Page 66 of The Cornish Widow

She pulled her hand free and slapped him hard. “Don’t speak of him that way. I was never just his mistress. I was—” She stopped abruptly.

“You were what?”

“Nothing. I misspoke.”

Jack eyed her with suspicion. That something had gone unsaid was obvious.

She gave herself a little shake. “I cannot go to Trengrouse, Jack. That pig-woman would relish having her servants throw me out of the house. But you can go. She can’t throw you out. I implore you to. You have to see him before he dies.”

“She’d relish throwing me out too, you know.”

His mother shook her head. “No. She won’t. He’d never let her.”

“You’re very confident of that.”

She bit her lip. “I have reason to be. Your father left a letter for you. I was to give it to you in the event of his death, or his expected death if possible. He wrote it shortly after the birth of your sister Lavinia, when he said he didn’t think he would ever get a son from Lady Letitia.” She paused. “The pig-woman.”

Jack couldn’t help a smile. “Mother, you keep calling her that, and it’s most unlike you to insult anyone in that way.”

His mother frowned up at him, tears streaking her cheeks. “Because she is a pig woman.”

“You’ve never called her that before.”

She snorted. “I’ve thought it often enough. Now, wait while I fetch out your father’s letter.”

“You have it on you?”

She reached for her reticule. “Safe here.” She loosened the cords and withdrew a folded piece of paper sealed with a blob of red sealing wax. “You will see I’ve not read it. It is addressed to you alone.”

“And he wanted you to wait until now to give it to me?” Did he even want to read it? “Do you know what’s in it?”

“No.” She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her dress, avoiding his eyes. Did she know more than she was letting on? “I didn’t ask. He said it was for you and it would explain everything.” She held out the letter. “It’s for you.”

Jack looked down at the spidery writing of his name on the letter and the indentation of his father’s signet ring—a dolphin arching across waves. A ring he’d envied as a small boy and wished to have a similar one of his own. His father always wore it.

Did he want to hear his father’s excuses for the way Jack had been brought up, nearly fatherless? Yes, he’d had material possessions, but he’d lived for the days of his father’s visits, which had never come frequently enough. To have that tall, jovial man swing him above his head or tickle him, to play with his puppy, Scout, to set him on the pommel of his saddle and gallop with him along the beach at Morgelyn: all of these things he’d longed for with passion and hope. Only to see his father at church with his humorless wife and three little girls in the family pew, whilst he and his mother sat in the far corner out of sight and mind.

“I hope,” his mother said, “that when you’ve read it, you will understand him better and wish to go to his bedside. I know he would want you there. And she will not be able to turn you away. I swear it.”

That was what his mother thought. Jack had a different opinion.

He broke the seal and unfolded the letter. His fathers scrawl covered the sheet from top to bottom in close packed lines, a little faded with age. It must be all of nearly twenty years old.

He began to read.

My dear Jack, my beloved boy,

If you are reading this then I am either dying or already dead. I ask that if I still cling onto life then you might come to my bedside that I might bless you with my dying breath, for I have wronged you and your mother.

Jack looked up and met his mother’s eyes. Did she really not know the contents of the letter? He bent his head to continue reading.

I was twenty when I met your mother, and she seventeen, the most beautiful creature I’d ever set my eyes on. You will know that she was the daughter of one of my father’s better-off tenant farmers, but what you will not know is that he had ambitions for her and she was well-educated and clever as well as beautiful. How could I not have fallen in love with her? And in return, to my amazement, she fell in love with me. I felt I was the luckiest man alive.

Jack had a sudden feeling of voyeurism at reading his father’s inner thoughts about his mother. He hesitated, glancing up again at her, but she gave him a nod and he lowered his gaze and continued to read.

I told my father, your grandfather, Sir Montague Trengrouse, that I wished to marry your mother. He was so furious he forbade me to ever see her again. I was beside myself, but he sent me off to London to work in the import business he was a partner in, and refused to allow me back into Cornwall for a whole year. Your mother and I swore to remain true to one another while I was gone. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, my father evicted your mother’s family from the farm they’d tenanted for centuries, as far back as our family had held Trengrouse. In London, I knew nothing of their fate.

This was information Jack had never heard before. His mother must have known it, but kept it from him. It had never occurred to him to enquire about her family, and he’d just accepted their absence from her life. Perhaps they lived yet, but elsewhere.