High Tide at Midnight
Sara Craven

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

ENDPAGE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

‘WELL, I wish to make one thing perfectly clear at the outset. She cannot remain here.’

The new Lady Kerslake’s voice, almost strident in its vehemence, resounded plainly through the closed drawing room door, freezing Morwenna where she stood, her hand already raised to knock. A number of thoughts chased wildly through her head as she assimilated Cousin Patricia’s words—among them that it would be far more honourable to turn and walk away, pretending to herself that she had heard nothing, and that eavesdroppers never heard anything good of themselves anyway, but at the same time she knew that wild horses could not make her budge an inch. And it might be a relief to find out what her cousin really thought, as opposed to the saccharine sweetness she had been treated with up to now.

‘Oh, Mother!’ It was Vanessa speaking now, her voice slightly impatient. ‘You can hardly turn her out on to the streets. She has no training and no qualifications. You know as well as I do that she simply wasted her time at school. What on earth’s she going to do?’

‘That is hardly our responsibility,’ Lady Kerslake returned coldly. ‘She chose to neglect her opportunities. She can hardly complain now if they no longer exist. And it was up to her father to make suitable financial provision while he was alive. He knew quite well what the entail involved.’

‘Perhaps, but he could hardly foresee that he and Martin would both be killed in the same accident. Martin was the heir, after all, and he would have looked after Morwenna.’

Standing motionless in the hall, Morwenna felt a fresh stab of pain inside her at the casual words. But Vanessa was right in a way. No one could have foreseen on that bright autumn day, only a few weeks before, that before night came she would have been quite alone in the world, her father and brother both dead, victims of a freak collision with a lorry whose brakes had failed on the steep hill outside the village.

She had always known that the entail existed, of course. Had even laughed ruefully with Martin over the male chauvinism in this era of Women’s Lib of the insistence that the baronetcy and the estate should still descend through the male heirs only. The future hadn’t filled her with a great deal of concern. She was barely eighteen, after all, and more interested in having a good time than considering her future prospects. And her father had encouraged her in this. Always he and Martin had been there like bulwarks, and she had basked secure in the certainty of their affection and spoiling. Until that day—when the chill wind of reality had shown her how fragile her shelter had been.

The solicitors had been very kind, and had explained everything in great detail, including the fact that there was not a great deal of money for Cousin Geoffrey to inherit. Her father, she learned for the first time, had been speculating on the stock market and suffered some considerable losses. Given time, Mr Frenchard had said, he would have recouped these losses—his business acumen was considerable. Only he had not been given time.

During the weeks since the funeral Morwenna had felt that she was existing in a kind of curious limbo, and this impression had been emphasised with the advent of Cousin Geoffrey, whom she hardly knew, and his rather domineering wife, whom she did.

Cousin Patricia, she knew, had expected to find herself a wealthy woman and had been less than entranced with the true state of affairs, although becoming Lady Kerslake and occupying the house, a gem from the reign of Queen Anne, must, Morwenna surmised drily, have been some consolation at least.

At first she had been inclined to gush over Morwenna, but as the days passed, her manner had become more distant. Not that they had ever been close, Morwenna thought. And she had never been on friendly terms with Vanessa either, even though her father had insisted they attend the same school and had paid both lots of fees to achieve this. She had wondered since whether Vanessa had resented this, or whether her main source of grievance had been simply that her younger cousin had the ability to skate lightly over the academic waters where she had frankly floundered. Whatever the cause, Vanessa’s hostility had at times been almost tangible, and there had been little softening of her attitude since her arrival at Carew Priory. On the contrary, Morwenna felt at times that Vanessa was frankly gloating over the reversal in their fortunes. She’d had to be very careful over everything she did and said, making certain that Mrs Abbershaw the housekeeper went to Cousin Patricia for her instructions, even remembering to knock before she entered rooms where the family had gathered. Suddenly she was the outsider in her own home. Yet no longer her own home, as Lady Kerslake was reiterating with some force.

‘And I can’t imagine why you should be so concerned, Vanessa,’ she added with asperity. ‘You’ve never cared for her particularly.’

‘I don’t care for her now,’ Vanessa retorted waspishly, ‘but we have to consider what people will say, and her father and Martin were extremely well liked locally. We don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.’

‘Indeed not.’ Lady Kerslake gave a deep sigh. ‘What a problem it all is! I had no idea the wretched child was simply going to hang around here aimlessly. Wasn’t there some talk of a painting school?’

‘There’s always talk of something where Morwenna’s concerned. But you’re right, she was supposed to be joining Lennox Christie’s class at Carcassonne this month. Whether he’ll be so keen to have her now that the fees are not forthcoming is a different matter. It’s a well-known fact that he fills up his class with rich dilettantes in order to pay for the pupils he really wants.’

Morwenna’s fingers, clenched deep in the pocket of the loose knitted jacket she was wearing, closed shakingly round the envelope she had thrust there not half an hour before. She had seen the postman coming up the drive from her bedroom window and some premonition had told her what he was bringing, and she had run down to intercept him. All the letters were taken as a matter of course to Cousin Patricia now before they were distributed to the appropriate recipients, and Morwenna knew that a letter with a French stamp would have attracted just the sort of attention that she least wanted.

And her sense of foreboding had been fulfilled. Vanessa might almost be a thought-reader, she told herself despairingly. Lennox Christie’s letter had been courteous but adamant. The work she had shown him at her initial interview in London, he wrote, did not justify him offering her a non-fee-paying place in his class as she had requested. However, he would be back in London in the spring, and she could always contact him then with any new work she had produced, so that he could review his decision. It was the final humiliation. The offer of a review in the spring was, she knew, put in as a salve to her damaged pride.

She had never had a lot of faith in her ability as an artist. She had inherited some of her dead mother’s talent, and had been the prize pupil at school, but she had had few illusions about how she would fare in the fiercely competitive art world if ever her livelihood depended on it. It hadn’t before, of course, and only a sense of utter desperation had prompted her appeal to Lennox Christie. She had sensed during their brief interview earlier that year that he had been unimpressed with the range of landscapes and still life she had shown him, but she knew at the same time that she was capable of better things, if not the touch of genius which had been stamped on so much of Laura Kerslake’s work. She had not mentioned her mother’s name to Lennox Christie. There seemed little point. Laura Kerslake had been dead for over ten years and she had painted little after her children were born. Besides, her work was no longer fashionable.

Cousin Patricia had said as much soon after she had arrived at Carew Priory. Morwenna had little doubt that those of her mother’s paintings which were hanging in the house would soon be relegated to an attic, and replacements sought for them in the trendy gallery in London which Lady Kerslake patronised. She had hoped very much that she would be long gone from the Priory before that happened.

She had never intended to stay there in any case. This was what made it so doubly hurtful to hear herself being discussed as if she was some parasite. She had always known that she would have to get a job of some kind. This was why she had been on her way to speak to Cousin Patricia, to ask, cap in hand, if there was any prospect of a job, however menial, at the trendy gallery. At least she had been spared that particular shame, she thought fiercely.

But that was all she was to be spared. Vanessa was speaking again. ‘And are you sure that she is just hanging around aimlessly? After all, she was seeing quite a lot of Guy a few months ago before all this happened. Perhaps she’s hoping to revive all that again and use him as a meal ticket for life.’

Guy’s mother gave an unfeeling laugh. ‘I can’t believe she’s that naïve,’ she exclaimed. ‘Guy may have paid her attention while Robert and Martin were alive, but the circumstances are different now, very different. Guy isn’t a fool by any means. She’s quite an attractive girl, I’ll grant you that, but if she’s hoping for anything more from him than just a casual affair, I’m afraid she’s going to be severely disappointed. Guy can do better for himself than a penniless cousin.’

Vanessa’s ‘Mother!’ was half laughing, half scandalised, but Morwenna waited to hear no more. She turned precipitately and fled back across the wide hall with its rich Turkey carpet and dark panelled walls, and up the gently curving stairs.

In the past few weeks, one room in particular had become her refuge—her mother’s small sitting room in the West Wing. This was one of the few places where Cousin Patricia and her ‘little changes’ had so far not penetrated. Morwenna slammed the door behind her, then flung herself down on the shabby brocaded sofa and gave way to a storm of tears. In a way, it was a catharsis she had been needing. She had hardly shed a tear at the funeral or afterwards, and had meekly accepted the tranquillisers that the doctor, worried by her pale face and shuttered eyes, had prescribed.

Now grief, humiliation and rage all had their way with her, as she lay, her face buried in the silken cushions. It was dreadful to contemplate how near, how very near she had come to falling in love with Guy. As children, they had been largely indifferent to each other on the few occasions they had met. Then, in the early summer, she had met him again at a party after a gap of several years. In fact they had hardly recognised each other, but the attraction had been, as she thought, instant and mutual. Now she had to face the fact that she had been the one who was attracted, and that Guy had only had an eye to the main chance. She pressed her knuckles against her teeth until they ached.

So many things began to make sense now, particularly the fact that she had seen so little of Guy since the funeral. True, he had been working, and only came down to the Priory at weekends, but even then he had held aloof. She had been grateful then, telling herself that it was respect for her grief that held him in check, but now she knew differently. It was simply that Guy had nothing to gain now in prolonging their relationship. She could only be thankful that she had never yielded to the frank temptation to turn to his arms for comfort.

