‘Then for God’s sake stop acting so guiltily yourself, for anyone hearing you would begin to question whether you’re truly blameless. Think on that, Ben.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t feel guilty!’ he said bitterly. ‘My brother-in-law is dead, and his wife lost the will to live and died a few weeks after him, leaving three orphaned children. Wouldn’t you be guilty if you had that on your conscience?’
‘Ben, I beg you not to let emotion take the place of common sense. Go home and sleep on it, boy, and come to my chambers tomorrow, where I’m preparing our brief. We must have a solid defence to offer. You’ve already come up against Mr Princeton, who’s acting for the Honourable Mrs Stanforth. He’s a formidable opponent, and with all the public interest aroused in your case, Princeton will be anxious to make a name for himself.’
Ben glared at the lawyer, his feelings of disgust transparent on his face.
‘God, this whole thing sickens me. Is it some kind of circus, with you and he fighting for the glory of winning the case, and to hell with who pays the bills in the end?’
Richard’s mouth gave a flicker of a smile. ‘It’s something like that,’ he agreed.
‘And I’m to be thrown to the lions, am I?’
Richard’s smile faded. ‘Not if I have my way! Killigrew Clay isn’t going under without a fight, and I’m more than ready for it. You may be headstrong, but you’re your father’s son, and I have a strong allegiance to the pair of you. Trust me, Ben. All I ask is that I don’t have to fight you as well as Princeton.’
It made sense and Ben knew it. But he knew that one month from now he would rather be anywhere than sitting in the front of the court at Bodmin Assizes. The eyes of the whole district would be on him, the pen of Lew Tregian for The Informer eagerly picking up every word that was said, to be relayed to the rest of the county.
He didn’t relish the thought of being so exposed one little bit. Richard Carrick was not a young man – he had years of experience behind him, and the glint in his eyes reassured Ben that he would indeed fight tooth and nail to save the Killigrew fortunes.
‘All right, Richard,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I’ll try to curb my temper in future.’
‘Then at last you’re talking sense.’
* * *
Bess dandled Primmy on her lap, reluctant to let her go with Morwen after such a delightful day with her grandchildren. The boys were outside, rushing about the garden now, tugging at Morwen’s hand and showing her first one thing after another that Hal had planted.
‘Grandpa says this be our own garden,’ Walter shouted, jumping up and down in his excitement. ‘There’s cabbages in there, and next spring Grandpa says we can plant carrots and flowers if we like. An’ under a bush over there, Grandpa says some primroses will be showing in a few months, an’ we can pick ’em for our Primmy—’
‘Slow down, Walter!’ Morwen laughed. Grandpa was clearly the hero of the moment. Her eyes were soft with love as she tried to calm him.
It took so little to restore the laughter to a child’s eyes, she thought. The pity of it was that an adult took so much longer to recover from tragedy. Bess was pleased to have the children here today, but Morwen suspected that half of her pleasure was because she wouldn’t have to sit alone with her sewing and brood over Sam and Dora. The children were a panacea as well as a delight. Hadn’t she found that out for herself?
For a second, when she’d come down from telling the bees up at a remote moorland cottager’s shed, she had been very tempted to tell her mother about the coming baby. It would have given Bess such joy. But she had resisted the temptation because it was Ben’s right to know first, and Morwen wasn’t ready for the telling yet.
* * *
Long before the dreaded day for the court case arrived, nerves were strained to breaking-point in the Killigrew household. Ben could barely speak to anyone without flaring up. The children irritated him, and he complained loudly and often at the mess Primmy made, and the way Morwen pampered her.
‘Ben, for goodness’ sake, she’s only a babby—’
‘Stop using that ridiculous name for her,’ he snapped. ‘The word is baby, and it’s time you used it. You’re not a common bal maiden any longer, so please don’t behave like one.’
Morwen’s mouth dropped open in disbelieving fury. How dare he speak like that to her! She had been toiling with poor little Primmy all day, who was miserable with teething. The boys were crotchety because the day was wet and they had wanted to be taken for a walk, and the charm of this big new house had palled slightly with familiarity.
