Invitation to a Cornish Christmas

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘You see now why I resent being here. This is not a joyous homecoming. There are only reminders of death and guilt here.’

  He must truly be desperate for money, then, to come back. Money or work. Maybe both. It prompted another question. How had the great Cador Kitto fallen to such levels of desperation? ‘But you are here, you’ve chosen this and you must make the best of it. You need to write the cantata.’

  ‘The past is irrelevant, now? Am I to just forget? I believe I was trying to do just that until you came and dragged me out and started asking your questions.’ Argument was his armour. She saw that now. He wasn’t attacking her as much as he was defending himself. She must be getting close to the answers if he was fighting this hard, willing to risk rudeness. She did not budge in her pursuit.

  ‘No, you do not get to be victorious, Mr Kitto. You do not get permission to wallow in misery and use it as an excuse for everything negative in your life.’

  ‘And you can’t have it both ways, Miss Treleven. You cannot tell me to embrace my past and then tell me to wipe it away.’ He sighed. ‘You see my dilemma now. Why I stayed away. In Vienna, I can ignore it.’

  She could imagine how he ignored it: women, parties, balls, drinking, gambling, dissolute living at night, composing by day. Perhaps those choices were also a stab at revenge against the strictness of his Methodist father, but that didn’t make the imagining of them any easier. A little sliver of jealousy prodded at her. She didn’t like thinking of the man who sat here on the sand beside her with other women; women who let him use them for sport perhaps just to see him smile one more time, to know that for a short while they held the attentions of this handsome, enigmatic man, a slice of the passion that bubbled so near the surface of him, the passion that was evident when he spoke, in his anger, in his laughter, even in his coldness.

  ‘Is your family nearby?’ She tried another question, something to take her mind off other thoughts. He’d mentioned his father and that some siblings had been alive when he’d left. Had he made any attempt to contact them since his arrival? There were no Kittos living in Porth Karrek at present, but perhaps they’d moved to another village. She hoped for the best. Perhaps she could encourage a reunion, a chance to heal the past. But he was not done trying to shock her.

  ‘Beyond the churchyard, Miss Treleven? No. They are all dead now. My sister lived to adulthood, but died in childbed. My brother joined the army and died in the wars, my other brother embraced a life of crime and met his end in Bodmin Jail.’

  He wanted to shock her into silence, shock her into walking away. She would not go. Shocking statements were a defensive strategy. Rosenwyn pressed on, driven in part by her own curiosity to know this man. ‘And your parents?’

  ‘My father died last year. The master of their suffering outlived all of them.’

  ‘Your mother?’ she asked softly, hesitant to know. There was enormous tragedy behind those blue eyes and golden waves, a tragedy masked by easy smiles and laughter when in the company of others and protected by a sharp-edged tongue when someone poked too close to the truths. A ballroom of two hundred glittering peers would not know the depths of loss Cador Kitto carried. He was not unlike her in that regard—a surprising discovery indeed.

  ‘She died the year I left. If she hadn’t, I might not have gone to London at all. It was her dying wish that I go. My father had resisted when Reverend Maddern first asked, but in the end he promised her. It was all she wanted. She saw the potential I had if she could just get me out of Cornwall. Her death saved me.’

  ‘Your talent saved you,’ Rosenwyn corrected, instinctively wanting to shield him from such an interpretation of a memory—that his life had been bought at the price of another. It was not the sort of memory a child should carry with them, yet it appeared he had carried it for years. ‘If you hadn’t gone then, you would have gone later. The Reverend would have seen to it.’

  He gave her a dubious shrug, only half-convinced of her argument. ‘Regardless, the legend is quite tarnished, after all. Does that disappoint you?’

  ‘Hardly. Yours is a story of resilience—the resilience of a boy who survived against the odds and the resilience of a mother’s hope, that despite those odds, her son would do more than survive, that he would somehow change the world despite his humble beginnings.’ The waves were edging closer to the tips of their shoes. They would have to go soon and she was reluctant to bring this interlude to an end.

  ‘Music does not change the world.’

