HIGH TIDE AT MIDNIGHT (12 page)

condone it.'

'So you'll stay?'

She was startled by the eagerness in his voice. She spread her hands in a

negative gesture. 'Well, only for a little while longer. I have a train to catch

and…'

'No,
no.' Nick Trevennon dismissed trains and their timetables with a testy

shake of his head. 'You misunderstand me. I want you to stay here, child.

You have nowhere to go, no definite plans—you admitted as much to my

nephew last night. I want you to consider Trevennon as your home.'

'Oh, no!' Morwenna's hand strayed to her cheek in pure horror. 'I couldn't

possibly do that.'

'Why not?' The weariness and pain had gone from his eyes now. They were

keen and piercing beneath the grizzled brows*

'For all sorts of reasons.' She tried to steady her voice. 'For one thing, your

nephew dislikes me. He wouldn't want me here, I know.'

Nick Trevennon laughed. 'One of the compensations of being an invalid is

that one's whims are pampered in a way that never happened when I was

well,' he said. 'If I want you to stay, there will be no arguments from

Dominic. If his attitude has upset you, you must make allowances. His

opinion of Laura was much influenced by that of his parents.'

'But that's not all,' Morwenna said hastily. 'I—I really do need to get a job. I

have to support myself. I'm not a charity case, however well-meant the offer

might be.'

'Who's talking about charity?' Nick Trevennon barked. 'And there is a job for

you. I need an assistant to help me with my Trevennon chronicles.'

'But I have no secretarial experience whatsoever,' Morwenna protested.

'You can write, can't you? That's all I ask.' He lifted his right hand from his

lap with difficulty. 'I'm recovering some use in my hand, but I can't hold a

pen yet, and my attempts to write with my left hand have been ludicrous. I

need someone to write to my dictation, and you would be more than capable

of that. The typing of the manuscript is immaterial at the moment. If and

when the book is finished it can go to a woman in Port Vennor who does

typing at home. Now, what do you say?' He saw her hesitation, and added,

'My dear, you would be helping me so much. Not just in a practical way. But

don't you see, I could begin to put right the wrong I did Laura all those years

ago. Be generous, Morwenna. Help me to live at peace with myself, after all

these years.' He paused again, and when she was still silent, added, 'Perhaps

it still isn't too late—even now—to put things right, and find out the truth.'

It was blackmail, and she knew it, but blackmail of the most potent kind. If it

could only be possible, she found herself thinking, to clear her mother's

name and see the Trevennons grovel in apology when the truth came out. Or

one Trevennon at least, if she was totally honest with herself.

She said quietly, 'Very well, Nick, I'll stay. But only until the chronicles are

finished. Then I must go, whether the truth has emerged or not.'

'Agreed.' He extended his left hand and she put hers into it.

After a moment he said gruffly, 'Don't imagine this is going to be a sinecure,

child. I don't take kindly to being almost helpless, as you'll find. This is one

of my better days. You'll find me a hard taskmaster.' He cleared his throat.

'Now send Inez to me, so that I can tell her the change in arrangements. I

shall rest until lunchtime, but come here to me once you've had your meal

and I'll start you off on some background reading.'

She was halfway down the stairs when she suddenly thought, 'My God, what

have I done?'

And as if to lend emphasis to her misgivings, Dominic Trevennon came out

of his study and stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at her.

'As soon as you're ready, Miss Kerslake,' he said, "I'll drive you to

Penzance.'

'I'm not leaving,' she said, and was amazed to hear how steady her voice

sounded. Thank heavens he would never know that her insides were

churning and her legs felt like jelly.

'I beg your pardon?' His tone was blank, but his brows were already drawing

together in one of those thunderous frowns.

'Your uncle has asked me to work for him—in a temporary capacity,' she

said. 'He needs someone to get his notes on the family history into proper

shape for the typist. So I shan't be leaving just yet.'

'My God,' he muttered, his voice sinking almost to a whisper. 'You

scheming, conniving little bitch!'

She shrugged with an insouciance she was far from feeling. 'Sticks and

stones, Mr Trevennon,' she said. 'After all, this interview with your uncle

was your idea, don't forget.'

'I'm not likely to forget—anything,' he said. His eyes skimmed over her

contemptuously. 'Well, you've seen the house, Miss Kerslake, and no doubt

in the next few weeks you'll see what's left of the estate and the boatyard. I'm

afraid you won't find the pickings quite as good this time around. I can't

think of anything you'll be able to take with you when you leave.'

There was her mother's good name, she thought, and the reflection brought a

confident smile to her lips.

'Can't you, Mr Trevennon? I can.'

He looked at her incredulously for a moment, then his head went back and

his brows lifted in the sneer she detested so much.

'So that's it? You're like a chameleon, Miss Kerslake. I can't keep up with all

these changes of role. From waif to old man's darling in a few easy lessons.'

For a moment she looked at him uncomprehendingly, then his voice went

remorselessly on. 'You really mean to begin where your mother left off,

don't you? An elderly man's loneliness—sentiment for the past—anything's

grist to your mill, isn't it? Tell me, Miss Kerslake, will you too jib at the

actual wedding ceremony, or don't you have any qualms about selling your

body to a man old enough to be your father?'

She took two shaking steps down the stairs and her hand lashed out to meet

the side of his face in a stinging slap with all the weight of her arm behind it.

