by Sara Seale
"I'm sorry we are not more prepared for you," she said, walking with Shelley up the wide, shallow stairs. "But Mr. Penryn gave us no warning he was bringing home a bride until yesterday."
Shelley felt the chill of the unexpected guest who has made trouble for the staff.
"I'm sorry," she said a little helplessly. "I'm sure he didn't mean to inconvenience you."
"Mr. Penryn has a perfect right to inconvience his employees. He pays good wages," said Mrs. Medlar, and Shelley felt reproved.
The housekeeper paused at the head of a long corridor and opened a door.
"This is your room," she said, standing aside for Shelley to enter. "All the Penryn brides have slept here, so I've been told."
"How big it is," said Shelley, timidly viewing the massive furniture with misgiving.
"All the rooms at Garazion are big," Mrs. Medlar said. "Too big for these days of short staff. Well, if you've all you want, ma'am, I'll be going down. Mr. Penryn will be up
before long, I don't doubt."
Left alone, Shelley stood in the middle of the room and looked at the high tester bed which, for all its size, seemed marooned, a small island on its own in this vast sea of space. She was still standing there when someone knocked on the door and Nicholas came in.
"How lost you look in all this space," he said. "We can change the room, you know, if you don't like it."
"No. It's strange to me, that's all," she said. This room, another, what did it matter?
He looked at her rather sharply but made no comment except to lay a white Frau Karl Druschki on the the dressing-table.
"There's a rose for you," he said. "And I've left something for you to pin it on with."
He crossed the room and took her hands in his.
"Does the bed frighten you?" he said. "I saw you looking at it. The tester won't tumble down on your head, you know."
She tried to smile, and after a little silence he led her across the room to another door.
"I sleep in there," he said prosaically, and opened the door for her to see inside.
Both relief and shame at her own thoughts sent the colour to her face, but he merely touched her cheek in passing and went into his room and shut the door.
She sat down at the big triple mirror and began to comb out her hair. She would get used to the space, she told herself, used to the canopied bed and to Nicholas next door. She saw his rose lying where he had left it, and beside it an exquisite brooch set in the form of a true lovers' knot with diamonds and sapphires. The colour flooded her cheeks again and she picked up the brooch and the rose and ran to the dividing door between their rooms.
"Nicholas," she called. "Please come out!"
He opened the door remarking:
"There's nothing to stop you from coming in."
"Oh, Nicholas, it's so lovely..."
"The brooch? A small wedding-present. Tomorrow I'll find you some more trinkets." "But I've nothing for you," she said sadly.
He smiled.
"Let me pin it on for you, then we'll go down to dinner."
Shelley felt very solitary at her end of the long table. A very forest of candelabra seemed to be between her and Nicholas and the light from the candles dazzled her so that she could not see his face. Penryns looked down from the walls, all of them dark, all with that piercing regard which she found so disconcerting in Nicholas, and the high, carved back of her chair was cold against her shoulders.
Baines at her elbow was pouring champagne into one of the delicate fifteenth-century goblets which had come fromVenice, and she caught the gleam of the glass Nicholas was raising to her.
"To you, Mrs. Penryn," he said. She raised her own timidly.
"To you, Nicholas," she replied, and sipped the wine nervously.
It seemed a long meal to Shelley. She was unused to having a servant in the room and she could think of nothing to say. At last the table was cleared, and the coffee set before her on a heavy silver tray, and Baines had left them.
Nicholas carried his brandy to her end of the table, and drew up a chair beside her.
"That's less lonely," he said.
He looked at her sitting so straight in her high-backed chair, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and her eyes, wide and grave under the straight fringe which shone silver in the candlelight.
"You look like the portrait of the child, now," he said. "You are only a child, aren't you, Shelley? Does Garazion seem very strange to you?"
"A bit," she said forlornly.
He reached for her hand, turning it gently palm upwards in his own. It was her left hand, and the plain platinum ring moved loosely under his fingers.
"Regrets?" he asked, and she looked at him, seeing the sinister lift which the scar gave to his eyebrow, the little twist
to his mouth; but seeing also the gentleness, the odd humility in his eyes.
"No," she said gallantly. "No, Nicholas. Just give me time."
"Well, pour out the coffee," he said briskly. "And drink your brandy, it will do you good."
They went back to his study, and he showed her his collection, telling her how he had acquired each piece. She watched him handling glass and delicate china with his firm, beautiful hands, touching each object with loving care, inviting her ill-informed opinion, and did not realize that he was like a little boy, laying his treasures at her feet. She only knew that she was desperately tired, that Garazion was like a museum, dead and unfriendly, and that she was a Penryn - the only fair Penryn who had ever come there.
"Tomorrow," Nicholas was saying, "I will show you the chests. Materials - silks, brocades, velvets - all brought back through the years by the coasters. We will have them made into dresses for you. You are, you know," he smiled crookedly, "the best piece in my collection. You must have the perfect setting."
She did not realize that in his own way, he was making the most subtle love to her. She only knew that he treated her like a treasure which he had added to his collection, and that her father had owed him money.
"Mrs. Medlar doesn't like me," she said irrelevantly.
