The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (4 page)

Gradually I realized that the room had fallen silent except for a few clinks of cutlery. My eyes flew open.

Roger Penwyth stood before me.

“Are you rested?” he asked without greeting. “The cart is ready.”

I nodded and rubbed my eye to dash the sleepiness from it.

“Your maid will have to wait for a Hermitage porter to come fetch her. I have room in the cart for you only.”

“Oh, she is to return north with the conveyance. I don’t have a maid.”

“Is that so?”

I opened my mouth to explain further, that my stepmother thought a native girl selected by her sister would suit me better, but he had already turned away toward the door.

I saw it as I rose to follow him.

A collective spitting from the group at the fireside, and the furtive jabs of a warding-off sign. The blood to my heart turned cold. Had I been found out already? Had Hazel betrayed me? How,
how
had they found out?

Quickly I followed Roger Penwyth out of the silent inn, noticing that the other patrons carefully kept their attention on their mugs or pipe bowls. As I stepped out into the bright sunshine, a bee-like murmur rose in my wake.

I stole a glance at him. Had he seen me cursed as a witch by those who lived closest to the land and the twilight edge of death? They always knew, of course.

Roger’s adam’s apple bobbed once up over his neckcloth as if his throat hurt.

“It’s this way,” he muttered without meeting my eye, striding away and leaving me to struggle with my birdcage, my carpetbag, and a prayer that I would be allowed to slip away unmolested.

###

Roger ungraciously settled me into the front seat of an open waggon laden with burlap bags filled to splitting. Then he leaped lightly into the seat next to me. I clamped my hands under the board to keep from edging away from him. The black-splashed white horse had been tied to the back end, left to trot behind us.

I looked over my shoulder. Hazel was standing in the middle of the yard, staring at me with an expression of sour relief. Behind her, Coachman Bobbet spat into the dust.

I lifted my hand to her in assurance. I hoped that she would give my stepmother a favorable account of my mature comportment during the journey. Roger clucked to the horses; we rattled away and like that the door to the past shut.

My muscles immediately protested the renewed jarring. I bit my lip and clutched Pretty Peter’s cage more firmly on my lap. “How long until we reach the Hermitage?” I asked tentatively after a few silent minutes. I knew better than to ask about his ride on the cliffs overlooking St. Ives.

No reply. My companion stared moodily over the horses’ ears out to the browned scrub lining the lane, twisted by the wind and poor soil to form tiny lumps on the scoured dirt.

I cleared my throat, ignored the thin cries of struggling vegetation, and repeated the question. He turned his odd light eyes on me, and I immediately regretted it.

“Not long,” he replied after an interminable moment. “Two hours or so.”

“Two hours,” I echoed faintly, and we fell into silence once more, broken only by the clop of the horses and the squeaking wheels.

Eventually Roger said, “The horses cannot go faster than a walk with this load. Coffee and cocoa are not as heavy as corn, but not so light either.”

“I see.” I did not know what to do with this sudden gush of information.

He slanted a look down at me through a thicket of gold lash. “You were perhaps expecting a red curricle drawn by a set of matched ponies? Damon Penwyth riding up like an Italian prince out of a horrid novel?”

“I wasn’t expecting anything,” I murmured.

The wound must have bled through my voice for an expression of something like regret flitted across his features; he turned back to his morose absorption of the road.

After a long while he said, “Sir Grover, my uncle, would have come to fetch you himself, but I offered since I was going to St. Ives anyhow upon business. The road to Lyhalis goes by the Hermitage, and it was of little inconvenience for me to do so.”

And would have been of much inconvenience to Sir Grover, I finished the sentence.

“Lyhalis? What is that?”

“My home.”

“That is a picturesque name for it. Is it Cornish?”

“Yes.”

The monosyllable crushed any attempt on my part to draw him into further conversation, and so I settled myself into another silent journey.

