Pengarron's Children

by Pengarron's Children (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’m very sorry, Clem. But in all fairness you thought Jessica had lain with Luke too. It was the reason you came rushing over to the Manor.’

  ‘Only because I thought he’d got her drunk or something, but I admit, thinking about it, even he wouldn’t have done that.’ Clem went silent and gazed at the sea.

  ‘It’s upset you deeply, hasn’t it?’

  ‘All the way over to the Manor I kept thinking, what if Luke was responsible and he actually offered to marry Jessica and she accepted him? I would rather have seen her in her grave beside Alice than married to Oliver Pengarron’s son, to have my daughter as the next Lady of the Manor, after you, the girl who was stolen away from me.’

  ‘And Kane? What if there had been a baby and it had been Kane’s?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded that too much. Kane’s not a Pengarron by blood and I’ve always liked him. He won’t inherit anything of the Pengarron property, and somehow I think of him as belonging only to you. ’

  ‘I see. Then have you forgiven him for shouting at Jessica on the night of the kidnapping? He only acted so because he was so worried about her.’

  ‘Maybe, but he ought to have said he was sorry. Even Luke’s told Jessica he’s sorry for saying he’d got her with child. Why hasn’t Kane said he’s sorry?’

  ‘I rather think he’s tried to but without success. It’s more difficult for them.’

  ‘Well, it’s all over now, in the past, and I suppose that is where it should stay. Kane’s got his farm and a new start and Jessica is about to start a new life with her stepmother and me.’

  ‘Oh?’ Kerensa was startled.

  Clem looked her full in the face. He swallowed hard as if he had great difficulty with what he was about to say. ‘Kerensa, we’re leaving Trecath-en Farm and the Mount’s Bay area. All the family are going and Ricketty Jim’s coming with us.’

  ‘No, Clem, no!’ The last thing on earth she wanted was for Clem to leave the estate. She clutched his arms as if she would forbid him to go.

  He held her shoulders firmly and spoke as she shook her head in disbelief. ‘As you know, Catherine has her own income, not a lot by Pengarron standards but she’s saved most of it over the years and it’s become a goodly sum. Philip approached her and asked her to put her money with his. He’d taken a huge chance on a wager when he wrestled the Barvah Giant and made over a thousand pounds. They came to me next and offered to buy a farm between them. It took them a long time to persuade me because I’ve got little money of my own, but that was only pride and I’ve had to put it aside. It’s not been easy living on Pengarron land over the years, especially after my father died and I became the tenant and Sir Oliver my landlord, knowing he’s got the right to ride over it any time he chooses and if he wanted to be difficult he could easily find a way of throwing us off. But the events of the past few months have made things intolerable, for me and Jessica, and it will never be easy for Catherine knowing you are the landlord’s wife and how I’ve always felt about you.

  ‘We’re going to have our own farm, up at St Cleer on the Bodmin moor. We’ll be our own men, Philip and I. He’ll take care of the land and I’ll deal with the animals and that way we won’t clash. The farmhouse is much bigger than Trecath-en’s and there’ll be plenty of room if Philip marries and has a family and if Catherine and I have more children. There are two houses on the land so Kenver and Kerris will have their own place with a big room for his workshop.’

  It was a hard task for Kerensa to take this in. She said shakily, ‘I… I’m very pleased for you, Clem, but…’

  ‘But what, Kerensa?’ and he gazed at her deeply.

  ‘Will I ever see you again?’

  ‘I don’t know. I realised that day at the Manor when I charged in that you’re totally Pengarron’s now. I’m sure he’ll be glad I’m leaving his land. I’m finally going away after all these years to start a new life. I wish you well with your new child.’ He removed her desperate hands from his arms, held them tightly for a moment, then got up. ‘Goodbye, Kerensa.’

  ‘Goodbye, Clem,’ she uttered, just managing to hold back her tears.

  She watched him walk away from her. The tall blond man she had been going to share her life with on Trecath-en Farm. And now he was going away from her forever.

  ‘Clem!’

  He’d only walked a few paces and came straight back to her. In an instant she was being held tightly in his arms. They looked into each other’s eyes and they were back in the days of their youth, a girl of seventeen, a young man of nineteen, very much in love and looking forward to a future together.

