Chapter Thirteen

L etting Peggy tuck in behind Shadow, Harriet followed Jack up through the low sandhills onto a stretch of scrubby grassland. Rabbits scattered in all directions, but the small, tough-looking sheep with their wooly, half-grown lambs ignored the horses. Across this open grazing land, the Penzance Road cut an unimpressive swathe. If you could call it a road. She’d noted on their stagecoach journey down into Cornwall that the further they strayed from Bath, the worse the roads became, and here it was little more than a stony, pot-holed track and had been an uncomfortable ride in the stagecoach.

“Not far now,” Jack said, as they turned to the left and headed towards the village, where it sat, hugging the curve of the bay and astride the coach road.

Of course, Harriet had seen plenty of small villages or towns but never a fishing village like this before. On the outskirts, the main road led between the semi-tumbledown cottages of the poorest inhabitants, but as they progressed, the quality of the buildings improved, and soon they were riding down a wide High Street and into a bustling marketplace.

“Market day,” Jack remarked, as though he thought she needed telling. There’d been markets in Bath too. She wasn’t stupid.

Shadow and Peggy had slowed to a walk, passing between stalls selling everything from live chickens to hot pies, possibly themselves made of chicken, a kind of insult to their clucking neighbors. Hurdled pens held pigs and sheep, amidst displays of farm tools, pots of honey and conserves, as well as stalls displaying all-manner of vegetables that were tucked in every possible corner.

The people moving between the stalls were a motley bunch—some of them clearly the poorer members of the community in their drab homespun clothing, the few children barefooted and grubby. Others resembled the better-off working class Harriet had seen in and about the parks and streets of Bath—clean and tidy but in clothes that had seen a good degree of wear. And here and there, the more genteel paraded, women with jaunty bonnets and men in tailcoats and shiny topboots like Jack’s. Not many of them though, and Jack seemed keen to avoid meeting them, hurrying the horses away as he spotted them.

“We’d best leave our horses at the Star.” Jack indicated a reasonable sized inn on the corner of a side road. “I doubt your Mrs. Bolitho will have stables we can leave them in.”

Was he planning on accompanying her right up to the house? Somehow, she’d envisioned herself facing this challenge alone. However, the thought of turning up with a gentleman in tow only had the effect of making her quail. What would Ben’s aunt think of her? That she was a fast woman who had moved on from Ben in the blink of an eye, that was what.

“Captain… I mean Jack. This is something I have to do alone. I appreciate that you are willing to escort me, but really, I think it’s best if I do this by myself.”

He’d kicked his feet out of his stirrups about to dismount. “As you wish. But I insist on taking you to the door, and I shall wait outside while you see her.” He must have seen the expression on her face. “But have no fear. I shall do so unobtrusively.”

She managed a smile. “That is very kind.”

He swung down from Shadow and came around to help her down. “Nonsense. It’s nothing.”

Their eyes met. Was that understanding in his eyes? Surely he wasn’t that perceptive. He was a man, after all. She slid down into his waiting arms and felt the strength of his steadying grip about her waist for a brief moment. Before she could recoil, though, he’d released his hold and stepped back, as if instinct had told him how much she didn’t want to be held by any man. “Thank you.” She smoothed her habit and caught up the loop that would enable her to walk without trailing her skirt in the dust and dirt of the street.

A young ostler in a collarless shirt with its sleeves rolled up above his elbows, over brown breeches, stockings and heavy working boots, emerged from the side gates of the Star . “Stablin’, Cap’n Trevelyan?”

So Jack was well-known here.

Jack nodded. “Thank you, Jonno. An hour, two at most.” He handed a coin over to the man, who took Shadow’s and Peggy’s reins as though he knew them. “Just a slice of hay. No oats.”

The coin disappeared into a leather bag on his belt, and the man saluted, as best he could while holding two horses, then led them through the archway into the inn’s backyard.

Harriet looked back at the street, which seemed suddenly more crowded now she was on the same level as the people on foot. Which way? Luckily, Jack knew. Tucking her hand into the crook of his left elbow, he guided her along the edge of the street, keeping as close to the buildings as possible and skirting the main thoroughfare between the market stalls, where the majority of shoppers were walking.

A bare minute or two later he steered her out of the busy market and to the right, up a street only a little wider than a stagecoach. A selection of shops lay to either side—a dressmakers, a milliners, and a tailors, in between more day to day necessaries such as an apothecary’s, a chandlers, and an ironmongers. So, this was the oddly named Causewayhead. Less crowded down here, as no doubt most of the townspeople were looking for market day bargains.

Mrs. Bolitho’s house lay towards the top of this road, a little back from most of the other buildings which gave it room for a small, iron-gated and stone-slabbed front yard. It stood taller as well, with three main, sash-windowed stories and smaller windows in the roof indicating an attic for servants’ accommodation.

