Witching Hour (3 page)

Polzion, and she sometimes could not contain a little surge of envy

when she heard Elaine talk so carelessly of skiing at Klosters, and

beach parties in the Bahamas. Nor did it help to feel, as she often

did, that Elaine intended her to feel envious.

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 deep in her bones she felt they didn't know each other well

enough yet.

Of course, it might be that they would never know each other well

enough. She and her mother might have to leave Polzion and go

miles away, and eventually, inevitably, the gap that she and Rob

had left in each other's lives would be filled with other people.

Journeys led often to lovers' partings as well as their meetings, she

thought with a little grimace. And 'lover' was a strong way of

describing Rob, although she enjoyed the moments she spent in his

arms. He was a normal man with all the needs which that implied,

but he was not overly demanding. He preferred to let their

relationship proceed steadily rather than sweep her off her feet into

a headlong surrender they might both regret later.

But if she went to him now, with all her doubts and her troubles,

he might interpret her need for comfort and reassurance rather

differently, and that would simply create more problems.

'And just now I have as many as I can handle,' she muttered

against the moan of the wind.

She buried her hands in the pockets of her cape, her fingers closing

round the familiar shape of her small pocket torch, and it was that

which decided her where to go for her walk. Her original intention

had been to follow the lane round, perhaps even as far as the

village, but now she knew she wanted the open spaces of the

stretch of moorland behind the house. Even in summertime, it

seemed bleak, the few trees bent and stunted under the power of

the prevailing westerly gales, but Morgana loved it, in particular

the great stone which crowned its crest.

It was an odd-looking stone—a tall thick stem of granite with

another slab balanced across its top. In some guide books it was

referred to as the Giant's Table, but locally it was known as the.

Wishing Stone because it was said that if you put your hand on the

upright and made a wish, and then circled the stone three times,

the top slab would rock gently if the wish was to be granted. At all

other times, of course, it was said to be immovable, but Morgana

had always thought that a really desperate wisher could probably

give fate a helping hand with a quick nudge at the cross-stone.

Sometimes she'd wondered if there had once been other stones

there, so that the hillside above Polzion had resembled Stonehenge

or Avebury, until people had come and taken them for building.

Yet it was intriguing that they had left this one, and she had asked

herself why often. Maybe it was because they sensed its power, or

more prosaically perhaps it was because the cross-stone had

proved more difficult to shift than anticipated.

Anyway, there it stood, like a mysterious signpost to a secret in the

youth of mankind, surviving the initials which had been carved on

it, the picnics which had been eaten in its shadow, and all the

attempts of vandals to dislodge it, squat and oddly reassuring in its

timelessness.

As she picked her way across the thick clumps of grass and

bracken, the wind snatched at her hood, pulling it back from her

head, and making her dark hair billow round her like a cloud. She

breathed, deeply. This was what she had wanted—the freshness of

damp undergrowth and sea salt brought to her on the moving air.

Rob would think she was mad if he could see her now, she

thought, stumbling a little on a tussock of grass, but then he hadn't

been born here as she had. In fact she'd often wondered what had

prompted his father to buy the Home Farm in the first place.

Perhaps under his rather staid appearance he was really a romantic

at heart, remembering the pull of the boyhood holidays he

mentioned so often. Certainly Morgana doubted whether his wife's

wishes had much to do with his decision. Mrs Donleven's roots

seemed firmly grounded in the Home Counties.