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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Ruby Vaughn
- Sprache: Englisch
1922. Ruby Vaughn has made a life for herself running a bookshop alongside octogenarian Mr Owen. When she finds herself at Penryth Hall, deep in the Cornish countryside, painful memories emerge of her lost friendship with Tamsyn, now married to the rather sinister Sir Edward Chenowyth. Although desperate to leave, Ruby's plans are thwarted when Penryth's bells ring for the first time in thirty years. Edward has been brutally killed in the orchard and fears are rife that a dormant curse has been awoken. Sceptical Ruby doesn't believe in such things, nor in the power the locals swear Ruan Kivell, the Pellar, possesses to break the curse. But, to protect her friend, Ruby must work alongside this unsettling man to find out what really happened that night.
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123
THE CURSE OF PENRYTH HALL
JESS ARMSTRONG
45For my dad6
Contents
Chapter One
An Unwanted Journey
Exeter, August 1922
There were three things a girl wanted after the night I’d had. One: a proper breakfast. Two: a scarcity of sunlight. And three – possibly most important – coffee. Dark, bitter, and at least two pots. But I had none of the aforementioned. What I did have, however, was a splitting headache, a sunburn, and my octogenarian employer sitting alongside me in a deck chair with the Pall Mall Gazette and Globe in his hands.
I blinked in the bright morning sun, then shut my eyes back tight. I braved a glance down at myself, still dressed in the same ocher silk evening gown from the night before. Details of which returned in the vaguest of flickers, none particularly illuminating. The nearby bells of Exeter Cathedral rang out loud and clear, rattling around in my gin-muddled head.
‘Is there coffee?’
‘Is that all you have to say for yourself?’ Mr Owen flicked another page in his paper, his dark-brown eyes fixed upon the newsprint. ‘When you didn’t come down for breakfast I thought you’d finally gone and drowned yourself in this death pit you’ve dug in my rose garden. But it seems you’ve nearly done the job in gin.’
I waved a hand at him, ignoring the twinge of truth in the last barb. ‘It’s a bathing pool, Mr Owen. They’re going to be all the 8rage one day. Besides, your roses were dead when I moved here. I daresay I improved matters.’
He chuckled beneath his breath. At least he wasn’t terribly cross. He seldom was, no matter how deep my provocation. I sat up in the wooden chair, pulling my knees against my chest, wincing at the light. The blackcap in the tree nearby was particularly effusive in his morning song. The fellow was a bit more cheerful than I.
He slid a wire-framed pair of sunglasses across the table between us, and I breathed out a sigh of relief, taking them at once. God bless him. A rapidly cooling cup of tea sat on the table beside me, and I couldn’t help but smile. This was our habit, he and I, had been since I’d answered his advertisement for a room to let. Though I’d got quite a bit more in the bargain. We’d lived together in this strange little world here in the eastern part of Devon, and it suited us both fine. In name, he owned it all: the bookshop, the derelict mansion along with everything in it – with the exception of my little automobile and my clothing. Oh, and my jewellery. Not that I had much of that any more as I’d taken a rather bare-bones approach to life since the end of the war. Fewer ties, fewer things to lose.
With the sun no longer assaulting my head, I opened my eyes to the jade and gilt tiles of the pool, which sparkled back at me like a jewel box in the midmorning sun. And while he might detest the thing, it was my greatest joy as we weren’t along the seaside. ‘Has Mrs Adams arrived yet?’
‘After last night, lass?’ Mr Owen raised an incredulous bushy white eyebrow.
I bit my lip – well, if I could only recall last night it might clue me in a bit as to my current state of being as well as the location of our housekeeper. My parties did have a knack for 9getting out of hand. Last night, from all evidence, was no exception. And it started off so lovely too, with dinner and a bit of port – which I believe was the 1907. We still had half a case in the cellar that I’d brought up specifically for the occasion. Followed by literature and poetry. A smattering of philosophy until things took a more libertine bend. And they always took a libertine bend. Mr Owen would join in the revelry for the first few hours, eager to debate Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud, his favourite – I despised the fellow, but no one was perfect. Not even dear Mr Owen.
‘How bad was it?’ I wrinkled my nose.
He snorted again and took a sip of tea, glancing at me over a gilt-rimmed teacup. ‘It wasn’t nearly as bad as the one in February with the …’ He gestured with a furrowed brow. ‘You recall, the one with the goat dressed for the opera.’
I snorted back a laugh. ‘She wasn’t dressed for the opera, she was Brünnhilde from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Come now, we even saw that one together in Hammersmith last winter. Remember?’
‘I do not recall any sopranic goats when we were in Hammersmith.’
‘That’s not a word—’
He shrugged with a quirk of his white moustache. ‘It is if I say it is.’
I glanced around the eerily quiet garden. It was too quiet. Ordinarily by this time of day Mrs Adams would be bustling about, casting me annoyed glances as she went about her duties. Likely gathering bits of information to carry back to the ladies’ auxiliary or whatever they call that sort of thing in Devon. ‘Mr Owen … where is Mrs Adams? She hasn’t taken ill, has she?’
The old Scot’s dark-brown eyes were warm and amused. Not 10that he’d ever admit to either sentiment. ‘Gone. Within ten minutes of setting foot over the threshold. Something about a den of sin and vice. What’s that make now? The third housekeeper that’s scarpered this month?’
‘Second.’ But really, who was counting at this point? Honestly, my parties weren’t that scandalous. Even if I couldn’t recall the exact details of the affair.
‘It’s for the best, as I wanted to speak with you about something, lass. And if that old hen were here she’d never leave us in peace.’