Morwen was feeling absolutely wretched with the sickness she had so far managed to hide from Ben, and now he had the nerve to treat her like some kind of skivvy!
‘I’m sorry if I displease you, Sir!’ She spoke with exaggerated correctness. ‘If I’d been born a fine lady like Mrs Askhew, no doubt these appalling mistakes wouldn’t slip from my lips so often!’
‘You only make yourself sound more foolish by referring to Jane in such disparaging terms—’ he snapped.
‘What terms are those, Sir? Please speak in words of one syllable so that a poor bal maiden can understand.’
She was treading dangerous ground and she knew it, but his arrogance incensed her. They should be close in times of trouble, but Morwen had begun to realise more and more that Ben was shutting her out of any discussions about the court case.
It seemed as though he wanted to fight this battle without her, and the feeling hurt. And when she was hurt, she hit back any way she could.
‘I’m sorry I referred to you in that way—’ Ben said stiffly.
‘Why?’ she whipped back. ‘’Tis what I was, and I see no reason to be ashamed of it. These hands that you call so pretty and soft were once as red and roughened as any weathered clayworker’s. Don’t ’ee remember the night I first came here and met Jane Carrick, and how embarrassed I was by the sight of my own hands? Or mebbe such a thought didn’t occur to you and your father, so magnanimous in inviting we poor Tremaynes to supper in the midst of the fine folk from St Austell and Truro!’
‘Have you quite finished?’ he asked at the end of this tirade. ‘God, you people are so humble it makes me sick. I thought you’d got over all that by now – and can’t you ever forget all that nonsense about Jane?’
‘This is not just about Jane,’ Morwen said bitterly.
‘This is about the two people we are, and there are times when I wonder what on earth Morwen Tremayne is doing in this big house, when her roots are elsewhere.’
Ben was suddenly aware that this was truly more than a mere upset between them. God knew he was temperamental of late, but so was she. And the two of them wrangling together was like setting a match to a tinderbox.
‘Morwen, roots are there to grow.’ He came across to where she was rocking the snuffling Primmy on her lap. He put his arms around both of them, enveloping them both.
‘Grow with me, dar. Don’t destroy what we have. We have the beginnings of our own little family tree here, with Sam’s children – our children. Bend with me, Morwen, for I couldn’t bear it if our tree broke.’
She heard the desperation in his voice, and knew that his pride was stretched to the limit in expressing himself so, and as always she responded to it. Her face twisted to meet his, her kiss sweet on his lips, the simple words said from her heart.
‘We’ll never break, dar,’ she said. ‘We’ve come through too much to let this trouble divide us. We love you and we’re all behind you, but ’tis not where I want to be. My place is alongside you, Ben. Don’t shut me out.’
As if tired of being squashed between her two people, Primmy began to wail and to struggle against Ben’s chest. He gave a crooked smile as he took the baby from Morwen.
‘It seems this little lady doesn’t want to shut me out, either,’ he said huskily. ‘Let’s find some cloves for those nasty teeth of yours, my baby.’
Wordlessly they forgave each other. Morwen and her mother already kn
ew that the children could restore their calm faster than any potions. Ben would discover that too.
Her stomach lurched uncomfortably, and the unpleasant taste of bile rose in her mouth. But it wasn’t entirely unwelcome. It meant that their own baby, their flesh and blood, was still growing safely inside her, another precious part of the dynasty they were creating.
Morwen had almost hurled the fact at Ben just now, but it would have been so wrong to tell him in bitterness. She thanked God that her anger hadn’t taken complete control of her.
Telling Ben about their coming baby was a moment to be shared with love, as it had begun.
Chapter Twenty-One
The case of the town of St Austell versus Ben Killigrew at Bodmin Assize Court was set for the twentieth day of November, 1855. The Informer blazoned the fact as front-page news for several issues before the due date, so that Ben said bitterly that there could hardly be a man, woman or child who didn’t see Ben Killigrew for a villain, and would attend to see justice done, seeing it as something of an outing.