Pretty Peter drooped in his cage; I began to grow sick from the constant swaying of the waggon. At one point the horses strained forward in their collars as they climbed an incline. The scream of a gull split the creaking silence and a salty tang, carried to me on a gust of humid air, hit my nose. Suddenly we were at the edge of a cliff, the sea flying wide before us.

I could not help exclaiming. The sight filled me with excited pleasure. Water crashed over the cliffs below us, foaming creamy whorls onto the rock, and the clean wind cleared my senses. Out in the middle of the cove, a spire of rock pointed skyward like an uplifted finger.

I glanced over at Roger, who had drawn up the horses at my first exclamation. He, too, gazed out at the sea with pleasure; I thought I almost saw a smile pull at the corners of those sealed lips. He sighed and drank in the wind as I did.

“How beautiful,” I said, meaning it. “It almost makes it worth putting up with the ugly mines scarring the moors to see this.”

“I know. It takes one by surprise, every time. Even I. This little cove is difficult to get to except by boat, but the water’s as calm as a bath.”

“Oh, have you swum here then?” I asked, emboldened by what I would term conversation, but for Roger must be a near-confidence.

I immediately regretted the question. The pleasure ran away from his face, the shutter slammed in his eyes, and his hands tightened on the reins, causing the horses to toss their heads and champ.

“The Hermitage is over that rise,” he said coldly, and we started down the path.

I made myself small in the seat, wondering why I never failed to say the wrong thing.

###

At the fork, the horses swung to the left, carrying us down a path leading to a cluster of shuddering larches. The scent of the sea followed us into the wood, blending with the moist decay of leaves. I breathed deep, relishing the smell. After a week upon the road I was already sick for the feel of loam under my nails, and the mineral scent of growing plants.

Without warning the trees opened up into an unexpectedly wide expanse of emerald lawn, neatly scythed and rolling toward a manor house of good proportion.

“The Hermitage,” Roger said, and clucked encouragement at the horses as if the sight of the house signaled the end of an unpleasant task.

I studied the Hermitage with mingled trepidation and excitement. Graceful colonnades fronted the portico in a style of fifty years gone, and the two wings on either side of the main house were of more recent vintage, as befit a gentry family of improving circumstance.

Roger guided the horses to the back of the house and into a cobbled courtyard hidden from the elegant front. A modern stable of enormous proportion lined one end of the courtyard, and my heart lifted when I saw the edge of a garden begin at the other.

From the stable end of the courtyard, a woman on horseback caught sight of us, and urged her mount forward. It was a great brute of a chestnut, dancing impatiently under her with a ripple of muscle she effortlessly controlled. A veritable Diana, I thought. She wore a weather-stained riding habit of good quality, and russet hair straggled out from under a man’s tricorn hat. As she approached, almond-shaped eyes flicked me up and down appraisingly, and without volition I clutched my birdcage more tightly.

“And so this is Damon’s . . . our visitor,” she murmured, drawing her mount beside the stilled waggon. The chestnut cast a shadow over me. “You are come late with her, Roger. Mama had been expecting her two hours ago.”

“
She
was late,” Roger said shortly. “Move your animal away, Susannah. You know better than to crowd my horses, especially Avallen.” He jerked his thumb toward his magnificent spotted mare.

So this was Susannah Penwyth, the daughter of the family, someone whom Sarah Eames thought might extend me the hand of friendship. I looked up with a smile hovering around my lips, and there I let it die.

Susannah stared down at me coldly from the back of her horse. A receding chin and too-small mouth rendered her features rather ferrety, and though the freckles of a true redhead spoiled her complexion, her brown eyes were large and beautiful. Her expression exhibited a barely concealed hostility.

“I’m not in the habit of asking twice,
cousin
,” Roger said.

Susannah’s mouth pursed smaller in an unconscious stubbornness. Something flickered in the back of those almond eyes--apprehension? Fear? before she made an irritated sound and backed her horse.

