Chapter Fourteen

H arriet found Jack, as he’d said, drinking his second cup of coffee in a small, rather smoky coffee house devoid of other customers. He glanced up as she entered, and his face broke into a welcoming smile. Just what she needed after such a disturbing interview.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

She shook her head. What she wanted to do was return home to Theo and reassure herself of his safety. She felt, unreasonably, of course, as though Mrs. Bolitho might stretch out her talons, decorated with that ostentatious diamond, and snatch him away from her before she could get back to him. “I’d rather be on our way if we can. If you don’t mind.”

He tossed a coin onto the table and called a thank you to someone banging about out of sight, then escorted her out onto the street. The fresh air felt good on her skin. She heaved in a deep breath in an effort to steady her nerves.

“What happened?” Jack asked, pulling her hand once more into the crook of his arm. She’d have resisted this time, but he had her gripped tight and it would look bad to struggle. And besides, she had other things to think of.

“She wants my son.” The words popped out before she had a chance to stop them.

“Theo?”

She nodded. “She wants to meet him and, if she likes him, pay for his education. At first. But I know what happens in situations like this when a rich relative offers to pay for a fatherless child’s education. Very soon Theo would be spending all his time with her and not with me. She wants him for herself as the last Penhallow.” Tears were close but she mustn’t let them fall. There must be something she could do.

They turned out into the market, and he steered her along the edge. “And you don’t want to agree to this?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. He’s my son, not hers. She has no sons. I don’t want Theo at school miles away from me.”

He frowned. “She’s a widow, don’t forget and he’s her closest relation, or so she seems to think. Do you not think it wise to let her do this, as in all probability she’ll leave her fortune to him.”

Harriet glared up at him. “Do you think me a common fortune hunter?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. But I did take you for a woman of sense. You said yourself you are in straitened circumstances and your late husband’s aunt could provide a way out of them for you, and especially for Theo. Do you think that he’ll get such a chance again while living at Keynvor Cottage with you?”

What was he saying? Did he think she should take this offer?

He held up his free hand as they stopped outside the Star. “If I were you, I would give it some thought before you turn her down.”

She wrenched her hand free of his arm. “You don’t understand. Only another mother could. Did your mother send you, her only child, away to school?”

A strange look she couldn’t fathom flitted across Jack’s face. “I went to the grammar school in Truro. I boarded during the week and was home on Saturday afternoons. She had no opportunity for giving me a better education.”

Harriet shot him a triumphant glare and strode through the arch and into the stableyard.

His footsteps sounded behind her on the cobbles. “Jonno, our horses, please.”

The horses having been brought, Harriet allowed Jonno to boost her into the saddle and she and Jack rode out into the street. All this while she maintained a stony silence and it was only as they left the hovels at the edge of the village that she turned to him again.

She took up where they’d left off. “And would you want to have been sent to Eton, away from Cornwall and your mother?”

He had the grace to shrug and smile at her. “Probably not. Let’s call it a truce. I was only thinking of your future… of Theo’s future. I’ll keep my opinions to myself from now on.”

She allowed herself a slight smile. “Thank you.”

“And for now, shall we trot?”

For answer she set Peggy into a lively trot along the uneven road.

They’d gone only perhaps half a mile in a more companionable silence than before, when a shout assaulted Harriet’s ears. She twisted in the saddle to look, as Jack did the same.

Trotting along a track to their left came three riders, one of whom, the female of the bunch, was waving her right hand with enthusiasm, as though she thought she knew them. Well, as though she thought she knew Jack, surely? Which she in all probability did. Jack drew Shadow to a halt, and he and Harriet waited while the riders caught up. Who could they be? From their appearance, they must be well-to-do locals, possibly people of quality… but for that hoydenish wave. If Lydia had behaved like that back in Bath, she’d have been swiftly reprimanded. Not that reprimanding her seemed to do much good. And this was Cornwall, with Cornish customs which might well allow someone to shout and wave if they caught sight of a person they knew.