"Mrs. Medlar?" His thick eyebrows drew together in the familiar uncompromising line. "Has she been impertinent?"
"Oh, no" said Shelley quickly. "But - " She tried to laugh. "Perhaps you upset her arrangements. Did you just walk in and say 'I'm going to be married tomorrow; have everything ready.'?"
He smiled.
"Something like that. She hasn't complained, I hope?"
"No. But you are very secretive, aren't you? I know nothing of Garazion, and Garazion knows nothing of me."
"You're very tired, aren't you?" he said gently. "Go to bed, my dear."
In Shelley's room, the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn across the windows and a lamp stood on the dressing-table and another on the little table by her bed.
The house was very quiet. She missed the sound of footsteps coming from the inn after closing time, the voices calling good night, the wash of the sea and the sound of a ship's siren out in the bay. Outside her windows there was the moor stretching endlessly, silent, watchful, and she a prisoner inside the high granite walls.
She heard Nicholas come up and go to his room, and still she stood, in her long pale dressing-gown, listening to the silence. She was still standing there when he opened the door between their rooms.
"Not in bed yet?" he said, and stood watching her. "No, I-it's so quiet."
He went to her, and his hand was gentle under her chin, raising her face to his.
"You're afraid," he said, and brushed the fringe from her forehead.
She looked up at his dark face and knew that it was true. She was afraid, afraid of this strange man whom she knew so little, of the demands he had every right to make, of her own ignorance and inexperience.
Her face, lifted to his in the moonlight, was young and defenceless.
"Nicholas, I -1 - " she stammered.
"Don't be afraid of me," he said, and his hands went to her shoulders, drawing her to him.
"You are so lovely, Shelley -such a charming child - help me to make you happy."
She placed her own hands against his breast, holding him off with desperate appeal.
"I don't know you," she said. "Give me a little time to get used to you."
His eyes were quizzical.
"There's only one way of getting used to me, you know," he said. "You married me, my dear. What did you expect?" "I don't know," she said forlornly. "I don't know..." "But you expected a lover, surely?"
A lover? No, she had never thought of the dark Penryn as
that. He had never made love to her during their short engagement, or, if he had, she had not understood.
"A lover?" she said, feeling even then the comfort of his hands, and striving to understand him. "But we don't love each other. You said you didn't expect that."
The gentleness went out of his hands, and his face was suddenly hard and demanding.
"No," he said. "I don't expect that, but I do expect the recognized privileges of marriage. You surely didn't marry me expecting less?"
"No..." she whispered.
"Come, then, I must teach you. We cannot remain strangers, you and I."
His arms closed round her;, and she stood passively against him, her face lifted to his in mute acceptance of whatever he should demand of her. But in the moment before his mouth closed on hers, the moonlight fell full on his disfigurement, cruelly etching the scar which twisted that side of his face into such sinister ugliness. In his urgency he had forgotten to turn his head from her. For a moment she could not control her instinctive recoil, and she began to struggle.
"Don't fight me, relax, darling," she heard him say, but she was beyond reason, beyond pity.
"I can't ... I can't ..." she cried. "Nicholas, forgive me, but I can't..."
He let her go, and his voice, when at last he spoke, held such strange bitterness that she hid her face in her hands.
"I was forgetting," he said. "I should have drawn the curtains, and put out the lights."
The frightened tears trickled through her fingers, but she could find no words. A vast weariness engulfed her, and a growning sense of utter inadequacy.
"I'm sorry ..." she whispered. "I'm so sorry..."
There was silence, then she felt his fingers on hers, drawing the hands away from her face.
"Look at me, Shelley," he said. The hard urgency had gone from his voice, and only a great sadness remained. "Does my face shock you so very much?"
She raised her eyes to his, and what she read there made her want to recall her first, instinctive revulsion.
"I was stupid," she said. "If you will give me time ..."
He thrust his hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown.
"Time?" he repeated ironically. "Time to get used to the monster before he can at least demand tolerance? Well, I suppose it's natural. I had no right to expect that I could be - anything but repugnant to you."
She made a move towards him.
"I - I'm willing to give you anything you wish," she said. He made no effort to touch her.
"No, Shelley," he said, and there was an infinite weariness in his voice. "I wouldn't hurt you, and I won't distress you any further. Go to bed, my dear, you're worn out."
"If I've hurt you -" she began a little desperately, and he replied with his old gentleness:
"That was my own fault. I learned long ago not to be hurt. I should have remembered that tonight."
"Why did you marry me?" she asked, and they were not the words she had meant to say.
"Why do you think?"
"I don't know ... I don't know ... I only know why I married you, and it wouldn't be the same."
"No, it wouldn't be the same," he said harshly. "What was it your beast did with Beauty?"
She looked bewildered.
"Beauty? Oh, he kept her for a year and a day."
"And then?"
"Then she married him."
He turned the disfigured side of his face away from the moonlight.
"I see. You're very young, aren't you, Shelley?" he said. "Good night, my dear."
"Nicholas, I - " her hands went to his shoulders. He turned them palm upwards, and kissed them lightly, each in turn.
