The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (6 page)

I exclaimed suitably.

“Brutal work, too,” Damon said. He swirled the wine in his glass languidly. “Underground for eight hours in foul air, chipping away at rock while the whole mess could come down on them any minute and bury them alive. No wonder most of them get drunk at the end of the day.”

“Is that nice talk at table?” his mother interjected.

“She wanted to know. It’s a wretched business.”

I thought of the gashed moorland, moaning under the outrage, and silently agreed with him.

Sir Grover deftly dropped the heap of fish bones on the side platter. “The men are able to feed their families on my wages, sir, as I am able to feed mine. I see that I shall have to allow you to take a more active interest in our livelihood.”

“A gentleman labors with his head, not his hands,” came his son’s reply.

Sir Grover sighed. “An English gentleman does both, sir, and you will learn it if I have to send you down with the tinners myself. In fact, you may get the chance soon, for Tregurtha has wind that another set has been discovered.”

“Are you certain?” Lady Penwyth’s increasingly pained expression transformed into attentive interest. Even Damon and Susannah looked intrigued.

Sir Grover tapped open the mackerel’s blood crust. “Aye. Not far from Wheal Kitty too, another stroke of good luck. I’ve sent a few men to follow the set to see if it’ll turn into a seam.”

“Oh Papa!” Susannah exclaimed.

“Perhaps I can lure you into dirtying your hands after all,” Sir Grover murmured sardonically to his son.

“Perhaps.” Damon kept his attention on his wineglass. “I was thinking of speaking to Roger about buying joint-stock in one of his ships. He has dashed good luck with them.”

“With what, sir?” his father inquired coolly. “You haven’t a groat to rub together.”

“Never fear. I will get it.”

The determined set of his chin thrilled me beyond words.

“You will do no such thing.” Lady Penwyth’s hand trembled slightly as she forked into a rondelly of steamed purslane.

“Why not, Mother? Spending the day at the quay is no more disagreeable that hunkering down in a mine.”

“I daresay. But let Roger stay on his side of the Hundred, and we on ours.”

Damon’s wineglass came down with a thump, slopping remnants over the laboriously starched tablecloth. “You cannot forgive him for spurning us, can you? That was long ago. And the rumors are rot.”

“I do not listen to gossip,” Lady Penwyth replied quellingly, with a meaningful tilt of her head at me, “but so much talk must contain some germ of truth. Roger has no notion of how his queer ways and unsocial behavior affect our standing in the district. I prefer we share as little intercourse with him as possible.”

“Roger has his eccentricities, to be sure--”

“Lord, yes!” Susannah exclaimed, interrupting her brother. “I never saw one so much for coffee--nasty, bitter drink.”

“--but who doesn’t? I never wager on a horse race without making sure my luck piece is in my pocket; so what if he never takes off those damned spurs.”

“That’ll do.”

Sir Grover’s tone hardly went above a pleasant remark, but his family instantly fell silent. “My dear Jocasta, if Damon has taken an interest in Roger’s business, it is all well and good. Roger has an uncanny knack for the shipping trades. His vessels are never wrecked nor harried by the African privateers.”

“But isn’t that proof of--”

“It’ll be better for Damon than idling his days with the other over-privileged bucks.” Sir Grover ruthlessly cut across his wife’s agonized whisper.

“Roger cannot help being morose,” Susannah said thoughtfully into the little pool of silence that had developed. “I would too, if my parents had tried to murder me.”

“Susannah!” her mother cried.

“Hold your tongue!” Sir Grover rapped.

Susannah gulped and lowered her eyes to her plate.

“Shall I clear, ma’am?” Nanny’s soft country lilt broke the stillness, as she was blessedly unaware of the tension.

Lady Penwyth let out her breath. “Yes. Thank you, Nanny. Why, Miss Eames, you’ve hardly touched your plate. I hope everything was done to your taste.”

“Oh, indeed. It’s just that all the traveling . . . my appetite is quite crushed . . .”

