The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (5 page)

“Damon?” I echoed, puzzled.

“Damon did not fetch her,” Susannah said with a trace of malicious relish. “It was Roger. Hadn’t Papa told you?”

Silence. Instantly I comprehended the situation. Damon Penwyth had been meant to bring me home, ostensibly to present a favorable impression on the visiting heiress and to have a few private moments together. But somehow the plan--cooked up well in advance by the two sisters--had not gone as Lady Penwyth had wished.

I expected her to flush with mortification. Instead I was surprised to find her face white with shock . . . and anger.

“Roger!” she repeated through stiff lips. “You were brought home by Roger?”

“She was,” Susannah supplied.

Lady Penwyth’s mouth worked soundlessly.

“I was given to understand that Sir Grover interposed to Mr. Roger Penwyth, as he was already going into St. Ives on business. He was most kind and . . . and prompt,” I finished diplomatically.

Lady Penwyth recovered swiftly. “Sir Grover asked him, is that so? Well, it is of little importance. You are here at last. Ah, Jenny, is Miss Eames’ room ready? Pray bring her some cool water too.” Lady Penwyth rose, and I followed her up. “You will wish to rest. Jenny will fetch you for supper at four o’clock--Sir Grover insists we keep country hours at the Hermitage. Until then.”

Another kiss, and she gave me a little push towards an astonishingly pretty maidservant with feline features and thick, ugly hands who stood waiting by the doorway. I picked up my birdcage and thankfully made my way out of the room. My body ached to stretch out on a bed and the grit of exhaustion weighed my eyelids.

As the door closed behind me, I could hear Lady Penwyth’s voice raised in a squawk of fury, and Susannah’s defensive answer. But I was too tired to tease out the import of that conflict. All in the world that mattered was the heavenly prospect of a nap.

CHAPTER FOUR

With a start, I awoke.

I stared about me in puzzled fright, my surroundings unknown to me. The dim heat seemed to close about me, leaching the air from my lungs, and the dew of sweat soaked the pillow beneath my head. Then I saw Pretty Peter hopping about his cage, his flutters illuminated by the waning light of the sun, and I felt the world righted.

The branches of an elm rattled against the window. I ignored the call as I pushed out of the comfortable bed. My shift clung to me, damp with the sweat of a good nap. Stretching stiff joints, I began to search the room for my trunk, did not find it, and began to panic. I could not go down to supper wearing my crumpled travel gown.

Another turn about the room brought me to a wardrobe I did not notice before. There I found my brocaded silk mantua and beaded stomacher hanging pressed and freshened, the very thing I had thought to wear to my first supping with the Penwyth family; my embroidered shoes were stuffed with an herb sachet to keep the perfum’d leather sweet. Opening the drawer of the dressing table, I found that my ivory comb and hairbrush had already been put away next to the pocketbook I had carefully purled with a complicated web of ivy leaves. A pretty painted box held my tiny collection of jewelry.

I giggled. It was something, then, to be treated as an honored guest instead of an afterthought. I had not thought I would like being fussed over by servants, for Sarah Eames considered the new fashion of excessive fawning to be poor economy, and I was too much the Northerner not to be concerned with thrift. But the servants at the Great House had often pretended I did not exist, or made warding-off signs as I passed them by.

My jaw firmed. Things would be different here. Cornwall marked the start of something new; and despite the incident at the posting-inn, I would make every effort to be ordinary. I wanted so very much to be ordinary.

I deliberately turned from the elm now angrily lashing the window to get my attention.

At the nightstand, cool fresh water brimmed in the jug. A thick towel had been placed carefully alongside the basin with a bottle of rosewater. Happily I bathed, dabbing my breasts with the luxurious rosewater, and just as I was wondering how I would have my stays laced, heard a tap.

I shot a baleful look at the elm, but saw that it had subsided. Another insistent rap pummeled the door.

Susannah poked her head in at my invitation. “Mama sent me to fetch you. We sup in a quarter of an hour.”

“Thank you.” I smiled shyly at her. “Will someone be along to do up my laces? I can manage everything else but that.”

