The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (3 page)

The whispers crowded my ear.
A land soaked in blood, a people bred in violence
.

I shook my head to clear it. Dreamily I gazed out to the bouldered landscape running toward the encroaching sea, and to reorder it, fixed my mind on the meager information Sarah Eames shared about the family I would live with until Lady’s Day when the roads dried from their winter’s mire. Or, perhaps, forever.

“The Penwyths are a very old Cornish family,” she told me over our last dinner together, a cold collation and the Rhenish wine suddenly made fashionable by the advent of our new German-born king. “Jocasta married Sir Grover when she was sixteen; she was a famous beauty in her day, and Sir Grover was everything a good match could be. He has property, and is held in high regard in the district for all he comes from the cadet line of the family. A rising man in politics, too. He stood for MP in the last election. Unfortunately he lost that contest, but has gained the support of the Godolphin family for the next, Jocasta says, which should secure the win.”

Was there a trace of envy in her voice when she related this information? The corners of her mouth deepened slightly.

“The cadet line?” I asked, having little interest in Sir Grover’s political future. “What does that mean?”

A gesture of impatience. “It means that another family of Penwyths resides in the district. At some point in the past, two sons split the line, and the main estate went to the eldest. Sir Grover’s line is from the younger half. That was long ago, however, and time and prudent living erases such divisions. I have no idea if the other set of Penwyths holds a greater fortune, but my father seemed very satisfied with Sir Grover’s.”

“And what of Jocasta’s children?” I asked.

“You will address her as Lady Penwyth. I know very little about my niece and nephew that I haven’t already told you. I believe Susannah rides a great deal, and that Damon is fond of music. I daresay you and Susannah will become fast friends and spend all your time gossiping.”

I brightened. That seemed a pleasing prospect.

“Only . . .” Sarah Eames began, and then stopped.

“Only what?”

“It’s nothing.” She moved the pewter spoon forward of her plate at a more precise distance. “Pray remember that Sir Grover and my sister are well regarded in the district, and their property, the Hermitage, is quite the center of the county’s social whirl. You can be assured that entertainment will come your way, even in the wilds of Cornwall.”

She went on to lecture me about my comportment and behavior, and I listened dutifully with half an ear. Entertainment usually meant dancing, and though my master was persistent with regard to my impediment, I still shifted clumsily through the figures. I passionately hoped that despite his regard for music, Damon did not care to dance.

The mild sea air, rich in moisture, and the worries finally dulled my mind. I believe I dozed. When I awoke, I found the landscape changed. Fertile fields swaying heavy with ripening hay now became starved clumps of browned furze and gorse.

Coachman Bobbet gave a shout as we rose over a hillock where the road swung closer to the cliffs. Before us stretched the vast blue swath of the sea, sparkling with tiny glimmers. Off in the distance, I saw a pretty rounded harbor encircled by colored rooftops--St. Ives, picturesque and charming, just as I imagined a Cornish sea-side town to be.

I caught my breath at the beauty, stupendous colors of blue ocean, red rooftops, whitewashed, softly plastered buildings, oh, lovely! It was as if I had lived in gray all my life and the sudden burst of color brought my senses alive.

Then, without warning, a wrench of homesickness engulfed me.

As I stared out over the painfully blue sea where dots of white sails trawled like snails over its surface, a flash of silver blinded me.

I blinked. A figure on horseback, a man, was cantering easily along the treacherous path paralleling the road, and which ran along the cliff’s edge. The unusual black-and-white coloring of the animal delighted me. I had never seen a white horse splashed with black before. It lifted its feet with disdainful ease.

Up from the land whispers swarmed fast and thick; I had no time for them now so I crushed them out.

The horseman was only a quarter furlong away and supremely unaware of the coach, close enough for me to see a profile etched on the horizon. My eyes moved, without volition, lower, to the lithe body moving in harmony with his mount in supple strength. His coat and waistcoat were discarded; he wore good-quality dun breeches and a white shirt that gaped open at the neck to expose a strong brown column. Neither hat nor wig covered his head, allowing a golden wave of hair to riot about his shoulders. Something in the way the rider held himself, a pride that matched his mount’s, suggested that he would never cover his head while the wind might rip unhindered through his hair. Magnificent silver spurs--the flash that first needled my eye--encircled ankles encased in surprisingly shabby, mudspattered jackboots.