  They kissed longingly… and then it was time to come back to the present.

  Kerensa lowered her aims from his neck and he took her hands, kissing them both tenderly, and they looked at each other with tears falling from their eyes.

  ‘I’ll always love you, Kerensa.’ She went to speak but he put a finger to her trembling lips. ‘Remember me with affection.’

  Then he left Trelynne Cove and Kerensa alone with her thoughts. She walked to the shoreline, not feeling the cold that struck her face and tried to sweep off her hat. Clem the boy had gone many years ago; her enforced marriage to Oliver had seen to that. In the years since, they had both reared a family, known much sorrow, heartbreak and joy. More than once, circumstances had thrown them together and they had nearly given themselves to one another. But fate had always stepped in to forbid it.

  Now fate was stepping in again, and Clem the man was going away from her, possibly forever. Kerensa felt lost and lonely but knew it was the best thing to happen. She would think of Clem Trenchard all of her life, and it would be with more than affection.

  Chapter 30

  While her husband was absent, presumably off on one of his long quiet spells, Catherine was ruthlessly discarding things the Trenchards would not take with them to St Cleer. Kerris and Philip were carrying them out to the bottom of the vegetable patch at the back of the farmhouse, and Jessica was throwing the items now deemed rubbish onto the high twisting red flames of a huge bonfire.

  Kerris held up a pair of curtains, faded but with plenty of wear left in them, and showed them to Jessica. ‘I’ll put these into the charity pile. Somebody will be glad of them. Miss Catherine is certainly having a good turn-out.’

  ‘My mother chose these,’ Jessica said, fingering the material. ‘She saved up for ages to buy the cloth. I remember sitting on her lap as a little girl while she sewed them.’

  ‘Oh! Shall I tell Miss Catherine? She probably didn’t realise they meant something to you. I said they would do for mine and Kenver’s house but she’s insisting on us having new throughout.’

  Jessica picked up her fork and poked the bonfire to get a better blaze on the furniture burning in front of her. A cupboard, pocked with woodworm and so old that no one was sure of its origins, crackled for a few moments then shuddered and disintegrated into small pieces. Kerris was watching Jessica’s face.

  ‘Shows how dry that wood had become. Put the curtains into the charity pile, Kerris. I’ve been through the house and put aside everything I want to keep. It’s good to think some of my mother’s and grandmother’s things will help the needy of the parish. I don’t blame Catherine for wanting to make a fresh start. ’Tis the best way to go about it.’

  ‘Aye, I think Miss Catherine is more excited than I am. She’ll be able to hold her head up more when we move away. She’ll be the prominent lady of the area, the wife of a landed farmer, not just a tenant’s wife. I must say though, Kenver and I think your father is a brave man to let Miss Catherine and Philip spend their money like this on a new farm. Must have been a blow to his pride; certainly Kenver had to think hard about agreeing to it.’

  ‘Perhaps it was brave of Father, but there’s nothing here for him now and everything is so difficult. It’s the same for me.’ Kerris jumped back as Jessica slammed the fork down so hard it threatened to put the bonfire out. ‘’Tis a shame about that, but things have a way of
working out, Jessie.’

  ‘Aye,’ Jessica said, attacking the bonfire once more, ‘but not for the best for everyone.’

  * * *

  Round the bay, up on high ground at Gulval on Vellanoweth Farm, Kane was half-heartedly wandering through the twelve large square rooms he was living in. Most of the rooms were completely empty; the room he slept in contained only a mattress. His footsteps echoed around him. He had no heart to choose the furnishings to fill the house and resolved to ask his mother for help; he was sure she would be delighted to do it for him. It would give her all the excuses she would need to come over often and mollycoddle him, exhort him to eat proper meals and make sure his clothes were kept up to standard.

  Stopping at a bedroom window, he put his head outside and looked out across a wide patchwork of bleak fields, many of which would be growing his wheat, oats, barley and animal feed in the New Year. He tried to picture the crops swaying in their splendid colours in the breezes, awaiting a band of harvesters to swathe them down and make him richer and successful. He hoped he would have something to feel happy about then.

