Robert, on the other hand, was very different. For one thing his hair was inexorably sandy, instead of being deep auburn like Elaine’s, but his temperament was far more unassuming than his sister’s, and he took the day-to-day running of the stables far more seriously than she did, although ironically, Elaine was a spectacularly better rider. But then, Morgana thought, she did not have his patience with beginners.
For herself, she enjoyed Robert’s company. She liked him, and suspected that given time her feelings could become much warmer. Ever since the funeral, he had been assiduous in his attentions, sending her flowers, and phoning nearly every day. She was grateful for this, and a little relieved too, if she was honest. The Donlevens had always been charming to her, but she had been aware all the time in little ways that they felt Robert could do better for himself than the daughter of a country hotelier. Now that it was public knowledge in the area that, since her father’s death, the long-forgotten entail had come into force and that soon she and her mother would probably be not only penniless but probably homeless as well, she had wondered whether any kind of pressure would be exerted to persuade Robert to let their relationship slide.
If so, it clearly hadn’t worked, or had had the opposite effect, she thought, smiling a little as the image of Robert’s pleasant regular features and clear blue eyes rose in her mind. And of course he was the fair man Elsa had seen in the cards and he was going to propose to her and take her away from all this.
She was grinning to herself as she carried the tray into the drawing room, but the grin faded a little as she encountered the gaze of Miss Meakins, sitting bolt upright on the edge of her usual chair, clutching her knitting bag as a drowning person might clutch a lifebelt. Miss Meakins was elderly, and harmless, and Morgana felt sympathy for anyone whose life was a succession of cheap hotels, but she found Miss Meakins passion for attempting to be unobtrusive a trial. ‘Without wishing to be a nuisance …’ and ‘I wonder if I might …’ preceded even the most normal of requests and she seemed to spend most mealtimes in a state of permanent agitation.
A hotelier’s lot is not a happy one, Morgana thought grimly as she set down the tea tray.
‘Have you any idea where the others are, Miss Meakins?’
‘Major Lawson usually goes for a walk before tea,’ Miss Meakins said primly.
Major Lawson, Morgana thought, wasn’t daft. She and her mother sometimes wondered about him. They usually had two or three permanent guests each winter at Polzion House, but Major Lawson wasn’t in the usual mould at all. When his booking had originally been received, her father had been inclined to pooh-pooh his rank, saying he had probably been a clerk in the stores who had decided to promote himself after discharge. ‘Or a con man,’ he added cynically. But Martin Pentreath had been wrong.
Major Lawson was a tall, quietly spoken man, but there was an indefinable air of command about him. His clothes were not new, but their cut was impeccable, and the suitcases he’d brought them in were leather, and had been expensive. But in many ways he was an enigma. When pressed, he would talk about Army life, but he spoke in generalities with a certain diffidence. And he was a loner. Miss Meakins’ flutterings had not the slightest effect on him. He enjoyed walking, and he spent a good deal of time in his room, working on a small portable typewriter. He was very tidy about his work, whatever it was. They’d only found out about it by chance, through Miss Meakins—‘Not wishing to be any trouble, dear Mrs Pentreath, but the constant tapping … comes so plainly through the wall.’
Her eyes had gleamed with curiosity as she spoke, but it was doomed to be unsatisfied. Major Lawson had never volunteered why he spent several hours each day typing, and none of the Pentreaths were prepared to ask him. In the end Major Lawson was moved to another room, well out of earshot—to Miss Meakins’ secret chagrin, Morgana suspected.
Quite suddenly she knew she had to get out of the house for a while. It was ridiculous, because it was almost dark, and almost certainly raining, but she needed to breathe fresh air and be completely alone for a while. Since her father’s death, she had been rarely alone. Her mother had needed her and there were always things to be done, and at first she had welcomed this because it meant there was less time to think, and to worry and ask herself what she was going to do. But now, when there was so little time left for thinking and planning, she had to get away on her own for a while. It had been building up inside her all day, this need to be alone, to escape. That was why she had felt so restless earlier.
She flashed a brief smile at her mother as she passed her in the doorway. ‘I’m going out for a little while.’
‘Just as you please, dear,’ Mrs Pentreath responded.
Morgana went into the hall and on into the small cloakroom which opened off it. Her old school cape was there, and she swung it round her shoulders, pulling the hood up over her cloud of dark hair. As she re-emerged into the hall, the telephone rang, and she crossed to the reception desk to answer it.
‘Polzion House,’ she said crisply.
It was a relief to hear Robert’s quiet ‘Hello, darling. Just ringing to find out how everything went today. What’s he like?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. He didn’t show up.’
‘Well, that’s pretty cavalier,’ Robert was plainly taken aback. ‘Hasn’t there even been a message?’
‘Nothing at all. We’ve spent the whole day on tenterhooks, and all to no avail.’
‘I suppose he could have had an accident,’ Robert said slowly.
‘We thought of that.’ Morgana laughed. ‘And at this moment he’s breathing his last at the foot of Polzion cliffs. I wish he was,’ she added hotly.
It was Robert’s turn to laugh. ‘Darling, what a little savage you are! It’s a good job my respected mama can’t hear your fulminations.’
‘Meaning her worst fears would be fully justified?’ Morgana asked coolly, then relented. ‘I’m sorry, Rob. Your mother can’t help the way she is, any more than I can. And I won’t say anything shocking in front of her, I promise. I’m just a little uptight over this whole business, that’s all. And the atmosphere in the house is deadly at the moment—Elsa prophesying doom all over the place, and Mummy’s trying to be optimistic and see a silver lining in everything. I was just going for a walk when you rang.’
‘In the direction of the Home Farm?’ he enquired hopefully.
She sighed. ‘Not really. I do need to be on my own for a time. You understand, don’t you?’
‘I’ll try to anyway,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You know I’m here if you need me. Perhaps I could pick you up later when you’ve walked your blues off, and we could have a drink somewhere.’
‘Now that would be nice,’ she said. ‘See you.’ She was smiling as she put the receiver down. Robert was sweet, she thought, and she’d forgotten to tell him he was the fair man that Elsa had seen in the cards, but it didn’t matter. Gems like that would keep, and she would enjoy telling him later, over their drink.
As she went out of the house, closing the side door carefully against the gusting wind, Morgana wondered why she hadn’t considered going down to the Home Farm, because until Rob had mentioned it, it hadn’t even crossed her mind to do so.
Was she being totally fair to him? she wondered. He wanted to help. The phone calls proved that. He was kind and concerned, and he’d been furious when he heard about the entail, calling it a ‘load of outdated nonsense and prejudice’. And although she agreed with every word, it wasn’t what she wanted to hear right now.
Nor did she really want to hear him ask her to marry him, which she suspected he might do. If and when he proposed, she wanted it to be for the right reasons, and that was quite apart from the fact that