She shrugged.
David chuckled. “It had the opposite effect, you know.” He rubbed his thumb along the sensitive skin behind her earlobe. “You told me of a lady who deeply regrets her past and showed me one willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her son and a husband who isn’t even around now to know. You were more interested in preserving my heart than hurting me. You—” He hesitated as several voices rang in the corridor, then returned his attention to her, sliding his thumb from her ear to her chin. “Your behavior and your words support the lady I see; they do not support the sort of lady who would resort to murder to protect a—” The footfalls and voices grew louder, pausing outside the chamber door, and David broke off again. His hand fell away, and he strode around her to fling open the door just as a lady in widow’s weeds, the veil of her hat flung back over the brim, raised her hand to knock.
Stunned by David’s words, Morwenna stared into a pair of gray-green eyes set into the face of a middle-aged beauty, and her insides twisted.
She was alone in David’s bedchamber with him in naught save shirt and breeches, and she facing his mother.
“Mama.” David’s heart eased to see his pretty, petite mother standing before him, even if her coffee-colored brows were drawn together in a frown of disapproval. “It’s good to have you here at last.”
“But you were not expecting me, I can see.” Her precise, cool voice rang clearly, if not loudly, through the room and beyond to a corridor full of the Trelawny party and physician. “Otherwise, you would not have a female in here with you only half dressed.”
“This is Lady Penvenan.” Lips twitching, David grasped Morwenna’s hand and drew her forward.
“Then she outranks me and I should have been presented to her, not the other way around.” She dropped Morwenna a curtsy. “I thank you for writing to me as soon as you had my direction. We were worried about David sailing right before that storm hit.”
“With reason, ma’am.” Morwenna sounded subdued. Her hand shook in his.
He squeezed it. “She was looking in on my well-being, nothing more, Mama. I expect you heard?”
“That Cornwall is not a safe place for you? Indeed I have.” Mama glanced at the Trelawny party. “You are kind to take care of my son. He looks better than I expected to find him to.”
“We were happy to do so.” Morwenna still spoke with the restraint of the highest born of ladies, her voice the low thrum of a half-asleep kitten—barely audible. “And now we happily leave you two alone.” With a gracious inclination of her head, Morwenna slipped past Mama with a rustle of skirts and drew the door shut behind her.
Mama wrapped her arms around David and rested her head against his chest. “I so feared we had lost you.”
“There’ve been a few times I was afraid you were going to lose me as well.” David patted her shoulder. “But I’m alive and thinking there’s little better than seeing at least one member of my family again.”
“I want my chicks gathered around me again. Andrew wrote from Southampton. He’ll be back in Bristol any day now. And if you come home with me, we will be together again and be able to plan what we do now—now that my William is gone.”
“I want to do that.” David shoved his hands into his pockets and toyed with Morwenna’s hairpin as he gazed at the blank door through which Morwenna had walked with nothing settled between them. “But I won’t be leaving with you anytime soon.”
“Why not?” Mama backed away far enough to look into his face.
David wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I need to stay here in Cornwall.”
Mama took several steps into the room, the flowing black fabric of her skirt hissing across the floor, the veil drifting behind her like smoke. When she reached the chair, she faced him, her hands on her hips. “Tell me everything, David.”
Oddly, David was reluctant to start. “Shall we wait until tea arrives?”
“I didn’t order tea. Did you?”
“No, but I have gotten to understand how these people live. We will receive refreshment in—”
A knock sounded on the door. David opened it to find a maidservant on the threshold bearing a tray with teapot, cups, and plates of pasties and cakes.
“Thank you.” David took the tray from her and carried it to the desk.
Mama stood looking down at his drawings. “That is a fine vessel you’re planning there, but nothing we’re likely to build.”
“Martin asked me to design it anyway. He found notes in Father’s desk . . .” David brushed the papers aside with one hand and set the tray in their place. “Will you do the honors?”
Mama sat and poured tea and milk into a cup, then eyed the food. “Meat pies?”
“Pasties. Everyone eats them here from miners to noblemen. I think only the ingredients change. The miners get potatoes and the gentries get beef.”
“We’re eating a great many potatoes these days.” Mama picked up a pasty. “Will this be beef?”
“It was ordered by the Trelawnys. It will have beef.”
“I saw Bastion Point. I went there first, then came this way by boat.” Mama bit into the pastry and sighed with contentment.
David smiled and carried his own refreshment to the table beside the bed so he could sit. He didn’t much feel like eating, but nibbled to make Mama happy.
“Are they as wealthy as they look?” Mama asked.
“I believe they are. One of those young men with them said something once about fifty thousand pounds a year.”
Mama choked on her tea. “And we consider ourselves blessed with one thousand a year.”
“We are.” David sipped his tea, though he wanted to gulp it. “We love one another.”
“And the Trelawnys do not?”
“They are too prideful and determined to have their own way to truly love.”
Mama eyed him above the rim of her cup. “Including Lady Penvenan?”
David met Mama’s gaze. “Including Lady Penvenan.”
“Yet you’re sweet on her anyway.”