She had sometimes wondered in the past why it had always been Guy who had drawn back in their lovemaking. There had been several times when she had longed for his kisses and caresses to sweep her away on a tide of passion past the point of no return. Now she wondered if it had been self-control which restrained him, or simply a disinclination to get too closely involved with her. Whatever his motive, it had been enough to keep her eating out of his hand all through the summer, she thought unhappily. In fact, she had come close to quarrelling with Martin on the subject. Martin had been unimpressed with Guy’s blond good looks, and had disliked his sense of humour which tended to poke sly fun at everyone outside the charmed circle in which he moved.

Guy was one of the few subjects they had disagreed on, and now she had to acknowledge that Martin had not simply been playing the heavy brother. He had been wiser than she knew, and she understood his motives now in encouraging her to apply for a place on the painting course. Apart from wanting to get her out of Guy’s way, he had been concerned about her lack of purpose in life, her lighthearted assumption that there would always be someone around to look after her. She was quite aware, without conceit, of her own attractions and knew there were few men who would not be drawn by her pale silky hair, twisted up into a loose knot on top of her head, and her large grey eyes with their long fringe of dark lashes. She supposed now that this was why she had been so easily taken in by Guy. She was accustomed to men’s attentions and admiration, and it had never even occurred to her that her good-looking cousin could have an ulterior motive.

‘What a fool!’ she whispered aloud, pressing her knuckles childishly against her streaming eyes. ‘What an utter fool!’

At last she lay quietly, her eyes closed, capable only of an occasional aching sob. She felt physically and emotionally drained, and she was scared as well. One certain thing had emerged from the unpalatable comments she had heard downstairs—she was going to have to leave the Priory, and fast. But where was she to go? Even the potential refuge of the painting school had been taken from her, and the remnants of her pride forbade her to ask for any kind of help from Cousin Patricia.

She sat up unwillingly, pushing her tumbled hair back from her face, while her brooding gaze travelled round the room, resting with a kind of painful affection on the few pieces of antique furniture that she knew her mother had chosen for this room when she had first come to the Priory as a bride. The fact that the chair covers were faded and the curtains and carpet had also seen better days only added to their charm. Above the white marble fireplace hung Laura Kerslake’s only attempt at a self-portrait, painted only a few years before her death. Morwenna’s eyes lingered on it with peculiar intensity, as if that serene face with the humorous eyes and the wryly twisted mouth, suggesting that the artist knew only too well that portraiture was not her forte, could provide her with some clue what to do for the future. She gave a small weary sigh at her own fancifulness, and her eyes wandered on past the portrait to the small group of landscapes on the adjoining wall.

Here, Laura Kerslake had been thoroughly at home. These were what Morwenna had always thought of as the Trevennon group. They were scenes done from memory of the place where Laura had spent her girlhood. Although she had been born and lived in London during her early years, the outbreak of the Second World War had caused her parents to seek a safer home for her, and so Laura, on the brink of her teens, had made a long, solitary journey to Cornwall to stay with some distant relatives. She had never returned to London. When the news had come that her mother and father had been the victims of a direct hit on their house during the Blitz, she had simply remained at Trevennon.

Trevennon. Morwenna climbed off the sofa and walked across the room to study the pictures more closely. Of all her mother’s work, these seemed more deeply imbued with the almost mystical, fey element which characterised it than any others. When she was small, Morwenna had gazed at the big, dark house on the cliff top with its twin turrets and tall, twisted chimneys and set her young imaginings of Camelot, of Tristan and Iseult among those sombre stones. Laura had laughed indulgently at such fancies, although at the same time she had pointed out that Trevennon owed more to the tin-miners than it did to any fabled knights and ladies.

Morwenna knew that the rugged coast nearby was littered with the remains of the mine-workings, and the ruined buildings and chimneys stood now only as the landmarks of a vanished prosperity. Trevennon, her mother had said, had been founded on that prosperity, but Laura had never given any hint as to what it owed its present subsistence.

In fact, when she looked, back, Morwenna realised that her mother had said very little about her life in Cornwall. But she had been happy there, or that was the impression Morwenna had always received. Besides, her own name was a Cornish one, and her mother would hardly have chosen it if it had revived any unhappy memories, although at the same time she was aware that her father had not approved the choice. ‘Pure romanticism’, he had called it, but with an edge to his voice rather than the indulgent note with which he usually greeted his wife’s whims. And he had used the same phrase, Morwenna remembered, when he had looked at the Trevennon group—the house on the cliff-top, the deserted Wheal Vaisey mine, the tiny harbour village of Port Vennor, and the cramped beach of Spanish Cove with the dark rocks standing up like granite sentinels against the swell of the tide.

‘Why do you say that?’ As if it were yesterday, Morwenna recalled the lift of her mother’s chin. ‘I wasn’t just painting a place. I was painting my youth, and all I knew then was peace, security and love.’ She had risen from the sofa and walked over to her husband, sliding her arm through his and resting her cheek against his sleeve. ‘I don’t doubt that you’re right, but leave me my illusions.’

‘Peace, security and love.’ As the words came back to her, Morwenna felt herself shiver. They were like an epitaph for her own hopes, she thought unhappily. Then she stiffened. A purposeful step was coming along the passage outside, and she turned to face the door as it opened. Lady Kerslake came in.

‘Oh, there you are, Morwenna. I’ve been looking all over the house for you,’ she said rather pettishly. ‘I was wondering whether you intended being in for lunch.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘You see, Guy has just phoned to say that he’s coming down and bringing a friend with him and we thought….’ She let the words drift into silence and gave Morwenna a significant look.

Morwenna bit her lip. So Guy was bringing his latest fancy down to lunch, and his mother was checking to see that their inconvenient house-guest would accept the situation without showing that she cared, or making any kind of scene. Her temper rose slowly.

‘How nice,’ she said with assumed indifference. ‘But if my presence is going to cause any embarrassment I can easily pick up a snack at the Red Lion.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ Lady Kerslake’s lips parted in a smile of total insincerity. ‘As if we would expect you to do any such thing! What a silly girl you are, sometimes. Not, of course, that we would wish to interfere if you had made any plans. After all, you’re a grown woman now, and you have a life of your own to lead. It’s perfectly natural that you should want to be independent, and we don’t want to interfere, or feel that we’re holding you back in any way.’ She paused again, invitingly, as if waiting for Morwenna to confide in her. Her tone had been all interest and motherly concern, but Morwenna knew she would not have been deceived for an instant, even if she had not overheard that brief conversation in the drawing room. Cousin Patricia’s whole tone and attitude was hinting broadly that she had outstayed her welcome, and that they were waiting to hear what plans she had made to shift herself.

The humiliation of having to admit that she had no plans, and that even her embryo career as an artist had died an undistinguished death, was suddenly too much to bear. A germ of inspiration lodged in her brain, and before she could reason with herself or question the wisdom of what she was about to do, she spoke.

‘You really don’t have to bother about me any more, Cousin Patricia. I’d intended to tell you over lunch that I’m going away. I—I’ve been invited to stay at Trevennon—with my mother’s people—until I go to Carcassonne in the spring. The letter came this morning. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me. Cornwall’s a marvellous place for painters. My mother used to say that she got all the inspiration for her best work from her time at Trevennon,’ she ended, rushing her words nervously, as the thought occurred to her that Cousin Patricia might demand to see this mysterious invitation.

Lady Kerslake’s eyes rested wonderingly on the group of paintings over Morwenna’s shoulder, then came back to search her face rather frowningly. ‘Your mother had relatives in Cornwall? I wasn’t aware….’

‘Very distant relatives,’ Morwenna broke in. ‘Cousins heaven only knows how many times removed.’ Wildly she searched her memory for names that would add weight to her story. ‘It—it was Uncle Dominic who wrote to me.’ That was the name her mother had mentioned most of all. Dominic Trevennon who had taught the city-born girl to climb barefoot over the rocks, to row a boat, to fish, to lift the lobster pots and relieve them of their snapping contents. It had been Dominic too who had told her the legends that Morwenna remembered as bedtime stories. Tales of the ‘knackers’, the small malevolent spirits who inhabited the tin mines, whose tapping hammers presaged disasters, such as flooding or earthfalls. Tales of the galleon which had foundered off Spanish Cove during the storms that pursued the ill-fated Armada, and the gold it had carried, still to be found, Laura had said, among the sand of the cove by anyone reckless enough to climb down the cliff to search there and risk being cut off by the racing tide. And Morwenna had lain there round-eyed among the comfort of the blankets, hearing the screech of gulls and feeling the sand gritty under her bare toes as she delved among the shifting grains for the doubloons.

‘It all seems very sudden,’ Lady Kerslake was saying, her lips drawn into a thin line. ‘But I suppose you know what you’re doing. Have you met any of these—er—cousins before?’

‘No, but I feel I know them. My mother told me so much about them.’ Morwenna, guiltily conscious just how far this was from the truth, surreptitiously crossed her fingers in her jacket pockets.

