He left her in the care of Hal and Jack, the two Tremayne men as white-faced as Richard Carrick. Later, Hal commented to Bess that Ben and Morwen themselves seemed the most controlled of any of them. Sam’s little boys climbed all over him as they told Bess all that had happened.
‘If I appeared controlled to ’ee, Daddy, then you don’t know your own daughter!’ she laughed shakily. ‘My knees felt as though they were turning to jelly every second I faced all those prying faces. If it hadn’t been for seeing you and Jack behind Ben, I don’t know if I could have said all that I did.’
‘She was magnificent,’ Jack said gruffly. He wasn’t given to superlatives, except when describing the charms of Annie Boskelly, and Morwen felt a stinging in her eyes at this compliment from her brother. Matt, of course, would have been wild with his praise, but then, Matt always had a way with words…
Why she should have thought of Matt right then, she didn’t know, but her emotions threatened to run away with her. Rather than let the children see her cry, she went into the little scullery to make them all a drink. Bess followed her, and her voice was calm and soft as she closed the door behind her.
‘When are you goin’ to confide in me, Morwen? I’ve seen that look in a woman’s face before, and you’ve a certain roundness that you can’t hide from me, even if you’ve hidden it from your husband. Has the miracle happened, my lamb?’
Morwen couldn’t reply for a moment, and then she ran into her mother’s clasping arms. She hadn’t betrayed Ben’s right to know first. She should have known that her mother would guess. And there was such relief in the sharing. But she whispered to Bess not to tell anyone else just yet.
‘I’ll not tell,’ Bess said gently. ‘But tell that man of yours as soon as possible, love. ’Twill put the life back into un after today. ’Tis too late to take the children home tonight. Let your father take you in the trap, then you and Ben can be alone.’
Morwen knew she was right, and suddenly she couldn’t wait to be home, to be alone with Ben after the busy, traumatic day, and to tell him that in the spring there was to be another baby. Their very own child… she caught her breath at the thought, and as quickly she remembered the vow she and Ben had made.
To care for Sam’s children like their own… and so they would, but Morwen would have been less than human if she had not welcomed the child she carried beneath her heart with an extra special love.
* * *
The entire county would know of Ben Killigrew’s self-styled disgrace by the time The Informer was next published, Morwen was thinking as her father left her at Killigrew House. By then she hoped their own happy news would have dispelled some of Ben’s anguish. Tonight she would take away some of the pain.
It was the early hours of the morning by the time he returned. Morwen had long since retired, and she heard him creep into the bedroom, trying not to disturb her. But what she had to say couldn’t wait.
When he slid into bed beside her, her arms went around him, and before she could say a word, he was holding her close. The tension wasn’t over yet, and she realised it at once from his bitter words.
‘God, Morwen, it’s worse than I thought. Our affairs are in a sorry state. We won’t see the returns on the autumn clay despatches for several months, and Daniel says we may have to close all but Clay One to keep our heads above water with that bastard Judge Manley’s directives. A fine clay boss I’ve turned out to be. A fine husband for you—’
‘Don’t say that!’ Her voice was vibrant with anger. ‘Don’t ever say that, Ben Killigrew. You’re the only husband I ever wanted—’
‘And you’re the most beautiful and loyal wife a man could wish for,’ he muttered against the softness of her hair. ‘But it won’t solve my problems. I wish to God that it would. Everything I’ve worked for seems doomed to failure. I’m not sure it’s worth going on at all. Why bother with it all? Why not let the damn clay works fall into decay and forget they ever existed?’
Morwen knew that there would never be a better moment than this. Her voice was low and soft now, her breath a warm caress on his cheek. Her arms held him close as though to shield him from all worry. She spoke slowly, so that he would take in all the sense of her words.
‘Because it’s your heritage, that’s why! Because your father built it up from nothing to give to you, and an inheritance like that is something to be passed down through the generations.’
She took his hand and pressed it gently against her belly. ‘I give you your son, Ben, growing here under my heart, and ready to be born with the newness of the next spring. Don’t throw away our son’s heritage—’
She felt him tense as she finished speaking, suddenly too emotional to go on. She felt his hand press more protectively over her rounded belly, and heard the strangled joy in his voice as he answered. ‘Is it true? Are you certain, dar?’
‘Certain sure!’ She gave a shuddering, heartfelt laugh, because at last they were sharing in this miracle, and Ben’s defeatism had vanished, however momentarily. He shook off his tiredness like discarding a heavy cloak, demanding to know how long she had been aware of it, and why she hadn’t told him before… demanding and arrogant like the old Ben, his masculine pride and his belief in himself restored more by the second.
‘I’ve only known a month or so – yes, a whole month… no, I made up my mind not to tell you before, until today’s business was settled… Doctor Pender says I’m fine, a wonderfully healthy specimen, and there shouldn’t be any problems… but I’m thinking there may be if you crush me so…’
She was laughing and crying at the same time, because Ben was wholly here with her again, and it was as wondrous as the night they were wed, when everything was fresh and new, and the only important thing in the world was sharing their love…
‘Morwen, God knows I should be exhausted, but right now I feel as though I could conquer mountains. I want – I want – hell’s teeth, but you’ve turned me into a gibbering idiot by this news! Am I forbidden to touch you from now on? I mean, will it hurt the baby? Then again, are we in danger of Primmy waking up as usual and taking you away from me?’