Something secret – now, that was interesting. My morning was looking better already.
‘You see, girl, I’ve been thinking.’
Oh, dear. Mr Owen’s thinking never boded well. Usually, it was followed by my being flung hither or yon on some mad escapade of his. I wondered briefly what he’d been like as a younger man, travelling the world until he ran out of funds, and returning back home with an unconventional wife to set up the bookshop here in Exeter. Of course, she passed away before the war, and all three of their sons during it. Leaving him a father in need of a child, and I a child in need of a father. He never spoke much about his life before I came into it. Nor did I for that matter. The past was no good to anyone, and digging about in it only brought about unpleasantness. It was best to leave it where it was. Past.
I took a sip of the tea, letting it wend its way, dark and strong, down my throat. ‘Where am I off to this time?’
‘Am I that easy to read?’
‘Dreadfully so.’
He folded his paper with a harrumph and set it down between us on the little metal table. ‘It shouldn’t be too troublesome for 11you this time. I need you to carry a box of books to a little town outside Tintagel. I’ve an old friend, you see.’ He lifted his cup to his lips. ‘He’s a bit of a folk healer.’
I arched an eyebrow. ‘A bit of a folk healer?’
Mr Owen ignored me and carried on. ‘Lothlel Green, I believe the village is called. Tiny little spot. Nothing but cows and cliffs and sweeping vistas dotted by creatures of the ovine persuasion. I daresay you might even find the place charming.’
Lothlel Green. My stomach knotted at the name. A place I hadn’t thought of in quite some time. He’s a baronet, Ruby. Don’t you see what this means? I think, perhaps, I could be happy there. Her voice echoed in my mind. In truth, I made it a point to not think on it. Or her. Or Cornwall for that matter. I’d expressly vowed to never set foot in the godforsaken county ever again.
‘It isn’t much of a town, mind. It’s a handful of miles from Bodmin Moor, on the way to Tintagel. You’ve been there, haven’t you? On one of your little sojourns. I could have sworn you’d gone off for a wedding some years back for a friend of yours. Just after you moved in here.’
Yes, well. The old man seemed to have a very keen memory. Any trace of my good humour evaporated as I stared into my teacup, wishing for something a bit stronger than oolong in its depths. Oh, I’d been there. And I’d watched my best friend – the only person I’d ever truly loved – marry another. And not out of love – that I could understand – but out of … I wasn’t even sure out of what. Inertia, perhaps? ‘I’m afraid I’m not feeling quite up to—’
‘Nonsense, child, you were more than able to entertain your human menagerie last night. And if you could carry on in such a manner then, you can do this for me now. Tell me you took the handsome one to bed at least?’ 12
Bed? I’d just spent the evening in a deck chair. What feats of acrobatics did he expect of me? Besides, I hadn’t taken a lover in a scandalously long time, as sexual congress had lost a bit of its charm. I must be as dissipated as the neighbouring ladies’ association whispered behind gloved hands. No, it was worse than that – I was suffering the worst case of ennui since the dawn of the nineteenth century.
‘What was his name?’
I sniffed and took another sip of tea. ‘I haven’t a clue to whom you are referring. And I don’t believe it’s any of your business what cavorting I do, or do not do.’
He laughed again and shook his head. ‘It’s not the bed sport I take issue with, my darling girl, it’s that you’re wasting yourself on these young jackanapes.’ He pointed at me with his forefinger. ‘A girl like you, Ruby Vaughn, has more potential than the lot of those gents who come here every Saturday eve in hopes of getting in your good graces. Half of them couldn’t decipher their arse from their elbows if given a Michelin guide.’
I nearly snorted the tea out my nose. My eyes watered. He wasn’t wrong. I was searching for something. Needed it. Only I hadn’t quite determined what exactly I sought.
Fiachna, Mr Owen’s house cat, on the other hand, knew precisely what he was after. The great feline hopped up into my lap, purring loudly. I stroked his ebony ears. His claws caught the silk of my gown as he settled in for a good rub.
‘I mean it, girl.’
‘Why don’t you go if it’s that important?’ I shot back, changing the subject.
‘You know my gout has got to the point I can hardly walk.’
There was no arguing with him when he was in this mood.
He stretched, rising from his own deck chair, and steadied 13himself on a simple rowan walking stick. ‘Come along. I have something to show you.’
Very well then. I scooped Fiachna into my arms and set off inside, following Mr Owen through the terrace doors into his personal library. He tugged on the heavy velvet drapes, allowing the morning sun in through the ancient leaded windows. Illuminated dust danced in the air. The room was lined floor-to-ceiling in books. Dark. Hidebound spines facing outward.
All the mundane titles he kept in the bookshop, but this room – this room housed all the exceptionally rare and valuable tomes, along with those particular titles that the government took issue with.
He lumbered across the room and thwacked an enormous case with his walking stick. ‘These are them.’
A box of books?! A trunk more like, and an old tatty one too. ‘What’s in there? The butcher? Are you certain Mrs Adams left, or did you do her in and stuff her in the trunk so I can dispose of what’s left of her?’ I wrinkled my nose, reaching down for the clasp and shifting Fiachna’s snoring form to one side. The black cat let out a mewling sound of protest at the inconvenience and I set him down.
Mr Owen’s cane came down on the top of the trunk with a loud crack about three inches from my fingers. ‘You’re not to open it. You understand me, girl?’
He’d never spoken to me that way before and I didn’t care much for his tone. I opened my mouth to tell him the same when it struck me – in the nearly four years I’d lived with him, he’d never forbidden me to touch anything. Never forbidden me to look at a book, even handle one. I’d gone through some of his most delicate volumes. Pages as thin as butterfly wings and twice as fragile without him voicing a single protest. What in this box 14could be so different?