As soon as she had done it, she stood stricken, half expecting that he would

retaliate. Oh, why had she let his taunts get to her? When her mother's

memory was vindicated, she could have made him eat every one of them

instead of losing her temper like a silly schoolgirl.

The marks of her fingers were already reddening on his cheek, she noticed.

Wretchedly, she made her eyes meet his.

'I'm sorry,' she said, aware how inadequate the words sounded.

'You will be,' he said very softly, in a way that was somehow more alarming

than plain anger would have been. 'Oh, yes, Morwenna, you'll pay dearly for

that, and for everything else. And that's a promise.'

He turned on his heel and walked away down the hall. The front door

slammed behind him, and after a minute t>r two Morwenna heard the sound

of a car engine being revved and then fading in the distance as he drove

away.

She expelled a long trembling breath, then sank down on the bottom stair,

resting her cheek against the carved newel post. And again a voice inside her

asked, 'My God, what have I done?'

THE next few days passed in such a fever of activity that Morwenna was left

little time for introspection, and for this she was grateful.

Nick Trevennon had not been exaggerating when he had described himself

as a hard taskmaster. After the solitary lunch that Inez had served to her in

the dining room that first day, she had plunged willy-nilly into the past of the

Trevennon family, a subject which she found much easier to contemplate

than the immediate present. She was amazed at the amount of background

research that Nick had managed to carry out prior to his stroke. Photographs

of ancient church records, reference books and original documents from

various periods jostled for attention on the big littered desk and Morwenna

decided that priority must be given to getting this mass of material into some

sort of order. Nick, she discovered quite early on, had a habit of demanding a

particular book or document and reacting sourly if it did not immediately

come to hand.

Much of the earliest family history—and there had been Trevennons in that

part of Cornwall, she learned, since early Tudor times—had already been

chronicled by succeeding generations and many of these records still existed

in crumbling leather-bound books with fading and almost indecipherable

brown writing. But many of the best known legends, Nick informed her, had

been handed down by word of mouth, and had lost nothing in the retelling.

And among these, apparently, was the story of her namesake Morwenna, but

when she asked Nick, intrigued, to tell her more, he merely looked

mysterious and murmured that she would hear it 'all in good time'.

In many ways, she found, life at Trevennon seemed to revolve round two

different households, the only link between them being Inez and to a smaller

extent her husband Zack. Morwenna had frankly dreaded the idea of having

to meet Dominic Trevennon at mealtimes, and was thankful that this proved

unnecessary. The Trevennon brothers seemed to breakfast at a very early

hour. At any rate they were always finished and gone by the time she came

downstairs. Generally she lunched with Nick, and had her supper on a tray in

her room. Inez had made no demur about this when Morwenna had

tentatively asked if it could be so. Indeed, she rather embarrassingly seemed

to enter into the spirit behind the request, telling Morwenna confidentially

that she was 'not to worry her head. Mr Dom would come round in time.'

Morwenna had toyed with trying to assure her that she had no desire for 'Mr

Dom' to be reconciled to her presence in any way, but it seemed more

dignified to pretend that she did not understand what Inez meant.

Each evening, when she was sure that Nick did not require her any more, she

went down to the big shabby sitting room at the front of the house, where

Inez had kindled a fire in the big stone hearth and read or listened to the

radio. Once Mark had joined her and she had welcomed his presence,

especially when the initial awkwardness between them had worn off. He

was only a few years older than she was and much younger than Dominic,

and he said frankly that he had been an afterthought on the part of his

parents.

'But they say second thoughts are always best, don't they?' he added,

grinning cheerfully.

Dominic, she was glad to notice, never came near the sitting room in the

evenings. He spent his free time in the study where she had been taken on

that first evening. She wondered sometimes if this had always been his

practice, or whether it was something new, adopted since she had come to

stay in the house, but she told herself that it was no concern of hers. As long

as Dominic Trevennon kept away from her, he could spend his time as he

pleased.

On the fourth morning she made her way to Nick's room after breakfast to be

told rather brusquely that he wouldn't need her that morning. A

physiotherapist was coming from Penzance to check on the progress he was

* making and put him through various exercises. He grimaced as he said this

and Morwenna guessed that he was in for an uncomfortable few hours.

He gave her a keen look. 'You look peaky,' he opined. 'I've been working

you too hard. It's not raining today. Go for a walk, get some air.'

It was far from an uninviting prospect. The weather over the past few days

had been uncertain, with grey skies and squally showers predominating, but

today the sun shone and there was the crispness of frost in the air.

'And keep away from the beach unless you check with someone about the

tides,' he called after her. 'The sea comes into Spanish Cove like a millrace.'

She promised to be careful and went downstairs feeling positively

lighthearted, like a child who has been unexpectedly let out of school. She

was filled with self- reproach at the thought. She knew she would only have

had to drop the slightest hint to Nick that she was becoming jaded and he

would have called a halt to their labours at any time. Bat she had not done so

because she was enjoying their work together, although it was altogether

different from anything she had ever tackled before. She felt a curious sense

of involvement, of kinship even with these early Trevennons with their

quarrels and their feuds and their carefully arranged marriages with local

heiresses that in some cases, Morwenna thought, were little more than

abduction and rape. Nick, it seemed, was prepared to reveal the whole

picture of the family's past, warts and all.

She had collected a sketching book and a box of pencils from her room on

her way downstairs, and Inez, on her knees wrestling with a recalcitrant plug

on an elderly vacuum cleaner, gave her an approving stare as she went past.