‘Well, it’s very kind of them to offer you a home, under the circumstances,’ Lady Kerslake said sourly. ‘I do hope you won’t take advantage of their generosity, Morwenna. You can’t expect to be a burden on other people all your life, you know. But if it’s only until the spring, I don’t suppose it will matter too much.’ She gave a brisk nod. ‘Now, what about lunch?’

‘Oh, don’t bother about me.’ Morwenna’s nails dug deep into the palms of her hands. ‘I think I’ll go and see about my packing.’ Another meal in this house, she thought, would choke me.

‘As you wish,’ Lady Kerslake concurred, not troubling to hide her relief at the way the situation seemed to be resolving itself. She turned towards the door, then hesitated as if a thought had occurred to her. ‘If there are any of your mother’s paintings, Morwenna, that you would care to take with you, I hope you won’t hesitate to do so. Geoffrey and I were talking last night, and we agreed it would only be fair that you should have some keepsake of her, although there is no actual legal entitlement. I’m not suggesting, of course, that you should take any of the better-known canvases hanging downstairs, but if you want any of the pictures in this room you may have them. I don’t think they can be regarded as her best work by any means, but naturally they will be of sentimental value to you.’

If she had expected a show of delight, she was disappointed. Morwenna’s face was impassive and her few words of thanks merely polite. Lady Kerslake went away to arrange her lunch party reflecting that the girl was probably put out because she had not been allowed to take her pick of the more valuable paintings.

As soon as she could be sure that she had departed, Morwenna sank back again on the sofa, her legs shaking. She stared across the room at the painting of the lonely house on the bleak headland and her stomach contracted nervously. She thought wildly, ‘Oh, God, what have I done?’

She had always tended to be impulsive. It was a family trait, but it had never carried her to these lengths before. It had been impulsiveness that had led her to apply to the painting school. Many of the friends she had been at school with were rather desultorily pursuing careers as personal assistants or secretaries, but they seemed to be little more than glorified dogsbodies as far as Morwenna could see. Or they were helping to run boutiques, or serving in West End department stores. Somehow she had wanted more than that. And it hadn’t particularly pleased her when people said tolerantly, ‘Oh—Morwenna? Well, she’ll get married, of course,’ their eyes lingering appreciatively over her slender figure with the gently rounded hips and small, firm breasts.

She tried to control her whirling thoughts. After all, she wasn’t committed to going to Cornwall. Trevennon had been a let-out—the inspiration of the moment—something to save her face with Cousin Patricia. She didn’t have to actually do anything about it. Anyway, a wave of colour flooded her face, she couldn’t just wish herself on a group of strangers, in spite of her brave words to Lady Kerslake. She had no means of knowing whether the Dominic of whom her mother had spoken with such affection was still alive. He would be in his sixties at the very least, and the years that Laura Kerslake had spent at Trevennon would only be a distant memory.

She had sometimes wondered why her mother had not maintained contact with Trevennon over the years, but at the time it had never occurred to her to ask. She had been too young to consider the complexities of the situation, she thought, and after her mother’s death, too much probing into the past had never seemed quite appropriate. Besides, she had always had the feeling that her father had not shared her mother’s nostalgia for Cornwall. Nothing had ever been said, but the impression had been a strong one. Perhaps it had been nothing more than ordinary, and only too human jealousy of a time when she had lived and been happy without him, Morwenna thought wryly. Sir Robert’s love for his wife had been all-encompassing. But somehow she had felt the past was an area where she should not trespass with her questions, and now they could never be answered—unless of course she went to Trevennon herself.

She shook her head slowly, clenching her fingers together in her lap. She must stop thinking along those lines. The fact of the matter was that she was homeless, but that wasn’t the disaster it seemed. Friends were always flouncing away from the shelter of the parental roof after some devastating row or other, and they managed to survive. There were a number of names in her address book which she could call on in an emergency. People were always swopping flats, or marrying and moving out. There would be someone somewhere wanting another girl to make up the numbers. And there were jobs too. Not the sort of creative work she had planned on. For those she would need training—qualifications. But she would find something to do which would pay her share of the rent and food bills, and there were always evening classes she could go to.

She suppressed a grimace. It was a far cry from the spring in the South of France that she had envisaged, but she had only herself to blame. She was capable of far better work than that she had shown Lennox Christie. But she had known the money was there to buy her a place in his class, and she had simply not tried too hard. If she were trying now, it would be very different.

She took the crumpled letter out of her pocket and read it again slowly. While it held out no definite hope, it did offer her a second chance. But she would need to work very hard over the next few months to convince him that she had sincerity and application as well as talent, and wasn’t just another wealthy playgirl looking for an undemanding few months in the sun.

She got up restlessly and walked over to the window, staring out at the prospect of smooth lawns and leafless trees which unfolded itself before her. What she needed was a few months’ grace to do some serious painting, when what confronted her was the urgent necessity for job and flat-hunting. She tried to do some swift mental calculations, but the results were depressing. The pitifully small amount of money she had in her bank account would not be enough to feed and house her while she pursued this tenuous dream. It was time she recognised her hopes of a career even on the fringes of the art world as the fantasy they were, and got down to realities.

She sighed and cast a regretful look back over her shoulder at the group of paintings on the wall. Their appeal had never seemed more potent. If she took any of her mother’s work away with her when she went, it would be those and the self-portrait above the mantelpiece. But if she did take them, heaven only knew what she would do with them. She could not imagine them as a welcome addition to the decor in any of her friends’ flats. She supposed drearily they would have to be stored somewhere until she could find a proper home for them. Whenever that might be.

She was halfway to the door when the thought came to her. She stopped dead in her tracks and swung round again to survey the pictures. She might not be able to claim a temporary home at Trevennon, but surely, for her mother’s sake, they might be willing to store the paintings for her. If she took them down to Trevennon and explained the situation…. As long as she made it clear it was only a temporary measure. They would be far better there than locked away in some warehouse. And it might give the Trevennon family some pleasure too to know that Laura Kerslake had never forgotten….

There was some relief to be gained in knowing she had solved at least one of her problems, minor though it was. It was doubtful whether she would find such ready solutions for those that remained, nevertheless as she went to her room to begin to sort through her clothes and belongings, a tiny ray of hope began to burn deep inside her.

The next few days were not comfortable ones. Morwenna was thankful that she had announced that she was leaving in advance, otherwise she felt the atmosphere in the house would have been well-nigh unendurable. As it was, she could remind herself that the little barbs and snide remarks which came her way were only for a little while longer.

She had been totally ruthless with her packing. Most of her extensive wardrobe was now at the Vicarage awaiting the next jumble sale, and she had retained only the most basic elements. But this did not grieve her as much as parting with the childhood books and possessions that still occupied her bedroom. She had thought sentimentally that one day all these things could be passed on to her own children, but she knew she had to travel lightly, and the cherished articles were disposed of to the charity shop in the nearby town. She had soon reduced her possessions down to the contents of one large suitcase, while her painting gear was consigned to the depths of an old rucksack which she found in one of the attics. The Trevennon pictures and her mother’s self-portrait were carefully taken from their frames under Lady Kerslake’s eagle eye and made into a neat parcel.

Life did not become any easier with the arrival of Guy with his latest girl-friend in tow. She had dark, elaborately frizzed hair and a giggle that made Morwenna want to heave, but judging by Guy’s air of smug satisfaction, he saw nothing amiss.

Morwenna also had to cope with the added humiliation that Guy had obviously told this Georgina all about her, possibly with embellishments, and that Georgina’s reaction to the situation was to treat her with a kind of pitying contempt, mixed with triumph that Morwenna’s loss had been her gain.

Morwenna suffered this in a kind of teeth-grinding impotence, but she knew there would be no point in trying to convince Georgina that her relationship with Guy had been very much in the embryo stage, and that she was not stoically trying to conceal an irrevocably broken heart. It would have given her immense satisfaction to tell Georgina that she was welcome to Guy, and that her only regret was that she had not had the wit to see the truth behind his advances in the first place, but she knew that the other girl would not believe her.

However, it was Vanessa’s attitude that Morwenna found the most surprising. As the time approached for her departure, her cousin became almost cordial, even to the point of insisting on driving her up to London to catch the Penzance train. Morwenna accepted the offer, but she did not deceive herself that it was promoted by any new-found liking for herself. She suspected that Vanessa was taking her to the train merely in order to make sure that she was in fact going to Cornwall, and was seeking her company during her remaining hours at the Priory simply to enable her to avoid Georgina to whom she had taken an instant and embarrassingly open dislike.

Life at the Priory, Morwenna decided on reflection, seemed likely to become hell for man and beast quite shortly, especially if Guy decided to marry Georgina and her father’s money of which she spoke so often and with such candour, and in a way this helped to alleviate the pain of parting from her home. Nevertheless she cried herself to sleep each night, her tears prompted not merely by grief for the losses she had suffered but fear as well. It was all very well to tell herself robustly that no one need starve in these days of the Welfare State, but there was no escaping the fact that she had led a reasonably sheltered existence up to a few short weeks ago, and that what faced her was likely to be both difficult and unpleasant. Nor was it any consolation to remind herself of the thousands of girls of her age who were far worse off than she was herself. She felt totally and bewilderingly alone. From being the pivot on which the family’s love turned, she was now an outcast, and she felt all the acute vulnerability of her position.