“I’d say it’s more than sweet on her. I’d marry her if she’d have me.”
“But she won’t.” It was a statement, not a question, and Mama finished with a sigh. “Peeresses do not marry boatbuilders. Heiresses do not marry boatbuilders.”
“You married Father.”
“I was the youngest of too many daughters of a mere baronet. An impoverished baronet. A man with a large house and good income was the best I could expect.” Mama’s eyes filled with tears. “And he loved me and I him. I doubt I would have traded your father for any number of well-set-up gentlemen even if I had enjoyed the opportunity.”
“Lady Penvenan has opportunities. Good opportunities. She doesn’t need a penniless boatbuilder.” David stared into his teacup, as empty as his heart’s future. “She’s afraid to love anyone, I’m thinking. For all the Trelawny wealth, she has had an unhappy life. Her grandparents are autocratic, her husband was murdered, and her parents—”
“Yes, let us discuss her parents. Did you know they are at Bastion Point?”
CHAPTER 19
THE TRELAWNYS, MORWENNA’S PARENTS THOUGHT DEAD FOR YEARS, were in Cornwall. Should he or should he not tell Morwenna before she met her parents face-to-face for the first time in six years? And if he told her, would he not have to admit he knew, that he had known all along, that they were alive? Then he would have to admit that he had kept the information from Morwenna just as soon as he had told her he believed her, he trusted her because he loved her.
Having given up his chamber for his mother’s comfort in the crowded inn, David pondered these questions as he paced the taproom, now empty at four of the clock in the morning. A truckle bed had been set up for him in the chamber Rodda and Pascoe shared, but David had been unable to rest with them so close. Servants slept on truckle beds, and he wasn’t about to play the role of a servant with those two. Without rest, he would fare poorly on his way back to Bastion Point in the morning, and workin
g out what to say to Morwenna—if anything—was far more important.
What to say to the Trelawnys when he encountered them was perhaps more important.
“You murdered my father,” scarcely seemed appropriate.
He didn’t know if they had directly. He only had coincidence and circumstance to conclude any wrongdoing on their part. They paid Father a late-night visit.
Two days later, he disappeared with nearly every penny the business and family possessed. Then he died. A month later, David nearly died—three times.
When the Trelawnys were nowhere about.
Not that they had been about Father died either.
David slumped on the snug beside the banked fire and rubbed his aching eyes. “Heavenly Father, I can’t tell her anything. I can’t not tell her anything. Now, if I had any chance with her, it’s likely gone unless you make this right.” With a sigh, he added, “If you want to make it right.”
Of course the Lord might not want them together. David had to accept that as much as he didn’t want to. An unblessed union was worthless.
And they were so disparate in their lives, perhaps he was a fool for thinking for a moment they could share more than what they already had.
She thought him a good man. Once she learned what he’d kept from her, she would know he was not. If he did not give in to the Lord’s will for his life, he was not a good man, as much as any man was good on his own merit.
He must simply face what the Lord set forth before him instead of trying to manage things on his own. He had certainly failed at that, nearly paid for his efforts with his life.
Weary to the bone, David fell asleep on the high-backed seat. He woke to the sound of carriage wheels rumbling over the cobble-stones in the yard and the shout of the hostlers. Any moment, the maid was likely to rush through with refreshment for the travelers unless the travelers themselves entered the premises. Either way, David needed to get himself up to his shared chamber to wash and shave, if he could get hot water so early.
A peek through the window at the stable clock told him the hour was not so early after all. Daylight was breaking enough to dim the lights on the carriage and above the stable door.
He hastened up to the top floor and along the gallery to his room. Cans of water indeed already sat outside the door. David carried one inside and poured steaming liquid into the basin as quietly as he could manage. By the time he shaved, brushed and tied back his hair, and donned fresh linens, the other men were rousing themselves and grumbling about having to carry in their own water.
David considered leaving the others with their grumbling, but remembered how Morwenna had called him a good man, and retrieved the other can of water for Pascoe and Rodda. Neither man thanked him. He merely smiled at them and departed.
As he passed her door, Morwenna stepped onto the gallery. She jumped at the sight of him, then offered him a tentative smile. “Is your mother well?”
“She is, though was weary, so I left her to sleep.”
“She’s very pretty.” Morwenna’s eyes danced. “But then, you favor her.”
“Are you saying I’m pretty?” David paused beside her, hands shoved into his coat pockets to stop himself from drawing her to him.
She shook her head, sending the silly little feather on her hat bobbing. “You’re too big to be called pretty. You’re simply a pleasure to the eyes.”
He drank in her beauty with the first rays of the sun kissing her cheeks. “Are you flirting with me, my lady?”
“I’m afraid it’s second nature to me. Or perhaps first nature. I say things without thinking about how one might take them.”
“I’d like to take them to heart.” He gave in and traced a fingertip along the path of a sunbeam on her skin.
Her lashes dropped over her eyes. “Do not. I . . . cannot until I solve the disarray in which I find my son’s inheritance.”
“On your own, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And being on your own has done so well for you thus far?”