"Good night," he said again, and was gone. Shelley looked at the closed door and a sense of failure took her and brought shame and also bewilderment. She was so
tired ... so tired ... She climbed into the great bed, and lay watching the moonlight flood across the dressing-table catching the sparkle of the diamonds in Nicholas' brooch. She thought of the convent and of her little white bed, so narrow, and so safe, and she turned her face into the pillow and wept.
She woke suddenly, conscious that something had disturbed her. It must have been much later, for the moonlight had shifted and now lay in a patch across the foot of the bed. She sat up, listening, her heartbeats loud in her ears, and then she heard it. The sound of a cat crying outside her door, and the faint scratch of claws on wood.
"Oh!" She flung back the bedclothes. A cat would be company. It would curl against her, purring and kneading her with its claws, and she would tickle its soft stomach and watch it roll over in ecstasy, and fall asleep with its contented breathing in her ears.
She opened the door and it slipped inside, a great Persian with tail erect and yellow eyes gleaming in the moonlight. It rubbed itself against her legs and she picked it up and carried it to the bed.
"You're warm ... you're alive ..." she whispered to it, waiting for its purr.
But it would not stay. It kept running back to the door with little throaty cries, and, reluctantly, Shelley let it out again. She watched to see where it went, but the cat ran a little way down the corridor and paused, looking back and crying.
"Where do you want to go?" she asked it softly, and it ran a little way and cried again.
Shelley pulled on her dressing-gown and followed it. The cat seemed pleased, running ahead, and pausing to make sure she followed. The cat turned down another corridor, past closed doors and windows, down some steps and into another, smaller passage where it stopped. Shelley stopped, too, the silence of the house enveloping her. Not quite silent, though. Somewhere, someone was crying.
The cat stalked to a door and lifted a paw to scratch, and Shelley opened the door very quietly to let it in.
The bedroom was almost as big as her own, with the same massive furniture and tester bed. Sitting up in the bed was a
young boy, a shaft of moonlight slanting across his dark, tumbled hair.
The crying stopped and they stared at each other.
"Why are you crying?" Shelley asked.
The boy gulped.
"It was Mitzi. She sleeps with me, and I couldn't find her." The cat sprang on to the bed and he gathered it into his arms. "She is here now, my Mitzi. Who are you? I didn't know there was another child in the house."
Shelley shut the door behind her.
"I'm not a child," she said quietly.
"Aren't you? You look like a child with your long silver hair. What's your name?" "Shelley."
"He was a poet, wasn't he? Why have you got a poet's name?"
"My mother loved him."
"My mother's in India. I'm too delicate for India." "Are you?"
She came slowly towards the bed and he watched her with his great dark eye's still bright with tears. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Martin," he said with surprise that she should not know. "I'm seven."
"Are you? And I'm eighteen. Do you live here?"
He stroked the cat, curling up in the tumbled bedclothes.
"For a little while," he said indifferently. "When I'm strong they'll send for me, though. Till then I have to live with my Uncle Nick. I hate him."
Shelley felt she must be dreaming.
"Is Nicholas Penryn your uncle?" she asked incredulously. He nodded. "Why do you hate him?"
"He frightens me. He has an awful face. Do you know what they call him in these parts? Old Nick, and that m
eans the devil."
"No - no, Martin. He's very kind."
"Do you know him? Who are you?"
She smiled.
"I'm your Uncle Nick's wife," she said. "I suppose I'm
your aunt." She suddenly began to laugh and he joined in with a high, nervous giggle.
They laughed a little hysterically, then stopped abruptly, staring at each other. She came slowly and sat on the bed and the moonlight embraced them both and shone on their young, startled faces.
"Uncle Nick hadn't got a wife when he came to see me two days ago," the boy said. "At least he didn't say he had, but then he doesn't tell me anything. He didn't tell me that my mother and father had gone back to India until they were nearly there."
"That was probably for your sake," Shelley said gently. "And he didn't have a wife two days ago. I only married him today - at least, I suppose it's yesterday now."
Martin frowned.
"What did you want to marry him for at all?" he demanded. "He's quite old."
"Not really," she said and looked at the boy with wide eyes. She was, she realized with a shock, nearer to Martin's age than she was to Nicholas'. She shivered.
"Come into my bed," Martin said.
She slipped in beside him, and they snuggled down together, while the cat made dough in the blankets, purring contentedly.
"Who looks after you?" she asked.
"Mrs. Medlar. She's kind."
Kind? Mrs. Medlar? But then she would be kind. Martin was a Penryn.
"This is such a big house," she said drowsily.
"You can get lost in it," said Martin. "Shelley, will you love me?"
"Yes, Martin."
"Better than Uncle Nick?"
"Oh, that's silly."
His dark head drooped on her shoulder, and his eyes closed. "You can't love Uncle Nick," he said. "He doesn't want anybody. I've been lonely."
Her cheek rested against his forehead. "Perhaps he's lonely too."
"No." He was nearly asleep. "Grown-ups aren't lonely."
"Sometimes they are," she said and sighed. "Sleep now, and then I'll go back to bed."
The moon set slowly, meeting the new day, and they both slept.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mrs. Medlar was shocked.