  This year he had left his regiment, settled the question of his true parentage, bought the farm and land he’d dreamed about in the pain and heat of the Tropics, but… he wanted someone to share his new life with him. To share the joys and worries of farming life, to take on the fickle weather with him that affected so much of its success, to mourn with him when they were beaten by it and laugh with him when they’d triumphed over it. To comfort him in moments of grief, like when he’d learned that the ship Rockingham Castle had sunk on its way to Ireland with the loss of many of his friends from the 32nd Foot. He wanted that someone to fill this large empty house with lots of babies, with joy and laughter… and a little wildness.

  He moved to another bedroom, the largest one, evidently meant for the master and mistress of the place. The windows here looked out to St Michael’s Mount in the green waters of the bay. He swept his eyes round to Cudden Point, sprawled out in the sea, and could see his father’s estate stretching back from the cliffs behind it. Drawing his eyes nearer home across the fields, he saw the strong tower of Ludgvan Church, and round to his right the parish church of Gulval, with Penzance as a backdrop. These last sights held no interest for him and moodily he swung back to Pengarron land again, where somewhere, on one little spot, lived the girl who had given him more trouble than anyone or anything else in his entire life. A girl with hair as wild and as free as her nature and as golden as the cornfields, with laughing summer-blue eyes, and an utterly stubborn will.

  You should be here with me, Jessica Trenchard, he thought miserably. Then you could choose the furniture to put in this place, what curtains to put up at its windows. You should be feeding your own chickens here in the yard below me, waiting for me to come home from the fields, sometimes working with me in them, and always loving with me wherever we are. Kane hung his head. He’d had nightmares about his past and had purged them, but now he had bad dreams about his future.

  A voice hailed him from down in the yard. He had not realised that a cart had pulled up in it. Kane had acquired some staff. On a byway of Mount’s Bay he had come across the legless Jacob Penberthy and his son Ben looking for work. Now the old soldier who had been so helpful to Clem when he was looking for clues to Kerris’s identity could give up the hazardous life of begging and live in a cosy little cottage while his son worked on the farm. Knowing the Penberthys had worked on Trecath-en Farm and had met and spoken to Jessica made Kane feel a little closer to her.

  He made his way downstairs. This was what he had to do now, work hard and see to his men, and try to forget how much he yearned for Jessica Trenchard.

  * * *

  Oliver was in his study when Kerensa arrived home. He got straight up from the letters he was writing at his desk and she went to him to be cradled in his warm arms. He took her to the fireplace and rubbed her arms to bring some warmth to her shivering body.

  ‘You should not stay out in this weather so long, beloved,’ he gently chided her. ‘I wouldn’t like you to catch a chill, especially in your condition.’ He placed a gentle hand on her middle and felt their baby kicking. He smiled happily, but her face caused him concern. ‘Is everything all right? You’re very quiet and you look as if you’ve been crying.’

  ‘Oliver, I was in Trelynne Cove and Clem came there to talk to me, to tell me something.’

  Oliver’s face darkened. ‘How dare he! What did he want? Won’t that man ever leave us alone? Damn him!’

  ‘But that’s why he came to see me, Oliver. To tell me he’s leaving the farm.’

  ‘That’s the best news I could possibly hear – but he should have told me first.’

  ‘Don’t be angry, my love. He wanted to tell me to my face rather than let me hear it from someone else. Catherine and Philip have put up the money, most of it, and they’ve bought a farm at St Cleer. The whole family, and even Ricketty Jim, are going. Clem said it’s intolerable for his family living on Pengarron land after all that has happened over Jessica, especially with Jessica and Kane being in love and seemingly hating one another. It must be hard for Catherine too, being the wife of a tenant farmer when she’s gentry born and bred.’

  ‘And knowing he’ll always hanker after you, the landlord’s wife.’

  ‘But if he was still feeling like that, Oliver, he wouldn’t have agreed to leave Trecath-en Farm and Mount’s Bay. St Cleer is a long way away, we’ll probably never see him again. It must have cost him dear to swallow his pride and allow his wife and son to buy a farm for the family. He could easily have refused and Philip would still have had enough money to buy a smaller farm for himself so he wouldn’t have been letting his son down.’

