Page 4 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
“I had an errand to run and thought I might drop in to say hello.”
“In Lothlel Green? What on earth could bring you all the way out here?” Her face suddenly fell, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I suppose you didn’t receive my letter?”
Guilt washed over me. “Letter? No, I hadn’t received any.” The lie tripped smoothly from my tongue. Better than the truth in any event.
“Well, never mind it. I’m so terribly glad you’ve come. There are things I must tell you. I only wish we had more time.” She cast a glance back to the house, and that was when I spotted it. A faint smudge of yellowish brown on her cheekbone. “There never seems to be enough time in this dratted old place.”
I lifted a hand toward the fading bruise, but she pushed it away. “Don’t, Ruby. I should have put on powder this morning but I wasn’t expecting guests. It’s nothing. I woke up one morning with it… I… I must have done it in my sleep.”
It didn’t look like nothing, nor like something one could accidentally do, but I kept silent. Tamsyn glanced again back to the house, brows drawn tight in worry, before she turned back and grabbed both my hands tight in her own. “Come to dinner. Perhaps at seven? I need to speak with Edward first of course. Wouldn’t that be lovely, Jori? Company all the way outhere?” She jostled the boy on her hip, smiling fondly at him and brushing a kiss to his brow. Her expression shifted briefly, fine lines creasing her forehead. “Edward hasn’t been himself lately. But I can have your room made up. It will be just like old times. Do say you’ll join us. It would mean the world to me.”
“Of course, goose. I’d love nothing more.” I struggled to sound cheerful. Her guarded words, the old bruises. I didn’t like what I’d found here one bit. I should have come when she’d first written, but I’d never imagined Sir Edward to be a violent man. Disagreeable, yes. But never the sort to harm his wife. Then again, I learned long ago that things are never as they seem.
CHAPTERTHREEThe Pellar
MYmind grew ever more troubled with worries for Tamsyn as I drove away from Penryth Hall. She was a grown woman who’d made her own choices, and yet I couldn’t get the haunted look in her eyes from my mind. I’d not expected it. Not at all. As I reached the crossroads again, with its stone marker, I checked my pin watch. I had a few hours. And while I ought to have gone straight to Mr. Kivell’s home to deliver the trunk of books, I also needed to clear my head. Mercifully we were only a dozen miles from the sea.
Surely with a couple of hours in the salt air, this sense of foreboding would pass. Yes. That was precisely what I needed.
I followed the weathered stone road markers toward Tintagel before turning off and parking my car at the top of a hill. It would never have made it down the path, let alone back up, and I needed the exercise. I made my way down the steep slope that led to the ruins and the sea beyond. The ancient castle walls rose up before me, stark against the brilliant afternoon sun. From the cove, if I looked up I could spot a handful of more adventurous souls gamboling about upon the clifftops,entirely disinterested in me. But here along the rocky shores I’d found my haven.
I quickly shucked off my pale-yellow frock, then, dressed in only my muslin shift and a pair of drawers, I walked into the sea. The water was angry, thrashing upon the rocks. I was angry too.
It was bracing and cold, even for August, causing my skin to prick and teeth to chatter. I swam farther out from the shore. Stroke by stroke as the waves pulled me back toward the rocks. The current here was far stronger than I’d expected—but I was stronger. Always had been.
A rock outcropping rose up from the blue-green water some handful of yards away. I reached it in a few easy strokes and pulled myself up and stretched out atop it in the warm sun. Finally, I’d outrun my thoughts. Only the violent crash of waves against the stone kept me company, ridding me at last of the growing sense of dread that had followed me all the way from Exeter. And somewhere between the sea mist and the sound of the greedy gulls crying out overhead, I fell fast asleep.
“Madam?” A voice startled me awake. “Madam, are you quite well?”
Where was I? I bolted upright, neck aching from the awkward angle I’d fallen asleep. A man stood there before me up to his knees in the water. Right. I was at Tintagel. I glanced past him at the shore, now much farther away than I’d remembered. The tide must have gone out. His hair was a riot of black curls shot through with silver strands. The wind had whipped it free, and it blew wildly around his shoulders. His sleeves and trousers were both rolled up with an old, stained British Expeditionary Force haversack slung across his shoulder.
“Are you quite all right, miss? Did you…” He paused,running a hand over his jaw and glancing around the cove. “How the devildidyou get out here?”
“I swam,” I grumbled, rubbing my sun-flushed cheeks in an echo of his own movement before I tucked my knees up beneath me. “And yes, I’m quite well. I just need a moment to gather myself. I must have fallen asleep.” I glanced up at the sky, where the sun hung decidedly lower than it had been, and swore. “I’m afraid I’m going to be terribly late.”Again.
He snorted for a moment in amusement, a faint smile crossed his lips. It was then I noticed his eyes. He had the most extraordinary ones I’d ever seen—pale green mostly, except the left one bore a second color within it, like a gray cloudbank drifting across the sea. I’d never seen such a thing, and yet there was something about his face that tugged at me. It was achingly familiar. As if I knew him. Though I would have certainly remembered having met a fellow like that.
He turned his back to me then stooped down and scooped up something from the tidal pool. A small shell of some sort. He gingerly tucked it into his haversack.
“You’d best get back to shore before the tide returns. It’s really remarkable you made it to this point. Many a foolish man has drowned in these waters trying to reach the far caves.”
“I’m not afraid of the sea.”
He gave me the strangest look. “Regardless, you should have…” He checked his pocket watch then tucked it back into his brown waistcoat pocket. “Another few hours at least before the tide cuts off the cove.”
“What time do you have?” I inclined my chin to his pocket where the watch resided.
“Six. Why?”
Damn and blast.“I have to get back. I’m later than I thought.” Scrambling to my feet, I slipped on the wet stone and began to fall. The man’s hand shot up, grabbing hold of my hip andsteadying me above him. I accepted his aid as demurely as one could when in one’s unmentionables—which had mercifully dried in the sun—and slithered down the rock to join him in the tidal pool. The water was vastly colder than I recalled a few hours earlier, as it lapped around my bare skin.
He chuckled beneath his breath, shaking his head as he watched me with interest. It was as if he’d stumbled across some strange creature and couldn’t quite decide what to make of it. “Will your husband be in a terrible temper if you’re not back in time?”
I arched a brow and started back to the shore. “I haven’t one. Nor am I in want of one if that’s what you’re insinuating. I am blissfully unattached and intend to remain so.” Aside, of course, from a meddlesome octogenarian bookseller. But we were family now, of a sort.
“I didn’t mean…” He raked a hand through his hair, matching me step for step as we splashed through the water back to dry land. My strides defiantly long, partly from the cold, partly from annoyance at his assumptions.
The wind picked up, spitting mocking mist at me, robbing me of those last few delectable moments of warmth on the rock. Another mark against Cornwall—its dreadful weather.