  ‘I disagree.’

  Cador Kitto sighed. ‘Of course you do, Miss Treleven, but that doesn’t make you right.’

  Chapter Seven

  Dear heavens, Miss Treleven would argue with the saints if it suited her. Cade dusted cake crumbs off his hands. ‘You see the world differently than I do.’ Cade picked up a short stick and began drawing in the sand, trying to ignore the twinge of hope her words had pried open in him. ‘I used to believe that, too, back when I was innocent and naïve.’

  ‘You think I’m unworldly, Mr Kitto, because I prefer Porth Karrek to the cities of Europe.’ It was always statements with her, never questions. She asserted her beliefs and opinions with confidence. He’d meant to wound her with his comment about naïveté, as if naïveté was something to be ashamed of and he had failed. ‘Tell me, what changed your mind?’ She had him on the defensive again.

  ‘I looked at what I did, at what I do. I write music for pompous noble men who want to celebrate their birthdays, commemorate their various anniversaries. They pay me to flatter them in song, in symphony, and I do because I cannot afford to live otherwise.’ He painted it as bleakly as possible. ‘It was easy to lose sight of my hopes when the money started coming in. I’d never had so much money at my disposal before. I flattered myself that it was enough. But when the money stops, one sees there’s nothing else left that matters. What did those symphonies, those oratorios signify beyond being a means to the end of keeping me fed and sheltered?’

  She was quiet for a while, her gaze on a point near the horizon where sea met sky. Perhaps she was conceding him victory in her silence, at last. The thought disappointed him. Part of him, that hopeful part she’d awakened, didn’t want to be victorious. He wanted her to argue, to prove him wrong, because if he was wrong, then there was still hope. He did not want to be right on this account.

  ‘Music may not make a difference in a sweeping sense like laws that change an entire nation,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But it changes the world one person at a time, it touches people one at a time, it moves us, and not even in the same ways or for the same reasons.’ Argument made her magnificent. He could not take his eyes from the curve of her profile, the sweep of her cheek, the slim length of her neck. Want speared him—not just a desire to possess her beauty, but to possess her mind, to think as she thought, to see the world as she saw it. It was a new kind of wanting when it came to women, one that, for a moment, transcended the physical.

  She turned her gaze from the sea to him, those green eyes full of her passion. ‘Music does make a difference. Music inspires us to greatness, to reflection, to change. The only problem is that the musician doesn’t often see the results of his efforts. He can’t judge rightly the impact.’

  The hope inside him eased, relaxing at her words. It would not die today, not completely. ‘The defence rests, then, Miss Treleven?’ he said softly, his own gaze dropping to her lips, his body roused by her, by her argument. If he could kiss her, perhaps he could claim some small splendid piece of her.

  ‘Absolutely and irrevocably. You have a great talent. Do not underestimate it.’ Her own voice was a mere whisper above the waves. The distance between them on the sand had disappeared over the course of their exchange, both of them too caught up in their arguments to notice. He noticed now. He could see the dark pupils of her eyes, the pulse at the base of her neck, proof that she noticed, too. That she was affected. She had not made
her arguments solely out of need to be right. She’d made these arguments for him, because she’d wanted to convince him that he wasn’t useless, that his work mattered, his story mattered.

  ‘Rosenwyn.’ Her name slipped from his lips before he could rethink it. There was a quiet between them on the beach, a peace that existed nowhere else. Her eyes held his, waiting. ‘Do you know what a gift you’ve given me today?’ Even if it wasn’t the inspiration he’d been looking for, even if he hadn’t discovered the cantata story he so desperately needed, she’d given him something else: optimism, a new lens perhaps through which to view the past. Those were not things to be smirked at. His hand curled around hers, easily, naturally, as if their hands belonged entwined together. ‘I haven’t spoken of my family for ages.’ Most people didn’t have the tenacity to keep probing once he made it clear he didn’t want to talk. But Rosenwyn had persisted. ‘Thank you for making me do it, for not being frightened away.’