Satisfied, Roger then leaped down from his seat and came around to me. He reached up and I nerved myself not to shrink from him.

He cocked a brow as if he read me all too clearly. I put my hands on his arms and allowed him to set me firmly on the cobbles. My legs shuddered, stiff and aching from the journey, and my foot was numbed. As Roger abruptly released his support, I stumbled.

He caught me from falling again.

“I am fine, well able to manage, thank you,” I said breathlessly, conscious of Susannah’s appraising eyes upon me. I took a brave step forward, found my balance, and then I made two determined strides away from Roger into the shade of the portico.

From the back of her mount, Susannah’s lips curved into a thin smile full of contempt.

Roger said, “Are you going to sit on your horse and watch, Susannah, or are you going to honor us with the merest of courtesies by fetching your mother to greet Miss Eames?”

A purple flush suffused her, and I braced myself for an angry shriek. Instead she swallowed, slid gracefully from her mount, and approached me.

“I have been unforgivably rude,” she said. There was a total lack of sincerity in her voice. “Come inside and rest. Mother is waiting for you, Miss Eames.”

“Persia,” I whispered through dry lips.

“Persia, then. Follow me.”

She disappeared inside. I turned to pick up my birdcage and to thank Roger, but he had already climbed back into the waggon, and without another word to me, flicked his whip. The horses jolted forward, the black-and-white horse stepped out, and he was gone without a backward glance. My trunk and oddments of baggage were left in a neat row on the cobbles.

Slowly I picked up Pretty Peter and followed Susannah into the welcome dark of the Hermitage.

###

I was led through a busy kitchen into a long hallway, cool and dim and soothing, with modern wall sconces hung every three feet so that at night the way would be comfortably lit. Susannah paused in front of a closed door, and scratched at it.

“Entrez,” came a female voice, and for one heartstopping moment I thought Sarah Eames sat on the other side before I remembered that the voice likely belonged to her sister. Susannah held the door open, stifling a snigger as I awkwardly limped past.

I found myself in a bright room, unexpected after the dark hallway, where a soft eggshell blue stained the walls, complimenting the deeper blue of the satin upholstered furniture picked out in gold thread and gilt. A filigreed Chinese vase had pride of place on the gleaming round walnut table dominating the room, while the scent of lemon and fading roses filled the air. The room was tasteful and beautiful, as was the woman who rose from her seat at an escritoire, laying aside her quill.

“Miss Eames, my dear, welcome.” Lady Jocasta Penwyth held her arms wide as she came to me, moving gracefully over the Turkish carpets, her passage muffled by the thick nap. She drew her cheek next to mine. “You look quite done in from such an appalling journey. Susannah, ask Jenny to bring in some refreshment. Sit here, Miss Eames, it is cool by the window.”

“You are very kind,” I said, and I meant it. Lady Penwyth possessed none of her sister’s brusque efficiency or her daughter’s coarse rudeness. The faint image of Sarah Eames’ features could be discerned in the face of her sister, but where my stepmother’s lines were sharp and shrewd, Lady Penwyth’s had been softened by comfortable living. Her fashionable gown draped her plump figure elegantly, and her brown hair, dressed simply but in good style, retained much of the gloss of youth. I saw little of the daughter in the mother, except perhaps in the expression of the eyes, slanting brown crystal orbs of rare beauty. Both pairs were sizing me up as the maid brought in a tray.

“I will only keep you for a moment, for you must go up and rest,” Lady Penwyth said as she handed me a glass of watered wine. “The roads past Truro are horrifying, and travel in this heat must have been oppressive.”

“It was hot, but not unbearable,” I answered, eager to set her mind at rest. “Mr. Penwyth was good enough to fetch me promptly.”

“That is a mercy,” Lady Penwyth answered. “The posting-inn at St. Ives is a rude establishment, a gathering place for miners and all sorts of raffle. I am glad Damon did not leave you there for long.”