But when the day of her departure actually arrived, she was relieved. She said a stilted goodbye to Sir Geoffrey in the study which had once been her father’s and was acutely embarrassed when he handed her with a few mumbled words a slip of paper which turned out to be a sizeable cheque. Blushing furiously, she managed a word of thanks and as soon as she was outside the door, she tore the cheque into tiny fragments and stuffed them into a jardiniere, conveniently situated on its pedestal further along the corridor.

Lady Kerslake returned to her former saccharine amiability, giving the impression that it was only Morwenna’s own intractability that was taking her away from the Priory. Morwenna, putting her own cheek dutifully against the scented one turned to her, wondered with a wry twist of her lips what Cousin Patricia’s reaction would be if she suddenly took her at her word and announced that she was going to stay.

Vanessa was waiting in the hall tapping her foot impatiently. She made no attempt to help Morwenna with her case or rucksack but walked briskly ahead of her to the car and sat revving the engine while her cousin stowed her luggage in the boot. Morwenna climbed into the passenger seat and looked steadily ahead of her. There was no point in looking back. The Priory was closed to her now and lingering backward glances as the car started down the drive would only distress her.

Vanessa gave her a sideways glance as they waited to emerge from the drive on to the road.

‘You’re a cool customer, I must say, Wenna,’ she remarked. ‘One moment you’re drooping about the place like Patience on a monument or something, and the next you’re off—and to Cornwall of all places! You must be completely mad. I mean, it may be all very well in the summer, except for the crowds, of course. But in winter time—my God!’

She paused but Morwenna made no response, so she continued, ‘I thought Guy might have made the effort to come down and say goodbye—especially under the circumstances.’ She waited again, but there was still no reply, and her voice was slightly pettish as she went on, ‘I suppose he thought if he made a fuss it might upset the frightful Georgina.’

Morwenna said calmly, ‘There was absolutely no reason for him to make any kind of fuss.’

‘Oh, come off it, Wenna.’ Vanessa put her foot on the accelerator and overtook a van on a slight bend to the alarm and indignation of its driver. ‘You know quite well that you and Guy had a thing going. It can’t be pleasant for you to see him with someone else. I don’t blame you at all for going off to lick your wounds somewhere—I think I’d do the same in your position. But if it’s any consolation to you, Mother was furious over Georgina. It’s been almost amusing watching her try to be civil to her. I think in some ways she would have preferred it if Guy had insisted on sticking to you.’

‘Thank you,’ Morwenna said drily.

Vanessa hunched a shoulder. ‘Oh, you know what I mean. After all, you were pretty involved with him. He’s lucky to have got away as lightly as he has.’

‘Without having to make an honest woman of me, do you mean?’ Morwenna was controlling her temper with some difficulty. ‘Is that what you all think?’

Vanessa shot her an uneasy glance. ‘Well—not precisely. But Guy is sleeping with Georgina—and being utterly blatant about it, so….’

‘So naturally you all assumed that I’d fallen into bed with him with equal ease.’ Morwenna forced a smile. ‘I can’t pretend I’m flattered, or does Guy usually restrict his attentions to pushovers?’

‘Well, let’s say he doesn’t usually waste a great deal of his time on frightened virgins,’ Vanessa returned derisively.

Morwenna caught her bottom lip savagely in her teeth. ‘I see.’ She was silent for a moment. It was difficult to know which was worse—the assumption that she had been Guy’s pliant mistress or the alternative inference that she had not been sufficiently attractive to him for him to have attempted seduction. She would have preferred not to be ranged in either category.

She managed a light laugh. ‘Actually our relationship was based more on mutual convenience than anything else,’ she said, digging her hands into the pockets of her sheepskin coat to conceal the fact that they were trembling. ‘We—we both needed someone to be seen around with. And I don’t blame Guy at all for confining himself to ladies with money. Now that our positions are reversed, I’m doing more or less the same thing.’

‘You are?’ Vanessa gave her a slightly flabbergasted look. ‘I don’t follow you.’

Morwenna allowed her smile to widen. ‘Well, I’m not going down to Cornwall for my health’s sake, let’s say.’

‘No?’ Vanessa was openly intrigued. ‘Is there a man?’

Morwenna achieved a giggle quite as smug as anything Georgina had produced.

‘Of course there’s a man,’ she said without a tremor, crossing her fingers superstitiously in the shelter of her pockets. ‘I’d hardly be travelling to the back of beyond at this time of year otherwise.’

‘Well!’ Vanessa’s tone was frankly congratulatory. ‘I always knew you couldn’t possibly be as innocent as you looked. Have you known him long?’

Morwenna shrugged. ‘Long enough,’ she said airily. Since I was a small child, she thought hysterically, in dreams and stories, and please don’t let her ask me how old he is or any other details. I don’t care if she does think me a gold-digger or worse. Anything’s better than being regarded as a charity case. And I’ll never see any of them again, so they can think what they like.

Vanessa was speaking again. ‘And do your plans include marriage, or is that an indelicate question?’

‘Oh, that would depend on a lot of things,’ Morwenna said hastily. ‘I—I prefer to cross that bridge when I come to it.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘And if I can persuade him to provide the money to send me to painting school next year, I may never have to cross it at all.’

‘I see,’ Vanessa said blankly. ‘Well, all I can say is that I wish you luck.’

‘Thank you,’ Morwenna laughed. ‘But I don’t think I shall need it.’ Her tone implied a total confidence in her own power of attraction, and for a moment she despised herself for playing Vanessa’s game, but what did it matter after all? They were never likely to meet again. Once she was out of the way, Morwenna guessed that her cousins would breathe a sigh of relief and put her out of their minds. In a way she could see their point of view. While she had remained at the Priory, they could never feel their inheritance was truly theirs. She was a wholly unwelcome reminder of the old days, and relations between the two families had never been on the most intimate terms.

But it was chilling to have to recognise that she was now alone in the world with her own way to make. There had been times, not long ago either, when she had inwardly rebelled against the loving shelter of the Priory, when she had been sorely tempted to thrust away her father’s and Martin’s concern for her and take off on her own like so many of her contemporaries. In some ways now, she wished she had yielded to the impulse. At least now she would not feel so bereft.

Later, as she stowed her solitary suitcase and her haversack, with the bulky parcel of canvases attached, on the luggage rack and felt the train jerk under her feet as it set off on the long run to the West, a tight knot of tension settled in the pit of her stomach. She watched the platforms and sidings slip past with increasing despondency. In spite of her brave words to Vanessa, each one of which she now bitterly regretted, she knew she might well be embarking on a wild goose chase.

She swallowed past a lump in her throat. The request that the Trevennons should store her mother’s pictures until she was able to come for them had seemed quite a reasonable one when she had first formulated it. Yet what right had she, a stranger among strangers, to ask any favours at all? Wouldn’t she have done better to have stayed in London and hardened herself to sell the pictures? That would have been the sensible thing to have done instead of tearing off on this quixotic journey to a corner of England she only knew from bedtime stories and a few romantic images on canvas.

She sighed unhappily. For better or worse, she had started on her journey and she wished very much that she could put out of her head the fact that someone had once said it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

CHAPTER TWO

HER mood of depression had not lifted by the time she reached Penzance, and matters were not improved by the fact that it was pouring with rain from a leaden sky. Morwenna surveyed her surroundings without enthusiasm. She wished that funds permitted her to summon a taxi and order it to drive her to Trevennon, but she knew that would be a foolhardly thing to do when she had no idea how far the house might be situated from Penzance. For a moment she toyed with the idea of finding somewhere to spend the night in Penzance, but she soon dismissed it. Top priority was getting out to Trevennon and leaving the pictures there.

Her hair was hanging round her face in wet streaks by the time she had found a newsagent and bought a map of the area, and she was thankful to find an open snack bar where she could shelter and study the map in comparative comfort. Trevennon itself was not marked, but she soon found Port Vennor as she drank her coffee and ate a rather tasteless cheese roll. Spanish Cove was marked too, so she knew roughly the direction to aim for.

As she emerged from the snack bar, a gust of wind caught the door, almost wrenching it from her hand, and catching her off balance for a moment. Morwenna groaned inwardly. Her mother had told her all about the southwesterly gales, but she had not bargained for meeting one as soon as she arrived. Walking down to the bus stop, it occurred to her that she wasn’t sure exactly what she had bargained for. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more hare-brained and impulsive her actions seemed. She eased the rucksack into a more comfortable position on her shoulder and bent her head against the force of the rising wind.

One thing was certain. She would soon find out if she had been a fool, and she found herself hoping with something very like a prayer in her heart that Dominic Trevennon would be a kindly and understanding old man who would not demand too many stumbling explanations of her arrival, unheralded, on his doorstep.

When she arrived at the bus stop, she found that she was not alone. Another girl was waiting, sheltering from the wind in a nearby doorway. As Morwenna stopped to put down her case, she gave her a frankly speculative look. She had a short, rather dumpy figure which wasn’t helped by being enveloped in the voluminous folds of a black cape reaching to her ankles. Her face was round and friendly, and quite pretty, and she smiled as Morwenna put down her case.

‘Miserable day.’