Jack edged Shadow between her and the new arrivals, almost as though he wanted to keep them apart, his dark brows lowering over his eyes in what could have been construed as a disapproving frown. He had a look of someone who would have liked to cut his losses and gallop off up the road. Puzzling, given the enthusiastic hailing from the young woman and the impression he’d given Harriet of not being one to follow social mores.

“Jack!” cried the young woman as she drew closer. A slight, dark-haired creature with a heart-shaped face and wide, brown eyes, she was beautiful by any standards. “How lucky to meet you on the road. Sam and I were on our way to visit Nat and Caroline when we bumped into dear Fitz, and he offered to accompany us.” She laughed, a gay, rippling sound that carried through the rapidly warming morning air, and turned her gaze to Harriet, her delicate brows rising.

“Ysella,” Jack said, more than a little stiffly. “Sam, Captain Carlyon. May I introduce you to my new neighbor, Mrs. Penhallow.” He turned back towards Harriet, and she couldn’t miss the displeasure in his eyes. What was it he didn’t like about this chance meeting? Surely not the effervescent young woman. “Harriet, may I introduce you to my friends, Samuel and Ysella Beauchamp of Carlyon Court. And this is Ysella’s cousin, Captain Carlyon, of the local militia. He’s in charge of apprehending smugglers locally, not to mention anyone else who catches the attention of the law.”

Harriet kept her face straight, afraid her confusion would show if she wasn’t careful. That Jack was not at all pleased at this encounter puzzled her no end. Did he not like any of them? No, it had to be this Captain Carlyon, whom he’d deliberately not included as his friend, he was directing his disfavor against. Ysella, Mrs. Beauchamp, appeared very happy to see Jack, and immune to his look of annoyance, and yet…?

Mrs. Beauchamp brought her little chestnut mare up closer to Peggy. “How lovely to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Penhallow. Oh, fustian. I can’t call you that can I? Might I use your first name? I call all my friends by their first names, and I know you’ll be one of them. This is Cornwall, after all, so I believe we’re allowed.” She tilted her head to one side and smiled becomingly, her eyes twinkling. She couldn’t be more than twenty or so. Scarcely any older than Lydia. Harriet suddenly felt ancient and world weary.

However, she smiled back, trying hard to ignore the interested, speculative gaze of Captain Carlyon. “It seems formalities are to be dispensed with here in Cornwall, which I own is not a bad thing.” She paused. “Ysella. What a beautiful name. Is it a traditional Cornish one?”

Ysella Beauchamp beamed. “It is. Both my sisters have Cornish names, too, despite our dear Papa having hailed from Wiltshire, for the most part at least. Mama insisted, as she was born and bred in Cornwall and says she is Cornish to the core and always will be. Only our brother, Kit, escaped. He’s Christopher, you see, but we often call him Kitto which is so much more Cornish. And you are?”

A compunction not to share her name with the wolfish Captain swept over Harriet, but it was too late by far now. She kept her eyes fixed on Ysella, as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “Harriet. My own parents were from Truro but sadly didn’t grace me with a name typical of our county.”

“Don’t hog our new friend, Ysella,” her husband said, getting between Harriet and Jack. For some reason, an urge to hide herself behind Jack and Shadow’s solid presence rose, and Harriet had to swallow down her fear and stiffen her backbone. She couldn’t behave like this in public, no matter how uncomfortable being the focus of a strange man’s attention made her feel. Jack’s sudden protectiveness endeared him to her, bestowing on him the mantle of knight in shining armor. For the moment.

Surely his behavior had been prompted by the dashingly handsome but cruel-eyed captain rather than the solid and dependable Sam Beauchamp. But as she well knew, you never could tell what a man was really like under the facade they chose to erect for public view. Ben had been handsome and charming when she’d met him…

“Sam Beauchamp, Mrs. Penhallow. Delighted to meet you. I’d kiss your hand and bow, but, alas, all I can really do is doff my hat whilst mounted. Please imagine I’ve done my duty.”