Jack halted at the gate. “I’ve spied myself a coffee house just along the street. I’ll leave you here and wish you luck with your aunt.” He made a bow. “If your interview is swift, then look for me in the coffee house, and we’ll return to our horses together.” He released her hand from his arm, holding it for a moment as though unwilling to relinquish it entirely, and perhaps inclined to give it a reassuring pat. Very avuncular.

His company suddenly felt like something Harriet would have appreciated, going into the lion’s den as she was. Or worse, to face a dragon, as St George had done, but without a trusty sword. Before she succumbed and asked him to stay, she turned sharply away and hastened up to the imposing front door. No. She would not glance back over her shoulder to see if he still stood there.

A bell rope hung by the door, so she gave it a firm tug. From inside came the discordant clang of it ringing.

Steeling herself, she waited.

After what felt like a long time, the door swung open on a young woman in a starched white apron over a dull gray dress. The white mob cap on her mousey-brown hair indicated her status as housemaid. “Can I help you, ma’am?” She sounded nervous.

Harriet took a deep breath. “I’m here to see Mrs. Bolitho. She’s not expecting me, but she knows me and was aunt to my late husband. You can tell her it’s Mrs. Penhallow who has come to call.”

The girl, who couldn’t have been a lot older than Lydia, opened the door wider, her doubtful eyes betraying a certain obvious lack of confidence about letting some stranger claiming a relationship with her mistress into the house. “If you’ll wait here, ma’am, I’ll go and see if the mistress is seeing people today.” And leaving Harriet standing in the gloomy hallway, she was gone up the narrow staircase.

Harriet stared about herself with nervous interest. A few dark pictures hung on the walls, and beneath the stairs stood a door that might lead to the kitchens. If only her heart would cease its infernal hammering she might feel better about this encounter. No matter what she’d thought outside, this was an old lady she was about to see, and not either a lion or a dragon.

The girl returned promptly, her booted feet clattering on the stairs. “The mistress is in the library. She says she’ll see you.” She gestured. “This way.”

The library lay on the first floor, one of several doors opening off an ill-lit corridor with a faded rug running its length. As the maid hung back wide-eyed, Harriet pushed the door open and went in.

A library in every sense of the word. Shelves of books covered every wall, and heavy curtains hung from the sash windows, letting in very little light and making the room near as gloomy as the corridor. A small fire, giving off next to no heat, burned in the grate at one end of the room, and in front of it stood two high-backed, upholstered chairs. In one of them sat an old lady clad entirely in black, her snowy white hair partly covered with a lace cap.

Harriet hesitated, unsure of her reception. Ben had never spoken of his aunt in all the time she’d known him, and the old lady’s man of business in Bath had more than hinted that she was a difficult customer.

“Well, girl, get over here and let me look at you.” For an old lady she possessed a firm and autocratic voice.

Harriet approached her seat and bobbed a perfect curtsey.

Mrs. Bolitho’s face was as lined as an old apple forgotten at the bottom of the barrel, her cheeks sagged and folds of crepey skin hung over her small, hard eyes. Both gnarled hands rested on an ebony cane, a diamond ring glittering on the forefinger of one of them.

Harriet hesitated again, unsure how to address the old lady, and withering inside under her gimlet glare.

“Well, girl, speak up. What are you here for?” she almost shouted.

This was not going the way Harriet had hoped it would. Had the maid not told Mrs. Bolitho who she was? Her hands began to tremble and hot color surged up her cheeks. “If you please, Mrs. Bolitho, I’ve come to thank you for your generosity.”

“Eh? What?” The old lady leaned forward. “Speak up, I said. I’m not deaf, but you’re mumbling. Who are you and what do you want?”

Harriet tried again, much louder this time. “My name is Harriet Penhallow. My husband was Benedict Penhallow, your great nephew. A captain in the Hussars. You have been so kind as to allow my children and me to live in one of your properties now Benedict is dead.”

The old lady’s eyes sharpened. “Oh. You’re that girl, are you? Come a bit closer and let me have a better look at you.” She waved at the other chair. “Sit down.”

Harriet perched on the edge of the chair, her hands folded in her lap while Mrs. Bolitho scrutinized her.

This took a while. Finally, the old lady gave a loud harrumph. “You’re a skinny little thing. I remember you now. Married to young Benedict. He used to visit me and my Horace down here when he was a boy. Smart little fellow. Smart indeed. And a hero, too.” She cleared her throat and spat into the fire. “Shame he’s gone. And it leaves you a widow woman with two children, I hear? Benedict’s two. And one’s a boy.”

“Theodore.” Harriet’s heart had begun to steady. “And Lydia.”

