Chapter Six

Kit

For the love of God, why had she stopped now?

"What's wrong?" Kit asked, pulling Jago's nag to a halt.

Morvoren, as she'd told him twice now that she wanted to be called, seemed to have weathered her first time on a sidesaddle remarkably well. Her wavy blonde hair had lost the ribbon Jenifry had used to confine it. Despite the bonnet, it now floated about her face in the most becoming fashion. Enough to be quite distracting if he didn't watch out. What a good thing he'd be returning her to the arms of her gentleman friend and, hopefully, as they were unwed, some stalwart matron of a duenna.

Until this moment, he'd thought that undertaking would be an easy one.

"You said you were staying in a cottage?" he tried, aware that her face had taken on the stricken expression of the well and truly lost. "Do you think you can find it?"

She turned her anguished gaze on him. "But this can't be Penzance. It's too small." She swiped a hand across her eyes, as though doing so might change the view, and muttered to herself, "But there's St Michael's Mount, all right. That's in the right place. Or is it? Can there be more than one of them? But where have all the roads gone, and the supermarket and… and everything else?"

With a sigh, he resisted the temptation to say that of course it was Penzance and where else could it be, and instead, went for her last remark. "What roads?"

"Why, all the main roads." Morvoren shook her head as though to clear it, then spoke more loudly, although her words still sounded like rhetorical questions. "How can all of that just have disappeared? This can't be Penzance, can it?"

What to say to this? He'd never had anyone, still less a beautiful young lady, assure him that the place they were seeing was not the place he'd told her it was. Very confusing. She looked confused. He was too, and time was getting on. "I can see the line of the main road from here," he tried. "Just there where the trees run along. Come on, we'll canter the last quarter mile."

Without giving her the chance to protest, he touched his heels to Jago's cob and, beside him, Prinny sprang forward into a canter at the same time. Within scarcely more than a minute, they were pulling the horses to a walk where the road he'd indicated ran down the hillside into the outskirts of Penzance.

She'd asked for a road, and he'd provided her with one. "Here we are," Kit said, with a flourish. "The Penzance road."

A gravelly track wound down through the trees to snake its way between the closely packed cottages. The potholes marring its rough surface here and there were to be avoided, but otherwise, it was a fine road of which the Cornish, and by default Kit himself, could be proud.

"That's not a road," Morvoren declared. "That's a track."

"Track, road, what does it matter?" Kit retorted, a little flustered by her tone of apparent disgust for what to him was a jolly good thoroughfare. "It'll get us to where we want to go."

Morvoren shot him a frown as they passed under the last of the trees and emerged onto the road. A strong aroma of seaweed and fish rose from the harbor to meet them, mingling with the normal strong odors native to any village. A smell Kit loved. However, not so Morvoren, it seemed. Her small and decidedly attractive nose wrinkled.

She must indeed be a fine lady if these scents offended her. No time to think about that now, though. He had to get her back to her lodgings so he could return post haste to the farm and Jago, preferably long before night fell.

"Where is your accommodation situated?" he asked as the road levelled out.

"Um, I was staying in a cottage in Abbey Place, near the harbor," Morvoren said, her voice redolent with uncertainty. "Number four. The Lobster Pot. It's a little cul-de-sac just off New Street."

Kit gave her a sideways look. Poor girl. She sounded addlepated, as though her dip in the sea had completely thrown her. Maybe she'd banged her head when she fell in? Perhaps he should have offered to check her over for bumps. The thought of running his hands through that mop of wavy golden hair sent a disturbing tide of warmth through his body.

No, he mustn't think things like that. It was his duty as a gentleman to return her to this "boyfriend" she'd mentioned, who would doubtless be returning from his so-called fishing trip with the tide. He gave himself a shake and concentrated on what she'd said. "Abbey Place must be close to Abbey Street, just above the harbor. I believe New Street is just around the corner. We'll go there first."

As they wended their way through the narrow streets, the clatter of their horses' shod hooves echoed on the cobbles. Kit kept a weather eye on Morvoren. Her anxious gaze flicked from left to right as though she couldn't believe what she was seeing. As though, for some reason, nothing about Penzance met her expectations. The fact that there was a definite mystery about her intrigued him more than he liked to admit.

Outside the tavern he and Jago liked to frequent on their visits to Penzance, Kit halted his cob. "We'll leave our horses here and proceed on foot."