Harriet managed a small laugh. “Being on horseback does present an obstacle to polite exchanges. I used to hunt when I was a girl, and frequently the niceties of polite conversation had to be abandoned in the heat of the chase.” Oh, if only she were that girl again, what wouldn’t she do to change her life?

The wolfish captain, Ysella’s cousin, who’d been half hidden all this time by Jack and Shadow’s imposing bulk, brought his horse around to stand beside Ysella’s, giving Harriet her first proper view of him. He held out a hand to her, his dark eyes smoldering in a way that sent heat flaring to her cheeks and made her suspect he knew what she looked like naked. His dark eyes and high cheekbones betrayed his relationship to Ysella, but other than that he was his own man. Tall, taller than Jack probably, with hair that might have started out carefully curled and coiffed but now was windblown, as they all were. Probably, with his looks, he was very successful with the ladies. The windblown hair only served to accentuate his rather devilish handsomeness, although she wasn’t blind to the cruel set to his mouth and the coldness in his eyes. He would not be a man to cross. No wonder Jack was wary of him.

With slight hesitation, she took the offered hand.

“Mrs. Penhallow. Might I, too, take the liberty of calling you Harriet?” He smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile as it never reached his intense dark eyes. “It’s so seldom we get to meet anyone new down here. So, you’re Jack’s neighbor. Lucky devil, Jack.” His voice had a languor to it, a world-weariness that sat well with his looks. The sort of man her mother would have told her to avoid like the plague.

A shiver ran down Harriet’s spine. A not at all pleasant one. The captain’s lazy eyes slid sideways to consider Jack as he spoke, cold intelligence foremost in them, as though he was assessing her companion and finding something fascinating about him. “So lucky to bump into you, Captain Trevelyan. I’ve been wanting to meet you again for some time.”

What was there about the way he said this? It had sounded almost like a threat. As though, he, like Jack, didn’t like the man before him.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Pray don’t let us hold you up. Harriet and I were going to ride inland a little before turning back to Rosudgeon.”

News to Harriet.

She caught the tension in Jack’s voice even though she sensed he was trying to hide it. He didn’t want to ride with these three. Now why was that? Even if you didn’t care for someone, why would it make you so keen not to be in their company? It was Captain Carlyon, she felt certain, who was provoking this reaction. Her mind shot back to the day they’d all arrived at Keynvor Cottage when Theo and Lyddie had come running up from the cliffs with tales of a ship in the cove unloading goods they’d thought might be smuggled. Was Jack keen that his tenants, who might well be the smugglers in question, should remain unthreatened by the revenue men? Was that it? Did he know about the smugglers? Probably, as she’d been sure he’d gone to the kiddley himself, which was bound to be their base, on the day he’d escorted her home in the storm. Confusing.

“Oh, do ride with us at least part of the way,” Ysella said, pouting a little. “I would so like to get to know Harriet a little better. You can’t keep her to yourself. And you can ride inland any day you choose, Jack, but the chances of us riding over here from Carlyon Court again and meeting up with you like this are tiny.” She smiled a sweet smile. “Indulge a poor lonely lady, Jack.” This last came out as a wheedle.

Would Jack be rude enough to turn her down?

No.

“Very well, Ysella, we’ll accompany you some of the way. You have appealed to my better nature.”

She giggled. “And there was I thinking you didn’t have one.” She flashed him a smile and moved closer to Harriet. “There, it’s done. I do hope you won’t mind me depriving you of your tour of our countryside and confining your ride to the road?”

Harriet smiled. “Not at all.”

“Then we’ll be off,” Sam said. “I’ve a notion to be at Roskilly with the Treloars in time for a bite to eat at noon.” He rubbed his belly and grinned.

The five riders, reassembled, resumed the road towards Marazion.

