Page 29 of The Cornish Mermaid

Ysella frowned. “Why, Lady Ormonde will do nicely. That is what my dear friend Caroline Fairfield calls Mama when she visits.” She giggled. “I daresay you will get to meet Caroline. I’m sure Mama will be inviting her to Ormonde as she still harbors the hope of making a match between her and Kit. Caroline’s mama is great friends with my mama, and they’ve had a fancy to pair Kit and Caro off since Caro was in the cradle.”

“Goodness,” was all Morvoren could find to say in response to that gush of information. So, Kit was as good as engaged in his mother’s eyes. No wonder she’d seemed unhappy when he’d turned up with a strange young lady in tow.

“And now,” Ysella said, “we shall descend to the library again and from there go in to breakfast. It must be at least ten o’clock and high time for something to eat. I, for one, am famished.”

She took hold of Morvoren’s hand and propelled her out onto the corridor.

*

Kit

The door of the library opened and Ysella came in, hand in hand with someone Kit scarcely recognized, so much of a change had been wrought upon her appearance. Her fluffy hair had been teased into golden curls and arranged on top of her head, supported in place by just the sort of silk bandeau his sister liked to wear. And gone was the outmoded dress of yesteryear to be replaced by the most becoming blue sprigged muslin gown, and elegant calf-skin slippers instead of those infernally ugly shoes.

And yet, something still marked her as different. Perhaps in the way she wore her new clothes and hairstyle, as though she were at a masque and this a costume only, and she a player. In fact, now he came to think about it, Miss Lucas had about her the air of someone totally out of place, as though she didn’t fit into her surroundings at all, as though, perhaps, she wasn’t even meant to be here.

Kit made a smart bow. “Miss Lucas, you look more charming than ever.”

Miss Lucas opened her mouth to speak, but Ysella interrupted. “Oh Kit, do cease to call my dear Morvoren Miss Lucas. She has asked me to use her Christian name and so should you.” She twinkled up at him with her usual effervescence. “Indeed, she tells me she has at least twice asked you to do so.”

Kit frowned at his sister, wise to her ways. “It would not have been seemly for me to have appeared too familiar with Miss Lucas by using her Christian name whilst we were traveling,” he said, aware that beside his open-natured sister he sounded pompous and stilted as soon as he opened his mouth but unable to stop himself. “However, if Miss Lucas still wishes it, I shall call her Morvoren while we are here at Ormonde.”

Morvoren’s slightly worried expression softened into a slight smile. “I would like that, especially as you’ve already told me I should call you Kit.”

He glanced at his mother, determined that she should accept her visitor—his visitor. “And Mother, I am sure you would like to call Miss Lucas Morvoren as well, wouldn’t you?”

His mother, who had resumed her seat by the fireplace after their altercation, rose to her feet, her sewing gripped rather too tightly in her slender hands, her dark eyes veiled so he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “I feel it a trifle impolite to assume to be on first name terms on so short an acquaintance,” she said.

How bloody irritating women could be, and how high his mother had climbed upon her horse since she’d been a farmer’s, and a smuggler’s, daughter living in a small farmhouse in Cornwall. The urge to take her by the shoulders and give her a shake was almost overwhelming.

Ysella, apparently immune to the hostility emanating from their mother, laughed, a happy, tinkling sound. “But Mama, Morvoren is to be my friend, and calling her Miss Lucas all the time will sound as if we are talking about a casual acquaintance and not someone who is staying with us in our own home. I insist that we all call her Morvoren. It is such a pretty name.”

Kit would have burst out laughing at his mother’s expression had he not been in full control of himself. Ysella, as usual, had his mother stumped, the chit.

Lady Ormonde, superbly conscious of her own role in his house, made a slight inclination of her head. “Very well,” she conceded. “Morvoren it is.” A slight smile lit her face, but not a totally convincing one. “It will serve to remind me of my childhood at Nanpean.”

That would have to do. What a woman she was. However, thank goodness for Ysella, who could always wind their mother around her little finger, and indeed had also been able to do that with their father, when he’d been alive.

When she went up to London for her season next spring, she was going to be a handful with her rather too vivacious ways and her innocent view that everyone had the same honest outlook on life as she did.

Morvoren lowered herself into a rather wobbly curtsey to his mother. “I shall be honored if you will call me Morvoren, Lady Ormonde.”

Chapter Thirteen

Morvoren

Ormonde Abbey was like something out of a film or a television drama, and here Morvoren was, a part of it, in a kind of dream existence, yet everything was real. Somehow, she’d found herself living the sort of life some people, although not her, dreamed of. But for now, while it was still a novelty, she determined to find it in her to enjoy all these new experiences and push thoughts of what she’d left behind in her own world to the back of her mind. As well as everything about Jago Tremaine, the Mr. Big of Cornish smuggling.

Everything about this new, or should it have been old, world astonished her: the sprawling decadence of the house, the sumptuous bedrooms with their four-poster beds, the gorgeous clothes provided to her by a girl who seemed needily intent on becoming her best friend, the beautifully laid out gardens and the wide stretch of deer park beyond, the retinue of servants to fetch and carry for all of them… and Kit.

Behind everything, there was Kit, an enigma of a man who apparently divided his life between that of lord of the manor here at Ormonde and being a desperate smuggler in league with his dodgy uncle in Cornwall.

Now that they were away from Jago’s farm, Morvoren was going to have time to relax and make the most of her surroundings. But that first day, at Kit’s insistence, she spent the entire afternoon sleeping in her room.

Ysella protested. “But why does Morvoren need to rest? I’d much rather she and I could get to know one another better.”

Kit frowned and shook his head. “Morvoren has had more than twenty-four hours of traveling, Ysella, and must be exhausted. It’s impossible to get much rest in a mail coach, as you know.”

Ysella pouted. “I’m sure I don’t know. I never get to go anywhere, certainly not in a mail coach, and probably never will.”