HIGH TIDE AT MIDNIGHT (7 page)

lighter in the room and she realised that someone had switched on the

powerful lamp which stood on the desk.

It was a man, and she knew as soon as she saw him that it was the man she

had encountered in the lane. Her instinct, she saw, had not misled her. He

was dark, as dark as r the stormy night outside the windows, tall and lean.

His face was thin and as hard as if it had been hewn from the granite

cliffs—a high-bridged nose, a jutting chin, firm lipsand dark, hooded eyes

that stared down at her mother's paintings spread on the desk in front of him.

Men who looked like that, she thought dazedly, had once sailed ships

bringing contraband from Brittany into the coves along this coast under the

noses of the Excisemen. And men who looked like that could even have

hung lanterns on lonely rocks to lure unsuspecting shipping to a terrible

doom.

He must have sensed her eyes on him because he looked up, and Morwenna

found herself shrinking from the mixture of angry disbelief mingled with

contempt that she saw in his face.

She tried to tell herself that she was still asleep and that her dreams had

crossed the frontier into nightmare, but then he spoke and she knew that it

was all only too real.

'Who the hell are you?' he said. 'And what are you doing here? You have two

minutes to answer me before I have you thrown out.'

FOR a moment Morwenna was stunned into silence, then impetuously she

jumped to her feet, regardless of her hair which had come loose from its

topknot and fell about her shoulders in a silken shower.

'And just who are you,' she raged, 'to speak to me like that? And how dare

you open that parcel? It was for Mr Dominic Trevennon—a private matter.

But you have the unmitigated insolence to walk in here and…'

'I can't imagine who has a better right,' he interrupted with icy hostility. 'You

are the intruder here, not I. And your time is running out, so I advise you to

answer my questions.'

Her head came up defiantly. T need tell you nothing," she said. 'I wish to

speak to Mr Trevennon and no one else.'

There was a long electric silence. Then,

'I suppose,' he drawled, 'that it's just within the bounds of possibility that you

aren't playing some devious provocative game of your own to attract my

attention and that you really don't know who I am.'

For a minute Morwenna felt numb. Her eyes travelled over him desperately

rejecting what her brain told her was the truth.

'No!' she whispered. 'It—it's not true. You can't be…'

'But I assure you I am—what was it you called me?— the uncrowned king of

Cornwall. And this'—he showed his teeth in a mirthless smile—'is my

castle.'

'No!' Morwenna pressed her hands against her burning cheeks. 'It's you that's

playing some game. You can't be Dominic Trevennon. You're not old

enough.'

He laughed contemptuously. 'If that's an attempt at flattery…'

'It isn't,' she said flatly. 'By my reckoning the real Dominic Trevennon must

be in his sixties at least.'

He showed no surprise at her statement. Instead he nodded slightly as if her

words had only confirmed what he himself already knew.

'Now,' he said very quietly, 'tell me who you are and what you want in this

house.'

She could have ground her teeth. Instead she held on tight to her self-control.

'I've obviously been under a misapprehension,' she said tonelessly. 'I can

only apologise, and leave. May I have my pictures, please—and their

wrappings?' She held put her hand, but he ignored the gesture completely.

'Not without an explanation,' he said. 'You had enough to say for yourself

when we met earlier. Why this sudden reticence? You wanted to ask me a

favour—remember?'

She gave a bleak little smile. 'Not you,' she said. 'Someone else who clearly

doesn't exist any more. Your father, perhaps, or…'

'My uncle,', he supplied equally bleakly. 'Who does exist, thank'you. He's

upstairs in his room at this moment studying chess problems.'

She looked at him, startled. 'Then—may I see him, please?'

'No, you may not. Whatever business you feel you may have in this house,

you can settle with me.' He flicked a hand towards the paintings. 'I assume it

has something to do with these. If you're hoping to sell them, then I should

tell you at once that you're wasting your time.'

'I don't,' she denied swiftly, her glance in spite of herself going to the

discoloured marks on the walls.

His eyes followed hers and he smiled thinly. 'You're quite right, of course.

There were pictures hanging there once, and of considerably more value

than these offerings.'

'I admit they're not her best work,' Morwenna said, biting her lip. 'But they

do have a certain value—sentimental value, perhaps. Or that's what I

believe, or I would never have come here.'

'Why?' he said. 'Because the subjects bear a certain superficial resemblance

to certain buildings and landmarks locally? I think you'll have to do better

than that.'

'Of course not,' she flared at him, stung. 'Because she— my mother, Laura

Kerslake, the woman who painted those pictures, used to live here. This was

her home when she was a girl. The Trevennons were her family—the only

family she had until she married my father. Oh, I know that she seemed to

have lost contact with you all, but…'

'Did she send you?' he interrupted, his voice glacial.

Morwenna shook her head, conscious that there was a sudden lump in her

throat, but reluctant to reveal her distress to this man's cold hostility.

'She—died, several years ago,' she said constrictedly.

He made a slight restless movement. 'I'm sorry.' It was a perfunctory remark,

made simply to satisfy the conventions, and oddly that hurt most of all.

She lifted her head and stared at him dazedly. 'I'm glad she can't hear you say

that,' she said, almost in a whisper. 'I'm glad she's not here to know how little

the people she loved really thought of her.'

'You're very quick with your judgments.' He thrust his - hands into his pants

pockets. 'You said she seemed to have lost contact with us. Did it never

occur to you to ask yourself why? I don't know how much or what she may

have told you about her life here, but I'll dare swear she never told you about

the misery she left behind her when she went.'