Morwen felt herself blush. She, too, felt the newness of their relationship. It was a strange and beautiful feeling. She took Ben’s hand and covered her breast with it, feeling his palm close over her.
‘The children have stayed at my mother’s house. Touch me all you want to, my love,’ she whispered. ‘Lay with me, and be part of me. Your needs are my needs too, and oh, Ben, it’s been such a long lonely time without you—’
She got no further as her mouth was covered by his own. Such a tender kiss at first, deepening into one of mounting desire. All the anger of the day, of past weeks, was forgotten in the exquisite joy of belonging.
She felt his first sweet invasion inside her, and gloried in the power of a man’s body that could be alternately gentle and thrusting, and bring such pleasure to a woman. In those ecstatic moments, she pitied anyone who had not known the love she knew, and even more, she pitied every woman in the world who was not Ben Killigrew’s woman.
Despite his new-found energy, their joy was swiftly over, but as fulfilling to them both as the longest night of love. When his passion was spent, Ben lay with her in his arms, careful that his weight shouldn’t crush her.
‘Thank you, my love, for keeping this secret until the best moment of all,’ he said softly.
‘I truly didn’t know when the best moment would be. I only knew that I would recognise it when it came,’ she answered.
‘Your instincts were always uncannily right. I always said you were a little fey, my dar.’
‘Not fey. Just Cornish,’ she said, and they both knew that for certain people it was one and the same.
He was aching with the need to sleep, but still reluctant to let go of consciousness and the best news a man could have.
‘Shall we tell the children they’re to have a little brother or sister yet?’
‘I’ve wondered about that, an
d I think so. It will make them feel part of a real family. Besides, we must tell your father tomorrow, and mine too.’
‘Your mother will be thrilled. I’m surprised she hasn’t already guessed,’ he murmured, no longer able to stay awake, and thankfully, Morwen saw no need to tell him that Bess was already aware of her coming fourth grandchild. Ben finally slept, still holding her, and they were still in one another’s arms when daylight awoke them.
* * *
The Tremaynes and the Killigrews had something to celebrate, and while they did so they could manage to put the other matter out of their minds. But for Ben those other times encroached on him like a cancer. He had to find so much money. His own priority was to help the clay folk who had suffered, but he was already doing that, and it was no hardship to continue.
The Judge’s dictum to refurbish the badly broken St Austell roads was an insult, since Killigrew’s clay waggons had not been solely responsible for their condition, but Richard Carrick had advised him against an appeal, which would only cost more money in delays and they might very well lose anyway.
The railway was to be torn up, as Ben himself had wanted, and the entire moorland surveyed for a more suitable route. But the new tracks would have to wait until the finances were found. And the town building Judge Manley had so pompously ordered Ben to finance would take a crippling amount of his resources.
For a few mad moments he had been tempted to try his luck at gambling again, but he was older and wiser now, and had a family to support. At that thought, the glow filled him all over again, for not only was it the legacy of Sam’s children, but a child that grew from the love he and Morwen shared.
He had something worth fighting for now, and for the first time he understood why Charles had fought to make his son love the clay as much as he had. Charles’s reaction to their joyful news was quite pathetic. Tears ran down the old man’s cheeks just as his nurse appeared to wash him, and Nurse Wilder tut-tutted and said he wasn’t to be upset like this.
‘We’re not upsetting him!’ Ben laughed, and Morwen had nodded quickly at his raised eyebrow. ‘We’re letting him know he’s to have a grandson in the spring, Nurse Wilder, so how do you fancy an extra job as midwife?’
She went pink, and exclaimed with pleasure, though Morwen suspected she, too, had guessed and had wisely said nothing. Her own family had been overjoyed, and the two little boys shouted that they hoped it would be another boy, as they couldn’t abide little girls who dribbled and cooed all day long.
‘When will it be here?’ Walter shouted. ‘Will it play with me?’
‘An’ me,’ Albert obligingly added.
Morwen hugged them both. ‘Not right away,’ she said. ‘It will sleep a lot at first, but we’ll be able to take it for walks, and you’ll be its big brothers, whether it’s a boy or a girl, and Primmy will be a big sister too!’
‘No, she won’t. She’s only a babby,’ Walter scoffed.
‘Baby, darling. But she’ll grow up, just like you.’ She met Ben’s eyes over Walter’s head, and smiled into them.
* * *
Morwen’s pregnancy was an uncomfortable one. The sickness that had plagued her at first now seemed to happen more frequently, but the doctor merely said that some women were unfortunate in that way, and teased that it was a penance they bore for the joy of having a child.
Privately, Morwen thought that for her it was a different penance. When she first knew about the baby, she had thought a lot about Dora. Now she seemed to be thinking constantly about Celia. She couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that these wretched months when she should be feeling at her most serene, were being made so miserable as some kind of Divine revenge.
