Page 68 of The Cornish Widow

Chapter Thirty

Down in the stables, Shadow greeted his owner with an excited nicker as Jack carried saddle and bridle down the passageway towards his horse’s loosebox. He’d turned down his groom’s offer to saddle his horse for him, preferring the activity to standing waiting with nothing to do but think. Instead, he’d sent the groom down to the kiddley to tell Will a little of what had happened, and to take The Fly round to Penzance without him. However, even the activity of tacking up Shadow didn’t stop his brain from reeling.

He’d always been legitimate. The mockery and often outright bullying he’d suffered at Truro Grammar School for being born a bastard had been unfounded. He and his mother could have lived with his father all this time, if only his father had possessed a backbone. And now, too late to try to mend the past, his father’s dying wish had been to reveal all.

He slipped the bit between Shadow’s teeth and pulled the headpiece over his long, velvety ears. What of Lady Trengrouse? Only of course, she wasn’t Lady Trengrouse at all—his mother was. What of her three daughters? Two were already married to men who thought them the legitimate daughters of a baronet. One remained at home, as yet unwed. How old might she be? Eighteen, nineteen? Of an age to come out into society, but a society which would now sneer at her and turn its back. Much as it had done on occasion to Jack himself. No wonder he hadn’t liked to move in Cornish society’s circle.

Could he do this to her? Make her suffer in the way he had himself, knowing she was just a girl and couldn’t find the kind of escape he had, with his fists. He fastened the throatlash and noseband, hooked up the curb chain and led Shadow out of his box. His horse’s hooves skittered on the cobbles, eager for the off.

Out in the stableyard, Jack tightened the girth then swung himself up into the saddle and turned Shadow towards the archway onto the drive. What he wanted to do was gallop round to Trengrouse Castle, but Shadow had been too long idle in his loosebox and needed walking for a good ten minutes to loosen up his muscles. He’d have to take the long way around via the Penzance road, and that irked him more than ever. His hand overly heavy on the reins, he headed Shadow down the drive and turned left.

His horse pranced and curvetted, as though he felt the urgency of their mission and Jack’s anxiety, but Jack tightened his grip and held him to a walk. Besides, it gave him time to think, although he couldn’t be sure if that was a good or bad thing. Thinking hurt him.

What would he do when he arrived? Leave Shadow with a groom, or a footman, and march in through the front doors? Doors he’d never been through before. Apart from the one time he’d met Lady Trengrouse in the gardens, he’d never even been within the grounds. Of course, after that initial rebuff, he’d been back countless times to observe from afar, drawn by the spectacle of his father’s other family. But eavesdropping or spying never brings happiness to those who do it, and, in the end, he’d given up before it made him bitter. Or more bitter than he already was.

So he didn’t even know where in the grand house his father’s room lay. He’d have to ask, or be escorted.

He’d walked long enough now. Time to trot. He gave Shadow a little more rein and the horse immediately burst into a long-striding trot, eating up the track to the main road. Jack turned west towards Penzance, and Shadow broke into a canter for the half mile to the turning down to Trengrouse, hooves pounding along the grassy verge beside the road.

That his father had set up the woman the world thought of as his mistress so close to the one they thought his legal wife was no surprise. His father had been pleasure loving and hedonistic, always the one to arrive with some toy or another as a gift, always willing to play with Jack, to laugh and flirt with his mother. He frowned at the thought of what his father had inflicted on his mother, just because of the accident of her birth and his fear of his own father. She’d not been unhappy, though, at least not while his father was with her. And she’d always shown a happy face to Jack.

But when she’d been alone, had she then wondered what her life would have been like had Sir Austin thought to stand up to Jack’s grandfather? That she would have been a lady. Not that she was totally spurned by the high society of Cornwall, because she wasn’t. She had her limited circle of friends, she attended the Assembly Rooms, she invited these friends to dine with her, mostly when Jack was absent. But did she dream of being by his father’s side? Had she nurtured pangs of sadness and jealousy when she saw him with the woman who had all unknowingly usurped her place?

The track to Trengrouse was not as long as the one down to Bessie’s Cove. It sloped downhill but was well-maintained enough for Jack to allow Shadow to trot. In all-too-short a time, he was riding up the wide, graveled drive to the front of the castle. Not that it was really a castle, being more of a grand house with the embellishment of crenellations and a few fancy towers. Something one of his father’s ancestors must have added on. One of his own, legal ancestors now.

He halted Shadow near the front door and was just dismounting when that door swung open and the sturdy, black-clad figure of a butler appeared, his face the picture of shock. He must be well aware of who Jack was. Everyone for miles around knew, and if they didn’t know, they could have guessed, from Jack’s close resemblance to his father as a young man. “You can’t—” the man began.

Jack held out Shadow’s reins to him. “Here, take my horse to the stables. I shall be at the castle for a while.”

The butler’s mouth fell open, but long years of obedience to the upper classes had him holding out his hand and taking the reins. Without further ado, Jack was past him and through the front door, leaving the man gaping and in charge of the restless Shadow.

Trengrouse Castle was even more ornate within than without. The marble floor beneath Jack’s feet echoed with his footsteps as he strode into the center of the enormous hall. Wide stairs rose to a half-landing then divided to left and right, heading for a galleried landing above that encircled the lofty hallway. Large, important looking doors opened to left and right and paintings hung on all the walls. There was one that had to be his father as a young man—the image of Jack himself. Jack dragged his eyes away from the portrait. Without the encumbered butler to ask, which way was he to go?

Upstairs. It had to be the way. He took the stairs two at a time, half-running to the wide landing where many doors and corridors opened off to different wings of the house. Where would the master bedroom be? He could hardly go searching every room.

The necessity to do so was removed as a gray-haired woman in a plain, dark-gray dress emerged from a doorway halfway down a wide corridor to Jack’s right. She was balancing a bowl and jug in one hand and looking harassed. As she closed the door behind her, she raised her eyes and started back in surprise. “Sir Austin?” Her face blanched as though she thought she might be seeing a ghost. “But you’re not dead, yet.” The words came out on a horrified gasp and she glanced back at the door she’d just emerged from.

Jack took a few steps towards her and she retreated, the bowl and jug clutched to her chest. “No, keep away from me.”

He halted, understanding dawning. “You’re not seeing a ghost. I am not your master come to haunt you. I’m his son, come to see him.”

The expression on her face changed in an instant. “You can’t go in there. You can’t be here at all. It’s forbidden.” Even though she no longer thought him a ghost, her low voice was rigid with fear. “You must leave. Now. Before you’re seen.”

Jack shook his head. “I’ve come expressly to see my father, on his deathbed, and you will not say me nay.”

Glancing towards the stairs as though in hope of reinforcements in the shape of the butler turned groom, she drew herself up as tall as she could, which wasn’t very tall, and set her jaw. “I shall call the footmen to have you removed if you do not leave.” Perhaps she’d given up on the butler coming to help.

Jack ignored her outburst. “Is this my father’s room?”

She stepped between him and the door, brave as a lioness defending her cub. “You shall not enter.”

Jack took her by the shoulders. She was a small woman, and he was big and strong. With firm determination, he set her to one side. Her face darkened with anger and the bowl and jug in her hands wobbled. “Now go and do what you were told to do. Fetch some fresh water for my father. Now.”

He turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.

*

“Wherever did youget this dress?” Bertha asked as Harriet sat down at the kitchen table. “It looks quite out of date. Here, get this hot tea down you.” A dish of tea was pressed into her hands, Bertha’s cure-all for every indisposition. There was no denying how welcome it was though. Harriet sipped the hot liquid and felt energy flood through her body along with the welcome warmth.