‘These are ancient things, my girl … dangerous ones.’
‘Honestly, Mr Owen, they’re books. How dangerous can they be?’ I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he was the one who had too much to drink last night.
He set his jaw firm beneath his thick white beard.
I glanced back down at the trunk. ‘They are books, aren’t they? I was only teasing about Mrs Adams …’
‘Of course they are books, lass. But books themselves are seldom the danger, it’s what’s within them that carries the risk.’
‘Oh, good God, they’re not illegal, are they? After the last time I thought you’d had your fill of banned books.’
‘Me?’ He gave me an innocent look.
‘Fine. After the last time, I had my fill. I thought I made it perfectly clear I wasn’t moving any more illegal books for you after you got me locked up in Holloway Prison for four days!’
‘It did wonders for your temper too, if I recall.’ He chuckled low and shook his head, waving me off. ‘Don’t look at me like that. You’re far too pretty to glare like my great-aunt Petunia. Besides, there’s nothing in there to get you arrested this time.’
‘You don’t have a great-aunt Petunia. And why can’t you send me somewhere interesting? You know how much I’d like to go to Egypt with your friend Mr Carter. He invited me to join him last time we spoke. Said he could use someone with my translation abilities.’
Mr Owen grumbled beneath his breath. ‘I haven’t a clue why Lord Carnarvon is so patient with him. Mark my words, the man will find nothing in the Valley of the Kings. I don’t even know why he keeps throwing good money after bad. Though I’ve heard Carnarvon’s going to pull funding soon.’
‘I thought you liked him.’ 15
‘Carter?’ Mr Owen drew his brows up. ‘I do. But even I know a bad bet when I see one,’ Mr Owen snapped, putting an end to that conversation. Again. Lucky Mr Carter goes to Egypt. I … I go to Cornwall.
‘There’s nothing illegal in the trunk. Stop glaring at the box.’
‘Oh, that’s a fine assurance.’ But I was done arguing. I’d already made up my mind to go. His box of forbidden books piqued my curiosity more than I cared to admit, as I was quite certain he knew. I was a predictable thing. Dangle the faintest hint of mystery before me and I would be captured like a fox in a snare.
Mr Owen sensed the change in my mood. His wide mouth curved up into a smile and he laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘Maybe this trip is precisely what you need, my darling. You’ll come back with your head clear. I knew a chap once, William Bottrell, long dead now but he travelled all over the West Country collecting their stories. It’s an ancient place – Cornwall – full of secrets and legends. I think you’d enjoy it if you gave it a chance.’
‘Did Mr Bottrell die in pursuit of said stories?’
Mr Owen laughed merrily, shaking his head. ‘The old Cornish folkways predate even the Romans. There are things that occur there no one can explain, no one dares question. After all, Tintagel is the birthplace of Arthur, they say. The seat of kings. Perhaps you’d find it interesting. Maybe it would help you to …’ He gestured for a moment, a look of pain crossing his face before he shook his head. ‘Never mind me, lass. You go on. I’ll write down Mr Kivell’s direction.’
Folk healers, superstition, and likely no electricity.
Lovely. Just lovely.
Chapter Two
The Growing Storm
The sixty-odd miles between Exeter and Lothlel Green passed in a series of craggy moors and sweeping vistas marked intermittently by granite tors. Sharp curves wending around fields separated by dry-stone fences. A more bleak and beautiful place I don’t think I’ve seen in all my life. Mr Owen was correct on that score: There was no shortage of cows or cliffs. I skirted along the edge of Dartmoor, heading farther west. No matter how long I lived here, it never ceased to amaze me how different ten miles in Britain could be. I’d left the lush woodlands of Devon and found myself in another world. And were I not headed towards the one place I’d sworn never to return to, I might have even enjoyed myself. Pulled off to the verge and enjoyed my lunch hamper overlooking a charming shadowed valley. But I did not stop, as I had no appetite, and the increasingly rugged landscape kept pace with my ever-souring mood.
Every mile that ticked by was one mile closer to her. It was an irrational thing to bear a grudge like this. I couldn’t even bring myself to think her name – let alone speak it aloud – without growing irritable all over again about the whole affair. I’d seen in the papers a while ago that she’d had a child. The lovely Lady Tamsyn Chenowyth and her dashing war-hero husband. There. I’d thought it at least. I scarcely even recalled their wedding, having 17spent the evening half drowned in gin, as Mr Owen so keenly describes it.
Tamsyn.
I gripped the wooden wheel of the Crow Elkhart roadster that Father bought me and paid a small fortune to have brought over after I’d been exiled from home before the war. Not precisely exiled; rather, sent away for my own good. But no need to think on that today. Memories had a way of begetting more of the dratted things, and I was full up on the stuff.
Tamsyn had written me in February of last year. It was the last I’d heard from her. Not that I’d responded then. Instead I’d kept her missive tucked away in my jewellery box beneath the strand of my mother’s pearls the solicitor gave me after the estate was settled. And yet here I was driving myself to Lothlel Green, with that very envelope tucked into my luggage. Her words an enigma, as they’d always been. We must speak, Ruby. I’ve made a terrible mistake coming to this cursed place and have no one to trust but you. I’m so afraid and alone. Ruby, I need you.
Perhaps I should have answered. But what does one say after all that came between us? She often tended towards the melodramatic, always had. She was a writer after all, perpetually scribbling down ideas and notions. Speaking in hyperbole and parable, so I cravenly brushed away any concerns I may have had for her. I clutched the wheel tighter, flexing my fingers. I suppose I was answering now – in a fashion – as I couldn’t very well not see her when I was in the village. Perhaps that was all part of Mr Owen’s nefarious scheme.