“I’ll do them.” She strode in boldly, bringing a faint scent of the stable with her. Turning me briskly and taking my stay laces in her capable hands, she gave them a yank.

“Good lord, you’ve a meager figure,” she commented.

“I prefer the term willowy, so much more elegant, don’t you think?”

My feeble humor failed, for she grunted in reply and pulled the laces again with renewed relish. I felt my ribs crack, and squeaked a breathless thanks.

Mercifully she stepped back and studied me with a critical eye. Her own dress was a pretty striped jonquil of a shade of green that set off her milky complexion, but she wore the gown with as much carelessness as she did her old riding habit. Faint crescents of sweat had already begun to darken under her arms.

“Don’t know what Damon will make of you,” she remarked. “Aunt Sarah gave us quite a different impression of you in her letters.”

“Oh? What was that?”

Color suddenly bloomed in Susannah’s cheeks. “Nothing that was not complimentary, I am sure. She dwelt at length on your gentility and breeding . . .”

The unspoken import was that Sarah Eames said nothing about my lameness.

“Now you see that I am very ordinary,” I said lightly, glad to hear my voice steady. “Nothing too threatening.”

It was the wrong thing to say, of course.

The brown eyes went hard. “Nothing threatening at all,” she snapped, and stalked out of the chamber, leaving me biting my lower lip, and finally, wondering how to make my way to the dining room.

###

I found it by luck, and by following my nose. The scent of roasted joint and steamed greens brought water to my mouth, and I wandered down the hall until I heard Lady Penwyth’s upraised voice.

“No, no, no, Nanny, you’ve put the mackerel on the common serving platter. I wanted my willowwear.”

“Sorry, madame.”

“It is no fault of yours, but you are still untrained for serving. Oh dear, where is Jenny?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am. She be in the kitchen afore the joint came out.”

“Careful, girl, you’ve almost dropped the sauce! Well, it can’t be helped if she’s gone, I’ll have to have Cook administer the strap when she does show up. Do your best, Nanny, and pray don’t break any of my good china.”

I did not know if I should pass by the dining room and wait in the parlour, for I knew Lady Penwyth would not want me to hear her reprimanding the staff, but at that moment Lady Penwyth rustled forth and nearly collided with me.

“Good gracious, Miss Eames! The meal has been set back ten minutes. Damon has just ridden in and he’s upstairs making himself presentable. Will you join me in the parlour? You’ve yet to make the acquaintance of Sir Grover.”

“Of course.” My midsection pitched at the mention of Damon Penwyth, and the delay in our meeting had set up the highest anxieties.

Lady Penwyth guided me to the blue-swathed room where I made my curtsy to a slim, distinguished gentleman wearing a subtle peruke and features marked by the cunning wariness of a man of business.

“Miss Eames, pray forgive the mistake at the posting-inn,” he began in a soft, controlled voice as he handed me a measure of madeira sherry. “I understand from my wife that I upset her plans to have my son fetch you.”

“It was no such thing,” Lady Penwyth protested coolly, despite a flush staining her exposed chest above the froth of expensive gilt lace. “Though I was surprised to learn that you sent Roger in Damon’s place.”

“I sent Roger because I could not find Damon,” Sir Grover replied, deliberately studying the amber depths of his glass before he took a precise sip. There was that in Sir Grover that made me think he did not do anything without reasoning out the end results seven times over. Without knowing why, I braced myself when he picked off a miniscule bit of cork floating on the top of his sherry.

“Besides,” he continued, “Roger offered.”

The cabochon ruby of his signet ring flashed sumptuously, and, clenching my jaw, I shut my mind against it.

“But why allow him to go at all?” Lady Penwyth gripped her fan until the whites of her knuckles showed. “The porter would have done just as well. If Roger insisted, you know that he has some ulterior purpose behind the courtesy--”

“There was nothing sinister about it,” Sir Grover said with a level look at his wife. “The task was at hand, and he fulfilled it.”

“Well, what’s done is done, I suppose.” Lady Penwyth sent me a serene smile that could not quite hide the anxiety lurking in her eyes.

