Page 16 of The Cornish Inheritance

Her hands had gone rigid in her lap, gripping the cover of her book, the knuckles whitened. “No doubt.”

“I shall look forward to that.”

Hmm. As there seemed nothing else to say to his mother, Nat bestowed a small bow on her, and performed an about turn. Nothing much changed there. Still a woman who played her cards close to her chest. Aware of her gimlet gaze boring into his back, he strode out of the room and headed for the stairs.

Sir Hugh Treloar had always occupied the best bedroom in the house, its long windows looking out over the wide front drive and giving an excellent view of the distant sea and the rise that was Penmar Head. His wife, the late Lady Treloar, had died while Nat was at Harrow, some twelve years since, not long after his own father’s death, and Nat’s memory of her had faded long since. But he held a firm picture in his head of how his grandfather had been three years ago when he’d ridden over from Bodilly after the funeral to see him: still over six feet tall, solidly built but not fat, his white-maned head held upright and proud. A lion of a man.

His heart in his mouth at what the last three years and an apoplexy might have done to his grandfather, Nat took the stairs two at a time, turning right where they divided and marching down the upstairs corridor to the east wing, his booted feet loud on the polished oak floorboards.

He reached the bedroom door and halted, swallowing. With his good left hand, he rapped smartly on the door.

Footsteps sounded, and the door swung open a foot, but no more. Nat kept his face turned to the right to hide his scar as the stern face of a large middle-aged woman, her hair scraped back and hidden beneath a mob cap, peered out. Thick dark brows met in a frown. “Yes?” Almost a bark. She’d have made a good sergeant major.

“I’ve come to see my grandfather.”

She looked him up and down as though suspecting what he’d said was a lie, and he had some ulterior motive for pounding on the door. “Who shall I say it is?” An accusation, her words implying he must be of no importance and his grandfather would not want to see him.

“Major Nat Treloar,” Nat snapped, itching to snatch the door from her hands and fling it open. “His grandson.” He had to remember his grandfather was not only very old but probably also very weak. He might even be asleep.

“I’ll find out if he’ll see you,” the woman snapped back, and would have closed the door on him had he not stuck his boot out to prevent her. With a withering glare, she turned away, and her feet tapped back across the room. Straining his ears, Nat made out the sound of muted voices. She returned, tap, tap, tapping as though she had hobnails in the soles of her shoes.

This time she opened the door a bit wider. “Sir Hugh will see you now. But don’t tire him.”

Nat bristled. Who did this jumped-up creature think she was?

The high, four-poster bed Nat remembered from his boyhood occupied the center of one wall. In it, propped up on numerous pillows sat his grandfather, a shadow of his former self. A plaid shawl had been draped over his bony shoulders on top of his nightshirt, and a nightcap sat on his head, wispy white hair escaping around its edges. His thin face, as wrinkled as a walnut shell, had the washed-out pallor of someone who had not seen the sun in far too long a time.

Nat, ignoring the nurse’s startled step backwards as she caught sight of his scar for the first time, stepped up to the bed and made a deep bow. “Good afternoon, Sir.”

The old man looked him in the eye. He must be able to see the scar as Nat had for once not half turned away. A long silence ensued. Was he, like everyone else Nat met, pitying him for the loss of half his face?

“So,” the old man said, his voice every bit as deep and authoritative as Nat recalled, “you’ve come home to us at last.” He glanced at the hovering nurse. “Don’t just stand there, Rodgers. Fetch the boy a seat. Then you can go. We’ve a lot to talk about.”