Trevennor’s Will, page 4
‘They’ll have to do until we get to Portreath,’ Nick said irritably.
Isabel looked down at her shoes as she stepped onto the iron-hard ground, glad she did not have to sacrifice them too. She made eagerly for the fire, holding out her hands to the flames which bent this way and that now the wind had picked up.
‘It’s freezing up here on the cliffs,’ she said to Charlie.
‘What do you expect in February?’ Nick snapped. He pushed past her, took the three steps in one leap, disappeared inside the shack and immediately reappeared carrying her bundle of clothing and wig.
‘What are you doing with my clothes?’ she demanded, trying to wrest them away from him. Nick raised them up out of her reach, his eyes travelling over her ears, wrists and throat.
Where’s all your jewellery?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘What have you done with it?’
‘I have only the ring my uncle gave me,’ she said, quickly hiding her hands under the shawl.
‘Give it to me,’ he ordered, thrusting out his hand.
‘No!’
Her protest was of no consequence. He pushed the clothes into Charlie’s arms, pounced on her, wrenched her hands from the shawl and pulled the ring off her finger. Spitting in fury, Isabel slapped his face.
‘Don’t you try that too many times!’ he growled.
‘What do ’ee want done with these then?’ Charlie said from behind the clothes, his hooded eyes twinkling as he gazed at Nick’s livid red cheek.
‘Throw them on the fire,’ Nick replied in icy quietness.
He stopped Isabel’s lurch towards Charlie by tightly holding her arms and she watched horrified as Charlie dumped her clothes on the ground and obediently threw her petticoat onto the flames.
‘My missus never wore none of this,’ he said, holding up her stays and shift in either hand.
Isabel was outraged at these men touching her intimate apparel; she felt as though they had violated her. ‘No! How dare you do this! Don’t you dare destroy any more. They’re all nearly new,’ she screamed, struggling to free herself from Nick’s grip and raking long nails across the back of his hand.
‘Never mind,’ Nick hissed into her ear, ‘you can buy a whole lot more with your inheritance – if I can keep you alive.’ He laughed when she called him a heathen, and seemed not to care when Charlie looked disapprovingly at him.
Nick knew he was going too far with his cruel behaviour but he could not help himself. Her continual outrage at his actions to protect her exacerbated the hatred he felt for her class, and added gall to the fact that he had no wish to be her protector. As the clothes burned, he let Isabel go and watched her unfeelingly while she grimaced as Charlie smashed the whalebone hoop and tossed the pieces into the blaze. The very air between Isabel and Nick seemed to crackle like tread on hoar-frosted ground.
‘What have you done with my ring?’ Isabel shouted at him.
‘Nothing yet. I’ll find a suitable hiding place or throw it over the cliff. I don’t want any evidence of your being… a lady, the same as I don’t want anything to show you have been here,’ he said, looking at the fire.
‘I see, and the ring which my uncle gave you?’ she asked pointedly.
Nick was angered by her tone. ‘I have no intention of selling it, if that’s what you’re getting at! The first opportunity I get I shall return it to its original place in Laurence’s bedroom.’
He suddenly snatched one of Isabel’s wrists and before she could execute a second slap across his face he grabbed the other to look critically at her fingernails and then the marks left on his hand. ‘Your nails are too long. Bite them off or I’ll do it for you. Your hands are too clean but I daresay they’ll get dirtied soon enough.’ He let her go and she stormed off a few paces and turned her back on him.
Nick looked at Charlie and held out a hand in friendship. ‘Thanks, Charlie,’ he said sincerely. ‘I’ll make sure you get your wife’s things back.’
‘’Tes a bit ’arsh, takin’ she across the cliffs, Nick. Can be an ’ard journey this time of year, ’twill be damned ’arder fur a lady.’
‘I know it sounds dramatic, Charlie, but after the coach accident I feel I must keep her out of sight until I can find out if Laurence’s suspicions about her safety were well-founded. If anyone suspects she’s still alive they’ll expect her to take refuge in an inn or comfortable cottage somewhere, travelling by road. The last place they’ll expect her to be is up on the cliffs.’