I felt Damon’s eyes upon me again.

“My poor Miss Eames!” Lady Penwyth said. “Do take a dish of cream and nuts and then we will leave off the cards tonight. I--where have you been?”

Her voice had sharpened.

I looked up to see the pretty maid from earlier in the day, Jenny, sidle in the room bearing a silver bowl filled with uncracked nuts. The maid passed a tongue over her lips and flicked a hunted look about the table.

“Don’t look away from me while I am addressing you.” Lady Penwyth’s voice cracked like a whip.

“I . . . my sister be sick, mistress. I went down to cottage to see if my mother needed anything.”

“Your sister is sick,” Lady Penwyth repeated with skepticism. “Why did you not inform anyone of your whereabouts? Cook was quite distracted without you, and poor Nanny had to serve alone. In future you must tell someone before you leave the grounds. I declare, Miss Eames, the girls I get from the village these days, scatterbrained to the highest degree--well, don’t just stand there, girl, serve the sweet.”

Jenny’s downcast face showed no reaction to the reprimand. I was just about to feel sorry for her when I caught a slinking smile creep up at the corners of her rosebud mouth when she thought no one was looking.

###

The next morning at the breakfast table, Damon was nowhere in sight. His mother informed me that he had left at first light to meet some friends in Hayle, where a gathering of gentlemen were to course a hare.

“Young men have their amusements,” Lady Penwyth explained apologetically as she pushed the bread-board toward me. “Damon has been away on the Continent for so long that I could not forbid him the pleasure of renewing acquaintances with his friends.”

I covered my disappointment as well as I could as I slid into my seat. I had dressed with more care than I wanted to admit to.

Susannah, dressed for riding, was dispatching her salted pilchards with gusto. A trace of annoyance lingered about her, and I wondered if it was because I had come downstairs earlier than she had anticipated.

If she hoped to escape me, she was thwarted. “Susannah will show you the grounds, and it will be her very great pleasure,” Lady Penwyth continued, serenely buttering her bread.

Susannah’s jaws stopped working. I almost laughed at her comical expression of tragedy. She swallowed painfully, and forced her lips into a curve. “If you feel up to it, Miss Eames. Your lame--I mean, you are probably still fatigued from travel, are you not?”

“Oh, no. A walk in the garden will give me much enjoyment,” I returned.

She sent me an evil glare.

“The countryside is rather wild and barren,” Lady Penwyth went on, “especially when one is new-come from tamer counties, but Susannah can show you our own little bit of romance, the Penwyth Quoit. Quite haunted, the locals say.”

“It is only a tall pointed rock, Mama.”

“It sounds thrilling,” I said, with little interest. A turn about the groomed gardens was one thing; I could resist the calls of the domesticated plants easily while in the company of another. But the lunar landscape beyond the grounds was potent and insistent. My affinity responded to it so strongly I held a cold doubt that I could control it in front of Susannah.

“I’ll meet you in the courtyard when you are finished eating,” Susannah muttered. “I will just change out of my habit, since my own plans mean nothing to anybody.” Scraping her chair viciously back on the painted walnut planks, she stomped out of the room.
Lady Penwyth lips tightened as she watched her daughter’s receding back. Then she sighed. “You must forgive my daughter’s manner, Miss Eames. She has been left far too long in this backwater, I fear. I’ve had less success with her than my sister has had with you.”

I stared at her wonderingly.

“I’ve done what I can to impart some polish to her . . . music lessons, needlework and so forth, but Susannah’s nature will not admit any feminine accomplishments. She was born for the saddle, her father says. I suppose I must resign myself to it, and pray I can make a match for her that will not be an utter disaster.”

Lady Penwyth gave me a watery smile, and again I saw the shadow of my stepmother, a woman left to parent a creature who could not be molded as she pleased, as females of gentle breeding are supposed to allow. I did not know whom I felt sorrier for, Susannah or her mother.