She made no protest and sat demurely on Prinny while he dismounted and handed his cob to the ostler who came hurrying out to take it. Then Kit turned to help her down, and, with another wrinkle of her pretty nose, she rather awkwardly unhooked her right leg and slid down into his arms. He caught her around the waist and set her lightly on the ground, very much aware of the feel of her body under his hands and how different it now was to the first time he'd taken her in his arms on the beach. The feel of stays under his touch was somehow reassuring. The world was the right way up again.

Her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, met his, and her cheeks, which had long ago resumed a normal coloration, flushed a becoming pink. Did she feel the same shiver of electricity as he did, every time he touched her?

"Which way from here?" he asked, releasing his hold on her as though she were a hot coal, immediately cross with himself for having done so. Best to revert to bluff indifference until he'd seen her safely ensconced in her lodgings. This was a girl he had to forget as soon as he parted from her, no matter how much he didn't want to.

She took a step back, her bosom, mostly obscured by the lace fichu around her shoulders, rising and falling as though she were breathless. "It wasn't far from the corner of New Street," she gabbled. "This way, I think." She certainly looked as shaken by the contact as he was.

Kit followed her, as, with determination, she turned down New Street, where small fishermen's cottages packed both sides of the cobbled road and a strong stench of privies had attached itself to the gutter in the center.

Abbey Place lay less than fifty yards along the street, recognizable only because someone had nailed up a sliver of driftwood on which the name—Abby Plais—had been painted. It proved to be a small, grimy-looking close, with cottages clustering cheek-by-jowl on both sides of a narrow, cobbled alleyway. Small front gardens, fenced with driftwood pickets, were spread with drying nets, and gaudily painted wooden fishing floats.

Kit stared at the cottages in a mixture of horror and annoyance. None of them appeared to be the sort of place a lady of quality would have chosen to reside. Could she really be staying in this impoverished side street? Or might her "boyfriend" be some unsavory adventurer who perhaps had eloped with a lady of quality and brought her to this low ebb in her life? And not yet married her.

Kit glanced sideways at Morvoren again, taking in her pale face and lips parted as though about to speak. As though, perhaps, to protest.

"Which one is it?" he asked, hope in his heart that she'd misremembered her address, and they were in the wrong place, vying with the need for this to be the right place. Then he could say a quick goodbye to her and return to the farm before he became even more involved.

She turned eyes stretched wide with fear on him, tears sparkling and ready to fall. "It-it was the last one in the row on the right," she managed, extending a trembling finger. "Only it didn't look a bit like this." Her voice shook as it rose to a plaintive cry. "Where have you brought me to? This isn't where I was staying. This isn't my Penzance. It can't be."

She swayed where she stood, her eyes still on him, almost pleading. Against his better judgement, which was telling him to leave her here in comparative civilization and run, Kit put out a hand to take her elbow. "Miss Lucas. Morvoren, this is certainly Penzance, and this is Abbey Place. I believe this is the only Abbey Place in Penzance. Perhaps you have it a little wrong in your head and your accommodation is elsewhere? Perhaps you mistook the name?"

Her tongue darted out to lick her lips. "Mr. Carlyon. Kit. Could you please tell me what… what year this is?" Her voice emerged, small and faint, yet resolute, as though she were steeling herself for some terrible shock.

Puzzled, Kit bit his lip. "Why, it's 1811, of course," he said, pleased to be certain of one thing at least. She might deny this was Penzance, but she couldn't deny the year.

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, than Morvoren crumpled sideways to the ground.

*

Morvoren

The sound ofvoices forced its way through Morvoren's clogged brain. Was she back on the fishing boat? Buoyed up by that hope, she forced open her eyes.

Not the fishing boat.

She was lying in a propped position on a lumpily upholstered chair, her cheek resting against a pile of prickly velvet cushions. Her bonnet had gone, but, oh yes, she still had on that awful constricting corset, those stays, digging into her tender flesh and making it hard to breathe.

The events of the last few hours rushed back at a gallop, crowding themselves into her spinning head. Penzance as she'd never seen it before, shrunken to a tenth of its correct size, and packed with the homes of what had to be poor fisherfolk. The cottage she and Josh had rented for the week looking as though a family of squatters had been inhabiting it for a very long time.

"You're awake." Kit loomed over her, his face full of relieved concern.

And Kit. Of course, Kit. No wonder she'd thought he looked like the painting she'd seen in the museum. He had to be that same young man, preserved forever in oils and incarcerated in a museum for everyone to stare at. Because he'd been involved, no, was going to be involved, in the smuggling operation and killed on the very beach on which he'd dragged her ashore to save her life. Never mind what had just happened, everything she'd seen and read in the museum came flooding back. Kit, this vitally alive young man, was going to die when one of the smugglers betrayed the rest. Oh. God.