‘Yes.’ Morwenna looked around her. ‘And it gets dark so quickly at this time of the year.’

‘Have you got far to go?’

‘I’m not sure really. I’m trying to get to a house called Trevennon.’

‘Trevennon?’ The other looked startled for a moment. ‘It’s quite a long way. You want to ask to be set down at a place called Trevennon Cross.’ She was silent for a moment, then she said, ‘Look—I’m not trying to be rude. But are you quite sure that’s where you want to go?’

Morwenna was no longer very sure of anything, but she lifted her chin with a confidence she was far from feeling. ‘Of course. I’m looking for a Mr Trevennon—Dominic Trevennon. Do you know him?’

‘Not personally.’ The other girl’s mouth twisted wryly. ‘He doesn’t exactly welcome outsiders on his sacred preserves.’

Morwenna groaned inwardly. So much for the benevolent old gentleman of her hopes, she thought.

‘You make him sound a formidable character,’ she said, trying to speak lightly.

‘He’s a bastard,’ the other girl said shortly. ‘Behaves like one of the Lords of Creation, hanging on to that barn of a house and his piece of crumbling coastline as if he was defending one of the last bastions of Cornwall. He hates tourists and he doesn’t go a bomb on casual callers either, but if he’s expecting you, it should be all right.’

Morwenna’s heart sank even more deeply. The white-haired grandfatherly figment of her imagination was turning into one of the autocrats of all time, so what kind of a reception was she going to get?

‘You seem to know a great deal about him,’ she commented.

‘Not through choice, I assure you. My brother and I have a small studio pottery at St Enna which is pretty near Trevennon. We want to extend it and open a small shop, but we were refused planning permission, and Dominic Trevennon was behind that. He was afraid it might attract tourists near his precious estate. He values his privacy very highly, does Mr Trevennon.’

Thanks for the warning, Morwenna thought bleakly. She glanced at her watch. The bus would be arriving any minute now. It still wasn’t too late to change her mind. Could this really be the man her mother had spoken of with such nostalgic affection, or had the passage of time simply changed him out of all recognition?

‘I’m Biddy Bradshaw, by the way,’ the girl went on. ‘I’ve been doing the rounds of some of the gift shops, trying to get some firm orders for the Easter trade.’ She gave a tight little smile. ‘If we had our own shop, it would make things much easier. The shops are fairly co-operative round here, but they want commission on what they sell for us, naturally, and there isn’t that much profit just at the moment to share around.’

Morwenna nodded, conscious of a slight feeling of awkwardness as she introduced herself.

Biddy’s eyes were alight with interest. ‘Morwenna? But that’s a Cornish name. I didn’t realise you were from this part of the world.’

‘I’m not. But my mother spent most of her childhood here, and I suppose it seemed a natural choice for her.’

Biddy shrugged slightly. ‘I suppose so—if you have a taste for tragic legends. Oh, here’s the bus at last.’

She clambered up the steps of the single-decker while Morwenna followed. ‘You want the stop after mine,’ she directed as Morwenna paid for her ticket. ‘Turn left at the Cross and follow the road until it brings you out at the house. You can’t miss it,’ she added. ‘It doesn’t lead anywhere else.’

Morwenna would have liked to have questioned Biddy further about Trevennon, but the bus was fairly crowded and she was aware of all the potential listening ears, so she confined her questions to general ones about the area itself. Biddy was cheerful company, and Morwenna felt oddly desolate when she announced eventually that they were coming to her stop.

‘You want the next one, don’t forget,’ she said as she got to her feet. ‘Good luck.’ She paused. ‘If you—do decide to stay for a while, look us up at the pottery.’

‘I’d like that,’ Morwenna smiled up at her. As the bus lurched away again she took a deep breath to steady herself and began to retrieve her belongings. In less than five minutes she found herself standing in the darkness, the wind whipping at her hair and tangling across her face. She shivered, huddling her sheepskin jacket round her for warmth and wishing that she was just about anywhere but the chill of this unknown country road.

She began to walk towards the faint glimmer of the signpost at the crossroads, glad of the shelter of the hedge. It was raining still and the drops stung her face. When she licked her lips she could taste salt on them, and in the distance above the howl of the wind, she could hear the sea roaring.

‘Good night for wrecks,’ she murmured aloud, and grimaced at the thought. At the crossroads she turned left as Biddy had indicated and found herself in a narrow lane, bordered on either side by high hedges. It was really dark now, the faint moonlight almost totally obliterated by the mass of rushing clouds chased by the gale.

She had walked perhaps two hundred yards, practically feeling her way along the hedge, when she stopped and said flatly and aloud, ‘This is silly.’

She set down her case and the rucksack and began to unfasten the buckles. Among the oddments she had thrown in at the last moment, she thought, was a torch, although she wasn’t sure if it worked or if there were even any batteries in it. Naturally the missing article had slipped right to the bottom of the rucksack and she was obliged to repack it almost completely before she could fasten it again. Grimly she stood up at last and tentatively switched on the torch. The faintness of the glimmer of light that fell on the road in front of her indicated there was not much life left in the batteries, but it was better than nothing, and it was a heavy, comforting object to have in her hand anyway on this evening when the whole world seemed full of movement and menace and unidentifiable sounds. She shone the torch ahead of her, and her heart almost leaped into her mouth when it picked out something large and white in the hedge, something which bent and swayed in the wind. A large notice board, she realised, with hysterical relief, and what an utter fool she was making of herself. She had spent the greater part of her life living in the country, so why was she behaving like a townie, leaping at every shadow, letting her imagination play tricks. It was nonsense to think that this dark, unfamiliar landscape was rejecting her. She was letting Biddy’s warnings really get to her.

Or was she? she wondered drily a moment later as she allowed her torch to play over the lettering on the board. ‘Private Road to Trevennon Only’, it stated unequivocally. No sign of the welcome mat there, she thought philosophically, and walked on.

She had been walking for about ten minutes and wishing that the notice board had given some idea of the distance involved when it happened. The shriek of the wind had been rising steadily, and now in a sudden boiling crescendo of sound there was a loud crack just ahead of her, and with a slithering rumble a tree fell right across the road in her path.

She stood very still for a moment, then put her case down, and began to shake. She wasn’t hurt. For God’s sake, it hadn’t even touched her, but it had been close, and at this rate her nerves were going to be shot to pieces and she was going to arrive on Dominic Trevennon’s doorstep a gibbering lunatic.

What was more, although the tree on closer examination did not turn out to be particularly large, nevertheless it had blocked the road. She could climb over it, but that was not the problem. Private road it might be, but presumably people at the house had vehicles and visitors with other vehicles, and the tree had fallen awkwardly between two bends in the lane. A driver would be on top of it almost before he realised.

She caught hold of one of the sturdier branches and tugged, but to no avail. It might not be large, but it was heavier than it looked. She supposed her most sensible course of action would be to hurry on to the house wherever it was, and warn someone, trusting to luck that no one drove along the lane in the meantime.

Ironically, the wind now seemed to be lessening, as if aware it had done its worst and could now be satisfied. And behind her, in the distance, she could just hear the sound of a car engine, coming fast. Morwenna swung round, her eyes searching the darkness. She was not all that far from the main road, she told herself. There was no reason to think that the traveller would not go straight on. But even as she watched, she saw the glare of a pair of powerful headlights and knew that against all the odds the car had turned off towards Trevennon. And the driver knew the road. He was covering the narrow twisting road without a check, and any moment now he would be here, unaware of the waiting danger.

Morwenna almost hurled her case and rucksack into the shelter of the hedge and ran, stumbling, back to the bend. She stood in the middle of the lane, swinging her torch from side to side in a desperate attempt to attract attention, but wouldn’t the pitiful light it afforded be swallowed up in the darkness?

The car lights seemed to slice across the evening sky, and then with a snarl of the engine the car was upon her. She gave the torch one last wave, then dived towards the hedge, but not quite soon enough. Something grazed her—perhaps a wing—and she fell, not hard but sufficiently to wind her. The car stopped with a squeal of brakes, a door slammed and Morwenna found herself being hauled to her feet with considerably more force than she felt was necessary.

He was tall, and his hands were hard and bruising. That was the first, the most immediate impression, and more than enough, Morwenna thought feelingly, as she was dumped unceremoniously back on to her feet. He seemed to be very dark, or was that just the suggestion of the darkness around him, and he was, she realised radiating an anger that was almost tangible.

‘You bloody little idiot.’ He wasn’t shouting; he didn’t have to. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You could have been killed!’

His grip on her upper arms was really hurting, and furiously she pulled herself free. ‘You call me an idiot!’ she blazed back at him, fright and stress making her voice younger and more breathless than she would have liked. ‘And what about you—driving like a maniac on a rotten night like this? If I had been killed, it would have been all your fault!’

Even as she spoke, she knew she was not being totally fair. He had seen her pitiful attempt to cause a diversion and had managed to stop, in spite of the speed he was driving at, almost within the car’s length. But this had been the final straw in a pretty abysmal day, and now reaction was taking its toll of her.

‘Your logic fascinates me,’ he said with a cool contempt that seared its way across her skin. ‘May I point out to you that this is in fact a private road, and under those circumstances one expects to be preserved from the antics of lunatic hitch-hikers. And might I also suggest you make your way back to the main road, and ply your trade there.’