“I have hopes that your coming, Miss Eames, will show her that a path other than on the back of a horse might be had. You will set the right kind of example for her.”

Suddenly I realized why Susannah disliked me so.

“Now, enough of my daughter. This may be a backwater, as I have said, but we have a lively society available to us, and I promised my sister that you should have the opportunity to show yourself at them.”

I murmured a thank you, quailing inside at the thought of trying to dance a jig among strangers, and especially under Damon Penwyth’s appraising eye.

“I have also taken the liberty of asking Jenny to maid you while you are here. She is quite competent, and Susannah asks wretchedly little of her in the way of personal service. She should be able to attend you both.”

The slamming of a door echoed through the dining area, bringing a pained expression to Lady Penwyth’s features. “I believe Susannah is ready.”

Obediently I rose and made my way out to the courtyard.

Susannah kicked impatiently at a dandelion growing between the flagstones. When she saw me she muttered, “It’s this way,” and marched unerringly toward the wild purple landscape edging the cultivated lawn beyond the ha-ha.

With a flounce Susannah plunged on over a hillock of furze. I struggled behind her, snatching the hem of my gown away from the reaching claws of mugwort and razor grass demanding my attention. I prayed that I would not twist my good ankle over the broken rocks that littered the hillside.

Shuddering quietly, I ignored the voices wafting about me. Wind tinged with fog and the scent of peat scraped back my hair, and as I reached the crescent of the impending hill, panting, Susannah finally looked over her shoulder at me. She barely leashed her impatience.

“The Quoit,” she said, nodding toward a pointed spire of speckled granite tilting away from the sea wind that blasted it.

It exhilarated me despite my best intention. Memory swirled around the rocky turret: a cataclysm, a screaming aftermath, and this appeasement, thrust among the decay of graves.

The remnants have forgotten
.

This land did not stoically acquiesce to the ebb and flow of time as it did in the North, I thought. I bent to examine a tuft of moss growing inside the seam of a cracked boulder. Gently I pushed the spongy mass aside. Delicate blue blossoms met my eye, slim stems twisting inside their cramped shelter.

“Susannah, can you tell me the Cornish name for this flower?” I called over my shoulder.

The wind wailed quietly. I straightened up and looked about. Susannah was gone.

I stilled a bead of alarm as I called out again. This time I thought I heard a laugh as the Quoit watched impassively.

Annoyed and a little hurt at being the object of fun, I followed the sound of her laughter, certain she would be waiting just over the next hillock, then the next, her small mouth stretched in smug amusement.

Trickles of rusty water scored the furze as I stumbled onward. Once I misplaced my foot from the path, plunging it into a stinking bog. I grew tired and more frightened as the minutes passed. This Cornish land was nothing like that of the North, I realized. In the North, the land bore its insults patiently knowing that the snow and cold would avenge the injustices dealt it; here the land crouched, waiting for an opportunity.

On I lurched, my bad foot aching and my head splitting, body beginning to weary as my hem grew heavy with mud. I reflected that Susannah had a lot to answer for, but thought that even she, with her patent dislike, would not leave me in a truly dangerous place.

A winking light floated some little distance before me, hovering in the gray mizzle suffocating the sunlight. Then I saw two. Thinking it could belong to a shepherd or perhaps a tinker, I stumbled after it. Peaty mud sucked about my ankles as if holding me back from sure disaster, but for once I did not listen. I wanted to get to the homely safety of the twinkling light.

They led me to a tumbled pile of rock. Without a thought I scrambled up its steep side, fingers snagging the razor grass for purchase, until I reached the crest.

A sob gurgled in my throat. The winking pinpoints were still just out of reach in the gathering darkness, beckoning.

Without volition I leaned forward. My senses opened to the lights offering blessed relief from the stabbing ache in my leg. They were stars, plump and sweet like ripe plums, ready to burst in my mouth with their honeyed antidote. I reached for their frozen fire, letting the wind fill me. The tips of my toes grazed the rock--