With a shock I then realized that the horse wore no tack, no bridle or saddle. The man rode it quite freely, as if the animal had consented to allow him on its back, a concession granted by a magical beast. Perhaps, my overdeveloped imagination murmured, the horse was really a unicorn shorn of its horn, its white coat dissolving into black as it disguised itself from mortal scrutiny. And that would make its rider . . .

Without any overt signal, the horse shot forward in a fluid gallop. The man stretched over its neck, gripping fistfuls of mane for balance. My body rose in response to the beautiful sight, man and animal fused, a centaur racing out of mythology to beguile me.

The horse pranced to a halt on a craggy rise some yards ahead. Its rider’s face was turned out to the sea, his silvery hair now wild from the reckless gallop and blowing like a cloud of milkweed.

He gazed raptly out where the periwinkle sky met the sapphire ocean, his spine straight, attention riveted.
By the impending pilchard run, most likely,
I told myself. But the snare of legend would not easily let me go. Imagination demanded that I see the rider as a Cornish hero. He was Tristan, or King Arthur. Merlin.

The rumble of my coach seemed to penetrate his consciousness slowly. He looked over his shoulder.

The rider and I stared at each other as I rolled by, and I, imprisoned in my conveyance, felt the blood drain from my face.

A scowl twisted his mouth in an expression of pure hatred. Empty hollowness I recognized as longing also haunted those features, and more, too, the blight of despair. His eyes, however, unnerved me, a color so light that from a distance they seemed nothing more than a flash of moonlight. Savage unhappiness darkened the edges of those orbs narrowed against the sun.

This was no Tristan. More like King Mark, Isolde’s betrayed husband, suffering the doubled anguish of a faithless love and perfidious nephew.

Awareness dawned in him as he focused upon me. And then I was blasted by the full force of unconcealed hunger.

My heart began to thud sickly against my chest. I had the uncomfortable sense that I had intruded upon a man contemplating a private hell. I shrank away from the window, into the darkened safety of the coach’s interior. I wanted nothing to do with this fallen angel.

###

We roared into the courtyard of the St. Ives’ posthouse, chickens scattering before the hooves of the sweating horses.

I made a show of gathering my travel possessions, but a wave of panic froze my fingers and made my hands stiff as I reached for my birdcage. Was Damon Penwyth standing in front of the posting inn at this moment, as Sarah Eames hinted, awaiting me with cynical, measuring eyes? What would he think of this crippled offering from the North?

The door of the coach clattered open in a billow of dust.

I flexed my clubfoot anxiously to massage the stiffness out of it. My lower limbs felt like blocks of wood after seven hours of travel, and a sudden cold assailed me.

“Go on, miss,” Hazel hissed as I struggled to rise. “I’ve got to piss. I’ll attend to the bird, if that’s what’s worrying thee.”

Another effort set me on my feet. I took Coachman Bobbet’s outstretched hand for support and gingerly felt for the step. The scent of rotted fish and an overripe manure pile pinched my nose, and I hesitated again, searching for firm footing with my bad foot. At that moment, the horses, impatient for their fodder, lurched forward. I wobbled, and fell.

The fall tore my guard away. As my cheek made contact with the earth, I saw it all: Roundhead boot, smithied horseshoes of a gallic conqueror, the trail of a hermit’s hairshirt, bared soles of the tribe’s sheildman--

I picked my head up from hawked-up gobs of spit and pulverized horse droppings, and fought the reaching fingers coming up from below. Shocked titters had followed me down to the ground.

A chink of metal abruptly hushed the snickers. Two scuffed boots appeared in my line of vision.

I stared at them. Spurs, generous with silver, enveloped the ankles, and I recognized them instantly. Merciless hands gripped my armpits. I was ungracefully hauled up, the past settled mournfully back to where it belonged, and I was set on shaky feet.

And then I gawped into the face of an Angel embittered by his Fall.

