Page 23 of The Cornish Mermaid

Leaning back in the corner of the rattling coach, Kit regarded his ex-tormentor with the eyes of a boy who has become a man. Although Fitzwilliam had a good twenty pounds on him, he could take him now if he tried. Boxing, or swords, if necessary, but planting him a facer would be the most attractive prospect. Right on the nose. Oh, how he longed to do that, to pay him back for all the torment he’d suffered at his hands.

Fitzwilliam looked up from stowing his exquisite kid gloves in his hat. “Will you be staying at Ormonde for long?” he asked, making it sound as though Kit were visiting someone’s tiny cottage, not his ancestral home.

Unwilling to supply Fitzwilliam with any information at all, Kit shrugged. “I cannot tell. I may or may not. I have only to deliver Miss Lucas to my sister and they will be content.”

Fitzwilliam smirked, glancing across at Miss Lucas, who appeared to be sleeping. “With the temptations of your beautiful, but somewhat out-modishly caparisoned companion, I should imagine you’ll be staying a while.” He paused, upper lip curling suggestively. “I certainly would be.”

Kit dug his nails into the palms of his hands. It was the way the man spoke, as though implying he thought Kit would be staying just to try to seduce Miss Lucas and for no other reason. Clearly that was what Fitzwilliam himself would do if he had the chance, despite his scarcely veiled sneer at Miss Lucas’s clothing. Like father like son certainly applied to him. Kit had never liked Uncle Robert, and neither had his sisters.

An overwhelming urge to protect Miss Lucas from the Fitzwilliams of the world washed over Kit. Instead of reaching out and throttling Fitzwilliam, though, he said, “It will very much depend on my mother and sister, whom I’ve not seen for a number of weeks.”

Fitzwilliam smiled. Never had a man so neatly fitted the description of a rake. “And my lovely cousin, Ysella, how is she? It’s so long since I saw her. She was scarcely out of the school room then. She must be what? Eighteen now and ready for her first season? And if she’s as lovely as your mother, then she’ll be a rare beauty.”

How was it the man could make Kit so angry with everything he said? That by mentioning Ysella and his mother he had somehow besmirched their names?

“My sister does well,” he said, keeping his voice level, and determined not to give anything away. “But what about you? I heard you were still in the army, yet here you are?”

Fitzwilliam’s cold eyes slid sideways to rest on the apparently sleeping Miss Lucas for a moment. “The army and I have not yet parted company,” he said, a sardonic smile curling his lips. He tapped his thigh. “Sent back to England with a musket ball in my leg, but I’m quite recovered now. I’m to join a detachment of soldiers in the west country next week, to rout out the nests of free traders who seem able to run the gauntlet of the revenue men down there with far too much ease. Quite dull work for me, but a necessary duty.” He looked back at Kit. “I am at this moment on my way to visit my grandfather at Denby before heading west to my posting.”

It was good to have the heads up on the arrival of soldiers in Cornwall, although they might not be going anywhere near Nanpean, but Kit’s heart sank, nevertheless. Denby Castle lay a scant ten miles from Ormonde Abbey, which was how his long dead uncle had managed to seduce the young and impressionable Lady Elizabeth so easily. To think of his cousin, with his bad reputation with women, no, with everything, staying so close to not just Miss Lucas but Ysella as well, curdled Kit’s blood.

Fitzwilliam stretched himself out even further, seemingly oblivious to the reaction he’d caused in Kit. “If it’s all the same with you, old man, I’ll snatch a bit of shut eye for a while.” He smiled again. “I’ll be getting off the coach in Marlborough in the morning. Perhaps we should share a carriage?”

And with that, he closed his eyes and forestalled any reply Kit might have been about to make.

Chapter Ten

Morvoren

With the summer sun already climbing the sky, the coach at last rolled down Marlborough’s wide high street. Now here was somewhere Morvoren could recognize—to a degree—as she’d been here before as a teenager.

Kit, who had woken up a few minutes earlier, slid the coach window down and Morvoren peered out, brimming with curiosity as to how this town would look two hundred years before she’d last seen it.

Down the center of the street, a busy market was already mostly up and running. The stalls thronged with people in a variety of styles of dress from borderline smart to rough and ready. And the smells and calls of all manner of farm animals—pigs, geese, sheep, cows, and horses being the ones she could see—filled the air.

The coach rattled its way down the road on the right-hand side of the long marketplace to take a turn east along what would one day be the A4 trunk road. As the coach took the bend, and the road sloped downhill, the wise coachman slowed his horses to a walk on the slippery cobbles. Thank goodness.

In her corner, Loveday, who seemed to possess a cat’s uncanny ability to sleep anywhere and with any kind of noise going on, snorted and stirred. “Be we there?”

“We are indeed,” Kit answered, rubbing a hand over a chin much in need of a razor. “The Lamb at Marlborough. Another change of horses, but we will not be going on with the coach.”

Captain Carlyon, also somewhat bristly chinned, straightened his cravat and began putting on his gloves, so, presuming it the thing to do, Morvoren slipped hers on again as well.

Gloom descended momentarily as the coach squeezed its way under the inn’s low archway and into the large, flagstone yard. A moment later, the guard had the coach doors open and the step down.

Kit got down first and held his hand out to Morvoren. Having had little to eat and drink now for nearly twenty-four hours, she was beginning to feel a trifle wobbly, but she didn’t want him to know that.

Loveday followed, then the captain, and the guard busied himself in unfastening the straps holding the baggage in place. Down came the two trunks and Loveday’s rather threadbare bag, as well as Captain Carlyon’s smart trunk. And all the while this was happening, ostlers were unhitching the spent horses and fetching out their fresh replacements.

Now what? Did Kit’s mother and sister live somewhere in the town? Morvoren glanced at him for guidance, but he was studying his pocket watch with a frown on his face.

Captain Carlyon approached, his traveling cloak over his arm and his smart hat in one hand. He managed to look, despite the dark stubble on his chin, as though he’d come freshly from a comfortable night’s sleep. “Miss Lucas, perhaps you and Lord Ormonde would care to take breakfast with me?”

What? Who? Lord Ormonde? Did he mean Kit? Morvoren couldn’t help the questioning sidelong glance she sent Kit, and the sardonic smile returned to Captain Carlyon’s face. Although whether it was due to her confusion, or to getting one over on Kit, she had no idea. He held out his arm, an expectant look on his saturnine face. “Allow me to escort you inside.”

For a moment, she hesitated. She could take the proffered arm and let him lead her inside the inn with Kit left to trail in their wake. Or she could stand up to this over-confident young man who seemed to think he was God’s gift to women.

However, she was a twenty-first-century girl. “No, thank you,” she said, with as much cold force as she could. “I believe Lord Ormonde is pressed for time and we’ll be traveling on immediately.”