Page 3 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
“Fine. After the last time, I had my fill. I thought I made it perfectly clear I wasn’t moving any more illegal books for you after you got me locked up in Holloway Prison for four days!”
“It did wonders for your temper too, if I recall.” He chuckled low and shook his head, waving me off. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re far too pretty to glare like my great-aunt Petunia. Besides, there’s nothing in there to get you arrested this time.”
“You don’t have a great-aunt Petunia. And why can’t you send me somewhere interesting? You know how much I’d like to go to Egypt with your friend Mr. Carter. He invited me to join him last time we spoke. Said he could use someone with my translation abilities.”
Mr. Owen grumbled beneath his breath. “I haven’t a clue why Lord Carnarvon is so patient with him. Mark my words, the man will find nothing in the Valley of the Kings. I don’t even know why he keeps throwing good money after bad. Though I’ve heard Carnarvon’s going to pull funding soon.”
“I thought you liked him.”
“Carter?” Mr. Owen drew his brows up. “I do. But even I know a bad bet when I see one,” Mr. Owen snapped, puttingan end to that conversation. Again. Lucky Mr. Carter goes to Egypt. I… I go to Cornwall.
“There’s nothing illegal in the trunk. Stop glaring at the box.”
“Oh, that’s a fine assurance.” But I was done arguing. I’d already made up my mind to go. His box of forbidden books piqued my curiosity more than I cared to admit, as I was quite certain he knew. I was a predictable thing. Dangle the faintest hint of mystery before me and I would be captured like a fox in a snare.
Mr. Owen sensed the change in my mood. His wide mouth curved up into a smile and he laid a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe this trip is precisely what you need, my darling. You’ll come back with your head clear. I knew a chap once, William Bottrell, long dead now but he traveled all over the West Country collecting their stories. It’s an ancient place—Cornwall—full of secrets and legends. I think you’d enjoy it if you gave it a chance.”
“Did Mr. Bottrell die in pursuit of said stories?”
Mr. Owen laughed merrily, shaking his head. “The old Cornish folkways predate even the Romans. There are things that occur there no one can explain, no one dares question. After all, Tintagel is the birthplace of Arthur, they say. The seat of kings. Perhaps you’d find it interesting. Maybe it would help you to…” He gestured for a moment, a look of pain crossing his face before he shook his head. “Never mind me, lass. You go on. I’ll write down Mr. Kivell’s direction.”
Folk healers, superstition, and likely no electricity.
Lovely. Just lovely.
CHAPTERTWOThe Growing Storm
THEsixty-odd miles between Exeter and Lothlel Green passed in a series of craggy moors and sweeping vistas marked intermittently by granite tors. Sharp curves wending around fields separated by dry-stone fences. A more bleak and beautiful place I don’t think I’ve seen in all my life. Mr. Owen was correct on that score: There was no shortage of cows or cliffs. I skirted along the edge of Dartmoor, heading farther west. No matter how long I lived here, it never ceased to amaze me how different ten miles in Britain could be. I’d left the lush woodlands of Devon and found myself in another world. And were I not headed toward the one place I’d sworn never to return to, I might have even enjoyed myself. Pulled off to the verge and enjoyed my lunch hamper overlooking a charming shadowed valley. But I did not stop, as I had no appetite, and the increasingly rugged landscape kept pace with my ever-souring mood.
Every mile that ticked by was one mile closer toher. It was an irrational thing to bear a grudge like this. I couldn’t even bring myself to think her name—let alone speak it aloud—without growing irritable all over again about the whole affair. I’d seen in the papers a while ago that she’d had a child. Thelovely Lady Tamsyn Chenowyth and her dashing war-hero husband. There. I’d thought it at least. I scarcely even recalled their wedding, having spent the evening half drowned in gin, as Mr. Owen so keenly describes it.
Tamsyn.
I gripped the wooden wheel of the Crow Elkhart roadster that Father bought me and paid a small fortune to have brought over after I’d been exiled from home before the war. Not precisely exiled; rather, sent away for my own good. But no need to think on that today. Memories had a way of begetting more of the dratted things, and I was full up on the stuff.
Tamsyn had written me in February of last year. It was the last I’d heard from her. Not that I’d responded then. Instead I’d kept her missive tucked away in my jewelry box beneath the strand of my mother’s pearls the solicitor gave me after the estate was settled. And yet here I was driving myself to Lothlel Green, with that very envelope tucked into my luggage. Her words an enigma, as they’d always been.We must speak, Ruby. I’ve made a terrible mistake coming to this cursed place and have no one to trust but you. I’m so afraid and alone. Ruby, I need you.