‘I was not hitch-hiking!’ She was furious to find that she was shaking like a leaf. ‘What I was doing was trying to save your life, or at least trying to prevent you from being injured. That, of course, was before I met you.’

There was a long electric silence.

‘You’d better explain,’ he said grimly. ‘Oh, not your last remark. I’ve managed to work the implications of that out for myself.’

‘There’s a tree down,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Just round that bend. I was going to warn someone at the house, then I heard you coming, and thought I’d better stay and warn you instead. Only all I had was that damned torch, and the batteries aren’t too good—and now they’ve gone all together.’ She began unavailingly to push the switch on the torch backwards and forwards as if her very insistence could make it work again.

There was another silence, then he said abruptly, ‘Wait here.’

He walked across to the car, climbed in and started the engine. He drove the few feet to the bend, then stopped. Another pause, then she heard his footsteps returning.

He said without emotion, ‘It seems I owe you an apology.’

‘Well, don’t let it ruin your life.’ She tried to sound flip, but the quiver in her voice betrayed her, and she heard him sigh, swiftly and sharply.

‘But that still doesn’t explain precisely what you were doing on this road in the first place,’ he said. ‘What happened? Did you miss the main road in the dark? This lane only leads to….’

‘To Trevennon,’ she finished for him wearily. ‘I know. I can read, actually, if the print is big enough. And I haven’t missed my way, though God knows it would have been easy enough. I’m going to Trevennon. I have to see Mr Dominic Trevennon.’

She heard his startled intake of breath and wondered resignedly if she was to be the recipient of another Awful Warning about Mr Trevennon’s intolerance of casual callers and general irascibility, but when he spoke his voice sounded cool and disinterested.

‘Indeed, and has Mr Trevennon the pleasure of expecting you?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘And I’ve already been warned that he’s arrogant and awkward and imagines that he’s some uncrowned king of Cornwall, but all the same, I’m going to see him.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ he remarked. ‘Judging by the description you’ve received of him, I would have thought it would have been infinitely preferable to keep your distance.’

‘I have to see him, she said abruptly. ‘I want to ask him a favour.’

‘Do you think he sounds the kind of man likely to provide favours for chance-met strangers?’

‘On the face of it, no.’ Morwenna shook her head. ‘On the other hand, he’s obviously a supreme egotist, and he might just be flattered to think someone has travelled half way across England to ask him to do something for them. Besides, I’m not wholly a stranger to him.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t count on it,’ he said bitingly. ‘And what do you mean—you’re not “wholly a stranger"?’

But Morwenna was already regretting that she had said so much.

‘I’m sorry, but I think that’s my business,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘And I don’t doubt you’re a lifelong friend of his and that you can’t wait to get down to Trevennon and tell him what I’ve said. Well, go ahead. I don’t suppose that in the long run it will make much difference anyway.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said slowly, ‘at this precise moment, I’m wondering whether I’ve ever known him at all. As for proceeding with all haste to Trevennon to drop you in it, may I remind you that the road is blocked by a tree. Besides, I’m going to make a detour round to the farm to get Jacky Herrick to bring his tractor down to shift it, so if you hurry you should arrive at Trevennon with your version first.’

‘A tractor?’ Morwenna let her voice register exaggerated surprise. ‘You mean you’re not going to pick it up with one hand, and toss it lightly into the hedge?’

She was sorry as soon as she had said it. There was something about him that got under her skin, but that was no excuse for behaving with gratuitous rudeness.

When he spoke, his voice was cold with anger. ‘If I was in the mood for tossing anything into a hedge, believe me, young woman, you’d get priority over any tree.’

‘I think we’ve already established that,’ she said ruefully, wincing a little as she moved forward.

‘Are you hurt? The car hardly touched you….’

‘Oh, please don’t bother about me.’ She felt as if one side of her was one terrific bruise. ‘I still might manage to finish fourth.’

‘Stand still,’ he ordered abruptly. ‘You might have broken something.’

She stood, teeth clenched more with anger than with pain as he completed a swift but comprehensive examination of her moving parts.

‘Thank you,’ she said with awful politeness when he had finished. ‘You should have been a vet.’

‘I won’t complete the analogy,’ he returned with equal courtesy. ‘Although several members of the animal kingdom do suggest themselves. Which reminds me—when you get down to Trevennon, watch out for the dogs. They’re not trained to encourage strangers.’

‘Oh God!’ Morwenna, retrieving her case and rucksack from the hedge, swung round to look at him. It was maddening that it was too dark to see his face properly, let alone the expression on it, and she could hardly ask him to stand in the car headlights for a moment so that she could judge whether he was joking. He hadn’t done a great deal of joking up to that point, certainly, and there was no reason for him to start now, so the dogs probably existed. She moistened her lips uncertainly. ‘Do—do they bite?’

‘It has been known,’ he said laconically. ‘The thing to do is stand your ground. Don’t try to outrun them—that’s fatal.’

‘I can imagine it would be.’ Morwenna knew an overwhelming desire to sit down on the wet lane and scream and drum her heels. ‘But you don’t have to worry. I doubt very much whether I could outrun a tortoise at the moment. Would it help if I knew the dogs’ names?’

‘It might. They’re called Whisky and Max. Do you think you can remember that?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ she said grimly. ‘I imagine I shall have great difficulty in remembering anything else.’ Wincing slightly, she settled her rucksack on her shoulder then picked up her case.

‘Dear God!’ He was still standing in the shadows well out of range of the headlights. ‘Not just a casual call, I see. Just how long were you planning to stay at Trevennon?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to confess that she would be satisfied with a roof over her head for the night, but she suppressed it. After all, it was none of his business.

She sent him a smiling glance over her shoulder as she prepared to negotiate the tree. It was one of her best, slightly teasing, deliberately provocative, aimed at leaving him with something to think about.

‘We’ll just have to see how things work out,’ she said lightly. ‘Maybe the king of Cornwall will take a fancy to me.’

But if she had counted on having the last word, she was to be disappointed.

‘I’m sure he’ll take something to you.’ His voice was bland. ‘Preferably a riding crop. Au revoir, my pretty way-farer.’

She held her head high, and wouldn’t allow herself to limp until she was round the next bend and out of the range of those too-revealing headlights.

The force of the wind seemed to have spent itself, and now the air was full of the sound of the sea, a sullen booming roar as the breakers hurled themselves against the granite cliffs. Nor was it rain on her face any longer, but spray.

As she trudged on wearily, Morwenna found herself wondering how easy it would be to miss the house entirely and walk straight over the cliff into the sea. She grinned wanly at the thought, and then stiffened, peering almost incredulously into the gloom. Somewhere just to the left she could see a light, a steady, purposeful light like a lamp set in the windows of an uncurtained room. And at that moment the moon emerged from behind the flying clouds, and Morwenna saw the dark mass of the house, its chimneys and roofs clearly outlined against the sky.

Under the circumstances, it was madness to feel such a sense of relief, of homecoming even, but the familiarity of the building’s shape, imprinted on her mind by her mother’s painting, caught at her heart, and she felt childish tears prick at the back of her eyelids.

Somewhere close at hand a dog began to bark, deep and full-throated, and then another took it up, and in the house another light went on, as if the occupants were responding to the animals’ warning. Of course, she thought, they would be expecting a visitor—the man she had met on the road.

Summoning all her courage, she walked up to the front door. The notice she had seen had been perfectly correct, she thought wryly. The road indeed led to nowhere but Trevennon—straight to its door in fact. And what kind of arrogance had decided to build a house in this very spot anyway—out on a headland, exposed four-square to the elements? ‘A barn’, Biddy had called it, she thought, and wished that her first view of it had been in daylight.

There was an old-fashioned bell pull at the side of the front door, and Morwenna tugged at it half-heartedly, not really expecting any results. But to her surprise, a bell did start jangling somewhere inside the house, and the dogs began barking again tumultuously. They seemed to be penned up somewhere in the outbuildings which rambled away from the side of the house, and as Morwenna waited, she heard the barking rise almost to a frenzy and the sound of heavy bodies banging against some kind of wooden barricade. It was altogether too close for comfort and Morwenna hoped devoutly that it would hold.

‘Whisky!’ she called out, trying to sound firm. ‘Max! Quiet, good dogs.’

The good dogs were clearly puzzled by this personal appeal from an unfamiliar voice, but they stopped barking. There was a lot of subdued whining, and convulsive sniffing, and paws scrabbling on a hard surface, but that, Morwenna felt, was a far more acceptable alternative.

And someone was actually coming to answer the door. Morwenna felt her stomach flutter with nervousness, and clenched her hands into fists deep in the pockets of her coat as the heavy door swung open with an appropriate creak of hinges.

She was confronted by a small stocky man, almost enveloped in a large and disreputable butcher’s apron. His face was wrinkled like a walnut into lines of real malevolence, and bright eyes under grey shaggy eyebrows glared suspiciously up at her.

‘Wrong ’ouse,’ he snorted, and attempted to close the door.