“And how will you help when you are a self-proclaimed poor man?” She turned away and started for the steps. “Now that your mother is here, I expect you’ll be heading back to Bristol.”
“We will be heading back to Bastion Point.”
She halted and stared back at him over her shoulder. “Why?”
“I have unfinished business there. You see, Morwenna—”
Footfalls rang on the wooden planks of the gallery. “You dare call her by her Christian name?” Tristan Pascoe strode between them and offered Morwenna his arm. “I should have been here sooner, my lady, to prevent this insult to your dignity.”
David waited to see if she would renounce him for the low-class clod he knew most people thought him. If she did, she wasn’t the lady he thought her.
“I am not insulted, Mr. Pascoe.” Eschewing Pascoe’s proffered arm, she started down the steps ahead of all of them.
“She is such a kindhearted lady, even to your sort.” Tristan shot David a glare that should have shriveled him, and followed Morwenna.
David started to follow, his heart lightened by her championship of him, but someone called his name and he turned back to see Sir Petrok holding open the door to his chamber. “Will you join us, Mr. Chastain?”
Did the man expect him to say no?
David nodded and retraced his steps as far as the Trelawnys’ room. They seem to have had coffee carried up to them—service for three, as their room was large enough to sport a table and chairs. Lady Trelawny already resided there.
Sir Petrok motioned David to take one of the other chairs. “We may not gain another opportunity to speak.”
“About what, sir?” David drew out the chair but waited for the older man to sit first.
“You have nice manners,” Lady Trelawny said. “Though I can see why after meeting your mother. Her family is from near Bath, is it not?”
“Yes, my lady.” David accepted the cup of coffee she poured for him. “She married far beneath her.”
“So did our elder granddaughter. She married an American.” Sir Petrok’s eyes twinkled. “Some would say that’s worse than her marrying a poor Englishman.”
David stirred sugar he didn’t want into his coffee to have something to do with his hands. “I have never met an American, so hold no opinion on the merits or demerits of their character.”
Sir Petrok laughed. “You are diplomatic, I see. Well, we aren’t from the highest stock. Let me be more accurate and say that, once upon a time, the Trelawnys of our branch and Phoebe’s family, especially Phoebe’s family, were fine stock. But they fled during the Civil War in the 1640s and lived by their wits and not always lawfully for many decades until they found their way back here. Many consider our bloodline polluted or diluted with common stock. We prefer to think that we look at the character of a man before the history of his family.”
“Except for our elder son.” Lady Trelawny sighed. “He and his wife are inclined to prefer blood over character.”
David concentrated on removing the spoon from his cup and setting it on his saucer without spilling a drop of coffee. He wanted to drink some of the rich brew, but his heart pounded so quickly his hands shook, and he feared pouring the contents down his front if he lifted the cup.
“We have said we are not opposed to you courting our granddaughter,” Sir Petrok continued. “And, with the events of two days ago so recent, I think we need to know why someone is trying to kill you.”
David curled his fingers around the edge of the table and chose his words with care. “I believe someone fears my father left me some kind of message before he died. Or I saw something during the wreck, or . . .” Weariness overwhelmed him, and he bowed his head. “I wish I knew for certain. It might be as simple as the fact that—”
The words choked in his throat. He could not tell these people, these kind people who overlooked his lowly station in life in giving him permission to court their granddaughter, that
his life could be endangered because of their own son and his wife. The Trelawnys, the younger ones, were the key to all of this for certain, and he couldn’t breathe a word of it, could not make accusations against the son and daughter-in-law of his host without more information.
“I’m going to ask some questions at the Bolithos’, with your permission,” he concluded. “The physician here said something must have been put into my food there.”
“Servants, alas,” Lady Trelawny said, “are all too easily bribed.”
“You have our permission and any aid we can provide.” Sir Petrok rose, signaling an end to the interview. “Tell us if you learn or remember anything.”
“Of course.”
“Let us go down to our breakfast. It’ll be a long day’s ride.”
They left the chamber and headed for the ground-floor parlor. On the way, David detoured to fetch Mama. She appeared more rested, but a tremor around her mouth suggested she was troubled in her mind.
“You must tell her of her parents’ return, David,” Mama said as she greeted him. “I have reached this conclusion this morning upon waking.”
“I think I cannot win either way.” He offered Mama his arm. “And opportunity is going to be scarce.”
He tried. He offered to help her mount, hoping he could then ride beside her, but she accepted the aid of a hostler from the inn and drew up beside her grandfather. Though the conformation of the party changed, seven riders this time, David never managed to find himself beside her when he could talk to her.
He might have done so at the Bolithos’ cottage, but he had other matters he wished to tend to there. With the excuse—a true one—that he needed a walk after the long ride, David made his way around the house and into the kitchens. The staff stared at him, their silence crying out their discomfort to have a guest invade their domain, but then he spoke and his accent, perhaps a little exaggerated for the purpose, gave him entrée. A giggling maid offered him tea, the elderly cook gave him thick slices of dark bread and thicker slices of ham—“Instead of that dainty fare the quality demands”—and soon David found himself seated at the scrubbed kitchen table with a repast he far preferred to more cold meats and salad.
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