CHAPTER THREE

He would have been sinfully handsome if not for two frown lines scoring between gilt brows, and a mouth downturned in a moody glimmer. Guinea gold hair, wild before, had been wrenched back, and he had shrugged carelessly into a coat tailored from expensive claret-colored Bristol cloth frogged with silver filé buttons.

He must have ridden like Lucifer to arrive ahead of me
, I thought, and when I told myself to have done with the satanic metaphors, he himself roared:

“What the devil do you mean standing there while this lady has fallen?”

If his features were handsome, his voice was doubly so, the burred timbre as arresting as the first sip of amber malt.

I blinked into a gentleman’s neckcloth; a small tear rent the priceless lace fall. Farther up, eyes fiery with anger blurred inside a sudden smarting of tears in my own.

Faintly I heard the hired coachman’s stammered reply, and a respectful mutter wrenched from Hazel. The hard hand pinned my arm while he made a few more choice comments in that velvet whiplash voice, sending Hazel scurrying into the inn and Coachman Bobbet fawning like a cur. Then he turned his attention to me.

A chill of premonition furred the back of my neck.

“Are you Damon Penwyth?” I blurted.

It must have been imagination that made me see a flash of something like furious despair lighting the strange green eyes, the color of night mist running over a sailor’s moon, because in the next instant they stared down at me as opaque as slate.

“No. You’ll be relieved to know that I am Roger Penwyth.”

That voice.

I shivered. A lilt of indifference edged the creamy cadence as if the speaker found life not worth the effort. “Roger?” I repeated stupidly.

“Damon’s cousin. Go into the inn and set yourself aright. You can walk? Good. I’ll be with you shortly for I am come to fetch you.”

I made no move. He raked me again with those queerly blank eyes that missed nothing, and then, with a slight start, he noticed that he still imprisoned my arm securely under his fingers. He dropped it, clenching his fist before walking away, the chink of the spurs marking his gait. Beyond him, the black-and-white horse was tethered like any ordinary beast to a tiny tumbled-down cairn of rock, lipping at sparse blades of grass.

My eyes followed Roger Penwyth’s retreating back in bemusement. The flame that had ignited those features when I first saw him had been banked. He now appeared sullen rather than bitter, I thought, morose rather than ferocious. He moved with the grace of one who spends his life out-of-doors, except for a hunching of shoulder, Prometheus-like, away from the flapping vulture. Well, the heart must be protected, mustn’t it?

I dismissed that fancy and shakily made my way into the cool interior of the inn, noisome with the reek of frying fish. Hazel, with uncharacteristic efficiency, had the proprietor bring me a mug of ale and a stale biscuit. There was, the innkeeper informed me apologetically with a hunted glance behind him at the knot of callused men playing dominos by the fireside, no private room he could offer. I waved him away with a word of thanks and an assurance that I would not linger long.

Thirstily I drank the ale and ignored the biscuit. I wondered why Roger Penwyth had come to fetch me to the Hermitage, but was grateful that Damon had not been present to witness my latest upset. I scraped at the smear of dirt on my cheek with an inadequate handkerchief, and looked sadly down at the dust coating the front of my traveling pelisse. Stripping it off, I boldly told Hazel to fetch my paisley wrap, which would be light enough to bear in the oppressive heat yet still afford me some protection from the flies and dirt. To my amazement, Hazel did as she was bid without comment.

I settled on the unsteady bench to await Roger Penwyth and the next stage of the journey. Pretty Peter flitted inside his cage, happier now that the swaying of his little world had stopped, and his rebound cheered me.

Despite my confident assurance to the innkeeper that I would not linger, I waited a long time for Roger Penwyth. At three and fifteen minutes of the o’clock, the slatternly barmaid emptied the taps into a row of ceramic mugs. The door swung wide, admitting a stream of men whose faces were blackened under hats spattered with candlewax, and they headed unerringly to the waiting refreshment. Instantly the inn grew smokier and noisier. A few fishermen eventually gathered at the hearth with the domino players, speaking in a singsong language I could not understand while they mended nets. Bursts of laughter and cheerful arguments clouded around me, the music of a bustling inn, familiar and soothing. I began to drowse at my place in the corner.