A sound came from the basket beside me. I turned to it, but there was nothing there. It must have shifted with the rutted road. I slowed the car to a stop alongside a tall hedge and pulled out the map. If I hadn’t taken a wrong turn, I should be nearly there. I’d passed carts and wagons, a few lorries, but every village I passed 18through, every farmstead, people would stop to stare.
I ought to be used to it. People always looked at me. It wasn’t that I was particularly interesting looking – if anything I was rather an oddity. With dark-brown hair cropped into a bob, which I thought rather avant-garde. However, Mr Owen said it gave me the appearance of his great-aunt Prudence after she came down with the flux and they’d shorn her like a summer ewe. Not that he had a great-aunt Prudence either.
A sensible soul would have delivered the books directly and headed back to Exeter without rehashing old wounds. But no one had accused me of being sensible. I folded up my map and turned the car at the crossroads, away from this Mr Kivell’s home, and headed directly to Penryth Hall. To her. Best to get it over with. I’d never been a coward, and it was a poor time to start now.
Penryth Hall loomed at the peak of the hill. A great foreboding neoclassical fortress set against the windswept countryside. Designed centuries ago to vulgarly proclaim the owner’s wealth and power over those who worked the surrounding land – now it only managed an anemic whisper of its own past. The money that once filled the Chenowyth coffers had long ago dried up, leaving the vaunted family’s future to be saved by an upstart’s fortune. Tamsyn’s.
I’d been here only a few years before, though looking up at the house, it seemed a lifetime divided now from then. If I remembered clearly, from the top floors you could see the sea rising up beyond the cliffs. I’d stood there once, buffeted by the wind, taking in the vista and wondering if such a bargain could ever make me happy. The answer was always the same. No.
My parents had thought sending me here and saddling me with an impoverished peer would save me from myself. But instead it 19reinforced the sad fact that I wanted none of it. Never had, and I feared never would.
I continued the drive up the narrow tree-lined road ever higher, until it gave way to large lawns on either side. Once tended by dozens of gardeners with neat hedges and beds, now nature outgrew its bounds, turning the land on either side to luscious meadow. High grasses promiscuously tangled with weeds and gorse. Lovely white, pink, and yellow flowers danced in the golden midmorning light.
And it was in that moment I saw her. There in the distance surrounded by sun and air and flowers. My breath caught in my chest. She didn’t see me. She was in the field to the left of the road by a great copse of trees bent down in the wildflowers. I drew the car to a halt and watched her. Engine idling. Half wondering whether I should go out to meet her, or continue on to the house and pretend I had not seen her at all.
Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, shining copper in the sun, as it often did when we were girls and away from the city. We’d summered in the neighbouring village, in the years before the war. She always loved the country, whereas I despaired of it. A great basket was looped over her arm full of cut wildflowers. A child was with her. Her son. He must be over a year now, toddling along beside her, stopping every now and then to pick his own flowers. Chubby hands full of crushed blooms.
Turning at the sound of the car engine, she raised her hand to the sun and paused for a handful of seconds. She scooped up the child onto her hip and darted across the open field, wind whipping the loose layers of her skirt. Her broad-brimmed hat fell from her head, tumbling into the high grass behind. She didn’t even slow at its loss. Tamsyn reached the side of my car in seconds, struggling to catch her breath. The boy giggled, his 20arms wrapped around his mother’s neck.
‘Ruby?’ Her cheeks were pink. ‘Oh, Ruby, it is you! I thought when I saw your motorcar, but I … I couldn’t believe my eyes! What brings you to Penryth?’ Her eyes sparkled brightly and my own spirits rose with her smile. She shifted the boy to the other side, his dark curls a stark contrast with his mother’s fair hair.
‘I had an errand to run and thought I might drop in to say hello.’
‘In Lothlel Green? What on earth could bring you all the way out here?’ Her face suddenly fell, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘I suppose you didn’t receive my letter?’
Guilt washed over me. ‘Letter? No, I hadn’t received any.’ The lie tripped smoothly from my tongue. Better than the truth in any event.
‘Well, never mind it. I’m so terribly glad you’ve come. There are things I must tell you. I only wish we had more time.’ She cast a glance back to the house, and that was when I spotted it. A faint smudge of yellowish brown on her cheekbone. ‘There never seems to be enough time in this dratted old place.’
I lifted a hand towards the fading bruise, but she pushed it away. ‘Don’t, Ruby. I should have put on powder this morning but I wasn’t expecting guests. It’s nothing. I woke up one morning with it … I … I must have done it in my sleep.’
It didn’t look like nothing, nor like something one could accidentally do, but I kept silent. Tamsyn glanced again back to the house, brows drawn tight in worry, before she turned back and grabbed both my hands tight in her own. ‘Come to dinner. Perhaps at seven? I need to speak with Edward first of course. Wouldn’t that be lovely, Jori? Company all the way out here?’ She jostled the boy on her hip, smiling fondly at him and brushing a kiss to his brow. Her expression shifted briefly, fine lines creasing 21her forehead. ‘Edward hasn’t been himself lately. But I can have your room made up. It will be just like old times. Do say you’ll join us. It would mean the world to me.’
‘Of course, goose. I’d love nothing more.’ I struggled to sound cheerful. Her guarded words, the old bruises. I didn’t like what I’d found here one bit. I should have come when she’d first written, but I’d never imagined Sir Edward to be a violent man. Disagreeable, yes. But never the sort to harm his wife. Then again, I learnt long ago that things are never as they seem.
