Page 60 of The Cornish Bride

Lochinvar didn’t seem to have heard the same saying. At first, he shied away from entering the edge of the sea, seemingly very nervous about the small waves rolling in to meet him, and then bothered by the splash his back legs were making behind him. But as Hercules had no such qualms, being of a calmer temperament all round, he consented at last to walk on the landward side of Sam’s horse, where he couldn’t see the waves coming towards him.

Thus, Ysella was forced to ride on Sam’s righthand side, up close to keep Lochinvar from shying every time a fresh wave rolled in. As her leg rubbed against Sam’s, a pleasant tingle ran through her body, and an overwhelming sensation of being safe with him, and perhaps not just safe from the waves. She smiled, content for now with what life had offered her. “The waves are very pretty with their foamy white caps.”

He didn’t look at her, instead staring out into the hazy blue distance where sea met sky. “Today they are, but Kit told me they can be treacherous in bad weather. Your Uncle Jago once told me there’ve been a lot of ships wrecked along this coast. You see all the rocks just sticking up above the waves?”

She nodded.

“Well, there are as many and more hidden beneath the water, waiting to trap any ship that comes too close.”

Ysella stared out beyond the rolling waves at the expanse of blue-gray water. How innocuous it looked, stretching away towards a distant horizon. “But don’t the ships’ captains know not to come too close inshore? To keep away from the hidden rocks? Or are there some further out as well?” Her brow furrowed. “How deep is the sea?” She gave a shrug. “Today, it doesn’t look dangerous at all.”

Sam kept his gaze on the sea. “Jago told me it’s storms that drive the ships onto the rocks. With an onshore wind they can’t fight against, they are doomed if they come too close to land.”

“Storms?” She wrinkled her brow. “What happens to the sea in a storm?” The only storms she’d ever known had been in Wiltshire when she’d been tucked up safely inside Ormonde’s stout walls. Unlike poor Martha, she’d loved the roar of thunder and the crack of lightning, leaping out of bed to stand at her window and watch the tumultuous sky.

He turned to look at her at last. “Just wait until the first high wind. I’ll show you what it’s like then, but we won’t go near the sea when there’s a proper storm raging. Apparently, there can be freak waves bigger than the rest that can wash a man out to sea. And a horse. So your Uncle Jago told me.”

Ysella shivered again. That something so beautiful could transform into a thing that could snatch and drown a man seemed unbelievable. But Jago had told Sam there’d been shipwrecks, so surely the sea must become more violent even than the sky in a storm. Whatever Sam said about keeping away from the sea when it was dangerous, she’d very much like to see it for herself. Up close. Best not to tell Sam, lest he assume he could be as controlling of her as Kit.

“Come,” she said, tossing her head. “Shall we canter again while the tide is out? Would you like to race?”

*

That afternoon, Samwas taken up with estate matters in the newly cleaned office, so Ysella found herself left to her own devices, which suited her well. She should, perhaps, have been overseeing the rest of the cleaning Sam had directed the servants to get on with, of which there remained a great deal, there being a lot of rooms. But the fine day lured her out into the gardens, escaping Martha and leaving the boring tasks of housekeeping behind. Overgrown lawns and leggy bushes and trees, fresh with the green of spring, stretched away in every direction around the house, even to her inexperienced eye much in need of some care and attention. Like the house.

Maybe she should have swallowed her own dislike and asked Sam to bring Mrs. Higgins, who kept a spotlessly clean house, to accompany them. Then she could have let her shoulder all the responsibilities Sam seemed to think were hers. But no. That would not have done. Mrs. Higgins liked her even less than she liked Mrs. Higgins. Best to start afresh without her.

She found the boy, Jem, on his hands and knees weeding the drive.

“Hello, Jem, you look busy.”

He looked up at her out of a face liberally covered in freckles, his hazel eyes twinkling in a friendly fashion. “Mr. Beauchamp wanted me to make a start on the weeds. Said the drive were a disgrace.”

He sounded a tad resentful at being consigned to this most boring of duties. Did she detect an undercurrent of unrest amongst the servants at finally having to do some work?

Ignoring that thought, she smiled back at him. Perhaps he considered he’d forged a partnership with her when he’d led them all to Nanpean to save Kit. Perhaps he had indeed. It would be good to have a friend here, amongst the servants she didn’t know. She had Martha, of course, but she knew nothing of the house or gardens, and definitely not a thing about further afield.

An idea seized her. “A good thing too as it is very overgrown.” She waved an airy hand at the small section he’d cleared. “It looks much nicer now. But I think you can leave it for a while. I’d like you to show me the way down to Nanpean, as I feel a need to call on my mother’s brother and make my presence here at the Court known to him.” She dimpled and was rewarded by the hot flush that rose up Jem’s cheeks. “And not by the clifftop route you took us on before. I never want to have to take that particular path ever again.”