Might this all be just a terrible nightmare?

"I thought you'd hurt yourself when you fainted." Unaware of the upheaval in Morvoren's head and heart, Kit gestured at the beamed ceiling overhead and the dark interior of wherever they were. "I carried you back to the tavern where we left the horses, I'm afraid. It was all I could think of to do. There was nowhere more respectable to take you."

Wait? She'd fainted? She'd never done that in her life before. It must have been the shock of being told this was 1811. Not to mention the heat of the day… and those stays.

Today was turning out to be one shock after another.

Determination seizing her, Morvoren pushed herself a little more upright in the chair, and removed her cheek from the cushions. A little dizziness remained, but her wits were returning. What must he think of her? That she was some sort of weak woman who fainted at the drop of a hat? Probably. This was 1811 after all, and she'd just fallen neatly into the stereotype of a delicate Regency lady.

Raising her eyes, Morvoren studied Kit's concerned face. That he was a kind and honorable young man seemed evident from the way he'd looked after her, but the fact that he was also a smuggler now forced its way into the front of her mind and wouldn't go away. And, of course, that he was going to die. Very soon. Well, sometime this year. Sometime in 1811.

Kit's enquiring eyes rested on her in kind concern. Those of a young man who could have no conception of where she'd come from. Oh God! Did they still burn witches in 1811? If she told him the truth, would he think her one? Or maybe even lock her in a madhouse?

Could she bring herself to confide in him that somehow, something extremely strange had happened to her when she fell off that boat? That she knew he was a smuggler and was going to die because of it? But when? If only she could remember the date quoted on the exhibition in the museum. She swallowed the rising lump in her throat, steeled herself, and opened her mouth to speak.

The landlord chose this moment to shoulder his way into the room carrying a tray loaded with food and drink.

The moment was lost.

"You need sustenance after your swoon," Kit said, as the landlord laid the tray on the table. "And then we need to decide what to do next. Your cottage appears not to be where you thought it was. Might you have been staying with… anybody else?"

Definite hesitation from him there.

He took a watch on a chain out of his waistcoat pocket and surveyed it. With a frown, he stowed the watch away again. "Could we perhaps search for… your companions? If you give me their names, then I can make enquiries while you rest here. I commanded a private parlor for you, so you won't be disturbed."

Of course. He had some pressing appointment with his uncle that night. Might it be to do with smuggling? Oh, God, might it be the night he was destined to die? Guilt washed over Morvoren at not having paid enough attention in the museum.

"I'm sorry, but I have no one," she said. Best not to mention Josh again. Best not to mention boyfriends at all, as it seemed an anachronistic word. "I was alone. I don't know anyone here, I'm afraid."

Which was not a lie. If this really was 1811, then she knew no one in the entire world.

Kit frowned again. "Then you should eat and put some color back into your cheeks, for you've gone quite pale again, and I fear it's my fault for not having insisted you ate something while you were at Jago's farm. It's now well after noon and high time for sustenance."

He unloaded the plates from the tray. "And perhaps we can decide how to contact your family and find you some help." He glanced around, a frown on his brow. "I don't think you can stay here though—it wouldn't be at all respectable for a lady to do so without a maid."

No one could keep this pretense up so well. The fact that he thought she needed a maid to make her acceptable was the nail in the coffin to Morvoren's ruminations. From now on, she had to assume she really was in 1811, mad as that sounded, and act accordingly, or everyone she met was going to think her very strange. She began by tucking her feet out of the way under the skirts of her dress. She couldn't go running around Regency England in a pair of trainers.

In fact, she couldn't go running around Regency England at all, unless she managed to get her hands on some money. And where, for instance, was she going to sleep tonight, dolled up like a dog's dinner as she was but without a penny to her name. A sobering thought.

But for now, she was famished, and the spread before her looked most appetizing. Breakfast in her old world had been a long time ago, further than she'd ever imagined it could get. She'd think about what she was going to do next, later.

"Thank you," she said meekly.

The food might have been plain, but it was very good. Slices of crusty bread, thick yellow butter, a large pie she recognized as a Cornish Pasty and some crumbly cheese.

The landlord had brought a tall jug of cider from which Kit filled two small pewter mugs. Thirsty, and forgetting her new resolution to meet the expectations of ladylike behavior suitable to 1811, Morvoren downed her first in several long gulps, making Kit's dark eyebrows shoot towards his hairline. However, he followed suit, then refilled the mugs. Perhaps he liked ladies who knocked back their alcohol in one, or, worse, perhaps he doubted she was a lady. Better be more circumspect.

