Her roof, not Father’s now.
Saddened after the flash of remembered happiness over memories of the whole family together for a Christmas Day feast not so long ago, David headed up the path with the not yet two-year-old baron. He heard no words spoken behind him, and he suspected everyone stared after him.
Good. Now he had disarmed them where he was concerned. They already believed he had no chance to win Morwenna—sadly true—and they thought him a weakling living under the cat’s paw, cheerfully willing to do women’s work.
He would cheerfully do women’s work for those he loved, and now Morwenna counted amongst them.
More fool you, David Chastain.
Morwenna scooped up the stick and tossed it for the dogs, then chased after them to avoid watching David walk away with her son. In himself he was pleasing to observe. Seeing him carry a cranky child who needed changing made her wish her life was a great deal different. But now, after last night, she couldn’t even look him in the eye. If she did, she feared she would throw herself at him and—
She tripped over a chunk of driftwood and sprawled on the sand. The dogs raced up to her and began to lick her face and nuzzle at her.
“Off with you.” She pushed them away.
“Let her up.” Tristan held his hands out to her. “How can you bear to have them do that to you?”
“We all need some affection in our lives.”
“If that is what you wish, my lady”—Tristan hauled her to her feet—“and you weren’t all over dog slobber, I would be more than willing to provide affection and more.”
“You are kind, Tris, but you’re too young for me.” She patted his cheek.
He brushed the sand away with an impatient gesture. “I’m your age.”
“And not half so worldly.”
“I’ve lived outside of Cornwall most of my life, unlike you.”
“But you haven’t buried a spouse and been accused of a crime.” She scratched Oggy behind one pert ear. He leaned his head against her leg.
Facing her, Pastie leaned against Tristan’s leg. He started to scratch her head, then snatched his hand away. “You dogs smell terrible.”
“And now you will too.” Jago was staring at Tristan. “I thought you didn’t like them.”
“So did I.” Morwenna stared at Pastie’s adoring gaze pointed at Tristan.
He rolled his shoulders as though shaking off a wet cloak. “The beasts always like me. They will like anyone who feeds them, though.”
As she had thought before, the dogs might have let him—or anyone else with a juicy bone in hand—take something from around David’s neck in those minutes he lay alone on the sand.
But what was she thinking? Tristan was from a family nearly as wealthy as the Trelawnys. He had actually taken a degree at Cambridge instead of simply attending classes as did most men of finer families. He had no reason in the world to participate with wrecking unless he wished for the thrill of it like her cousin Drake, who had smuggled for the excitement of it. Because of Conan and Drake’s social rank, the village men listened to them. Class rank ruled even in the underworld of lawlessness, so she could not discount any local man—or woman—from being the guilty party leading the smugglers.
Bewildered at her own thoughts, Morwenna called the dogs to heel and returned to where Nicca waited at the foot of the path. “Go on without me.” She gestured to her suitors. “I need a word with my manservant here.”
Jago and Tristan climbed to the top of the cliff, then waited, looking back.
Morwenna turned her attention to Nicca. “I want to ask you without Henwyn present . . . Did you ever give Mr. Chastain laudanum in his food when we were still at Penmara?”
“I wouldn’t do that, m’lady. Not unless you told me to.” Nicca reached for Pastie and rubbed her head, not meeting Morwenna’s eyes. “Henwyn, well, she didn’t much like him there.”
“And might have drugged him because of that?”
Nicca said nothing.
Morwenna sighed. “Your loyalty to her is commendable, but I pay your wages, poor as they are.”
Nicca’s head shot up. “I never saw her do nothin’, m’lady.”
“Of course not.”
And now he would warn Henwyn of Morwenna’s suspicions. But she knew all she needed to—Henwyn had drugged David without permission. Why was a matter of speculation and not something Morwenna could dwell upon at the moment.
Wondering how she could ever control a household full of servants if her two acted beyond her wishes, she climbed the cliff path to face the men waiting for her attention. “I am going inside to wash and see to my son. I shouldn’t have left Mr. Chastain to it.”
“You should hire a nursery maid,” Jago said. “No need for a lady to spend her days cooped up with a child.”
“I like my son. Being with him isn’t cooped up to me.”
Tristan sighed. “Which makes you even more beautiful.”
“And you absurd.” Morwenna shook sand off her skirt as best she could and started up the path, calling over her shoulder, “See you bright and early in three days.” She hastened so she could enter the garden well enough ahead of them that she could bar the door and prevent them from following her. They would take her hint that they needn’t stay. She did need to get herself up to the nursery.
She rested in the garden for a few minutes, leaning against the trunk of a peach tree where a haze of green along the branches suggested budding leaves might be forthcoming in the next week or two. The walls would protect those buds, then the flowers and fruit that followed, from storm winds.
Nothing but exposure would protect her from storm winds, and she didn’t know how to go about that in any way beyond catching the men in the act. She wished she didn’t have to, that the men would stop on their own. She didn’t like the idea of the brothers and husbands of poor villagers going to prison or even hanging. Yet she couldn’t go there either, and now a new notion rang in her head—the idea that the sons of local gentry families were the perpetrators. If she was going to suspect Tristan, if only for a moment, she needed to take Jago under consideration. Or why not the Kittos’ grandson who came to visit them upon occasion? And others returned home to the county as well. The Chinoweths, the Blameys, the Bolithos . . .