‘Justice will prove that you were not to blame,’ Morwen said calmly, in answer to another angry outburst from Ben. She let him rant and rage and let the tide of it wash over her, having realised that it was the best way to handle the explosive situation at home. Once the trial began, perhaps some of the tension would be released at last.
And when the outcome was known… Morwen’s thoughts never got that far. Her imagination drew pictures that were too uncomfortably vivid to contemplate. They couldn’t begin to guess at the findings of the court.
The Honourable Mrs Stanforth had plenty of town and county support behind her. The local Member of Parliament had recently taken an interest in the doings of his remote country seat, no doubt thinking the publicity might do him some good at Westminster, Richard Carrick had commented sourly. Nonetheless, it was fast becoming more than a mere wealthy clay-works owner against an indignant townslady.
As for her, she wished to see it proven that she was more than an hysterical woman who had first called Ben Killigrew’s rail tracks unsafe. She wanted justice done. If she had her way, she would rid the town for ever of the rough clayworkers who lowered the tone of the district, but while the clay provided a livelihood, she knew that was never likely to happen.
Ben insisted that Morwen didn’t attend the hearing, and she insisted just as angrily that she would. It became a battle of wills between them.
‘Your place is at home with the children. They need you here, Morwen—’
‘The children can spend the day with my mother, and my place is with you. Haven’t we agreed on that countless times?’
‘I don’t want you being upset—’
‘I’ll be more upset if I don’t know what’s happening,’ she said feelingly. ‘Do you really expect me to sit at home twiddling my thumbs while I wonder if some poncy lawyer is wiping the floor with Mr Carrick’s evidence?’
Ben grinned at her eloquent phrasing. ‘I never know what to expect from you,’ he said abruptly. ‘You always did do the unexpected—’
‘Isn’t that what you always called part of my charm, dar?’ Morwen could afford to be soft and wheedling now, knowing when she had won. She put her arms around his neck, looking up into his eyes, pressing her warm body against his in a deliberately provocative way.
‘Ben, we must be together in this. And afterwards, when ’tis all put to rights, we can start life again.’
She nearly said they could forget the disaster, but that could never be. The disaster had caused Sam’s death, and there were still clayworkers with wives and children receiving medical treatment for which Ben was paying generously. Where would it end? Morwen thought with a shiver.
But he was already responding to the soft and pliant woman in his arms. The woman he had always wanted and desired, and loved with a passion that had been sadly neglected of late. If she tantalised him, then he would tease her too, he thought, with a burst of his old masculine arrogance.
He squeezed her waist, and ran his hands over her curving hips, moving upwards until they cupped her breasts. Beneath the warm fabric of her day dress he felt the firm fullness of them, and the peaking of their tips as his fingers gently circled them into awareness of his touch. He laughed tenderly as he felt her squirm slightly at his questing hands.
‘You’re putting on weight, Mrs Killigrew,’ he said softly. ‘I like it, though. It suits you, and it more than suits me. A man likes to hold a real woman in his arms, and not a bean-stick.’
‘I was never that!’ Morwen said breathlessly.
The real reason for her increasing roundness trembled on the tip of her tongue. Would the news of his expected child give Ben more self-confidence at his forthcoming ordeal, or would he be even more beset with anxiety over Morwen’s health?
‘When all our troubles are over, we’ll put the children into your mother’s care for a few weeks,’ Ben went on. ‘If the country of France is good enough for our noble Queen, then perhaps we should take a look at its delights too. Does that appeal to you, Mrs Killigrew?’
He smiled down at her, clearly expecting her to be bowled over by such a thought. And so she was, but not in the way Ben anticipated. Once the trial was over, she intended telling him their own news, and she doubted very much that he’d want to go travelling at such a time.