'You're lying!'

'What reason would I have to do that?' he shrugged. 'What I've said may be

unpalatable, and light years removed from Laura Kerslake's glossed-over

version of her time at Trevennon, but it's the truth for all that."

It wasn't so much his words, but his tone revealing so clearly that it was

immaterial to him whether she believed him or not, that carried conviction.

Morwenna stared at him numbly, unable to think of a thing to say.

He broke the silence himself eventually. 'And what about your father—the

gallant Sir Robert. Does he know that you've come here?'

'My father's dead too.' She had to dredge the words up from some deep,

painful recess of her mind. 'And my brother Martin. They were killed in a

road accident only a few weeks ago. The estate went to his cousin. All I have

left are these pictures.'

'My God,' he said very quietly. 'So that's it. Your mother's stories must really

have got to you, my dear. Thirty-five years ago she found a refuge here, so

you thought you'd do the same.' He shook his head disbelievingly. 'Well, I

give you full marks for tactics. What a pity you were so totally misled about

your likely reception.'

The contempt in his voice seemed to curl down her spine. She wanted to

strike at him, to rake her nails down his dark face, and had to clench her

hands into fists at her side. His face did not alter, but she knew all the same

that he was quite aware of her inward battle with her temper and even faintly

amused by it.

'You are also very quick with your judgments.' She stared defiantly across

the room at him. 'I admit I did come here to ask for a home—but only for

these pictures. I thought you might store them for me until I got a place of

my own. I thought that if you wouldn't do it for my sake then you would do it

for my mother's. I know now that I was wrong.'

He gave a short, unamused laugh. 'Disastrously wrong. So that was the

favour you wanted to ask. I'm afraid I can't accede to it. There are still

people-in this house for whom such an overt reminder of your mother would

be undeservedly painful. My uncle is one of them, and he's been a sick man

for some years, so I would prefer him not to be upset in this way.'

Sh

here all those years before to leave this aftermath of bitterness? Whatever it

had been she could not believe that her mother had ever been aware of it.

Nothing had ever shadowed Laura Kerslake's affectionate memories of

Dominic Trevennon. She felt herself shiver, and moved her hands in a slight

negative gesture.

'I can't pretend I know what's going on here,' she said, steadying her voice by

a tremendous effort. 'But under the circumstances all I can do is leave at

once, and apologise for my intrusion.'

She picked up her rucksack from the sofa and walked towards the door, but

he stepped away from the desk and into her path.

'Just a minute,' he said peremptorily. 'It isn't quite as simple as you seem to

think. Just what did you hope to gain by coming here like this?'

'Very little,' she said wearily, her head bent. Her hands were clenched tightly

round the straps of her rucksack, the knuckles showing white. 'Just a few feet

of storage space, that's all. I see now of course that it was too much to ask of

strangers. It was just that I've never—thought of the people in this house as

strangers.'

'How very appealing,' he commented cynically. 'What a pity you didn't take

the trouble to write or telephone in advance of your arrival. You might have

been spared a difficult journey. And for the record, I'm not convinced by this

cock and bull story of yours. It's just unfortunate for you that giving refuge

to waifs is no longer among our family failings. And you have your mother

to thank for that.'

Morwenna lifted one shoulder in a shrug of resignation. 'Believe what you

want,' she said shortly. 'But what I told you happens to be the truth.'

'Come now, Miss Kerslake.' The cynicism in his voice deepened. 'Are you

trying to tell me that it never once crossed your mind that there might be a

home for you here?'

It would have been wonderful to lift her head and damn his eyes and fling his

insinuations back in his mocking face, but she couldn't lie, not even to save

her own face. Half- truths had got her into this mess, after all.

'No,' she said at last very quietly. 'I can't deny that it did cross my

mind—briefly, once.'

As she spoke, she glanced up and saw an odd look cross his face, as if her

admission had surprised him. But why should it have done? It was after all

only what he had been waiting to hear, she thought. She gathered all her

resolution and moved forward again towards the door. He made no attempt

to get out of her way and she had to walk round him to reach it. As she

reached for the knob, the door suddenly swung inwards and she stepped

back, unable to repress a little cry of alarm.

'Hell's bells, I'm sorry.' The young man standing on the threshold gave her a

swift look of concern which swiftly and overtly changed to one of

admiration. 'Did I knock you? I just had no idea that you'd be standing there.

I thought Dom was alone, you see, and.

'The young lady is just leaving,' Dominic Trevennon said in a voice as bleak

as a winter's gale.

'Really?' The newcomer made no attempt to hide his disappointment. 'That's

too bad. Are you staying in the neighbourhood?'

'Only as a temporary measure. I have to get back to London.' Morwenna did

not look at Dominic Trevennon to judge the effect of this deceptively defiant

little speech. She was frankly shattered at the thought of having to go out

again into this stormy night to find somewhere to stay. If she was honest

with herself, she had counted on being offered a night's shelter at

Trevennon. She had not wanted to eat any further into her small savings. She

reflected despondently that this trip to Cornwall was likely to prove one of

the costliest impulses of her entire life, not merely in financial terms either.

Her confidence and self-respect had also taken an unexpected battering. All

she wanted to do now. was to get away from this big dark house and the

harsh insensitive man who dominated it and lick her wounds in peace. She

needed desperately to think too, to consider some of the unpalatable facts

that she had been presented with. Her mother, it seemed, had created a