Oliver shook his head.
“A trollop.”
“He was a dissolute blaggard,” groused Oliver, “and you are nothing like him except in foolishness.” And grimacing, he settled into readingA Valet’s Guide to Cravats.
Jack brought forth his own book.
He traced the gold lettering –Moths of the South-West– and his chest ached all the more.
Flicking it open, he noted a pencil drawing of a moth but it wore a waistcoat and hessian boots complete with tassels, a huge toothy grin on its face.
Underneath an inscription.
To my dearest rogue,
May you always be you.
Tam.
Something smarted at the back of his eyes, his throat clogged, and he could find no joy in life this day.
Chapter Thirty
So, what are you going to do?
“I see a hard and barren winter to come,” bewailed Mrs Mildern from the kitchen table with an ominous tone.
Tamsyn glanced up distractedly. “Has the mirror shown a bad harvest?”
The old lady shook her head. “No, dearie. But we’ll have no jam as you’ve burned it.”
A sickly odour assailed their nostrils and cook scurried over to the range, clicking her tongue. Tamsyn had thought assisting in the kitchens would distract her from thoughts of Jack departing four hours past, but apparently not.
“Oh, Miss Penrose. Your mind must be…” Cook gawked at the clock, counted on her fingers. “…ten miles past Truro. Why don’t you read a book instead?” She scrunched her nose at the roiling pan. “And I’ll get Samuel to feed the pigs.”
Head bowed, Tamsyn took her leave and made for the library – surelyMoths of Deepest Perucould absorb her contrary thoughts and cure her aching heart.
As she perused the shelves,Hades and Persephonecaught her eye and she roundly scowled.
“Daughter? Are you well?”
She spun. “Yes, Papa,” she replied, not realising she’d stomped straight past him.
“Then why did you allow the fellow to leave? And what are you going to do about it?”
“Beg pardon?”
Father sat behind his desk, sipping a noon-day glass of cider and nibbling hevva cake, raisins dotting the green leather like tin mines on the landscape.
“Winterbourne. You let him leave with nary a squeak this morning.”
“One can do nothing but accept some events in life, Papa.” She re-arranged his collection of porcelain figurines on the book shelf.
“Is that so?” Her father made a fuss of throwing his head back in the chair. “Is that what you did in the cave all those years ago? Accept death? Is that what you did in old man Thomas’s rowing boat three days past? Accept your fate?”
Mouth opened. And closed.
“Or,” her father continued, “did you fight, rail and win? That is the daughter I brought up, not this timmersome miss.”
