Page 10 of The Cornish Inheritance

Jacka could only shrug. “I can’t answer that, I’m sorry to say. My sister, Bessie, you remember her?”

Of course he remembered Bessie. Hard for Nat to suppress the color rising up his face as he nodded, but at least the interior of the inn was dark. What young man doesn’t remember his first?

Jacka continued. “Her girl, Patience, works at the Court now, and she ses as how the old master has a special nurse who does everythin’ for him. The other servants don’t get near him.” He slanted a sideways look at Nat. “Organized by Mrs. Treloar.”

Nat sighed. “It seems I’m returned in good time. I’d hate to not have seen my grandfather before he goes. And by my reckoning, he must now be approaching his ninetieth year.” He grinned. “Although he always seemed old to me even when I was a boy.”

Jacka nodded. “To me too.” He hesitated, as if reluctant to say something.

“Go on,” Nat said. “If you have something you need to tell me, spit it out.”

Jacka rubbed his bristly chin. “Things’ve changed more than you’d think since your grandfather took to his bed. Mrs. Treloar, she hired in a man to do the work old Sir Hugh used to do. To manage the estate and mines, and the shipbuilders at Falmouth. Bessie says her Patience and Dickon don’t like the man one bit. He lords it about the place as though it’s his, and Mrs. Treloar… well, Bessie says there’s rumors about her an’ him.”

“What rumors?”

“I don’t like to say, what with her bein’ your mother.”

“You know why that doesn’t matter to me. What rumors?”

Jacka lowered his voice. “That her and Mr. Trefusis, her agent, are more than just employer and manager.”

Nat regarded his friend in silence for a long moment. Over by the window, the dog rolled onto its back, legs in the air, relishing the warmth of the sun. “And do you think them true?”

Jacka shrugged. “Not for me to say. But that Jan Trefusis is a handsome man for his age. He do come in here from time to time and my Delen, she told me women do like his looks. With your own father bein’ dead these twelve years, could you blame your ma for lookin’ at him wi’ lively eyes?”

Nat shrugged and picked up his spurned brandy glass. “Waste not, want not.” He downed it in one gulp. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Enough of this idle talk. It’s a tidy way to Treloar from here and, as you can see, I’m togged out like a gentleman.” He indicated his only slightly dusty top boots. “You wouldn’t want me traipsing through fields dressed like this, would you? Do you perhaps have a horse I could borrow?”

Jacka returned the brandy bottle to its place beneath the counter. “I do that, but it won’t be what you’re used to as a fine soldier. This way.”

Picking up his valise, Nat followed Jacka to the rear of the inn where a door opened into a small stableyard. Hens scratched at a neatly stacked muck heap on top of which sat a cockerel, and a pair of fat geese stood on the other side of a wooden gate, peering between the rails. A scrawny boy of about twelve was busy sweeping the cobbles with a besom. Along one side of the yard ran an open shed, housing a flat farm cart and a shabby pony cart. On the other ran the stables. Jacka led the way through their wide doorway into a flagstone corridor off which a number of stalls opened. In one of them, a stout bay cob was tethered by a rope and log.

“This is Bosun. He’s not tall, but he makes up for his lack of height by his width.” He slapped Bosun’s large quarters and a cloud of dust rose. “Your long legs shouldn’t hang too far down.”

Nat had seen and ridden worse. He checked over Bosun’s sturdy legs for blemishes with a practiced hand and found none. “He’ll do me fine. Does it matter when I bring him back to you?”

Jacka shook his head. “Keep him a week, if you have to. I don’t need him at the moment, and if I need to go to Penzance, I’ll put the pony between the shafts of the cart and take that.”

They shook hands on the deal.

Rather less than half an hour later, Nat emerged from the stableyard astride Bosun, his valise fastened to the back of the saddle with some old rope, and took the lane opposite the inn. Overhead, a clear blue sky smiled down on the weary traveler, and Nat pushed any doubts he had about returning to his boyhood home out of his head. He would just glory in being alive, in the warmth of the sun, in the measured tread of a horse’s hooves beneath him, and in the birdsong in every tree and bush.

*

Late in theafternoon, with lessons, dinner, and piano practice over, and the weather still holding fine, Caroline and Yves, accompanied by an excited Hetty and a bounding, yapping spaniel, set off down the narrow path Yves assured Caroline would lead to the beach.

Hetty, dressed very prettily in a long-sleeved lemon gown, dainty white gloves and a capacious bonnet that would indeed prevent every inch of her skin from catching the sun, skipped along at Caroline’s side, while Yves and the dog scurried back and forth in front of them, trying to encourage them to hurry. Caroline, conscious of being required to set a good example, had similarly attired herself to Hetty in long sleeves, gloves, and a bonnet, and was even now regretting this fashion choice.

“I think I shall take my bonnet off and leave it here until we return,” Hetty said, her hands going to her bonnet strings. “Mama is so mean to make me dress like this on such a beautiful day. I’m far too hot already.”

As Caroline was thinking just the same, she could hardly argue. However, Hetty was a redhead. “I think you might need to keep well covered,” she ventured. “With your delicate skin.”

“Oh, poof,” Hetty exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you’re to be as fussy as Miss Hawkins was, and always make me do as Mama says?”

Caroline, regretting she could now no longer remove her own bonnet, sighed. “It’s well known that those with auburn hair need to be more careful in the sun. And besides, if you were to catch the sun, and, heaven forbid, develop freckles, it would be more than obvious to Mrs. Treloar that I haven’t been making you obey her command.”

Hetty put a dainty hand up to touch her nose. “I do have one or two freckles already, I suppose, even though I dab them with lemon juice every night before bed. But nevertheless, it’s so unfair that Yves gets to run about uncovered like this, when you and I must hide every inch of ourselves under clothing. How is it boys are allowed freckles, but we girls aren’t?”

Yves came running back at that moment, before Caroline was forced to find an answer for this question, his blonde curls bouncing. “Hurry up, can’t you? Dash and me want to paddle in the sea.”