Page 16 of The Cornish Mermaid

Well, not quite the same.

“Now,” he said, the embryonic smile vanishing entirely. “We shall need to purchase our coach tickets for tomorrow morning first. Then collect our horses and ride back to the farm for the night, I’m afraid. The journey to Ormonde is a long one, and if I’m to travel with you, we must definitely engage a maid for the sake of propriety, and equip you sufficiently from my mother’s old clothes, unfashionable as they might be. So, Jago is going to have to swallow down his ire and put up with having a visitor.”

Lovely. Back to where Morvoren thought she’d escaped from.

Chapter Seven

Morvoren

On the way back to the farm, a place Morvoren was not keen to revisit, Kit called a halt at the little row of cottages they’d passed on their way out. The women had finished their washing and it now lay spread over the bushes, drying in the sun.

Kit pulled the cob, who must have known he was nearly home, to an unwilling halt. “I’ll just be a minute here at Jowan’s cottage.” He dismounted, looped the cob’s reins over a rickety gate post, and strode up the front path of the nearest cottage, the neatest and tidiest in the row.

He knocked smartly on the door and, after a moment or two, this door, better painted than the rest in the row, creaked open. A rotund, red-headed, apple-cheeked woman who might have been somewhere about forty, emerged, bobbing a curtsey as she came.

From where she sat on Prinny by the ford, Morvoren could only see Kit’s back and hear nothing of the low conversation he was having, but the woman’s excitable reaction spoke volumes.

This was the woman Kit had picked out to be the maid who would give respectability to Morvoren and enable her to spend the night in the farmhouse with two single men—Loveday Curnow.

“Jowan’s daughter,” Kit had explained on the long ride back from Penzance. “She used to be lady’s maid to my mother before she set up house with a fisherman from Nanpean village. You’ll be relieved to hear she’s a better worker than her father. Sadly for her, her fisherman’s boat was lost in a storm last winter and she’s been back here keeping house for her father ever since. I’m hoping she’ll remember some of the skills she had in her youth, if you’re lucky.”

Not that Morvoren had any idea what those skills might be.

She watched Loveday in curiosity. Perhaps she was the one responsible for the neatly painted front door and the curtains hanging in the windows that made this house stand out as better than the rest. Somehow, from what she’d seen of Jowan, she couldn’t imagine he’d be the sort to bother with such things.

From the eager smile on Loveday’s face, it seemed Kit’s persuasive powers were working. Either that, or being Morvoren’s maid was a better alternative to being her father’s. Beaming, Loveday vanished back inside her cottage and Kit strolled back to the horses.

“She’s very pleased to be offered the job,” he said, his eyes more troubled than Morvoren would have expected after this success in finding a maid and thus rendering her “respectable.” Maybe he was thinking about how he would explain Morvoren’s continued presence to his uncle.

Loveday emerged five minutes later with a bobbed curtsey and a “G’day to you, Miss Lucas,” that Morvoren returned with a “Hello, Loveday.” Then, with Morvoren still on Prinny, and Kit and Loveday on foot, the three of them continued down the track to Nanpean Farm.

Jago was much worse than Kit had been at hiding his annoyance at having to play host again. As the horses turned into the farmyard and he spotted Morvoren and Loveday, he sent a glowering look at Kit and stomped off into the house with his head down, his fury hanging over him in a black cloud.

It turned out that the full extent of Kit’s hospitality involved him giving up his bedroom at one end of the house for Morvoren. He was to sleep on the small camp bed affair in the box room along with the dusty shrouded furniture and the chests of blankets and clothes. He seemed unperturbed by this prospect. “I’ve slept in worse places than this,” being his only comment.

After an awkwardly silent dinner, and with Morvoren’s offer to dry the dishes refused, Jenifry took her upstairs with Loveday. Back in the little box room, the two servants rummaged through the clothes chest a second time.

“I’ll just put these things to air a bit,” Jenifry said, fishing shapeless garments out. “There should be more than enough for you at Ormonde.”

“You’ll be needin’ underwear an’ stockin’s, too,” Loveday declared, piling these items up. “Good thing Miss Elestren had all new when she married Mr. Thomas.”

“An’ a good thing I hung onto all of ’em like this,” Jenifry said. “Though I did think as ’twere a cryin’ shame they didn’t fit me.”

“Like Jago’d’ve let you wear ’em,” Loveday scoffed. “You might be warmin’ his bed for him, but he ain’t likely to tek you to wife, no matter what you thinks.”

For a moment they looked as though they might come to blows, so Morvoren reached out and picked up a prettily embroidered shift. “This is beautiful. Did one of you make it?” Their argument was somewhat defused as Jenifry was forced to tell her Miss Elestren herself had stitched it as a girl. However, this distraction didn’t stop the two women exchanging dark looks as the pile of chosen clothing mounted.

Best to ignore their bristling rivalry.

“Do you know where Kit’s mother and sister live?” she ventured, instead.

“Ormonde,” Loveday and Jenifry said in unison, clearly competing to be the one to answer.

Morvoren was none the wiser. “But where exactly is that?”

“T’other side o’ the Tamar,” Jenifry got in first. “A long way off.”

“England,” Loveday elaborated.