‘Aye, I s’pose yer right. Mind ’ow you go then.’ Charlie grinned impishly. ‘Both of ’ee.’
‘Please accept my thanks too.’
Nick had not expected this from Isabel and he stared at her again. She moved towards Charlie, her hand extended. With much embarrassment he wiped his dirty hands down the sides of his even dirtier breeches and gingerly shook the proffered soft hand.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked Nick, as if he was the lowest of servants.
He did not hide his hostility in the reply. ‘I’ve already told you, woman, we’re moving on to Crantock.’
‘My name is Miss Hampton,’ she said condescendingly, as if he was too stupid to have comprehended before that she should be addressed as such. ‘And how are we to get to Crantock?’
A look of gloating satisfaction crossed Nick’s face. ‘We walk,’ he said.
‘What? Crantock must be over thirty miles away!’
‘More like twenty across the cliff top,’ Charlie offered consolingly as he passed Nick a packed canvas bag.
‘The cliff top?’ Isabel looked wildly from one man to the other. Nick was gazing at her as if she was stupid. ‘You don’t really expect me to walk across the cliffs? They’re dangerous! And it’s nearly dark! We cannot possibly travel across the cliffs at night.’
‘We’ll manage,’ Nick said lightly. ‘And the sooner we start the sooner we’ll get there. A gentry coach is a rare sight and a damaged one is as good as a wrecked ship, the area will be crawling with people dismembering it and someone might come along this way to talk to my friend here about it.’
Isabel shuddered at the thought of the coach being pulled apart until nothing was left of it. She had heard many coloured tales of what the wreckers could do to a sailing vessel unfortunate enough to be swept onto the perilous shores. She had seen for herself, while out with her uncle, what a ship looked like after it had been done over. She had visions of a swarm of human ants carrying off even the smallest piece of the coach for firewood or trophy, and of the undignified treatment the four bodies they had left behind would receive, but her upbringing forbade her to show her distress.
‘Can we not hire horses and travel by road? I am an accomplished horsewoman.’
Nick would not have believed it if the words had not come from her own lips. Isabel Hampton looked the kind of lady who found half a dozen steps from carriage to doorstep overtaxing.
‘We couldn’t travel incognito that way,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m well known along the roads and villages. Folk don’t expect to see me with a woman holding me back and the moment you open your shrieking great mouth your voice would give us away.’
Not waiting for a response he threw the strap of the bag over his shoulder and bade Charlie farewell. Ordering Isabel to follow him, he started off walking east. Isabel stamped her feet, gave Charlie a look of helplessness and followed angrily in Nick’s wake. Charlie watched them, a cold wind beginning to snatch at his clothing. The same wind carried the sound of Isabel’s protests to him long after the warring couple had disappeared from sight.
Chapter 3
Edmund Kempthorne sat in his late uncle’s favourite armchair, slouched and content, before a roaring log fire in the parlour of Trevennor House. Wood smoke curled from the flames and filled his nostrils with a pleasant scent; he felt utterly satisfied with life.
He had removed the adjustable lectern on the chair’s worn leather arm, which Laurence had used for reading, and placed his own arm there in its stead, his hand holding a glass. Between sips of the excellent brandy, he triumphantly studied the finer aspects and ornamentation of the room. The furniture was all English, mostly walnut and made that century. The walls were covered with paintings and tapestries of Greek tragedies. On the mantelshelf and tables were several silver and bronze candlesticks and his aunt’s silver spoon collection. Edmund took in everything at his leisure. To the marble busts of his uncle and aunt on top of a bookcase he raised his glass and gloatingly drank to their ill health and its consequences. His gaze rested on the elaborate plaster overmantel of the fireplace, which looked as if it belonged in a much larger room.
The woven firescreen was put aside and lying behind it were two young bloodhounds. Not sharing the same contentment as the man who believed he was their new master, they glanced up at him often and nervously. Edmund had tried to put his feet on one of the dogs but it had moved out of his reach and the other dog had lain down fretfully beside it. Edmund had laughed heartily. He had had such good fortune today, no one, and especially not two humourless dogs, could upset him.
