn’t see anyone else here seeing if he’s still alive.” She heard the anger in her tone and felt it heating through her veins.
So quick to judge her and find her behavior wanting. She wanted to shout at them that she was living a different life now, a godly life, thanks to Elizabeth’s loving-kindness before she departed. She was doing nothing wrong.
She glanced away before shock turned to disapproval or contempt. “We should carry him to his chamber.”
“Coffee,” Grandfather said. “I’ve seen this, especially on China runs when opium was too plentiful. He needs coffee poured down him and needs to be moving.”
“How can he do that?” Needing to be moving herself to quell the words that might spill from her, Morwenna scrambled to her feet. “He’s barely alive.”
“Joseph, Carey?” Grandfather addressed the footmen. “The two of you are strong. Or we could get one or two of the gardeners.”
“Aye, sir, we can manage him.” Joseph spoke for them both.
They lifted David under his arms and began to perambulate him around the room. His legs didn�
�t cooperate. He looked like nothing so much as a rag doll with half its stuffing missing.
Unable to bear the sight of it, Morwenna fled to the kitchen to ensure coffee was forthcoming. All activity ceased at her entrance—maids halted with knives poised, the bootblack stopped with a pair of shoes in hand, the housekeeper quieted her lecture or orders, her mouth still open. Only the cook remained in motion, stirring something savory in a pot.
“Coffee,” Morwenna said.
“It’s ready.” The cook ceased her stirring to pour strong, black liquid into a silver pot and set it on a tray. “One of you girls stop your gawking and carry this.”
“No need.” Morwenna took the tray from the cook and rushed back to the drawing room. Grandmother was opening the doors to allow the chilly March wind into the room. “Cold air does wake a body.” Her smile was forced.
Grandfather stood before the dying fire, his arms folded across his chest. “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know.” Morwenna looked him in the eye. “We all drank the same tea and are all right.”
“Could he have put it in himself? Some men are addicted and take too much.”
“And where would he have gotten it? I keep asking myself that. He hasn’t been near any and didn’t have it with him.” Morwenna flicked a glance to David, where the footmen had set him in a chair and were trying to get coffee down his throat. They were surprisingly successful. “One of the servants or Jago or Tristan. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I just know—”
She broke off, her heart squeezing with fear of being blamed and something worse—the depth of her panic that he might not be all right.
“Perhaps we should take him outside.” Grandmother frowned at a trickle of coffee dribbling onto David’s chest. “He could be ill . . .”
“It’s too cold—” Morwenna’s protest died on her lips as the footmen lifted David once more and half carried, half dragged him onto the terrace.
The footmen would listen to Grandmother. It was her house. They had taken over David’s care. She stood helpless, useless in the middle of the parlor.
The doorbell rang. She spun, stopped herself in time from answering it. Servants did that here at Bastion Point. She was there to greet the apothecary and direct him out to the terrace. She followed in the event she could be useful. Unable to do anything, she leaned against the balustrade while medicines were poured down David’s throat, encouraging his body to reject the drug, the poison. He had been so healthy earlier, looking stronger when he came to the cliff path to see her.
He wanted to tell her something. Then the gentlemen arrived and David and she had no opportunity to talk.
The gentlemen. Talk. Drugs . . . It all whirled through Morwenna’s mind. Investors. Mines. Attack on riding officers.
Life at Bastion Point had never been smooth. Drake was forever getting into scrapes of one sort or another. Morwenna’s parents breezed in and out as though the house were an inn for overnight stays on their way to somewhere else. They brought her useless trinkets from around the world—a chunk of rock with leaf impressions, a hunk of quartz the size of her head, a nasty little doll she had tossed off the cliff at high tide. Then they vanished again and she sought for assurance elsewhere—a Carn, a Carter, a Polhenny. Because she was a Trelawny, people called her fast. The words would have been far less complimentary if she had been a village girl. She had done many things she regretted, but not once had she broken the law. Except no one believed her, and if David died, she would be suspected. Ah, she heard the gossip—he survived the wreck, and then he dies? What did he know?
David’s death would hurt far more than her reputation. She would—well, she would miss him, not something she liked admitting to. Not something she would let herself think about because of its implications that she might care for him as a man and not simply a resource of information on who was leading wreckers to her beach.
Cold, she wrapped her arms around herself and began to pace along the terrace, keeping out of the way of the footmen and apothecary working over David. She didn’t look. She couldn’t. The idea of him slipping away there on the terrace in the cold spring sunshine brought tears to her eyes. Fear for herself and more, that something more she didn’t want to think about.
“Morwenna,” Grandmother called to her.
Morwenna turned, opened her mouth to respond, and looked straight into David’s gray-green eyes.
Her knees weakened. She sank onto the flagstones, shaking. “You’re awake.”
He couldn’t possibly hear her rasped words, but he managed to hold her gaze.