Morwenna stepped forward quickly to circumvent the move. She smiled beguilingly at him, ignoring the scowl she received in return. Her thoughts were seething. Was this—could this be Dominic Trevennon? He would be about the right age, she reasoned, and he seemed to fit the portrait of unlovable eccentric which she had begun to build in her mind.

‘Mr Trevennon?’ she asked, trying to speak confidently.

‘Not ’ere,’ was the discouraging reply. ‘So you may’s well take yourself off.’

‘Do you mean he’s away?’ Morwenna’s heart sank within her. ‘Or is he just out?’

‘Tedn’t none of your business,’ the gnome remarked with satisfaction. ‘Now go ‘long with you. I want to get this door shut.’ Somewhere in the house a telephone began to ring, and his face assumed an expression of even deeper malice. ‘ ’Ear that?’ he snarled. ‘I should be answering that, not stood ’ere, argy-bargying with you.’

‘Oh, please,’ Morwenna said desperately, seeing that he was about to slam the door on her. ‘I—I’ve come a long way today. If Mr Trevennon isn’t here at the moment, couldn’t I come in and wait?’

‘No, you couldn’t.’ He looked outraged at the thought. ‘If Mr Trevennon’d wanted to see you, he’d have left word you were expected. You phone up tomorrow in a decent manner and make an appointment. Now, go on. I’m letting all this old draught in.’

The door was already closing in Morwenna’s face when a woman’s voice called, ‘Hold on there, you, Zack. You’re to let her in.’

‘ ’Oo says?’ Zack swung round aggressively.

The woman approaching jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘ ’E does. Good enough for you?’

Apparently it was, because Zack held the door open—not wide, it was true, but sufficiently to allow Morwenna to squeeze herself through it into the hall. She put her case down and eased the rucksack from her aching shoulder, ignoring Zack’s mutter of, ‘Seems mazed t’me.’

‘You keep your opinion until you’m asked, Zack Hubbard.’ The woman gave Morwenna a searching but not unfriendly look. ‘You can wait in the study for the master, miss. There’s a nice fire in there.’ She paused doubtfully, taking in Morwenna’s chilled and generally bedraggled appearance. ‘Would you fancy a cup of something hot, while you’m waiting?’

Morwenna accepted gratefully and followed her rescuer across the wide hall. She was too bemused by the suddenness of her access to the house, just when she had almost given up all hope, to take much account of her surroundings, but the paramount impression was one of all-pervading shabbiness.

And this was confirmed by the room in which she found herself. A big shabby desk, littered with papers and crowned by an ancient typewriter, dominated the room. A sagging sofa covered in faded chintz was drawn up in front of the fireplace, and these with the addition of a small table just behind the sofa constituted the entire furniture of the room. The square of dark red carpet was threadbare in places, and the once-patterned wallpaper seemed to have faded to a dull universal beige, with lighter, brighter square patches seeming to indicate depressingly that pictures had once hung there.

Morwenna sank down on to the sofa and held out her hands to the blazing logs. What she had seen so far gave her no encouragement at all. The Trevennons, it seemed, had fallen on hard times since her mother had last visited the house. And it could furnish an explanation as to why Laura Kerslake had never returned there. Perhaps the Trevennons themselves had discouraged any reunions, preferring her to remember things as they had been. To remember people as they had been.

She glanced at the rucksack which she had placed on the sofa beside her and began to fumble with the buckles. She took out the parcel of paintings, and after a moment’s hesitation walked across and laid it on the desk. Her own equivalent, she thought wryly, of putting all her cards on the table.

There were some newspapers and magazines piled rather untidily at one end of the sofa and she riffled through them casually when she sat down again. They were an odd mixture, she thought, giving little clue as to the tastes and personality of the subscriber.

There were some local newspapers as well and Morwenna unfolded one of these and began to glance casually through the news items on the front page, but the newsprint had a disturbing way of dancing up and down in front of her eyes, and at length she gave up the effort, acknowledging that she was more tired than even she had guessed.

The door opened and the women came in carrying a tray, which she placed down on the sofa table. Again Morwenna was the recipient of one of those searching looks.

‘Is—is something wrong?’ she asked.

‘You have a look of someone I know. Can’t bring to mind who it is, but I daresay it’ll come to me.’

Morwenna’s heart skipped a beat. Was it her mother that this woman recognised in her? She was quite aware that there was a resemblance, but before she could ask further, a door banged nearby and Zack’s voice shouted pettishly, ‘Inez!’

The woman tutted and moved towards the door. ‘Dear life, doesn’t he go on,’ she remarked placidly, and went out closing the door behind her.

Morwenna studied the tea tray with slight amusement. It had been laid with a tea towel, and bore in addition to a fat brown earthenware teapot, a cup and saucer, neither of which matched, and a small plate holding two buttered cream crackers. But the tea itself was strong and fragrant, and by some miracle not made with teabags. She sipped it as if it was nectar.

When she had finished, she leaned back against the shabby, comfortable cushions and closed her eyes. She felt warmed through, and oddly at peace in spite of her inner uncertainties. All kinds of curious images began to dance behind her shuttered eyes, and it was pleasant to lie back and contemplate them while the warmth of the fire began to dissolve away some of the ache from her tired limbs.

Trees danced in the wind, and dogs with eyes as big and golden as the headlamps on a car went bounding through the night, baying at the moon. And somehow Biddy was there too, the wind filling her black cape. ‘Private road,’ she seemed to be saying over and over again. ‘Private road. Keep out.’

Morwenna had no idea how long she had been asleep or what had disturbed her, but she was wide awake in an instant and sitting up startled. It was much lighter in the room and she realised that someone had switched on the powerful lamp which stood on the desk.

It was a man, and she knew as soon as she saw him that it was the man she had encountered in the lane. Her instinct, she saw, had not misled her. He was dark, as dark as the stormy night outside the windows, tall and lean. His face was thin and as hard as if it had been hewn from the granite cliffs—a high-bridged nose, a jutting chin, firm lips and dark, hooded eyes that stared down at her mother’s paintings spread on the desk in front of him.

Men who looked like that, she thought dazedly, had once sailed ships bringing contraband from Brittany into the coves along this coast under the noses of the Excisemen. And men who looked like that could even have hung lanterns on lonely rocks to lure unsuspecting shipping to a terrible doom.

He must have sensed her eyes on him because he looked up, and Morwenna found herself shrinking from the mixture of angry disbelief mingled with contempt that she saw in his face.

She tried to tell herself that she was still asleep and that her dreams had crossed the frontier into nightmare, but then he spoke and she knew that it was all only too real.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he said. ‘And what are you doing here? You have two minutes to answer me before I have you thrown out.’

CHAPTER THREE

FOR a moment Morwenna was stunned into silence, then impetuously she jumped to her feet, regardless of her hair which had come loose from its topknot and fell about her shoulders in a silken shower.

‘And just who are you,’ she raged, ‘to speak to me like that? And how dare you open that parcel? It was for Mr Dominic Trevennon—a private matter. But you have the unmitigated insolence to walk in here and….’

‘I can’t imagine who has a better right,’ he interrupted with icy hostility. ‘You are the intruder here, not I. And your time is running out, so I advise you to answer my questions.’

Her head came up defiantly. ‘I need tell you nothing,’ she said. ‘I wish to speak to Mr Trevennon and no one else.’

There was a long electric silence. Then,

‘I suppose,’ he drawled, ‘that it’s just within the bounds of possibility that you aren’t playing some devious provocative game of your own to attract my attention and that you really don’t know who I am.’

For a minute Morwenna felt numb. Her eyes travelled over him desperately rejecting what her brain told her was the truth.

‘No!’ she whispered. ‘It—it’s not true. You can’t be….’

‘But I assure you I am—what was it you called me?—the uncrowned king of Cornwall. And this’—he showed his teeth in a mirthless smile—‘is my castle.’

‘No!’ Morwenna pressed her hands against her burning cheeks. ‘It’s you that’s playing some game. You can’t be Dominic Trevennon. You’re not old enough.’

He laughed contemptuously. ‘If that’s an attempt at flattery….’

‘It isn’t,’ she said flatly. ‘By my reckoning the real Dominic Trevennon must be in his sixties at least.’

He showed no surprise at her statement. Instead he nodded slightly as if her words had only confirmed what he himself already knew.

‘Now,’ he said very quietly, ‘tell me who you are and what you want in this house.’

She could have ground her teeth. Instead she held on tight to her self-control. ‘I’ve obviously been under a misapprehension,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I can only apologise, and leave. May I have my pictures, please—and their wrappings?’ She held out her hand, but he ignored the gesture completely.

‘Not without an explanation,’ he said. ‘You had enough to say for yourself when we met earlier. Why this sudden reticence? You wanted to ask me a favour—remember?’

She gave a bleak little smile. ‘Not you,’ she said. ‘Someone else who clearly doesn’t exist any more. Your father, perhaps, or….’

‘My uncle,’ he supplied equally bleakly. ‘Who does exist, thank you. He’s upstairs in his room at this moment studying chess problems.’

She looked at him, startled. ‘Then—may I see him, please?’

‘No, you may not. Whatever business you feel you may have in this house, you can settle with me.’ He flicked a hand towards the paintings. ‘I assume it has something to do with these. If you’re hoping to sell them, then I should tell you at once that you’re wasting your time.’