  ‘Well, whatever the reason, I’ll be eternally grateful that Clem Trenchard is leaving my land,’ Oliver said. ‘I shall breathe easier after twenty-two years of having him hanging about. Since he took up with Miss Catherine, he’s even been in our church every Sunday. And it will make things easier for Olivia to settle down with Timothy. ’

  ‘There was never any chance of anything between Clem and me, Oliver. You do believe that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I could never forget you had once been in love. Now we can bury that in the past for good. I… wish him well, I suppose.’

  ‘It will mean Jessica leaving too, taking her even further from Kane,’ Kerensa said.

  ‘I regret that. I can see how much Kane loves her. He’ll always love her, always mourn her, no matter what he does with his life.’ Oliver suddenly laughed. ‘Dear Lord, I’ve just described the way Clem Trenchard must have felt about you.’

  ‘You sound as though you don’t feel too badly about him now,’ Kerensa said hopefully.

  ‘I don’t know about that. Well, I admit to understanding something of how he’s felt over the years. I know how I would feel if I lost you. I would be desolate. And now Kane has well and truly lost Jessica.’

  ‘The terribly sad thing about it is that it doesn’t have to be like this. I’m sure she loves him just as deeply as he loves her, and there’s no one to take her away from him, nothing but their own stubbornness.’

  Kane, who had come home to pick up some of his things, overheard the last two sentences. He came into the room and stared at his parents.

  ‘You heard?’ Oliver said.

  ‘I did. There’s no point in people going on about us being stubborn,’ Kane said heatedly. ‘Jessica and I can never sort out our much has been said and done. I wish you would just forget it.’

  ‘Jessica’s leaving Mount’s Bay, Kane,’ Kerensa said softly.

  ‘What?’ He sprang forward. ‘Is she going to marry Simon Peter Blake?’

  ‘No, but she might as well be as far as you are concerned,’ Oliver told him bluntly. ‘The Trenchards have bought their own farm at St Cleer, Bodmin. She’ll be miles away from you and it would serve you right if she forgets all about you.’

  ‘But Mother said she loves me. Why shoul
d she forget me?’

  ‘Well, that rather depends on you. I would never let your mother go as easily as you have her.’

  ‘I…’ For a moment Kane looked as if he was going to swear and Kerensa gave him a mother’s warning look. ‘That girl’s not going anywhere unless it’s to Vellanoweth Farm with me!’

  Oliver laughed and hugged Kerensa as their elder son rushed out of the Manor house.

  ‘Do you think he’ll convince Jessica?’ Kerensa asked between his kisses.

  ‘My dear, I have an awful feeling I’ll be facing Clem Trenchard across the church at a wedding.’

  Kerensa snuggled in against her husband’s warm, broad body. It was wonderful to be this much in love and she said a little prayer that Kane would be holding the girl he loved in his arms like this soon.

  * * *

  Kane trotted into the yard of Trecath-en Farm and knocked on the kitchen door. Catherine opened the door and immediately invited him in. He was embarrassed to find the only other person there was Clem.

  ‘I… I’ve come to see Jessica.’

  ‘She’s seeing to her chickens,’ Clem said.

  ‘Do you mind if I go and talk to her, Clem?’ Kane asked uncertainly, his hand hovering near the door latch.

  Clem put his arm round Catherine’s shoulders, then he answered Kane with a friendly smile. ‘’Tis all right by us, but don’t you go until you get the matter settled, do you hear me, Kane Pengarron?’

  ‘You can stake your life on it,’ Kane said determinedly.

  Jessica saw him coming and stared coldly at him for a few moments. She wasn’t pleased to see him. She was getting used to the idea of moving to St Cleer and starting a new life so many miles away. There would be a new sister or brother next year to look forward to and she had made up her mind to throw herself into some new interests, charity work or something – Catherine could tell her how to go about it. She had scattered corn for her chickens and she had been standing in front of the cone-shaped coops planning how to expand her little business and now this Pengarron oaf with the cruel mouth was coming to torment her again. She wished she had kissed a dozen men for him to see and not just his brother. Get back to your own farm, she thought angrily, and leave me to get on here. What are you doing here anyway? Come to boast about your new property? To make us feel how small ours is?