“Disappointed?” The single word was clear, not loud, but clear enough for everyone to hear the implied accusation.
She was going to be sick, cast up her accounts right there on the terrace in front of footmen, grandparents, and David. Her distress would look like guilt to David.
She pressed the back of her hand to her lips. “How could you? Why—?” She burst into tears and fled into the house. She fled where she always did—to her son, the one good, right thing she had done so far in her life.
He was playing with a pile of blocks. Each one bore a painting of an animal, paint that was bright and clear, not faded and chipped.
“Where did he get those?” Morwenna asked Miss Pross, who sat on a nearby chair, knitting with needles no thicker than toothpicks and thread as thin as a hair.
“Sir Petrok brought them up earlier.” Miss Pross set the needles in her lap. “What’s to do below?”
“Someone drugged or poisoned Mr. Chastain.” Morwenna wiped her eyes on the edge of her shawl.
“Nonsense. Who would do such a thing?”
“Who indeed.” Morwenna sank onto the floor beside Mihal and lifted a block. “This is a lion. What sound does a lion make?”
“Grrrr.”
“You’re brilliant.” She handed him the block and picked up a cat. “Grrr?”
Mihal giggled in that way that never failed to make her heart melt. “Meow.”
“Oh, silly me.” She picked up a monkey, realized she had no idea what one sounded like, and replaced it with a cow.
“Did he do it himself?” Miss Pross asked.
“I don’t see how.”
Mihal mooed.
“Such a clever boy.” Morwenna placed the cow with the other blocks. “He . . . no.”
She couldn’t bring herself to speak aloud David’s accusation.
That was the last disaster for her, having a survivor of the latest wreck accuse her of trying to harm, trying to kill him. With the assault on the revenue officers who accused her of causing the wrecks, she was going to be doomed in the eyes of the villagers, in the eyes of the authorities, in the eyes of her grandparents.
She needed to return to Penmara, pack up her son, and leave before shiny new toys and Miss Pross’s constant attentions lured Mihal from her, before she gave in to the lure of letting others control her life.
Grandfather had a right to dictate Mihal’s care and upbringing until he reached his majority, being the boy’s guardian under the law. The elder Pascoe and Rodda men were trustees of the estate and only allowed her to administer it, such as it was, and raise her son out of respect for Conan and his wishes. He might have been a smuggler, but he had been loved, and the Penvenans were one of the oldest families in the land. She was a Penvenan, mother to the heir, and she would make the estate pay again. As Conan’s widow, she would then be able to take her widow’s jointure and never need to rely on Trelawny largesse for survival.
From prison or New South Wales.
She couldn’t take her son to New South Wales—or the gallows.
Capping the geyser of panic bubbling up inside her, Morwenna searched through the blocks until she found a dog. “Dog?”
Mihal yawned.
“Is it time for his nap?” She posed the question before realizing that no mother should be asking someone else such a thing.
Miss Pross set aside her knitting. “It is. Let me—”
“No, I will.” Morwenna picked up Mihal and started for his crib, but once there, with his arms wrapped around her neck and his warm body snuggled against hers, she couldn’t let him go. Instead of laying him down, she settled in the rocking chair. He nestled in her arms and was asleep in moments. So was Morwenna. She leaned her head into the curve of the back, closed her eyes, and knew nothing until Miss Pross laid a hand on her shoulder and shook her.
“You might wish to wake, my lady.”
Mihal no longer cuddled on her lap. He lay asleep in his crib, and Morwenna’s neck was stiff. Sunlight slanting through the window spoke of late afternoon.
Morwenna sprang to her feet, swayed in a momentary dizziness, then glanced around the nursery as though it were a strange place.
“How did I sleep through you clearing up the blocks and putting Mihal down?”
Miss Pross smiled her gentle smile. “You looked worn to a thread. I hated to wake you, but you may wish to wash your face and change before dinner.”
Morwenna knuckled her eyes, gritty from her earlier tears and nap. “I would rather sleep.”
“Would you like me to have some coffee sent to your room? I have to go down and fetch his lordship’s dinner.”
“That would be kind of you, but I can—”
Miss Pross held up a staying hand. “No, you cannot, my lady. You can send a servant down to the kitchen, but going yourself is not done.”
“I’ve done it all my life.”
“You weren’t Lady Penvenan all your life.”
“I want to go home,” she muttered as she exited the nursery.
At Penmara she didn’t need to worry about such matters as offending the servants by appearing in their midst.
She needed to focus on dinner and what to wear, changing her dress yet again. How had Elizabeth borne life in London for six years? If nothing else, wearing stays from waking to sleeping was making Morwenna’s ribs feel like David’s had looked, though she barely had to lace them. She preferred her jumps, that more forgiving form of support. Another, if frivolous, reason to return to Penmara.
To run away?
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