Chapter Fifteen

J owan and Bran went out with Penrose at first light, leaving Tamsyn and Evangeline with Mrs. Penrose and her children. The coachman and guard stayed behind to act as guards, and Penrose also warned his servants to keep watch.

They stopped by Wheal Trethewey first. The miners and smelterers were just gathering for work, so Jowan spoke to them before they went underground, telling them about Miss Roskilly's desire to come home to Cornwall, Coombe's efforts to stop her from leaving or even seeing Jowan, the rescue, and the attack at the inn.

He was heartened by the shouts of approval for his actions, and the grumbles against foreigners.

"She's one of ours, men, and she has come home. I mean for her to be safe here in St Tetha. Are there strangers hereabouts? They might have been sent by Coombe."

"There's that mine fellow," shouted one of the men.

"Aye, Thatcher," said another. "He be tromping about telling us you don't have the money for the new mine. Is that true, Sir Jowan?"

Thatcher! So, this was where that villain went. "It's a damn lie," Jowan told the questioner. "Bran and I went to see him in London and found he was trying to steal from us. Getting people to put money into the mine just so he and his partner could run off with it. He and his partner were arrested, but they let him out of prison while he was waiting for his trial, and he ran away. Bran and I found our own investors and we can start whenever we like."

"If you know where he is staying, tell me," Bran added. "I have a few words to say to him before I hand him over to the magistrate."

A couple of the men chuckled. "He's staying with the magistrate, Mr. Hughes, so that'll be right easy." The local earl, Lord Trentwood, was also the magistrate. The job was normally a sinecure, but today the man might have a bit of work to do.

"He's the only one," one of the others commented. "The only stranger, that is. That I know of." He looked around at the other miners, eliciting a buzz of agreement.

"You'll let me know if that changes?" Jowan asked.

"Aye. That we will, sir," the miners agreed, and several commented they would be happy to do whatever they could for Miss Roskilly.

The word was the same in the village. The only stranger was Thatcher, who had been there for several days, doing his best to stir trouble. "We played dumb," one of the shopkeepers told him. "Didn't know what he was at, but we weren't going to believe a foreigner over you, Sir Jowan. You've dealt fairly with us since the day you took over from your Pa."

"Bran, you call by Inneford and see there's no sign of Coombe or his men, and I'll visit the earl," Jowan suggested.

"Perhaps I should send for the earl to meet me at the inn," Penrose suggested. "If this Thatcher fellow gets wind of you being here, he will take off again."

That was a good plan, so Bran headed for Inneford House, and Penrose and Jowan walked back to the inn, which had been one of their first stopping points.

It was still early, but that was all to the good. Thatcher, who had pretensions as a gentleman, might still be asleep. Penrose wrote his note and sent an inn servant to the earl's house, then Jowan and Penrose settled down in the snug with a glass of ale. They instructed the innkeeper to send Lord Trentwood in when he arrived, but to keep Thatcher out of the snug if he turned up.

They waited over an hour. Jowan filled in the time by asking Penrose for a report on the mine for the past few weeks. Bran arrived to join them, reporting that the Inneford servants had seen no sign of strangers and that bedchambers had been prepared for the two lady visitors after Jowan's message from Ealing. Bran, too, had an ale.

Eventually, the earl arrived and was shown through to the snug. He stopped in the doorway. "Trethewey. I didn't know you were back. Hughes, too. I've a guest who is stirring trouble for you. Thought I'd keep him here till I could find out what was going on. Sent a letter to you in London a week ago, but I thought you'd write, not come back."

"I left London nearly three weeks ago. I was in London when Thatcher was arrested for stealing from me and others. I got a letter where I was staying out of London to tell me he had been let out on bail and had disappeared. I'm not surprised to hear he's in St Tetha causing trouble."

As Bran told Tamsyn and Evangeline when they rejoined them, that was that for Thatcher. "Lord Trentwood took our sworn testimony and went home to turn his guest into his prisoner. I don't suppose we'll be able to recover any of the money he stole, but at least most of the investors had not made good on their commitments before we put a stop to his tricks. Lord Trentwood thinks he will refer the man back to London for trial since most of his crimes were committed there and his accomplice is there."

Since they'd made sure no other strangers were around, there was no reason not to take Tamsyn and Evangeline home, and so they did.

*

It felt strange to be back in Cornwall—back in Inneford House, especially. Good, but strange. Things were familiar but different. Everything around Tammie was what she had grown up with, but as she'd expected, it was not the same.

The people had grown older. Some had retired, or even died, and others—often their children—had taken over. Even those who seemed much the same had memories from the seven years Tammie had been gone that she didn't share. They would refer to "the year Sir Jowan caught the smugglers" or "that winter when vicar be snowed in on the downs for two days with t'earl's daughter", and she would want to hear the rest of the story, which everyone else clearly knew and took for granted.