"Daveth serves fine local cider," he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Which I see you appreciate."

Conscious of needing to behave more appropriately, Morvoren nodded and took a small nibble of her pie. Not that she was going to be able to squeeze a lot of food in while wearing stays. Did women in the past suffer from malnutrition, or did they eat in secret in their rooms without their stays on? That was definitely what she'd have to do, or she'd starve.

Kit didn't seem to have noticed her discomfort. "Now," he said. "You say you are from Reading. I happen to know that town a little. It lies on the coach road from London to Cornwall, on the bank of the River Thames. But unfortunately, without finding your accommodation, we can't reunite you with your baggage, and a lady travelling without baggage is considered worse than a lady without an abigail."

"An abigail?"

He nodded. "You must have a maid with you to travel on the mail coach back to Reading. We'll have to find you one. And I hope you'll allow me to presume to pay for your ticket and traveling expenses along the way. It's the least I can do as you've lost all your belongings and your accommodation."

Morvoren swallowed, her appetite vanishing. No one in Reading was going to be waiting to greet her, that was for sure, and she'd be in the same pickle she was here.

"I'm afraid I don't have anywhere to go," she gabbled, before her courage left her and she let him magic her an abigail from somewhere and put her, and this as yet unidentified female, on a coach to a town that would be as unrecognizable as Penzance. Then she'd be truly lost, and besides which, didn't she want a chance to save her rescuer from being killed? One good deed deserved another.

Kit set down his cider and leaned back in his seat, yet another frown darkening his brow. "Well," he said, slowly and thoughtfully as though weighing his words. "I suppose I could take you to my mother and sister at Ormonde. They'd likely know what to do about your predicament." He paused before continuing with more confidence in his voice. "Yes, that sounds the best idea. That would solve this problem at least for a while."

It would solve hers too, because if he wasn't down here taking part in the smuggling, he couldn't be killed on the beach in Smuggler's Cove—Nanpean Cove as it would be now.

Morvoren studied Kit's face. "Are you sure? You're not responsible for me, you know, even though you saved me from the sea." But inside, she was cheering.

He nodded with an air of having made a firm decision. "Of course I am. I pulled you out of the sea and, on that instant, you became my responsibility. I couldn't possibly just leave you here in Penzance with no friends or family, no maid, and no money." He looked her up and down. "And only the clothes you're standing up in, which do rather stand out. What sort of a gentleman would do that?"

Tears threatened to fall. Morvoren bit her lip to prevent them. "That—that would be amazing." The sheer relief of being offered sanctuary and shelter, not to mention satisfaction that she'd be taking him away from danger and in some way paying him back for his kindness, washed over her, bringing a lump to her throat. Was there no limit to the generosity of strangers, even if this one, although undeniably handsome, was a tad severe in his appearance? Not only had he saved her life and escorted her to where he thought she'd come from, but now he was offering the hospitality of his own family. She wasn't such a fool as to turn him down. Instead, she bestowed a radiant smile on him. "Thank you so much."

A flicker of amusement showed in his eyes for a moment. "My sister will be overjoyed if I bring someone like you to visit her. She complains all the time about how dull it is now Meliora is married and lives in Bath and has sprained her ankle and can't travel."

Morvoren's turn to be puzzled. "Sprained her ankle? Surely she'll recover quickly if she rests her foot?"

To her surprise, color rose up Kit's neck to his face. "Er, it's not really her ankle. She's in a… er… delicate situation. In that condition. You know. Increasing."

She couldn't hold in the chuckle at his discomfort. "You mean she's pregnant?"

His eyes widened as though she'd said something very vulgar.

She chuckled again. "Well, why ever not just say?"

Kit's shocked face twitched as though he were restraining himself from smiling. "I have to admit my sisters are always very evasive about that… condition," he said. "And so is every other society lady I've ever met. Not that many of them even talk about it at all, that is. I just assumed we weren't allowed to refer to it directly. But you may be right. So much easier to say she's in foal or something similar. No one would get the wrong end of the stick then."

Well, not quite the same.

"Now," he said, the embryonic smile vanishing entirely. "We shall need to purchase our coach tickets for tomorrow morning first. Then collect our horses and ride back to the farm for the night, I'm afraid. The journey to Ormonde is a long one, and if I'm to travel with you, we must definitely engage a maid for the sake of propriety, and equip you sufficiently from my mother's old clothes, unfashionable as they might be. So, Jago is going to have to swallow down his ire and put up with having a visitor."

Lovely. Back to where Morvoren thought she'd escaped from.