He scrambled up off his knees with an appreciative grin, a scrawny specimen in homespun shirt and tatty brown breeches. His stockings had wrinkled around his ankles, above boots as scuffed as if he’d been scraping them down a gravel road for hours. Wiping his muddy hands on his trousers, he made a sketchy bow. “’Course I’ll show you, Miss Ysella.” He eyed her pretty morning gown and lacy shawl, his gaze lowering to her daintily shod feet. “The path’s a bit rough. Will you mind that?”

Ysella shook her head. “Lead on, Jem. I have a hankering to get to know my uncle a little better than I do at present.” Which was not at all. She’d probably seen him once or twice as a child, but those memories eluded her. And last year, when Kit had been shot and she and Morvoren had taken care of him, Jago’s presence had been that of a shadowy background character she’d taken little notice of. Then, once Kit was on the mend, she’d had to return to Ormonde with Sam.

Jem’s alternative route down to Nanpean’s narrow valley might not have been along the top of the precipitous cliffs that had blocked her way on the beach that morning, but it nevertheless was not an easy walk. The path led between high stone and earth walls capped by straggly hawthorn bushes, with no view of the sea or anything much at all apart from the path itself. From time-to-time, muddy patches almost blocked the way, which Jem, in his scruffy boots, strode through without a care, but she, in her ordinary shoes, had to teeter around the edge of.

On top of that, it seemed a long way, much further than the clifftop path. Going mostly downhill, it twisted and turned around small fields and patches of scrubby moorland. Might it have been better to have taken Lochinvar and gone by road? But then Jem could not have shown her the way, and Sam was far too busy. If only she’d put on her boys’ clothes this morning, with her pair of Kit’s old boots. She’d stowed them away amongst her things when Martha hadn’t been looking, and they’d have been useful for this long walk. How unfair that boys and men got to wear the sort of clothes where they could do what they liked, and she had to suffer in a gown and stays, and these silly shoes that were looking worse by the moment. She might have to throw them away after today.

At last, though, the valley opened up before them and Jem pointed with a grubby finger. “There’s Nanpean, Miss.” A twist of woodsmoke rose into the blue sky from one of the squat old farmhouse’s several chimneys.

Uncle Jago was Mama’s older brother. The story of how Mama had met Papa was one Ysella loved to hear. So romantic that Papa, who’d been living at Carlyon Court, had one day ridden out and met the most beautiful girl in Cornwall. Those had been his exact words when he’d told Ysella the story, his face suffused with the love he still felt for Mama. The same sort of expression Ysella had seen on Kit’s face when he looked at Morvoren. She’d thought Oliver had looked the same when he’d gazed at her. How wrong she had been. He’d been seeing piles of money, not her. Never would she look to find the light of love in a man’s face again, because if she saw it there, she would know it couldn’t be trusted.

The path leveled out, leading between a field with a solid cob grazing in it and an orchard of small, stunted trees, bent by the wind from the sea to look as though they were stretching out their long, beseeching arms inland.

Jem led the way into the farmyard by a small side gate, and Ysella approached the front door of a long, low, stone-built farmhouse. A porch had been constructed to give some shelter from the elements that no doubt ravaged the farm in winter, built from bits of sea-bleached driftwood.

She knocked on the door.

After a moment, it swung open to reveal a small woman of early middle-age and rotund figure. Jenifry, Uncle Jago’s… housekeeper. She wore an apron and mob cap, the strands of her light brown hair escaping around a face flushed pink with heat. For a long few seconds, the woman stood there staring, before her expression changed from one of surprise to one of delight. “Miss Ysella! Well, I live an’ breathe. ’Tis you, m’dear. Come back to Nanpean. Come in, come in. I’ve a pot of tea on the stove keeping hot and cakes in the oven.”

Her gaze slid past Ysella to Jem. “Him an’ all. Can’t be sendin’ a boy back up that long path to the Court without a bite to eat and a dish o’ tea. I takes it you’ve come from up yonder?”

“Goodness, Jenifry,” Ysella managed, when her hostess paused to take a breath. “I didn’t expect you to remember me, what with all the things going on last time we met.” She and Jem followed Jenifry into the house. Everything was just as Ysella remembered it. The long oak table where Kit had pretended to be drunk at cards, the stove on one side of the room, and the wingback chairs to either side of it. A cat sat in a basket in front of the stove licking a batch of kittens, and a black and white sheepdog lay on the floor beside the window, ears cocked to keep an eye on the newcomers.

“Sit you down,” Jenifry said, “and tell me all the news. Your uncle’s away into Penzance this morning, so we’ve an hour or two to gossip without interruption.”

This was better than Ysella had planned, Jenifry was a far more welcome person to talk to than an old man would have been. In truth, she’d been nervous at the thought of meeting the gruff and ferocious looking Jago again, so his absence was a boon. Ysella settled down to tell her all about Morvoren and baby George, carefully skirting around her own problems.