“And as Miss Eames can tell you, Roger lacks something that our son possesses in overabundance.”

“What would that be, Father?”

My head whipped up at the ironic male voice coming from the doorway.

Sir Grover smiled faintly into his glass. “Charm, my boy. What else? Come here and mend your first offense to our guest, and pray that she forgives you.”

“I shall endeavor to make sure she does,” the voice purred. Hardly daring to lift my eyes from my twisting fingers, I pasted a smile on my lips and raised my head. A sob of fear, or hope, or hysteria caught in my throat.

Damon Penwyth lounged with his back against the doorjamb, regarding me with amused laziness as if he knew it would not matter what my first impressions would be, he would overcome them in the end if he chose. His hair, a darker shade of his sister’s fiery locks, fell over his shoulder in a neat queue, while two curls upturned at his ears gave his handsome face sophisticated dash.

He pushed off the doorway with his shoulder and sauntered toward me, a smothered smile deepening dimpled creases in his cheeks.

“Do you forgive me, Miss Eames, for allowing my cousin the pleasure of fetching you from the posting house? Roger’s a brute, as my father has said, but far more dependable than I.”

Shoes with jeweled buckles made a soft click over the carpet as they moved him closer.

My mouth had dried so that the conventional, “of course,” came out as a croak.

“But then,” Damon went on as if I hadn’t attempted to answer, “You’ll find that I am much more amusing than my cousin, which I hope will repair any affront. It makes up for the defect of losing track of the day, which is a great fault of mine.” He picked up my limp hand with a spill of a lace cuff, and bent over it. “As you will soon learn.”

Damon’s topaz-colored eyes roamed over me knowingly and I felt my insides tip.

Sir Grover exchanged looks with Lady Penwyth, and she visibly relaxed.

“Damon, there you are.” Susannah swished into the room, snatching her skirts away from the furniture with impatient energy. “I thought you were in the sunroom; I waited for you there. What did he--?”

“Susannah, is that how I taught you to enter a room?” Lady Penwyth snapped at her daughter. Susannah halted her headlong plunge toward her brother, flushing an unbecoming purple. She shot a sideways glance at me on the divan, my hand still in Damon’s.

“I . . . no, Mama. That is . . . Nanny begs me to tell you that the table is ready.”

Lady Penwyth smoothed her hair and rose. “Then shall we go in? We are usually very informal at supper, Miss Eames, so you will forgive my children for behaving as if they had no breeding or manner about them.”

“Oh we’ve got the breeding, Mother,” Damon remarked behind me as I was led, waist encircled, by Lady Penwyth to the dining room. “But manners change like fashion, and right now it is fashionable to act like rusticates. Ain’t it so, Father?”

“Oh, I think you’re well-versed in knowing when to exhibit your breeding and when to hide it,” Sir Grover murmured.

Something flashed in Damon’s eyes, and his grin briefly lost some of its elasticity. When I found the courage to look up again, he was sitting opposite me at the dining table. His unrepentant smile widened as he caught my glance, and I felt a hateful blush staining my neck.

The joint oozed savory juices, and the mackerel potted in blood flaked tenderly off the bone. A cornucopia of seasonal fruit, grapes, peaches, currants, and an exotic orange erupted out of the centerpiece, while Sir Grover’s stock of burgundies flowed lavishly. The table was set in good style but the food all tasted like ash in my mouth. I knew that Damon Penwyth had seized my heart, utterly and completely, and it had taken him less than three minutes.

CHAPTER FIVE

As the meal progressed, I learned, after a good bit of sifting, that Sir Grover was heavily invested in tin mining, and that his mine--Wheal Kitty--was so successful that it almost entirely funded his last election attempt on the Whig ticket.

“And how many miners do you employ, Sir Grover?” I asked, having only the dimmest inkling regarding our kingdom’s political divisions.

He paused in pulling the mackerel’s spine out of its back. “Now that
is
an interesting question, Miss Eames, and my answer is that I’m not exactly certain. My agent sees to it. Hundreds, I should imagine.”