Chapter Three
The Pellar
My mind grew ever more troubled with worries for Tamsyn as I drove away from Penryth Hall. She was a grown woman who’d made her own choices, and yet I couldn’t get the haunted look in her eyes from my mind. I’d not expected it. Not at all. As I reached the crossroads again, with its stone marker, I checked my pin watch. I had a few hours. And while I ought to have gone straight to Mr Kivell’s home to deliver the trunk of books, I also needed to clear my head. Mercifully we were only a dozen miles from the sea.
Surely with a couple of hours in the salt air, this sense of foreboding would pass. Yes. That was precisely what I needed.
I followed the weathered stone road markers towards Tintagel before turning off and parking my car at the top of a hill. It would never have made it down the path, let alone back up, and I needed the exercise. I made my way down the steep slope that led to the ruins and the sea beyond. The ancient castle walls rose up before me, stark against the brilliant afternoon sun. From the cove, if I looked up I could spot a handful of more adventurous souls gamboling about upon the clifftops, entirely disinterested in me. But here along the rocky shores I’d found my haven.
I quickly shucked off my pale-yellow frock, then, dressed in only my muslin shift and a pair of drawers, I walked into the sea. 23The water was angry, thrashing upon the rocks. I was angry too.
It was bracing and cold, even for August, causing my skin to prick and teeth to chatter. I swam farther out from the shore. Stroke by stroke as the waves pulled me back towards the rocks. The current here was far stronger than I’d expected – but I was stronger. Always had been.
A rock outcropping rose up from the blue-green water some handful of yards away. I reached it in a few easy strokes and pulled myself up and stretched out atop it in the warm sun. Finally, I’d outrun my thoughts. Only the violent crash of waves against the stone kept me company, ridding me at last of the growing sense of dread that had followed me all the way from Exeter. And somewhere between the sea mist and the sound of the greedy gulls crying out overhead, I fell fast asleep.
‘Madam?’ A voice startled me awake. ‘Madam, are you quite well?’
Where was I? I bolted upright, neck aching from the awkward angle I’d fallen asleep. A man stood there before me up to his knees in the water. Right. I was at Tintagel. I glanced past him at the shore, now much farther away than I’d remembered. The tide must have gone out. His hair was a riot of black curls shot through with silver strands. The wind had whipped it free, and it blew wildly around his shoulders. His sleeves and trousers were both rolled up with an old, stained British Expeditionary Force haversack slung across his shoulder.
‘Are you quite all right, miss? Did you …’ He paused, running a hand over his jaw and glancing around the cove. ‘How the devil did you get out here?’
‘I swam,’ I grumbled, rubbing my sun-flushed cheeks in an echo of his own movement before I tucked my knees up beneath me. ‘And yes, I’m quite well. I just need a moment to gather myself. 24I must have fallen asleep.’ I glanced up at the sky, where the sun hung decidedly lower than it had been, and swore. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to be terribly late.’ Again.
He snorted for a moment in amusement, a faint smile crossed his lips. It was then I noticed his eyes. He had the most extraordinary ones I’d ever seen – pale green mostly, except the left one bore a second colour within it, like a grey cloudbank drifting across the sea. I’d never seen such a thing, and yet there was something about his face that tugged at me. It was achingly familiar. As if I knew him. Though I would have certainly remembered having met a fellow like that.
He turned his back to me then stooped down and scooped up something from the tidal pool. A small shell of some sort. He gingerly tucked it into his haversack.
‘You’d best get back to shore before the tide returns. It’s really remarkable you made it to this point. Many a foolish man has drowned in these waters trying to reach the far caves.’
‘I’m not afraid of the sea.’
He gave me the strangest look. ‘Regardless, you should have …’ He checked his pocket watch then tucked it back into his brown waistcoat pocket. ‘Another few hours at least before the tide cuts off the cove.’
‘What time do you have?’ I inclined my chin to his pocket where the watch resided.
‘Six. Why?’
Damn and blast. ‘I have to get back. I’m later than I thought.’ Scrambling to my feet, I slipped on the wet stone and began to fall. The man’s hand shot up, grabbing hold of my hip and steadying me above him. I accepted his aid as demurely as one could when in one’s unmentionables – which had mercifully dried in the sun – and slithered down the rock to join him in the 25tidal pool. The water was vastly colder than I recalled a few hours earlier, as it lapped around my bare skin.
He chuckled beneath his breath, shaking his head as he watched me with interest. It was as if he’d stumbled across some strange creature and couldn’t quite decide what to make of it. ‘Will your husband be in a terrible temper if you’re not back in time?’
I arched a brow and started back to the shore. ‘I haven’t one. Nor am I in want of one if that’s what you’re insinuating. I am blissfully unattached and intend to remain so.’ Aside, of course, from a meddlesome octogenarian bookseller. But we were family now, of a sort.
‘I didn’t mean …’ He raked a hand through his hair, matching me step for step as we splashed through the water back to dry land. My strides defiantly long, partly from the cold, partly from annoyance at his assumptions.
The wind picked up, spitting mocking mist at me, robbing me of those last few delectable moments of warmth on the rock. Another mark against Cornwall – its dreadful weather.
‘It’s just rather amusing is all.’
I glanced over my shoulder, spine straight, and placed my hands on my hips. ‘What is amusing?’
He reached out, plucked a strand of seaweed from my hair, and tucked it carefully into his bag. ‘You see, there’s an ancient story around these parts about an old man who stumbled across a mermaid in these very same waters.’
My temper soothed. Just a bit, as the peculiar man went on.