‘I don’t,’ she denied swiftly, her glance in spite of herself going to the discoloured marks on the walls.

His eyes followed hers and he smiled thinly. ‘You’re quite right, of course. There were pictures hanging there once, and of considerably more value than these offerings.’

‘I admit they’re not her best work,’ Morwenna said, biting her lip. ‘But they do have a certain value—sentimental value, perhaps. Or that’s what I believe, or I would never have come here.’

‘Why?’ he said. ‘Because the subjects bear a certain superficial resemblance to certain buildings and landmarks locally? I think you’ll have to do better than that.’

‘Of course not,’ she flared at him, stung. ‘Because she—my mother, Laura Kerslake, the woman who painted those pictures, used to live here. This was her home when she was a girl. The Trevennons were her family—the only family she had until she married my father. Oh, I know that she seemed to have lost contact with you all, but….’

‘Did she send you?’ he interrupted, his voice glacial.

Morwenna shook her head, conscious that there was a sudden lump in her throat, but reluctant to reveal her distress to this man’s cold hostility. ‘She—died, several years ago,’ she said constrictedly.

He made a slight restless movement. ‘I’m sorry.’ It was a perfunctory remark, made simply to satisfy the conventions, and oddly that hurt most of all.

She lifted her head and stared at him dazedly. ‘I’m glad she can’t hear you say that,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘I’m glad she’s not here to know how little the people she loved really thought of her.’

‘You’re very quick with your judgments.’ He thrust his hands into his pants pockets. ‘You said she seemed to have lost contact with us. Did it never occur to you to ask yourself why? I don’t know how much or what she may have told you about her life here, but I’ll dare swear she never told you about the misery she left behind her when she went.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘What reason would I have to do that?’ he shrugged. ‘What I’ve said may be unpalatable, and light years removed from Laura Kerslake’s glossed-over version of her time at Trevennon, but it’s the truth for all that.’

It wasn’t so much his words, but his tone revealing so clearly that it was immaterial to him whether she believed him or not, that carried conviction. Morwenna stared at him numbly, unable to think of a thing to say.

He broke the silence himself eventually. ‘And what about your father—the gallant Sir Robert. Does he know that you’ve come here?’

‘My father’s dead too.’ She had to dredge the words up from some deep, painful recess of her mind. ‘And my brother Martin. They were killed in a road accident only a few weeks ago. The estate went to his cousin. All I have left are these pictures.’

‘My God,’ he said very quietly. ‘So that’s it. Your mother’s stories must really have got to you, my dear. Thirty-five years ago she found a refuge here, so you thought you’d do the same.’ He shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Well, I give you full marks for tactics. What a pity you were so totally misled about your likely reception.’

The contempt in his voice seemed to curl down her spine. She wanted to strike at him, to rake her nails down his dark face, and had to clench her hands into fists at her side. His face did not alter, but she knew all the same that he was quite aware of her inward battle with her temper and even faintly amused by it.

‘You are also very quick with your judgments.’ She stared defiantly across the room at him. ‘I admit I did come here to ask for a home—but only for these pictures. I thought you might store them for me until I got a place of my own. I thought that if you wouldn’t do it for my sake then you would do it for my mother’s. I know now that I was wrong.’

He gave a short, unamused laugh. ‘Disastrously wrong. So that was the favour you wanted to ask. I’m afraid I can’t accede to it. There are still people in this house for whom such an overt reminder of your mother would be undeservedly painful. My uncle is one of them, and he’s been a sick man for some years, so I would prefer him not to be upset in this way.’

She could hardly credit what her ears were telling her. What had happened here all those years before to leave this aftermath of bitterness? Whatever it had been she could not believe that her mother had ever been aware of it. Nothing had ever shadowed Laura Kerslake’s affectionate memories of Dominic Trevennon. She felt herself shiver, and moved her hands in a slight negative gesture.

‘I can’t pretend I know what’s going on here,’ she said, steadying her voice by a tremendous effort. ‘But under the circumstances all I can do is leave at once, and apologise for my intrusion.’

She picked up her rucksack from the sofa and walked towards the door, but he stepped away from the desk and into her path.

‘Just a minute,’ he said peremptorily. ‘It isn’t quite as simple as you seem to think. Just what did you hope to gain by coming here like this?’

‘Very little,’ she said wearily, her head bent. Her hands were clenched tightly round the straps of her rucksack, the knuckles showing white. ‘Just a few feet of storage space, that’s all. I see now of course that it was too much to ask of strangers. It was just that I’ve never—thought of the people in this house as strangers.’

‘How very appealing,’ he commented cynically. ‘What a pity you didn’t take the trouble to write or telephone in advance of your arrival. You might have been spared a difficult journey. And for the record, I’m not convinced by this cock and bull story of yours. It’s just unfortunate for you that giving refuge to waifs is no longer among our family failings. And you have your mother to thank for that.’

Morwenna lifted one shoulder in a shrug of resignation. ‘Believe what you want,’ she said shortly. ‘But what I told you happens to be the truth.’

‘Come now, Miss Kerslake.’ The cynicism in his voice deepened. ‘Are you trying to tell me that it never once crossed your mind that there might be a home for you here?’

It would have been wonderful to lift her head and damn his eyes and fling his insinuations back in his mocking face, but she couldn’t lie, not even to save her own face. Half-truths had got her into this mess, after all.

‘No,’ she said at last very quietly. ‘I can’t deny that it did cross my mind—briefly, once.’

As she spoke, she glanced up and saw an odd look cross his face, as if her admission had surprised him. But why should it have done? It was after all only what he had been waiting to hear, she thought. She gathered all her resolution and moved forward again towards the door. He made no attempt to get out of her way and she had to walk round him to reach it. As she reached for the knob, the door suddenly swung inwards and she stepped back, unable to repress a little cry of alarm.

‘Hell’s bells, I’m sorry.’ The young man standing on the threshold gave her a swift look of concern which swiftly and overtly changed to one of admiration. ‘Did I knock you? I just had no idea that you’d be standing there. I thought Dom was alone, you see, and….’

‘The young lady is just leaving,’ Dominic Trevennon said in a voice as bleak as a winter’s gale.

‘Really?’ The newcomer made no attempt to hide his disappointment. ‘That’s too bad. Are you staying in the neighbourhood?’

‘Only as a temporary measure. I have to get back to London.’ Morwenna did not look at Dominic Trevennon to judge the effect of this deceptively defiant little speech. She was frankly shattered at the thought of having to go out again into this stormy night to find somewhere to stay. If she was honest with herself, she had counted on being offered a night’s shelter at Trevennon. She had not wanted to eat any further into her small savings. She reflected despondently that this trip to Cornwall was likely to prove one of the costliest impulses of her entire life, not merely in financial terms either. Her confidence and self-respect had also taken an unexpected battering. All she wanted to do now was to get away from this big dark house and the harsh insensitive man who dominated it and lick her wounds in peace. She needed desperately to think too, to consider some of the unpalatable facts that she had been presented with. Her mother, it seemed, had created a fantasy world about her time at Trevennon for some reason best known to herself. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to face facts either, Morwenna thought unhappily.

The young man was speaking again. ‘Well, if you must rush away, then I suppose it can’t be helped. But do drive carefully. A tree came down on our road tonight. Jacky Herrick was moving it with his tractor as I drove down, but there might be others.’

She smiled at him with an effort. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well that I haven’t a car,’ she said, trying to speak lightly. ‘I presume there will still be buses on the main road.’

‘Yes, but they’re few and far between.’ He studied her for a moment with undisguised curiosity, then swung towards Dominic Trevennon who had been listening to the interchange with a faint sneering smile playing about his lips.

‘Dom, what’s going on here? You aren’t seriously suggesting that she should walk all the way back to the main road on a night like this—not when we’ve got half a dozen empty bedrooms.’

‘Oh, please.’ Morwenna intervened, alarmed. ‘I really must be going. I’ve made arrangements….’

‘Then you must let me take you in my car.’ He gave her a smile of such charm that she felt warmed by it in spite of everything that had happened. ‘Where are you staying? The Towers in Port Vennor?’

‘Er—no.’ Morwenna thought rapidly. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m staying with some friends. But you really don’t need to put yourself out.’

‘I’m not. Dom, don’t just stand there. Tell her that she’s not putting us to any trouble. What’s the matter with you? You surely weren’t going to let her simply trudge off into the night, for God’s sake?’

Dominic Trevennon raised his eyebrows coolly. ‘Frankly, it didn’t seem to be any of my concern,’ he said offhandedly. ‘In any case, Miss Kerslake has already impressed me as a young lady more than capable of looking after herself.’

‘Miss—Kerslake?’

Dominic Trevennon nodded. ‘You heard me correctly—and your assumption is equally correct. And as introductions now seem to be in order, Miss Kerslake, this is my younger brother Mark.’

His handshake was warm enough, but Morwenna already sensed a faint air of withdrawal in his manner. The younger brother had an easy forthright charm which his elder totally lacked, she thought, smouldering.

She said very sweetly and politely, ‘If after my dire identity is disclosed to you, the offer of a lift is no longer forthcoming, I shall quite understand.’

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