She feared Sam Carn was the ringleader now that he was no longer constable sworn to uphold the law. Men and women alike followed Sam since he was a youth. Hadn’t she lowered herself to dallying with the son of a miner?
She burned with shame at the memory and entered the house through the garden room, where she left her sandy half boots, before she made her way up to the nursery.
David sat there with Mihal. The latter slept soundly in his crib. David sat on a chair nearby, his burly frame dwarfing the rocking chair, his hair loose from its queue and slipping over his face as he leaned his head on his hand and slept.
Morwenna crossed the room and brushed his hair back, letting her fingers linger in the thick, dark mass. His eyes opened. He smiled.
And Morwenna admitted she had fallen in love for the first time in her life.
CHAPTER 16
MORWENNA PEELED MIHAL AWAY FROM HER SKIRT AND handed him over to Miss Pross. “I hate leaving him, but taking him on horseback isn’t practical.”
“He’ll be all right once you’re out of sight.” Miss Pross raised her voice to be heard above Mihal’s wails. “He’s a good boy.”
“He is.”
That he would stop crying and likely not start up again until perhaps bedtime, if then, disturbed Morwenna. She was too much separated from him there at Bastion Point, as she had feared she would be, and now she was leaving him overnight for the first time in his twenty-one months of life. She lingered in the nursery doorway, reluctant to leave.
“Morwenna,” Grandfather called up the stairway, “we need to be on our way.”
“I have to go to Falmouth.” She spoke her excuse aloud more for her own sake than anyone else’s. “This is for Mihal�
�s future.”
Everyone knew that. She headed for Falmouth to meet with men who were potential investors in the mines. No one blamed her for going. Only she blamed herself.
She was not much older than Mihal when her parents left her for the first time. She didn’t remember their departure. She only remembered not having parents like the other children. Even Elizabeth and Drake’s parents arrived from London upon occasion in those days. Morwenna remembered her parents coming home when she was five years of age. They brought gifts of ivory and gold, crystals and rare woods. They spoke strange languages. Mammik and Tasik they taught her to call them, from the old Cornish tongue few people knew anymore. Mammik’s skin was bronzed as dark as any sailor’s. With her red hair and blue eyes, she didn’t resemble Morwenna with her porcelain skin. Before Morwenna grew used to her parents as relatives and not exotic visitors from afar, they were off again, jesting about dragon hunting. That time, they were gone for five years, and then five more, and then—
“Morwenna, we’re leaving in five minutes,” Grandfather’s powerful voice rang out.
She snatched Mihal from Miss Pross again, hugging him close. “I will return, I promise, sweetling. I won’t leave forever.”
Before she changed her mind and left the investors solely to the men, she set Mihal on the floor, picked up the trailing skirt of her new riding habit, and fled down the corridor to the steps. She ran so fast she slipped on the last set of treads and would have landed in a heap in the front hall if David hadn’t caught her and set her on her feet.
“Are you all right?” He gazed at her with such concern she wanted to rest her head on his shoulder and let him hold her.
She backed away from him as she had backed away from him the day after she woke him in the nursery and, in doing so, awakened her own heart. She would not love him. She would not love anyone. That was too risky to her heart.
She fluffed out her skirt. “Riding boots and steps don’t go well together.”
“And speaking of going.” Grandfather tapped his riding crop against his thigh.
They followed him out the front door and onto the drive where the riding and packhorses with their grooms awaited. Were they headed for Truro, they would have taken the carriage, slow going as it needed to be on the rough road. But Falmouth lay on the southern coast, and between Bastion Point and the port city rose the spine of Cornwall, rugged rocky hills and the merest suggestion of a road impassable by a wheeled vehicle, barely passable by horse.
Watching David mount, seeing he still held himself stiffly, Morwenna wondered why they hadn’t thought to take the Fal River instead of riding. He could ride in a carriage as far as Truro and then take the smoother passage of the boat. Smoother and a slower way to go by the time they made the drive into town and the sail downriver. This way, they were likely to reach Falmouth before dark.
Morwenna allowed Henry to assist her into the saddle, where she perched, admiring how her grandmother, three times her own age, mounted with such grace. She hoped she looked half so well when she was old. With a sleepless night behind her, she felt at least twice her age.
She was bound to feel older by the end of the day. Riding for long distances took practice and stamina. Riding with her grandparents and three gentlemen took a different kind of practice and stamina. Jago and Tristan rode on either side of her and vied for her attention with flirtatious quips and conversational gambits. She parried each remark tossed her way, while watching David to ensure he was faring all right considering his injuries and his lack of experience riding.
He appeared well and in no need of her care. Her grandparents had stationed themselves on either side of him. From the snatches of dialogue blown back to her on the brisk morning breeze, they were discussing boat design and business. Once, David’s words, “I’d like to build a sloop,” rang out clearly.
Jago and Tristan guffawed.