‘He thought at first she was a mortal woman in distress and went to save her from certain drowning. You see, she’d climbed upon a rock to sun herself, and the tide abandoned her, leaving her unable to return home. The poor maid was frantic, concerned her husband would be angry with her for 26being gone so long and eat her children.’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘Lovely story.’
But he was not deterred and continued on as we walked back to where I’d left my clothes. My own pace slowing in time with his. ‘You see, the old man slowly earned her trust and before long, he carried her back to the water. In return the maid offered him anything he desired. A gift for saving her.’
I shivered, rubbing my arms for warmth, and stepped unconsciously into his shade. ‘What sort of gift?’
‘Well, you see, the seafolk could have given the old chap any manner of prize. Gold. Pearls. Power. Riches beyond his imaginings. Anything at all his heart desired.’ His voice was deep and carried with it an unusual cadence that warmed me through and through despite the weather.
‘And I suppose he became a fabulously wealthy man, then?’
The stranger shook his head. ‘No. You see, he didn’t want any of those earthly trappings. Nothing like that. Instead he asked for three things.’ He held up his thumb and his first two fingers to underscore the point.
‘It’s always three, isn’t it? In fairy stories, I mean.’
The edge of his mouth quirked for a moment before he continued on. ‘The man asked her to bestow upon him the power to help his fellow men. To heal the sick, to break the spells of witches, and to find stolen goods.’
‘And what did they call such a fool, to give up the wealth of the world to find missing trinkets?’ Secretly, I thought I might have made the same choice if given the option. After all, I had all the wealth I could want, and gave more of it away than I kept. I glanced up at the stranger, impossibly charmed by the story he’d woven. Enough to forget Tamsyn’s troubles – if for the moment – and to forget the fact I was half frozen, or that I was standing in 27my underthings with a man I didn’t know.
‘Pellars. They call them Pellars, Miss …?’
‘Vaughn. Ruby Vaughn.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Vaughn.’ He ducked his head politely, before he brushed his hair back from his brow with a rough hand. ‘I’m Ruan Kivell.’
My breath caught in my chest at his name. Now, that was a surprise. Surely he couldn’t be the same fellow Mr Owen had sent me after? But the name was unusual. There couldn’t be two in this area.
I raked my gaze over him, trying to make sense of him. I’d imagined someone suitably aged and perhaps with a stoop. Not … A man like this. ‘You … are Ruan Kivell?’ Perhaps that was why he seemed so familiar? Had I met him before back in Exeter at one of Mr Owen’s book meetings? No. No. Impossible. He was not the sort of man one forgot.
He nodded uncertainly, as if my shock was catching.
Mr Kivell stood a good head and shoulders above me – which was quite a feat, as I was not an insubstantial woman. Handsome in a fashion, I supposed, with a square stern face with faint lines between his brows from worrying too much. Though he possessed an odd ageless quality that made it hard to guess his years.
‘From Lothlel Green?’ I asked slowly.
It was his turn to be surprised. ‘How did you know?’
I gave him a crooked grin. ‘Because Mr Owen sent me here to bring you some books.’
If he’d startled me on the rock when I’d woken, I’d doubly shocked him now. His expression so comical, there was nothing to do but laugh.
Chapter Four
A Dreadful Dinner
As it turned out, Mr Kivell had been brought to the shore by a local farmer and the fool man had every intention of walking the several miles home – which boggled the mind considering he had collected half the seashore in that haversack of his – so for the sake of time I delivered both him and the box of books to his cottage. He was amiable enough, and it made for a pleasurable trip back to Lothlel Green, pushing Tamsyn that much further from my thoughts. It wasn’t until I parked in the lane outside his cottage that I recalled my reason for going to the shore in the first place.
Tamsyn. The bruises.
A coldness set in my belly, doubly worse than before. We said our farewells, and I watched him lug the great trunk through the gate and into his house. It was a charming, if small, white structure situated high up on the cliffside – likely only two rooms down and one up, if that – with an obscene preponderance of greenery surrounding it, all seemingly held together by a dry-stone fence. Leafy vines climbed up hazel trellises filling the air with scents I couldn’t even begin to categorise. Herbs and flowers. Bees buzzed everywhere. Cattle and sheep appeared like figures from a child’s wooden play set grazing in the lowlands below.
I sat watching his closed door long after Mr Kivell disappeared inside. I don’t know why I waited, nor why I watched him so 29intently. Perhaps it was just dread of what I’d discover at Penryth. My little excursion to the seaside had been a pleasant diversion, but now I had to face the truth. Something wasn’t quite right at Penryth Hall.
I checked my pin watch and snapped it shut. A habit that irritated Tamsyn when we were younger. She was always convinced I’d break the thing if I wasn’t careful. I was late for supper already, but there was nothing for it. Just as I resolved to leave, and set the car into gear, something meowed. Yes. It was definitely a meow. I looked around, glancing over at the basket in the seat beside me just as it shifted and I heard the sound again.
Cautiously, I lifted the lid and out popped Fiachna, stretching as he extricated himself from his makeshift bed, one paw at a time. Crumbs from bits of my lunch stuck to his crooked whiskers as he rubbed against me. There was no end of surprises for me today. I scratched his ears. Well, I certainly hoped Tamsyn’s housekeeper was fond of errant felines.
Some twenty minutes later, I stood on the great stone portico of Penryth Hall. The wind howled across the hills, catching the still-damp hem of my skirt and plastering it to my legs. A deep fog gathered, rising up from the fields below, casting the world behind me in muted shades. Just as I lifted my hand to the great bronze knocker, the door opened, revealing an elderly woman some forty years my senior with silvery hair bound up into a tight bun at the back of her head. She wore a drawn expression, her weary eyes tracing over me top to bottom, before settling upon the mewling basket in my arms. She looked vaguely familiar, though she ought to, as I’d been here three years before. But my memories of the wedding were murky at best.