Daylight was shut out of the room by heavy black silk curtains, pulled across at every window to show the house was in mourning. Edmund had angered the servants by insisting myriads of candles be lit in the parlour so he could recline there; they believed he should be keeping a long vigil of prayer in the deathbed chamber at the side of his dead uncle. Edmund hated the dark, and he particularly hated death, but it was not for those reasons he felt no urge to mourn. He was delighted that Laurence Trevennor was dead.
Edmund’s sister came into the room and he held up his empty glass and grinned wickedly. ‘Get me a refill of the old man’s delectable untaxed brandy, sister dear,’ he said in his velvety voice, ‘and don’t look so miserable. I’m not grieving over our dear departed uncle, and with that silly flit of a girl from Truro being so conveniently killed on the same day, all of her fortune and,’ he opened his effeminate hands to encapsulate the house and its contents, ‘all of this is now ours. It couldn’t have worked out better if we had planned it ourselves. Our dreams have come true all on the same day. What more do you want, Deborah?’
‘Some civility from the servants in this house for a start, especially that Christopher woman!’ Deborah snapped, but it was sympathy she was looking for from Edmund, her chagrin was never directed at him. ‘They would do well to remember that they are our servants now and if they want to stay in our employment they should not speak to me like a lackey! It’s enough to bring on one of my headaches.’ She put the back of her hand dramatically to her forehead. Deborah thought mistakenly that such gestures gave her a delicate femininity.
‘Don’t worry, Debs, when everything is finally settled we’ll move to Truro,’ Edmund said brightly.
Deborah refilled Edmund’s glass, and helping herself to a small port wine she gave the bloodhounds a disapproving look as they scuttled away under a distant table. She sat down sedately in the chair opposite Edmund and rubbed her fingertips over her taut forehead. When no blinding pain threatened to materialize and spoil the afternoon, she smiled at her brother.
‘That’s better, Debs. Just think, no more freezing half to death in that garret of a cottage at St Ives. This is our life from now on.’ Edmund slipped even further down in the green upholstered chair with a look of sweet contentment on his deceptively handsome face.
Deborah looked at him fondly. At thirty-six she was four years his senior and from Edmund’s birth she had treated him as a doll-like creature to be played with and fussed over. Edmund had also been adored by their mother, the female servants and Laurence Trevennor’s wife, who could see no ill in him. Not unexpectedly he grew up taking it for granted he would be treated in the same way by every woman who crossed his path. With his soft brown hair, dark eyes, clean-cut features and ever-ready charming smile, he was rarely disappointed.
After their parents died, Deborah had pandered to his every need, but Edmund’s profligacy had quickly left them penniless. Deborah had not the face or disposition to secure even a second-rate marriage but she took up the offer made by an unwise middle-aged office clerk who believed he would further his position by marrying a kinswoman of the gentry. He would be the source of a regular, although small, income to the Kempthornes, and to the clerk’s horror, instead of him moving into their comfortable large house on the outskirts of the fishing village, they left it to be sold to cover some of their debts and moved into his cramped and austere cottage closer to the heart of St Ives.
Within a month of Deborah’s constant complaints of having to live at such close quarters to the hardworking fisherfolk, and realizing he would soon be bled dry of his humble savings, the lawyer’s clerk salvaged what he could and abandoned his wife, leaving her and her parasite brother destitute.
The couple spent the next ten years living on their wits and Edmund’s expertise at cheating at the card tables. The earnings of prostitutes contributed too; the women were happy to help keep him in fine wines, good food and fashionable clothes in return for introductions to wealthy clients. Deborah was fiercely jealous of any woman he was involved with but she found that if he was kept in reasonable luxury and did not have to lift a finger to work, she could manipulate the greater part of his life and keep him living with her.
She took pleasure at the sight of him now. Although they had barely kept their heads above water over the last few years she had always managed to pay Edmund’s tailor, a remarkably talented Jewish man who lived in a quiet street in Hayle. She liked to see Edmund well turned out. His natural elegance was evident even while he lounged in the chair. The silver-plate buttons of his full dress coat and waistcoat of indigo watered-tabby silk shone like stars in the candlelight. His linen shirt was graced by ruffles of needle lace, and the buckles on his shoes, won in a card game, were real silver.
