Page 13 of The Cornish Mermaid

This couldn’t be Penzance, so where on earth had Kit brought her?

Chapter Six

Kit

For the love of God, why had she stopped now?

“What’s wrong?” Kit asked, pulling Jago’s nag to a halt.

Morvoren, as she’d told him twice now that she wanted to be called, seemed to have weathered her first time on a sidesaddle remarkably well. Her wavy blonde hair had lost the ribbon Jenifry had used to confine it. Despite the bonnet, it now floated about her face in the most becoming fashion. Enough to be quite distracting if he didn’t watch out. What a good thing he’d be returning her to the arms of her gentleman friend and, hopefully, as they were unwed, some stalwart matron of a duenna.

Until this moment, he’d thought that undertaking would be an easy one.

“You said you were staying in a cottage?” he tried, aware that her face had taken on the stricken expression of the well and truly lost. “Do you think you can find it?”

She turned her anguished gaze on him. “But this can’t be Penzance. It’s too small.” She swiped a hand across her eyes, as though doing so might change the view, and muttered to herself, “But there’s St Michael’s Mount, all right. That’s in the right place. Or is it? Can there be more than one of them? But where have all the roads gone, and the supermarket and… and everything else?”

With a sigh, he resisted the temptation to say that of course it was Penzance and where else could it be, and instead, went for her last remark. “What roads?”

“Why, all the main roads.” Morvoren shook her head as though to clear it, then spoke more loudly, although her words still sounded like rhetorical questions. “How can all of that just have disappeared? This can’t be Penzance, can it?”

What to say to this? He’d never had anyone, still less a beautiful young lady, assure him that the place they were seeing was not the place he’d told her it was. Very confusing. She looked confused. He was too, and time was getting on. “I can see the line of the main road from here,” he tried. “Just there where the trees run along. Come on, we’ll canter the last quarter mile.”

Without giving her the chance to protest, he touched his heels to Jago’s cob and, beside him, Prinny sprang forward into a canter at the same time. Within scarcely more than a minute, they were pulling the horses to a walk where the road he’d indicated ran down the hillside into the outskirts of Penzance.

She’d asked for a road, and he’d provided her with one. “Here we are,” Kit said, with a flourish. “The Penzance road.”

A gravelly track wound down through the trees to snake its way between the closely packed cottages. The potholes marring its rough surface here and there were to be avoided, but otherwise, it was a fine road of which the Cornish, and by default Kit himself, could be proud.

“That’s not a road,” Morvoren declared. “That’s a track.”

“Track, road, what does it matter?” Kit retorted, a little flustered by her tone of apparent disgust for what to him was a jolly good thoroughfare. “It’ll get us to where we want to go.”

Morvoren shot him a frown as they passed under the last of the trees and emerged onto the road. A strong aroma of seaweed and fish rose from the harbor to meet them, mingling with the normal strong odors native to any village. A smell Kit loved. However, not so Morvoren, it seemed. Her small and decidedly attractive nose wrinkled.

She must indeed be a fine lady if these scents offended her. No time to think about that now, though. He had to get her back to her lodgings so he could return post haste to the farm and Jago, preferably long before night fell.

“Where is your accommodation situated?” he asked as the road levelled out.

“Um, I was staying in a cottage in Abbey Place, near the harbor,” Morvoren said, her voice redolent with uncertainty. “Number four. The Lobster Pot. It’s a little cul-de-sac just off New Street.”

Kit gave her a sideways look. Poor girl. She sounded addlepated, as though her dip in the sea had completely thrown her. Maybe she’d banged her head when she fell in? Perhaps he should have offered to check her over for bumps. The thought of running his hands through that mop of wavy golden hair sent a disturbing tide of warmth through his body.

No, he mustn’t think things like that. It was his duty as a gentleman to return her to this “boyfriend” she’d mentioned, who would doubtless be returning from his so-called fishing trip with the tide. He gave himself a shake and concentrated on what she’d said. “Abbey Place must be close to Abbey Street, just above the harbor. I believe New Street is just around the corner. We’ll go there first.”

As they wended their way through the narrow streets, the clatter of their horses’ shod hooves echoed on the cobbles. Kit kept a weather eye on Morvoren. Her anxious gaze flicked from left to right as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. As though, for some reason, nothing about Penzance met her expectations. The fact that there was a definite mystery about her intrigued him more than he liked to admit.

Outside the tavern he and Jago liked to frequent on their visits to Penzance, Kit halted his cob. “We’ll leave our horses here and proceed on foot.”

She made no protest and sat demurely on Prinny while he dismounted and handed his cob to the ostler who came hurrying out to take it. Then Kit turned to help her down, and, with another wrinkle of her pretty nose, she rather awkwardly unhooked her right leg and slid down into his arms. He caught her around the waist and set her lightly on the ground, very much aware of the feel of her body under his hands and how different it now was to the first time he’d taken her in his arms on the beach. The feel of stays under his touch was somehow reassuring. The world was the right way up again.

Her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, met his, and her cheeks, which had long ago resumed a normal coloration, flushed a becoming pink. Did she feel the same shiver of electricity as he did, every time he touched her?

“Which way from here?” he asked, releasing his hold on her as though she were a hot coal, immediately cross with himself for having done so. Best to revert to bluff indifference until he’d seen her safely ensconced in her lodgings. This was a girl he had to forget as soon as he parted from her, no matter how much he didn’t want to.

She took a step back, her bosom, mostly obscured by the lace fichu around her shoulders, rising and falling as though she were breathless. “It wasn’t far from the corner of New Street,” she gabbled. “This way, I think.” She certainly looked as shaken by the contact as he was.

Kit followed her, as, with determination, she turned down New Street, where small fishermen’s cottages packed both sides of the cobbled road and a strong stench of privies had attached itself to the gutter in the center.