The people who owned the village shop when she was a girl were gone, retired to live with a daughter in Truro, and the family who owned it now were newcomers, though Cornish born and bred, and related to the family who owned the inn.

Houses had been repainted or bits had been built on or taken down. The church roof, which the parish had been saving through Tammie's entire childhood, had now been replaced. A whole line of trees was missing behind the village green—blown down, apparently, in a dreadful storm that was another of the events referenced when people wanted to date something. "The year the elms be blown clear down over by green."

Up on the moors, the ground had been cleared and building begun for the new mine about which she had heard so much. They were going to build a new and better smelter there, too, which would process the ore from all three mines.

In Inneford House itself, Jowan's hand marked every room. The old, dull, dark interior had been brightened with paint and furnishings. And Sir Carlyon's study was one place that had changed beyond recognition. It had been a place of fear where Sir Carlyon sat in state behind the desk while miscreants, or those he regarded as miscreants, were called to be berated and punished.

Now Jowan had made of it a library and business room combined, with bookshelves lining the walls, two desks in well-lit positions by the windows, and comfortable chairs near the fire.

The upstairs bedrooms, too, had all been refreshed with paint, even to the servants' rooms in the attic. The housekeeper's little domain belowstairs—the two rooms that Tammie remembered most clearly—had changed almost beyond recognition, with new paint, new furniture and curtains, and completely different paintings on the walls.

And a new coal range in the kitchen made meal preparation much easier for the cook who had taken over from the tyrant who used to rule there—a grumpy woman who lived in a state of perpetual feud with Tammie's mother.

It was disorienting. Close enough to Tammie's memories that the dissimilarities always caused a moment of shock. "Even with all the changes," she told Jowan a few days after their arrival, "I keep expecting to turn a corner and see Mama bustling by with the keys clinking at her waist."

Jowan and Bran had been busy since their return. Out around the estate, or at Wheal Trethewey, Trethewey Two, or the new mine site, or visiting the local gentlemen to catch up on all that had been happening in their absence. They had twice ridden over to the coast, where Jowan had shares in a couple of boats and owned a fish cellar, where the pilchard catch was processed.

They had been home for dinner every evening but had then retreated to the library to work for another hour or two. "We'll soon be over the hump of the work and coasting down the other side," Bran assured Evangeline, "and then I will show you the countryside."

He and Jowan had asked both ladies to stay in the house and garden unless one of them was available as an escort. Just until they knew that Guy had been, as Jowan put it, defanged . Tammie wanted to show Evangeline the places of her childhood, but she settled for those at Inneford House, for she certainly did not want to fall into Guy's hands again.

Bran was continuing his courtship of Evangeline with small presents and posies, frequent touches, and occasional ardent embraces when they thought themselves unobserved. Jowan had settled into a cheerful but slightly distant friendliness, though occasionally Tamsyn caught an expression in his eyes or a color in his aura that hinted at more passionate thoughts and that eased the empty ache she felt in her heart for the man she'd once loved and probably never had stopped loving.

One lovely discovery in the house was a new pianoforte in the music room. The old harpsichord on which Tammie had first composed music had also been restored, and both instruments were in tune.

How long had it been since she last wrote her own music? Or even heard fragments of melody or a beat that she would weave into the fabric of a piece?

In the early days with Guy, he had discouraged her from, as he put it, "wasting your time fiddling around with little tunes. No one wants to hear music written by a woman. You should be developing your voice, Tammie. Your great gift."

She had continued in private, unable to avoid documenting what she felt and experienced through the medium of music. At some point, under the dulling influence of the poppy and the oppression of the purely evil elf king, the music had died. But as they drove away from the abduction attempt at the inn east of Exeter, the hoof beats and wheel noise, the fear and the relief had begun to resonate in her mind, gelling into fragments of sound that, over the next few days, began to form a coherent piece.

Not a full symphony. Not yet. But one movement of a symphony. She sat at the piano and experimented with the motif and its variations. She was not too rusty. Fortunately, some people had been willing to pay for the Devon Songbird to sing while accompanying herself on the piano or another instrument, so Guy had been willing to allow her to spend time practicing.

She lost herself following where her fingers led her, not even distracted from the growing orchestration with the need to score what she was playing, what she was hearing. She only surfaced from the music when she heard herself vaguely thanking someone for placing a candelabra on the little side table she had been using to hold her paper, pen, and ink.

She blinked a couple of times and looked up. Jowan was smiling at her, and dusk filled the room.

"Good gracious, Jowan. It cannot be nightfall already!"

He did not bother to comment on something so obviously false, but nodded towards her stack of musical notations, now much easier to read thanks to the candles. She had not even realized she had been squinting in the poor light.

"You have been busy," Jowan said. "I know how you get when you are composing. I did not mean to disturb you, though I would have had to soon, for Evangeline says we cannot permit you to miss dinner."