Perhaps I should have answered. But what does one say after all that came between us? She often tended toward the melodramatic, always had. She was a writer after all, perpetually scribbling down ideas and notions. Speaking in hyperbole and parable, so I cravenly brushed away any concerns I may have had for her. I clutched the wheel tighter, flexing my fingers. I suppose I was answering now—in a fashion—as I couldn’t very wellnotsee her when I was in the village. Perhaps that was all part of Mr. Owen’s nefarious scheme.
A sound came from the basket beside me. I turned to it, but there was nothing there. It must have shifted with the rutted road. I slowed the car to a stop alongside a tall hedge and pulled out the map. If I hadn’t taken a wrong turn, I shouldbe nearly there. I’d passed carts and wagons, a few lorries, but every village I passed through, every farmstead, people would stop to stare.
I ought to be used to it. People alwayslookedat me. It wasn’t that I was particularly interesting looking—if anything I was rather an oddity. With dark-brown hair cropped into a bob, which I thought rather avant-garde. However, Mr. Owen said it gave me the appearance of his great-aunt Prudence after she came down with the flux and they’d shorn her like a summer ewe. Not that he had a great-aunt Prudence either.
A sensible soul would have delivered the books directly and headed back to Exeter without rehashing old wounds. But no one had accused me of being sensible. I folded up my map and turned the car at the crossroads, away from this Mr. Kivell’s home, and headed directly to Penryth Hall. Toher. Best to get it over with. I’d never been a coward, and it was a poor time to start now.
PENRYTHHALL LOOMEDat the peak of the hill. A great foreboding neoclassical fortress set against the windswept countryside. Designed centuries ago to vulgarly proclaim the owner’s wealth and power over those who worked the surrounding land—now it only managed an anemic whisper of its own past. The money that once filled the Chenowyth coffers had long ago dried up, leaving the vaunted family’s future to be saved by an upstart’s fortune. Tamsyn’s.
I’d been here only a few years before, though looking up at the house, it seemed a lifetime divided now from then. If I remembered clearly, from the top floors you could see the sea rising up beyond the cliffs. I’d stood there once, buffeted by the wind, taking in the vista and wondering if such a bargaincould ever make me happy. The answer was always the same. No.
My parents had thought sending me here and saddling me with an impoverished peer would save me from myself. But instead it reinforced the sad fact that I wanted none of it. Never had, and I feared never would.
I continued the drive up the narrow tree-lined road ever higher, until it gave way to large lawns on either side. Once tended by dozens of gardeners with neat hedges and beds, now nature outgrew its bounds, turning the land on either side to luscious meadow. High grasses promiscuously tangled with weeds and gorse. Lovely white, pink, and yellow flowers danced in the golden midmorning light.
And it was in that moment I saw her. There in the distance surrounded by sun and air and flowers. My breath caught in my chest. She didn’t see me. She was in the field to the left of the road by a great copse of trees bent down in the wildflowers. I drew the car to a halt and watched her. Engine idling. Half wondering whether I should go out to meet her, or continue on to the house and pretend I had not seen her at all.
Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, shining copper in the sun, as it often did when we were girls and away from the city. We’d summered in the neighboring village, in the years before the war. She always loved the country, whereas I despaired of it. A great basket was looped over her arm full of cut wildflowers. A child was with her. Her son. He must be over a year now, toddling along beside her, stopping every now and then to pick his own flowers. Chubby hands full of crushed blooms.
Turning at the sound of the car engine, she raised her hand to the sun and paused for a handful of seconds. She scooped up the child onto her hip and darted across the open field, windwhipping the loose layers of her skirt. Her broad-brimmed hat fell from her head, tumbling into the high grass behind. She didn’t even slow at its loss. Tamsyn reached the side of my car in seconds, struggling to catch her breath. The boy giggled, his arms wrapped around his mother’s neck. “Ruby?” Her cheeks were pink. “Oh, Ruby, it is you! I thought when I saw your motorcar, but I… I couldn’t believe my eyes! What brings you to Penryth?” Her eyes sparkled brightly and my own spirits rose with her smile. She shifted the boy to the other side, his dark curls a stark contrast with his mother’s fair hair.