‘You’re late, maid.’ The woman frowned. 30
Other women of my station would have likely taken umbrage at her familiarity, but she was most certainly correct. Tardiness was one habit I couldn’t shake. ‘I was …’ I racked my brain, struggling for an excuse other than the truth. ‘Detained.’
‘The master hates tardiness,’ she muttered beneath her breath. Something flashed across her face, a half thought that disappeared into the gathering mist. ‘But he’ll have to wait. You can’t very well show up for supper dressed as you are. I’ll show you to your room to freshen up. They’ve waited half an hour, I daresay they can wait another.’
I followed the anxious housekeeper through the halls of Penryth, cavernous and dark. She muttered to herself the names of the ordinary rooms as we passed, almost a litany rather than a tour. Library. Morning room. Dining hall. The dark umber curtains were pulled tight against the outside world, shutting out any prayer of light. We passed each door at a brisk clip, going up the stairs to the farthest corner of the third floor. Out of sight, out of mind.
‘You’ll be comfortable enough in here, my lover.’ She smiled at me faintly. A memory tugged at me. One I couldn’t quite place.
‘You don’t remember, do you?’ she asked, brushing my hair back from my brow. The sensation altogether too familiar. I’d been here before. In this room. With this woman. I knew her voice. ‘Probably for the best. Some memories are best forgotten.’ She cleared her throat and straightened, snipping the tie to the past and knotting the thread tight. ‘The mistress often uses this room. She prefers the view of the orchard to her own. It’s her favourite place on the estate.’ The old housekeeper’s voice softened at mention of Tamsyn. At least Tamsyn had one ally in this great monstrosity of a house. The housekeeper crossed the room, her dark-grey skirts rustling as she pulled the curtains 31wide, filling the room with golden evening light.
It was a grim yet serviceable space. Everything in this godforsaken place was grim. I’d forgotten quite how dreadful it was. With dark wood panelling and a bed that looked large enough for Henry VIII and at least three of his wives to occupy concurrently. I set my small valise down in the corner, along with Fiachna’s basket. Faint snoring emanated from inside. Dreadful little stowaway.
‘Do you need anything?’ she asked with a pause, her hand on the doorframe, lines etched deep in her face.
I smiled halfheartedly and shook my head. There was nothing at all she could give me now.
‘Ah, Miss Vaughn, you’ve arrived at long last. We feared you’d changed your mind about joining us.’ Sir Edward didn’t bother standing to acknowledge my presence, as any proper gentleman would do when a member of the opposite sex entered. Instead he gestured to a seat on the far side of the table without ever meeting my gaze.
‘Sir Edward.’ His name dripped like acid from my tongue. ‘It’s lovely to see you too.’ I crossed the room to take the proffered chair.
‘I was just observing how Americans seem to lack the ability to tell time. Wasn’t I, my love?’ His gaze went from me to Tamsyn, who sat across from him pale and shrunken. Her once vibrant green eyes now fixed on the plate before her. She didn’t respond.
He stabbed at a lone parsnip with a silver-tined fork. The bone handle clenched in his tanned fingers. ‘So what have you been about in all these years? I seem to recall last time you were at Penryth you caused quite the stir. I hope we aren’t to expect a repeat performance?’ he asked, biting into it with an audible snap. 32
His words struck a guilty chord, just as he’d intended. I didn’t recall what had happened here, but between his barb and the housekeeper’s concern it must have been quite the scene indeed.
On the whole, I supposed Sir Edward Chenowyth wasn’t an unattractive man. Unappealing, yes, but even considering the fact he was a good twenty years our senior, he kept in good form and had his hair and all his own teeth as far as I could tell. An active, vigorous fellow that one might even like if he had anything resembling a tolerable personality. For it was his temperament that made him insufferable. That inborn belief that he was superior to all around him by the sheer happenstance of blood.
‘Well?’ His word was clipped.
‘I’m renting a house in Exeter now, working at a bookstore.’
‘A bookstore? How terribly common. Then again, wasn’t your father in trade?’ He knew good and well it was Tamsyn’s father who made his fortune in commerce. I didn’t dare look to see how she fared, for fear I’d lose my temper, which was already on an increasingly taut tether.
‘Nothing so industrious as all that. I’m afraid he made his fortune in speculation.’
Sir Edward grimaced and shook his head before turning back to his plate with another irritated stab at his food. Excellent.
‘A gambler, I’m afraid. Surely you know the sort.’
He made an almost choking sound but swallowed it down, his face pinker than it had been a few moments before. A thin sheen of sweat appeared at his brow. Good. The bastard deserved a bit of what he doled out.
I chanced a glance at Tamsyn. A mistake. Sitting there at the table with her hands folded meekly in her lap, she was nothing more than the delicate shell of the girl I’d known so well. And in all my life, all my journeys, and all the people I’d encountered, I’d never 33wanted to kill a man more. To drive the meat fork sitting in the roast joint straight into his skull for what he’d done to her. Tamsyn had never been outspoken, instead allowing others to lead, but she’d always had a vivacity that I’d admired. No. That I’d loved. And he’d all but snuffed it out like a candle at the end of a too-late dinner party. With only a wisp of smoke as evidence it’d ever burnt at all.
Edward made a rather unpleasant sound. That slight beading of sweat had now turned to full perspiration. He dabbed at his brow with a crisp white handkerchief and cleared his throat. Clumsily he slid his chair back from the table. Banging into it, making the crystal clatter. ‘I think I shall take some air before retiring for the evening. I’m not feeling quite well.’