Jack, Sam and Captain Carlyon rode ahead, and Ysella and Harriet kept their two mares behind, lagging by some twenty yards, just far enough not to be easily overheard. Captain Carlyon had shown an urge to ride beside Harriet, but, thankfully, Ysella had shooed him away. “Nonsense, Fitz. I am busy making friends with Harriet and don’t need you butting in. Off you go and ride with Sam and Jack and leave us in peace. Talk about the things men like.” She glanced at Harriet. “Men. They see a pretty face and think that every woman wishes to be flirted with. What nincompoops they are. Now, let me give you the sort of guided tour Jack would no doubt have omitted.”

True to her word, for the first part of their ride, Ysella contented herself with pointing out and naming all the points of interest they were passing, but this information rapidly ran out. An inquisitorial gleam in her eye, she turned to Harriet. “Now, you must tell me all about yourself, or I shall die of disappointment. You have about you an air of mystery that intrigues me.”

Harriet, acutely aware of Jack’s ramrod straight back up ahead, bit her lip. Ysella had about her a hint of not being the best person to confide any secrets to. Of being a flap-jaw. But that could just have been her chatty friendliness and the fact she claimed to have been starved of female company. She did seem very keen to add Harriet to her list of acquaintances. But whatever she was like, Harriet was no more prepared to bare her chest to her than she had been to Talwyn Trevelyan.

“There’s very little to tell,” she said. “I’m a widow with two children, whom my late husband’s aunt has provided with somewhere to live. It’s a small cottage but very manageable in my reduced circumstances. We haven’t been there long, but it’s homely and,” she nodded at Jack, “the neighbors are kind and friendly.”

“Which is most surprising,” Ysella said, keeping her voice low as though she didn’t wish to be overheard. “Never was I more shocked to see Jack in the company of a proper lady.”

For a moment, Harriet didn’t know what to say. “Oh,” was all she managed.

Ysella nodded vigorously. “Oh, indeed. Jack is quite the recluse. Sam calls him a bit of a hermit. Not so his charming mother, who has attended all our soirées at Carlyon Court and is quite the loveliest of hostesses… only while he’s away from Rosudgeon, of course. But while he’s at home, she organizes nothing.”

“Where does Jack go when he’s away?”

Ysella shrugged her slender shoulders. “Heavens, I don’t know. He’s off in his ship, I believe. Sam says talk is Jack’s wedded to the sea and will never find a wife. I assume he’s moving goods up and down the coast, which is what a lot of the ships here do—so Sam says. A risky business with the unstable weather we have down here.” She glanced at Captain Carlyon’s back. “It’s odd, you know, but before we met up with you, Fitz was asking all about Jack. I’ve no idea why. Mind you, he’s quite a nosy person and is always asking me about people I know. Anyone would think he was an old lady in her dotage, he’s so fond of hearing all the gossip.”

Odd, indeed, but then Captain Carlyon was in charge of the revenue men down here and perhaps fancied himself a bit of a sleuth. Harriet peered at where he had his head turned and his eyes fixed on Jack, an acquisitive expression on his face. What was it he was after? Surely not Jack himself? She felt an odd proprietorial instinct towards Jack, as though he might need protecting. She frowned. “He was?”

Ysella nodded. “But there’s little to tell. Jack is such a private person with only a few friends—like Sam and me. And of course Nat and Caroline.” She dimpled. “And I’ve yet to see him paying court to any respectable lady such as yourself.”

Harriet felt the heat rise again to her cheeks. “He’s not paying court to me. I’m a widow and still in mourning, and he knows I am.”

Ysella chuckled. “My dear Harriet, if you think that makes you off limits to a man like him, then you are very much mistaken. Can you not see the look in his eyes?”

“The…?”

Another chuckle. “I may be young, but I know the look of love when I see it. He’s smitten.”

Harriet’s hand shot to her mouth. “Oh no. I didn’t mean him to… I-I didn’t think I was encouraging him in any way. This is terrible.”