“The rowboat maker wants to build a fishing smack perhaps?” Tristan laughed at his own jest.
Morwenna wanted to slap him. One did not mock the ambitions of the lower classes. One did not mock the lower classes. In Morwenna’s life, one was nothing but kind to those born into fewer privileges than those like the Pascoes, Roddas, and Trelawnys enjoyed. Half of her friends growing up had been the sons of miners and fishermen.
She would have edged her mare away from Tristan to state her disapproval, but that would take her closer to Jago. He needed no encouragement. So she maintained her position equidistant between the two gentlemen and focused her gaze straight ahead.
“I think you’ve displeased her ladyship.” Jago snickered. “You know she won’t let anyone speak ill of anyone else.”
“One of her few flaws.” Tristan grinned at her. “You are too much like those Americans who think all men are created equal or some such nonsense. I mean, just look ahead of us. He isn’t my equal. You just have to listen to him talk to know it.”
“I completely agree.” Morwenna slid Tristan a sidelong glance. “Listening to him talk proves a great deal about his character.”
“So you are wise, my lady.” Tristan’s blue eyes brightened. “You recognize that the way a man speaks says a great deal about his breeding.”
“Indeed it does.” Morwenna inclined her head.
“Every time that boatbuilder opens his mouth—”
“Tris,” Jago interjected, “I’d give over, were I you.”
“He reveals his background,” Tristan finished.
“Indeed he does.” Morwenna flashed Tristan a glare that should have knocked him from his mount. “He reveals that he is courteous, thoughtful, and raised with a strong faith in God. Yes, Mr. Pascoe, you would do well to listen to a man like David Chastain and learn a great deal about how he was raised.”
Tristan’s mouth dropped open, but no words emerged.
From Morwenna’s other side, Jago laughed so hard he nearly toppled from his horse.
The three ahead glanced back with questioning looks.
“Mr. Rodda appreciates my witty repartee on breeding and the raising of children,” Morwenna said. “Mr. Pascoe does not.”
“Morwenna.” Grandmother’s mouth flattened. “Be nice.”
“I am, Grandmother.”
“To the wrong party,” Tristan muttered.
That made Jago laugh again. “I warned you, Tris. You need to learn that our Lady Penvenan can spring a trap faster than any poacher.”
“She’s not the poacher.” Tristan sent a vicious glare at David’s back. “He needs to learn that his territory for hunting the fairer sex is not amongst the upper classes.”
“Nor am I game.” Morwenna tightened her gloved hands on her reins. “I am mistress of my own life.”
But not her heart, foolish woman that she was. She had lost that to the most unsuitable man she could have come up with—one who was poor by his own admission. And a man who spoke truth to her about herself, if not himself.
And she wanted to be near him, touching his hand, his face, his shoulders that looked as though they could bear any number of burdens without bowing under the weight. That was new for her—a man who drew her to him because of who he was and not because she wanted to use him in some way. She still needed information from him, why he had that medallion for one thing, but she went for whole days forgetting he held secrets she needed.
She longed for a lifetime of forgetting he held secrets she needed to know. At that moment, she wished she were riding with him, discussing his plans for building bigger boats than cutters and gigs for naval captains and merchantmen. If she were to do that, she might give her feelings away to the others or, worse, David himself. He must not know how she felt.
“We are doomed to ever win your heart,” Jago was saying.
Morwenna snorted. “You don’t want my heart.”
She would have mentioned how he wanted the dowry her grandparents would likely give a spouse, not her heart. They both knew it, that talk of her heart was a jest.
“I don’t have
a heart for you to win,” she said instead.
“I believe that.” Tristan still looked sulky. He might be her age, but he was a mere boy.
Unbidden, her gaze strayed to David. He was a man, calm and confident of his own worth. Appealing. He would never resort to smuggling or other unlawful activity to fill empty coffers.
She winced at this disloyalty to her late husband. Conan had an estate dependent on his prosperity. Yet what had he done with the money he made? He hadn’t invested in the mines. The house was falling down around his ears, and he hadn’t spent a great deal on the farmlands.
More disloyalty, yet questions she had found no answers for. She had looked in the house for secret compartments. The closest she came was that he felt obligated to pay his father’s gaming debts, some misguided male honor notion. The gaming houses couldn’t demand payment for those debts, couldn’t send Conan to a sponging house or debtor’s prison for not paying them. Yet Conan had wasted money paying those debts. Letters to that effect were abundant among Conan’s papers.
Had Conan been a gamester himself? Of course he had. He smuggled. That was a form of gambling—with his life. He had promised to stop smuggling as soon as all debts were paid off. He just needed one more run to clear all financial obligations. That was no different than the gamester who said he only needed one more game to win back his losses. And Conan had lost the toss of the dice. He had paid the debt with his life.
Why she should wonder this now, she didn’t know. She felt as though her feelings for David had brushed aside a layer of gauze she had hung between her thinking brain and the truth regarding Conan, Lord Penvenan. She wanted him to be good since he had saved her from her poor choices in life. But he wasn’t, not in truth. He worked with violent men and died accordingly. Perhaps he had even engaged in violence.
A Stranger's Secret Page 20