Nor too, would she want to send Sam’s children to her mother’s so soon after their own change of circumstances. One major upset in their lives was enough for their small minds to accept, without temporarily losing the two people on whom they had already come to depend and love.
But with an inner wisdom, Morwen said none of this to Ben at that moment. Now was the time for pressing her face close to his, and telling him that the idea sounded wonderful, and that travelling to France was something she had always thought happened to other people…
‘And not to the humble Tremaynes?’ he said teasingly, and there was no malice in the words, nor in her laughing agreement.
Reluctantly he let her go as Walter and Albert were brought down from the nursery by a huffy red-cheeked maidservant, saying that they wanted their tea and were leading her a right old dance until they got it.
Morwen laughed, her eyes twinkling as she watched poor Fanny blow a stray wisp of hair from her eyes, and guessed at the antics Walter and Albert had been putting her through.
‘I’ll take over now, Fanny,’ she said at once, and the children ran to her side with relief.
‘I don’t like Fanny, Mammie,’ Walter complained with the shrill candour of children. ‘She smells o’ cabbage water an’ she makes me wipe my nose every minute.’
‘Well, so you should!’ Ben scooped him up in his arms. ‘You don’t want to end up with dewdrops on the end of it like old Jack Frost, do you?’
The boys shrieked with laughter at that, but Morwen hadn’t missed the fact that Walter had called her Mammie naturally and for the first time. She prayed that Ben wouldn’t correct him on it, choosing this moment to say that Walter should have said Mamma, and crush his newfound identity in this house.
Thankfully, Ben ignored it, but Morwen knew it must come. She would be Mamma, not Mammie. The children of Killigrew House mustn’t use the easy-sounding country mode of address. How grand it sounded to be Mamma… and Morwen suddenly realised how little it mattered after all. The love would still be the same, and that was at the heart of it.
* * *
The morning of the twentieth of November was grey and colourless. It matched the feelings in Morwen’s heart. Ben had been sitting with his father for more than half an hour now, and it was well past the time that they should set out for Bodmin. It wouldn’t do for the defendant to be late at his own trial.
The whole affair was still unbelievable to Morwen. For some years Ben had been the town’s darling, and now they were hounding him. She had no doubt that there would be plenty of them at the Assize court, jostling to get the best sight of Ben Killigrew getting his come-uppance.
; And for what? For building a railway and taking the clay blocks to Charlestown port without offending the townsladies’ dignity by throwing up flurries of choking dust through the town and threatening to damage the narrow streets by the heavy out-dated clay waggons!
For giving the townsfolk their excursions and allowing them to exclaim in their superior fashion at the quaint clayworkers’ garb and give pretty names to the clay tips and the very country in which the clayworkers lived and breathed. For generously taking the clayworkers’ children and their families on outings to the sea that they would never otherwise afford!
Her thoughts veered away from the painful memories of that day. But it was all so unfair. Ben had been their hero, and was now painted as the blackest villain that ever lived.
The Informer had been scrupulously fair in pointing out the fors and againsts of Ben Killigrew’s cause, and the articles had provoked a series of letters to the editor that Lew Tregian had undoubtedly delighted in printing. Ben’s troubles would have vastly increased the circulation of the Truro newspaper.
Charles Killigrew had already commented on that fact to his son that morning. Charles was not ready yet to be put out to pasture, and had managed to tell his son so in painfully slow terms. He wanted to know all that went on, and Doctor Pender had sighed regretfully and told Ben he may as well tell him everything, or none of them would get any peace.
Charles knew very well that today could change the Killigrew fortunes, and urged his son to keep control of his temper.
‘You’re a fine one to give such instructions,’ Ben grinned. ‘If you were in my place, you’d be roaring like a lion, and to hell with the consequences.’
Charles gave a lop-sided grimace. He was going through a fairly lucid patch, his speech more intelligible, and he agreed with Ben whole-heartedly.
‘Don’t be goaded into saying what you don’t mean. Let Richard guide you. Lions stalk their prey before they pounce.’
Clay Country Page 27