Evangeline's professional opinion was reinforced by a loud and embarrassing gurgle from Tammie's middle. "It was time to disturb me. I have caught the spirit of it, I think. Now I need to shape it into something worthwhile."

"What I heard sounded wonderful," Jowan told her. He had always said that, but the opinion warmed her, anyway, as did what Evangeline said when Tammie saw her as they both went upstairs to dress for dinner.

"I heard what you were playing and thought it was beautiful. I told Jowan I didn't recognize it and he told me you were a composer. That was one of yours?"

"One I am writing," Tammie admitted. "It still needs a lot of work."

Evangeline stopped on the landing and touched Tammie's arm as if to check she was flesh and blood. "I am amazed," she said. "I suppose I always knew real people write the music I loved, but I never thought I would meet one."

"It is inspired by our escape from Coombe's men," Tammie explained. "At least, that is where it started." She could share her excitement with her friend, she realized. And then, it occurred to her that it had been so long since she had had a friend that she had forgotten the joy of celebrating her own achievements with them, and theirs in their turn.

"Evangeline, I haven't been able to write music in years. Coombe did not like my music and tried to prevent me, and somehow, I stopped hearing it. I feel as if I had lost both of my arms and today I discovered they were growing back and beginning to work again." On impulse, she hugged the other woman, and tears rose to her eyes when Evangeline hugged her back.

"I am so happy for you, and I wish I could kick that horrible man. To ignore such a talent! I thought he was supposed to be such an expert in music, but clearly, both of his ears must have been painted on if he did not like what you do."

Her indignation made Tammie laugh, even as the tears overflowed. "He said no one wanted to hear music written by women," she explained.

"Stupid, as well as horrid," said Evangeline, firmly. "Are those happy tears, Tammie? I hope so, for they should be. You have your music back."

"And I have a friend," Tammie noted. "If you are willing, that is."

"I am your friend," Evangeline assured her. "And will continue to be so, I hope."

*

That night at dinner, Evangeline and Bran raised the topic of their wedding. "I see no point in waiting," Bran commented. "We are both mature adults, and we have made up our minds."

Given the nighttime traffic Jowan had heard passing his bedchamber door, he was not surprised an early wedding was in the cards, but he was not as certain it was a good idea. Evangeline had a different concern.

She addressed it with Tamsyn. "I came to be a companion to Tammie. I do not wish to leave you in the lurch, Tammie. If you move to your mother's cottage, you will need another lady living with you to safeguard your reputation, and if you stay here, even more so, with a single gentleman in the house."

No way. Jowan shook his head. "I do not like the idea of Tammie alone in Apple Cottage, or even with servants and a lady companion. Not while Coombe is still at large. But if you two marry, you will be living here, will you not? A married woman in the house is all the protection Tammie needs."

"We talked about doing up the steward's cottage when I married," said Bran. "However, I don't see any reason why we cannot live here after our wedding until Coombe is dealt with or until Jowan is satisfied that Tammie is safe." At least Bran was making some kind of sense.

"I do not want you delaying the wedding on my account, Evangeline," Tammie insisted. "Nor do I wish to stand in the way of you and Bran having your own home. Jowan, I am sure there must be another lady who could be found to live with me. Perhaps we could advertise in the Plymouth papers if none of the local ladies is interested. As to Coombe, surely I will be safe in Apple Cottage? It is in the village, after all. And is there not a little stable with accommodation for a groom? If we looked for a strong and able man, he could also provide further security."

Jowan was trying to find the words to explain those plans could not work when Bran spoke.

"Both cottages need work," he commented. "We need to get the roof repaired or replaced, some plastering done, and a few other things fixed before either of them is livable."

Good man. Delay. That was the thing.

Jowan didn't want to be left alone at Inneford House. Bran and Evangeline could stay here permanently, as far as he was concerned. There was plenty of room. As for Tamsyn, he hoped to persuade her to stay permanently, too. As his wife. Too early to talk about that, yet, he supposed.

Bran, though, had other ideas. "What do you say, Evie, darling? Shall we arrange for the banns to be called and live here till the cottages are ready? And Jowan, we can arrange extra security for Tammie for as long as she needs it."

Bran seemed to think that was the final word. Jowan couldn't think of anything to say apart from, "I do not see any reason for any of you to move out. Inneford House has room for the three of you and more." And there would be more, the way Bran and Evangeline were going.

Bran smiled. "None of us will be moving straightaway, Jowan. Tammie, I don't suppose Jowan has had time to show you Apple Cottage yet." The traitor.

"Not yet," Tamsyn answered.

"We could walk down tomorrow afternoon," Jowan offered, surrendering to the inevitable. At least he would be able to point out all the problems that needed to be fixed.

"We can all go," Bran suggested. "We can inspect both the steward's cottage and Tammie's." And so, it was settled as things fell into place.