Mrs. Bolitho shook her head. “Ain’t interested in the girl.” She smacked her wet, wrinkled lips together. “But the boy’s a Penhallow and the last of his line. My brother Joseph had but one son who lived to adulthood, and that was your Benedict’s father, my nephew, Andrew, who also had but one son himself—Benedict.”

Where was this leading? Harriet held her tongue and waited, far too conscious of her unsteady heartbeat.

Mrs. Bolitho bared what teeth she still possessed in what might have been a smile but was more like a snarl. “I’d like to see the boy. Is he like his father?”

Now there was a question. In what way did she mean? Yes, Theo resembled his father physically but not in temperament, thank goodness. Probably the old lady would have fond memories of Ben as a boy and be more interested in Theo’s appearance. She nodded. “He is very like his father. As is Lydia.” The fact that Mrs. Bolitho wasn’t interested in Lydia irked.

The old lady nodded her head. “If I like him, then I’ll pay for his education. Can’t have him growing up in the back end of beyond like a yokel. I’ll send him up to Eton like his father and grandfather before him. Do him the world of good.”

So this was what the old woman wanted. Control of the last Penhallow. Theo. Harriet bit her lip to stop herself from shouting out a no to this. A strong awareness that it wouldn’t do to offend her benefactress kept her mouth shut. “He is very young, as yet, and needs his mother as he misses his father so much.” Not true at all about the missing of his father. Theo had always been her child, as wary of Ben as she was. Perhaps he’d sensed her own fears. Fears she’d tried so hard to hide.

“Nonsense,” the old lady snapped, spit spraying. “Bring him in to see me as soon as you can, and we’ll see about him starting school. My man in Bath tells me he’s twelve, isn’t he? About time he was removed from the apron strings and made a man of.”

But not a man like his father. Harriet’s insides quaked. “It’s difficult for me to get into Penzance,” she tried. “I have no transport of my own, and it’s quite a distance. Too far to walk.” Not necessarily true, but she was clutching at straws.

Mrs. Bolitho’s eyes sharpened like razors. “Indeed? And how did you get here today, then?”

Oh no . Should she lie or tell the truth? Better a half truth. “I was given a ride into the town. Which means I can’t be long with you, as my friends will need to return soon.” Anything to get away from this grasping old lady who wanted to turn Theo into a reincarnation of Ben.

“Which friends?”

Oh no again . Instinct told her not to mention Jack. Luckily, he possessed a mother. “The Trevelyans of Rosudgeon House. It is quite close to the cottage you’ve allowed me to take.”

“The Trevelyans? Talwyn Trevelyan ? She’s not a woman I would like my niece-by-marriage associating with.” She glowered. “And you should not like your daughter to be near her. The woman’s no better than she should be and has a ‘reputation’.”

Harriet stiffened her spine, glad her interlocuter had jumped to the conclusion that Talwyn had brought her into Penzance without the necessity to lie. “I’m afraid I had little choice. I felt I must come in to thank you for your kindness and could delay no longer. We are all most grateful for the cottage and the security of a roof over our heads.”

“Then bring the boy to see me. As soon as you can. I shall be awaiting him with impatience.”

Harriet nodded. “Of course. As soon as I can procure another ride into Penzance, I will bring him and Lydia to visit you.”

Mrs. Bolitho shook her head. “Don’t bother with the girl. What do I want with a girl? She’ll be off marrying someone and taking his name in five minutes. It’s just the boy I want. The Penhallow boy.”

“Of course.”

Of course not . She had to find a way around this, and at the moment, her one hope was her lack of transport. And insisting that Theo needed his mother. But neither of these excuses would last for long. At some point, Mrs. Bolitho would get impatient and send transport out to fetch them.

Mrs. Bolitho leaned back in her seat. “You may go.”

Taken aback at so curt a dismissal, Harriet stared at her.

“Don’t look all astonished at me, my girl. You’ve said your piece and I’ve said mine. We know where we stand so there’s nothing more to say. Off you go before Talwyn Trevelyan comes knocking on my door to look for you. I won’t stand for that from her. Be off with you and tell her I said that if you want. What do I care? I’m seventy-four years old and I’ve earned the right to say what I think.”

Harriet rose to her feet, her heart renewing its pounding and her knees wobbly. “Of course, Mrs. Bolitho. Good morning to you.”

No reply came, so Harriet walked across to the door and let herself out. The maid was waiting outside in the corridor. No doubt she’d had her ear to the keyhole. Harriet couldn’t resist. “Is she always like that?”

Wide-eyed, the maid nodded. “Can be worse, ma’am. I’ve seen worse, for sure.” She peered up at Harriet as they started down the stairs. “Didn’t know as she had any relatives though. It’ll be news to all of us below stairs.”

Harriet pressed her lips together. “I rather wish we weren’t her relatives.”