  She gave a breathless laugh. ‘Your secrets are safe. I won’t tell anyone.’ She wouldn’t. He was sure of it. She understood what he’d given to her today were treasures in their own right, things he did not show to the world, but he’d shown her, for whatever reason, even if that reason had been to shock.

  ‘I know.’ He brought their hands up, pressing his against hers, palm to palm as he interlaced his fingers through hers. She might be prickly and argumentative, she might be beautiful and stubborn, but she was also trustworthy. One needn’t know Rosenwyn Treleven long to know that. Honesty radiated from her along with the goodness that felt honour-bound to shop at Chegwins’. He’d been hard on her with his insinuations that she knew nothing of life. That wasn’t true. She just knew life differently than he did.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She gave another soft laugh.

  ‘What are you doing, Cade,’ he corrected with a teasing smile. ‘Say my name, Rosenwyn. I want to hear you say it.’ He should stop this before it went any further. He was flirting, playing, the way he played with courtly ladies. She deserved better. But he wanted her, wanted to hold her here on the beach before the waves took away the moment. He wanted to feel her pressed up against him, the riot of her curls in his hands as he kissed her, wanted to feel her mouth against his. If he could touch her, hold her, drink from her, perhaps he could take her passion, her optimism away with him to be a light in his darkness.

  ‘Cade.’ She made his name a caress, an invitation. A single kiss was all he wanted. Surely there was no sin in stealing one kiss. Nothing more. Cade leaned in and captured her lips, his free hand cupping her jaw, his fingers weaving through the depths of her hair, drawing her close until her mouth was entirely his. He could taste the moment she capitulated, the moment she gave over to the press of his lips, all sweet, tentative surrender. He’d surprised her, taken her unawares, although not too unaware. Her breathlessness, the beat of her pulse at the base of her neck, said she’d not been oblivious to the changing tone between them, nor was that change unwelcome. But even now, as she gave over to the curiosity of the kiss, there was a hesitance to her, a holding back, as if she didn’t dare trust herself to fully engage. Not because she didn’t want to. This was not resistance. It was hesitance. Cade had kissed enough women to respect the difference.

  He relinquished the kiss, but not her. He framed her face between his hands, his palms cupping the feminine curve of her jaw. ‘It’s only a kiss, Rosenwyn,’ he whispered.

  ‘Only a kiss? Are kisses so cheap to you, then? A kiss might cost a girl everything if seen by the wrong people, or if it’s misunderstood.’ Rosenwyn scolded him softly. Only it wasn’t a scolding. It was armour. He saw that immediately in her eyes as they rested on him, her gaze so near that he could see the flecks of gold with the green. There was sadness, too, mixed with the pleasure. Why? Because she thought the kisses cheap? Or because they reminded her of other kisses? Was that her secret?

  ‘No, not cheap.’ He would not have her thinking he was indiscriminate with his kisses. Such kisses cheapened her as much as they cheapened him. The latter he could live with. He’d done worse than kiss someone for money. But he would not make her complicit to those choices. Rosenwyn Treleven was a woman of virtuous quality, not a worldly woman of the Hapsburg court.

  ‘Then why did you do it?’ Rosenwyn prompted, searching his face. The minx wanted his answer, but she was warning him, too.

  He gave a soft chuckle, the kind reserved for the bedroom, for lying in a woman’s arms after lovemaking. ‘Can’t a man ever win with you, my darling? If the kiss is too cheap, I’m a profligate rake. If the kiss is too dear, then I’m warned away from casting pearls before swine. Can’t I simply kiss you? Can’t I simply express my gratitude for what you’ve given me today?’ he said in earnest.

  ‘A token of your appreciation?’ The tip of Rosenwyn’s tongue licked at her lips, whetting them in contemplation, the hesitancy, the sadness, lifting in her eyes. She was quite the siren with her lush mouth and searing gaze. ‘That has not been my experience.’

  He was starting to burn again, or was it more? Perhaps he hadn’t stopped burning. He’d not meant to do more than kiss her, but now that he had, a kiss might not be enough. He offered her a wry smile, his hand massaging at the base of her neck. He could not resist the tease. ‘Your experience? And what might that be?’