Deborah had stinted herself and allowed the cottage to fall into a serious state of disrepair to enable Edmund to enjoy his excessive lifestyle. She attempted to look like a lady of fashion by having alterations made to cast-offs of wealthy gentlewomen, but nothing could soften her severe face or make her stout, big-boned body appealing to the eye. She wore a black saque-backed dress, altered so badly that the wide pleats falling from her broad shoulders at the back hung crookedly, giving her bulky form an off-balanced look. Her hair, muddy in colour and darker than Edmund’s with no glossy shine, was streaked with premature grey and piled high under a white lawn cap tied under her wide chin.
‘Yes, Edmund, we have been fortunate today,’ she said, allowing herself another rare smile. ‘We came here today to beg mean old Uncle Laurence to pay off one of your gambling debts and to lend us a few measly pounds, only to find that he had passed away peacefully just an hour before. Then we learn that the sole beneficiary under his will, Isabel Hampton, has also met her end in a tragic accident.’
‘You don’t look very tragic, Debs,’ Edmund observed, with a twinkle in his lazy eyes.
Deborah’s expression changed and her true nature showed itself in full venom. ‘Now things will be as they should have been years ago. The old man and that haughty miss treated us like dirt! Us! Their only relatives. Oh, St Ives was not good enough for the gracious Miss Isabel Hampton to visit us there. There was too much of a smell of fish for her high tastes. Well, she’s got what she deserved. Smashed on rocks and rotting in the sea! There won’t be any grand wedding next month for us to be overlooked at, to be paraded only as the poor relations. There will be no alliance with the Grenvilles of Falmouth for her to boast about while we slowly waste away unprovided and uncared for.’
‘She always seemed a delicate little thing to me,’ Edmund said thoughtfully. ‘A little taller than the average woman perhaps but I thought it added something to her proud bearing. I liked that about her, that and the way her body moulded its way deliciously in and out.’ He moved his free hand in a slow figure of eight, picturing it wandering over Isabel’s body.
‘Really, Edmund.’ Deborah had never liked his indelicate talk.
‘I planned to take her one day, hopefully while still a virgin. It would have been exquisite.’
‘I can’t see why. In my opinion she was most unattractive.’
‘No virgin, especially no young virgin, is unattractive, my dear. Besides, after I had seduced her I could have demanded a pretty sum of money to be kept from telling Richard Grenville that he had married soiled goods.’
‘And what if she had not fallen for your fatal charm, Edmund?’ Deborah said tartly, but again the sharpness was not aimed at him. ‘That little bitch was too mean to give anything away.’
‘I daresay I could have got round her for a tidy allowance every year. She probably wouldn’t have wanted to live in this house, not with a huge residence at Truro and the home Grenville would have provided for her. I’m sure she would have allowed us to live here.’
‘You are being too kind to our cousin’s memory, my dear,’ Deborah demurred. Your charm may not always get you what you want. Let’s not forget that it did not make much impression on Uncle Laurence. He was very cruel to you, disapproving of you having a game or two of cards. You were born a gentleman, what else did he expect you to do with your leisure hours? Most of the best of society play the tables. If he had had the goodness to settle a substantial sum of money on you and provide us with a respectable income, you would never have been tempted to keep on gambling to cover your debts.’
‘Mmmm, it is a pity I cannot play a false card occasionally in the grander clubs, but I could never get away with it like I can with the fools around St Ives. One has to be careful; the best of the professionals play in the grander places and some of them get very ugly if they don’t lose fairly.’
‘Quite so, but there is no reason Uncle Laurence should have disapproved of your owing money to an establishment such as Almack’s of London. Only the leading members of society are allowed in through its doors. Well, now we will be able to settle all our debts, rent out the cottage at St Ives for a good sum of money and live here in luxury, as two dignitaries of this little parish, until we can move up to Truro. That is where we belong, the place where the country’s fashionable people meet, an important coinage town and port. I can see us now, walking down its wide streets together. Let’s go there in a few days’ time, Edmund. We can see the shops, eat at the Red Lion Inn, mingle with those we are now equal to.’