She and Celia had tampered with nature, visiting the old moors woman and taking a potion to kill a child. However much Morwen dressed it up, the stark facts were the same.
Celia had so wanted to have a man to love her and care for her. Instead, she had been defiled by the brutal Jude Pascoe, and been so deranged by it all that she had drowned herself in the clay pool rather than live with the memory.
But Morwen lived with it. She thought it was dead and buried like Celia and the appalling thing they had disposed of in a moorland grave, that Zillah had called ‘the waste’.
But there were times when the memory haunted Morwen, and never more so than now. She wanted desperately to confide in Ben, but he was too involved with business meetings and worries of his own for Morwen to add to his worries.
Hers was, after all, a perfectly normal happening in a woman’s life. It was something she had longed for, but she hadn’t expected Celia’s presence to be almost like a visitation.
The children took up much of her time. She adored Sam’s little ones, and they looked forward excitedly to having a new baby in the house. They had slipped into the Killigrew household as easily as if they had been born there.
Ben had once suggested changing their names to Killigrew, but Morwen had decided vehemently against it.
‘It would be wrong, and my folks wouldn’t like it,’ she said positively. ‘Everything else has been taken from them except their name, and I won’t see them deprived of knowing who they are. Sam would turn in his grave to know it.’
‘All right, I didn’t mean to make an issue of it, love. I just thought it may seem odd to them that their new brother has a different name, that’s all.’
‘We’ll just have to explain it to them then. ’Tis only the grown-ups who take such things seriously. As long as the children have things explained to them, they’ll understand.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Ben said with the ghost of a smile. ‘I wonder why we rich folk think we have to send our children away to be educated when my moorland wife is so all-seeing!’
It was a rare moment of teasing in the dark days when Ben thought seriously of selling his heritage. He and Gorran and Carrick had had endless consultations by the time Christmas loomed near, and had finally made a long list of priorities to be done. The rail tracks had already been torn up by a team of clayworkers on Ben’s instructions, since he couldn’t bear to look at them a minute longer.
Before he could even think of getting new land surveyed for building another railway, if indeed there was still a clay business to warrant it, the town’s needs must come next. The narrow broken streets, that had been a trial to townsfolk for years, must now be put in order, and then must come the new administration building the Judge had so unfairly demanded.
Contractors were approached, endless estimates were given and mostly rejected as being catchpenny affairs, and the whole task began to seem impossible for one man to undertake. Most of Ben’s assets were tied up in Killigrew Clay, and the thought of finding all the money that was required was a nightmare to him.
He tried not to worry Morwen with the problems, but Morwen had never been one for being shut out, and insisted on knowing all that was going on.
‘Oh, Ben, if only I hadn’t married a clay boss,’ she tried to tease him out of his melancholy. ‘We don’t need this big house, nor fine carriages, nor to be lord and lady of the manor! We could be just as happy living in a hovel—’
‘Well, that’s something we’re never going to do, so forget it! And if you’re really sorry you married me—’
She could always bait him into believing her for a few seconds, and she could just as easily coax him out of the doldrums by proving to their mutual satisfaction that there was no-one else on earth that she could love.
Ben was her whole life, but she was wise enough to know that she had to share him with Killigrew Clay. The clay that was so vital to them was gouged from the earth by simple, hardworking folk, changed beyond recognition and moulded into something of classic grace. For Morwen there was something vastly beautiful and symbolic in the thought.
The children could cheer Ben too, as they did old Charles Killigrew. Charles was ailing fast, but he said stoically that he wasn’t giving up this life until he’d seen the Killigrew fortunes revive, and more importantly
, until he’d seen his new grandchild.
Morwen loved him all the more for including Sam’s children in his affections. They called her own father Grandpa, but they called Charles Pa, which pleased him enormously. He was a man who liked little fuss, and the simple name suited him.
Morwen had little wish now to visit the moors that she had once adored. The thought of seeing the newly filled-in ground where the little trucks had plunged deep into the ground made her nauseous, knowing that it had been Sam’s tomb.
She had been there once or twice, needing to sort out Sam’s family clothes and possessions at the cottage, but it had been painfully embarrassing to meet the clayworkers she knew, and realise that they hardly knew what to say to her. Once, they would have done…
‘I’m not one of them any more,’ she had almost wept on Ben’s shoulder. ‘We couldn’t find the words to say to one another, and it pains me, Ben. They’re old friends, yet I don’t know them any more.’
There was nothing he could say to comfort her until she thought things out for herself, realising once and for all that Ben Killigrew’s wife and Morwen Tremayne, bal maiden, could never be one and the same. She couldn’t cling to both worlds, and even now, after four years, it was hard to let her old world go.
* * *
They had intended to let Christmas pass quietly, but in the end, Morwen’s entire family came to Killigrew House for a lunch of goose and plum pudding, and despite the anxiety hanging over all their heads, the antics of Freddie and the children lifted their spirits.
There were little gifts for everyone, and if this year wasn’t quite in the old Killigrew style, no-one noticed. It was still a house filled with love and subdued laughter, since none of them could quite forget those who were missing. Sam and Dora, and Matt…
Clay Country Page 29