Ysella chuckled again, her eyes twinkling in amusement. “Well, if it’s not reciprocated he’s gentleman enough to back down. But do you not think him quite the catch, with Rosudgeon, his own ship and his aristocratic father?”

“His what?”

“His own ship. Did he not tell you?”

Harriet, still reeling from the revelation that Ysella thought Jack interested in her, clutched the reins so tightly poor Peggy curvetted in discomfort. “Not the ship—the father. I didn’t think there was a Mr. Trevelyan. His mother gave me the impression she was a widow, like me.” The words came out little above a whisper.

Ysella leaned towards her with the air of someone about to impart a big secret. “I would not tell you were it not common knowledge. But you are right in one way, there never was a Mr. Trevelyan. Jack is the son of Sir Austin Trengrouse of Trengrouse Castle. Jack’s mother was his mistress.” She glanced furtively at the backs of the three men. “Sir Austin wanted to marry her, but his father refused his permission and forced him to marry a woman who brought with her a fortune—and gave him just the three daughters. No son and heir.”

“Good heavens.” And the man had set up his mistress and son in Rosudgeon House only a mile or two from where he must now live with his wife. What sort of a man did that? If she hadn’t met Talwyn, she might have felt sorry for the legal wife, but she couldn’t. And for Jack to have seen his father from afar as he grew up, but perhaps never had anything to do with him; that, too, seemed cruel on the part of his parents.

They had reached the lane down to Rosudgeon by now, and Jack and Harriet had to take their leave of the party from Carlyon Court, Jack with evident relief, Harriet wishing she could have heard more from Ysella.

“You must come over to the Court with your daughter,” Ysella said to Harriet, as they parted. “I should love to meet with her. And your little boy, of course. I have a little girl of my own, and a baby boy. Merrin loves to see other children and gets so few opportunities to do so. We can send the carriage for you, if you like.”

Caught unawares by this flamboyant offer, Harriet hesitated, but before she could answer, Jack did so for her. “I’m sure Harriet needs to settle in first, Ysella. We’ll send a message to you when she’s done so.”

Annoyance rose in Harriet’s breast, but she didn’t contradict him. It had been bad enough when Ben answered for her, and he’d been her husband, but to now have a man she hardly knew doing the same made her hackles rise. However, ingrained into her through her years of marriage was the inability to contradict what a man had said. She bit her lip instead.

Captain Carlyon managed an approximation of a bow to her from his horse and a nod to Jack. “If you don’t mind, Harriet, I would like to call on you. It worries me to think of you in your isolated cottage so close to the cliffs. No,” he forestalled Jack who had clearly been about to butt in again. “I insist. It’s the least I can do. I feel a responsibility as your late husband was in the same regiment as me. An officer always helps the family of a fallen comrade-in-arms. Nothing you can say will change my mind.”

Harriet managed to bestow a weak smile on him, yet again falling foul of her inbred inability to refuse a polite request. “Thank you, Captain. That would be most kind of you.” Only it wouldn’t, would it? Surely what the smuggler-hunting captain really wanted was a closer look at Bessie’s Cove and her house just happened to be close to it.

“Shall we say tomorrow, then?” He smiled his wolfish smile at her, showing too many of his white teeth. “We’ll all be staying overnight at Roskilly, so I can call on my return journey.”

“Won’t that be a long way out of your way?” Jack got in, speaking as though through clenched teeth. “After all, aren’t you based in St Ives?” He frowned. “Indeed, it seems odd to me that Sam and Ysella met you near Penzance. Where were you headed?”

Captain Carlyon’s upper lip curled. “Oh, I was checking on the new customs men I’ve set up in Penzance. It was only when I met Ysella and Sam that I decided to return home via Roskilly. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen Nat.”

“Well,” Jack said, his brows furrowed as he turned Shadow away. “No doubt you’ll enjoy your stay at Roskilly. Good day to you all.” And he trotted away.

Did he know more about the smuggling than she’d suspected? With a wave to Ysella, Harriet hurried Peggy after him.