Page 21 of The Cornish Mermaid

A gap-toothed serving girl in a grubby apron set bowls of brown soup before them on the table.

“Whatever you think is best,” Miss Lucas said, stifling a yawn and dropping her gaze to her bowl. She gave a tentative sniff. “What do you think is in this?”

Kit sniffed as well, glad to be able to talk about the food. “Difficult to be certain. Thickened bone broth perhaps? It’s hot, at least. If we don’t eat it up quick, we won’t get the roast, though, so best sup up.”

There was indeed a taste of meat about the soup. Faint, but present, but as to what else was in it—that was anyone’s guess. He’d heard enough cautionary tales about the food served in posting inns, even the best ones. Better, on the whole, not to know what you were eating.

“I’m sorry the journey is tiring you,” he tried.

Miss Lucas raised her eyes to consider him, something going on behind them that he couldn’t work out. “Having to use horse drawn transport does rather make the country feel large.”

What an odd thing to say. As if there were any alternative. “It is large. Although not so big as the Americas, so I’m told.” How inane was this conversation? What he really wanted to ask her was who Josh was, and what a boyfriend was, and why her accommodation had just vanished off the face of the earth. A lot of other things as well, but manners prevented him from reeling his questions off like an interrogation. A gentleman didn’t demand things of a lady. And now he’d left Cornwall behind, he was back to being a gentleman. Damn it.

With their soup bowls emptied, the same girl brought out slices of still bloody beef, potatoes and a rather mushy concoction of cabbage and walnuts. Kit washed this down with several glasses of a claret of dubious origins but better taste than he’d expected. Miss Lucas, however, only sipped her wine.

Now or never. “Will your parents not be awaiting your return?”

Those blue eyes widened. “My parents are dead.”

Of course. She’d said she had nobody. “But surely you don’t live alone?”

She shook her head. “I live with a friend.” She paused. “Another… young lady. Christina Armstrong.”

This was getting somewhere. “Will she not miss you?”

Morvoren shook her head, her eyes darting sideways giving her the appearance of a frightened deer. “She’s… not there at the moment, I’m afraid.”

Progress at last. “She didn’t accompany you to Cornwall, then?”

Morvoren picked at her food. “No. She didn’t.” Her words came out with a finality that had him stumped. As though she’d just closed a door in his face and shot the bolts across.

No time for anything else, though, as a shout of, “All’s ready,” rang through the inn.

Kit laid his napkin aside and rose to his feet. “That’s us he’s calling. We’d best make haste as they’re not known here for their patience. If we’re not careful they’ll leave without us, but with our baggage.” He held out his arm.

She stood up and took it with a smile. Perhaps she was glad the questioning was over. Her light fingers rested just in the crook of his elbow, as though she were getting more used to this action, the tingle of her touch most disturbing.

Outside, darkness had fallen, and the lamplighter had been round. The golden glow of the flickering streetlights spilled across the square, illuminating not just the large, smartly painted, red, black, and yellow mail coach drawn up outside the inn, but also the looming bulk of the cathedral across the square. Already, the passengers’ baggage was strapped securely onto the coach’s roof, and a guard, uniformed in a scarlet coat with blue lapels and gold braid, stood waiting to mount up and take his place beside the strong box of mail fastened to the back of the coach.

He’d already let down the step, and Kit handed Miss Lucas into the gloomy interior where a single small oil lamp now added to the fug. She cast it a suspicious glance, as though fearing it might ignite a fire inside the coach, which was, of course, possible, then settled down beside Loveday and arranged the skirts of her brown dress to demurely cover her strange footwear.

Taking his seat opposite the two women, Kit regarded Loveday with a jaundiced eye. How much easier would it be to continue to engage Miss Lucas in conversation if Loveday were not here with her flapping ears. Perhaps he should have bought her an outside ticket.

He was going to have to wait until they reached Ormonde to question Miss Lucas further. He had a lot more he wanted to ask her when she wasn’t so tired, and the list was only growing the more time he spent with her.

Chapter Nine

Morvoren

The journey seemed to take forever. The mail coach, a much smarter vehicle than the one that had transported them to Exeter, bowled along the bumpiest roads in England at what felt like breakneck speed, but was really only a snail’s pace when compared with a car. It rattled and banged and jolted Morvoren about so much, she couldn’t sleep. She kept her eyes closed as much as possible, but every time she managed to nod off, the coach hit a sizeable rut, and a sudden lurch would bang her head against the side and wake her up. This must be why coach interiors were kitted out like padded cells.

Her sleepless situation was not helped by the fact that the guard blew his post horn very loudly as he approached each tollgate, every time making her start in alarm.

“That’s so they can have the tollgates open,” Kit explained when she threw him a shocked look the first time it happened. “The mail coach gets free passage through all the tollgates.”

The fourth time the coach halted for a change of horses, another passenger arrived to join them.

He was waiting outside the inn when the coach arrived, dressed in a rather stylish long cape and with a smart top hat set at a jaunty angle on a head of carefully arranged chestnut curls. In one hand he held a silver handled walking stick, and in the other a pair of immaculate pale gloves.