Good riddance.
Tamsyn murmured something to him that might have passed for concern. He pressed a kiss to her brow and departed. As the door snicked shut, she quickly straightened and reached out for the roast joint, slicing off a chunk and setting it onto an empty plate. I eyed it, rather thinking twice of eating.
‘Parsnips?’
I patted the chair beside me with a shake of my head. ‘I’m not hungry. Come sit. Talk to me.’
She sighed heavily and set the knife on the table before grabbing the half decanter of wine and her glass. ‘Please don’t say anything about him. I don’t want your judgment, Ruby. Not tonight.’
The beaded hem of her skirt brushed my own. It wasn’t so long ago that we’d spent every dinner like this at her parents’ town house in London, sharing our secret world between the soup and fish courses. The rest of our companions none the wiser. It all seemed so long ago.
‘Why would I judge you?’
She gave me a puzzled look and glanced towards the closed 34door. Her hands knotted in her napkin. ‘I chose my path. I know. It’s only that sometimes … sometimes I wish …’
My stomach clenched and I shook my head. ‘We won’t speak of it then. Not tonight.’
She squeezed my hand and for the briefest instant the past was close enough I could grab it if only I reached out. Except when I turned to her, her eyes were those of a stranger. ‘Well then, what do you want to talk about?’
‘Not the past. That’s for certain.’
She laughed lightly, a strange hollowness in her voice. ‘You always did hate the past. And I’ve always been wed to it. I think that’s the difference in us. Even before …’ She lowered her lashes. Before my parents died, she meant. ‘You were always racing to the future. To the next thing and I … I think I was always falling behind.’
‘That’s because you weren’t caught at the Vanderbilts’ Christmas ball with your skirts rucked up and a married man beneath them for all the world to see.’ Not that I’d known that final point at the time. He’d been a promising young alderman whom my father had taken as his protégé. No one in our set knew he already had a wife in the country. Not until he’d ruined any prospect I had for a decent society marriage. I’d fancied myself in love with him and see where that useless sentiment had got me?
Tamsyn gasped at the casualness of my words. ‘Ruby!’ But she knew the story, as did her family. It was the condition my father set when he sent me off to England, that his old business associate knew precisely what he was getting: a naive and utterly ruined sixteen-year-old girl.
I shrugged. ‘It’s in the past. We cannot change it. I do still find it strange that Mrs Vanderbilt’s son was on the same ship as my parents, though. What are the odds of that?’ 35
She furrowed her brow. ‘So he was. I had nearly forgotten. Do you keep up with the Vanderbilts still?’
I shook my head with a small smile. ‘Of course not. I think they were happy to see the back of me.’ I snorted at my unintentional pun. ‘Besides, it’s the past. Remember?’
She laughed at that, her eyes brightening for just a moment, and I could have clutched on to those precious seconds for an eternity. The old Tamsyn wasn’t dead. At least not fully. She existed still, somewhere, beneath it all.
‘Well then, since we’re on the subject, tell me everything that’s happened since you left France. Don’t leave out anything.’ The strain was still all over her face along with the faint bruise that neither of us would speak of. But she was trying, and so would I.
‘Not even the racy bits?’ I teased. Not that there were many of those as I’d become dreadfully boring lately.
‘Especially not those.’
I played my part, weaving her a tale more cheerful than the sad song of ancient books, expensive gin, and a troublesome house cat that made up the backbone of my existence. Instead I told a story of sparkling parties, interesting bedfellows, and starry nights. With music and art and beauty all around.
A convincing charade, but a charade, nonetheless.
Perhaps it was the wine on an empty stomach, but somehow my hand found hers again. I squeezed her fingers in my own and continued talking. Words spilling out in a desperate ploy to keep that familiar flicker of light in her eyes. Too afraid that if I stopped nattering on, even for a second, she would disappear entirely. And I couldn’t bear that thought. Not now that I’d seen what Edward had wrought.
And I drank in her hollow laughter. Because perhaps even this shell of her was enough to ease my guilt at not coming sooner.
Chapter Five
Bad Dreams
Returning to Penryth was a mistake. It was one thing to allow Tamsyn to transform into this fantastical monster of my imaginings. It was an entirely separate one to see her fate with my own eyes. To pity her. How was I to go back to Exeter in clear conscience after seeing what had become of the girl who had once been my dearest friend – my closest companion? The one person who had seen me at my very lowest point. And the only person to willingly walk away. My eyes pricked at the memories, tears coming hard and fast of their own volition.
I pulled a bottle of gin from my suitcase and uncorked it before unpacking the barest of essentials for the evening. I took a swig straight from the bottle, letting it slide smoothly down my throat, then laid out tomorrow’s clothes upon the dressing table and began combing out my knotted hair. The changes in Tamsyn since I’d last seen her were so marked and terrible I hardly recognised her.
Hell. Looking into the mirror, I hardly recognised myself. I touched my face for a moment, running my fingers down my cheek. I hadn’t spoken of the scandal that caused my exile from America in years. I’d been such a foolish little girl then. But no more. Between leaving America, war, and the death of my parents, I’d become a different creature. An almost feral fatalistic thing, living from chance to chance, existing only because death didn’t 37want anything to do with me. At least not yet.
I took another long drink of the gin and stripped out of my clothes, replacing them with a thin cotton nightdress. The evening air thick and damp. I washed my face in the basin, scrubbing away layer after layer of day. The room was dark as evening set in, with thick panelled walls and heavy velvet drapes that reminded me of those in a mortuary chapel.