  ‘That kisses don’t exist in isolation. They are often beginnings. One kiss leads to another.’ Her mouth parted in brave invitation.

  Cade leaned in, his mouth hovered above hers. ‘It can work that way, Rosenwyn. Would you like it to?’ he breathed his challenge. ‘If you’d like another, come and claim it.’ He’d made his overture, the next kiss had to be hers. That was how the game worked. He didn’t pursue where he was not welcome.

  * * *

  What delicious folly this was! Rosenwyn took her kiss, her hands on his hands where they cupped her jaw, her mouth on his mouth, wide, and open and unyielding as she drank her pleasure. In this kiss, she allowed herself no quarter and it pleased them both. The kiss might have been hers, but Cade was a subtle master, leading her with his tongue, with his body, until he reclined on the sands, she above him, making it seem as if this was all her idea, that she was in charge when nothing was further from the truth. She was on the beach kissing Cador Kitto, as wildly out of control as a Cornish storm after all her resolution to the contrary and enjoying it, wanting it with every fibre of her being.

  She nipped at his lip with her teeth and let out a yelp as Cade flipped her, rolling her beneath him with a laugh as he reversed their positions. ‘Time to give you a taste of your own medicine, minx!’ He kissed her deeply, then, and she felt the sense of play that had permeated their kisses dissipating in its wake. Her body hummed with the thrill of it even as her mind whispered its last, feeble warning. Glorious, wicked trouble, but trouble none-the-less.

  ‘Oh! The tide!’ Rosenwyn gasped. A dash of cold water doused her boots, a reminder that they’d lingered too long in many ways. Cade leapt to his feet and helped her up, laughing as he grabbed her about the waist and swung her out of the way of the next wave. The tide had been rising since they’d come down and now it had nearly come all the way in. The afternoon was nearly spent.

  ‘Well, that’s one way of knowing when it’s time to go.’ Cade was all good humour as he led her to the base of the cliff path leading up to Karrek House, but there he stopped and danced her back to the cliff wall, his eyes on her mouth. ‘It’s a bit abrupt, though, for my tastes. I like a more gradual ending to an afternoon. Something like this.’ He kissed her again, softly, with promise. A promise of what? Her curiosity piqued against her better judgement. She’d only allowed herself the kiss because there could be no promises and now she was wondering what those elusive promises might be? What form they might take and should she accept? Ayleth’s wicked suggestion that she take Cade up on his offer whispered loud in her mind. But Ayleth didn’t understand passion, had never experience
d how it could sweep someone away, destroy their reason. Rosenwyn knew. She had to stop this.

  Rosenwyn pushed gently at his chest. ‘It’s late. I need to get home. I’m sorry.’ Would he understand she was sorry for more than rushing off? That she was sorry she could not give him more?

  He kissed her one last time and took her hand, leading them up the path to the headlands. She was thankful for the silence of their walk. It gave her mind time to settle itself around what had happened today. She had not planned any of what had occurred. Everything since the moment she’d stepped into the gatehouse had been a journey into uncharted territory. Did he need the silence as well? Was he thinking of their kiss at all? Was this just another flirtation for him? Perhaps he kissed women daily? His reputation suggested that was a distinct possibility. His skill suggested that reputation was not unearned.

  She studied his back with its tapered waist and square shoulders—not as broad as Eaton’s, perhaps, but no less impressive. They suited his lithe build. They suited her, too. She’d not felt overpowered by him. She’d welcomed his weight on the beach. Yet, there was a certain strength to him. She’d felt it when he’d lifted her away from the waves, when he’d helped her to her feet. A woman felt safe with him, apparently even when he was seducing her. Seduction. That was where this was headed. Could she allow it? Or would it become another mistake like Dashiell?

  By the top of the cliff, she’d made her decision. Today could be an isolated incident only. He turned to her and Rosenwyn stuck out her hand. ‘This is where we part, Mr Kitto. Thank you for the day.’