A Romance in Cornwall (A Wedding in Cornwall Book 7)

by Laura Briggs

  "So now it's my heart we're unlocking?" I said. "Is it the garden within you're envisioning?"

  "Hmmmm...more like a very cluttered attic," he replied. I pinched his arm.

  "What?" he protested, laughing. "You did ask."

  "I was hoping for something romantic in return. You know that — Mr. 'Key to My Heart.'"

  "Attics are very romantic places," he said, resting his cheek against my head now. "Full of the past, of mysteries, of hidden treasures. Great stories begin in them. They're not merely dusty storage places."

  "They're also where you hide the body in a mystery book," I replied.

  "There are no bodies hidden in yours," said Matt. "Only a great many fascinating and valuable things tucked away, which I have yet to uncover completely."

  That sounded more like it. I closed my eyes, wishing now that I had chosen the sofa instead of a chair. "Rowena told me you'd make a perfect hero in a romance novel," I said, nestling my head against his chest.

  "Did she?" He sounded mildly amused.

  "Mmhmm. She told me and Rosie that. Of course, Rosie agreed."

  "Very kind of her," said Matt. "And where did the three of you have this conversation about my vastly-exaggerated virtues?"

  "On the beach, when Rosie was looking for the dog. Have you seen him lately?"

  "Yesterday. I gave him half of my chicken sandwich. But I still couldn't catch him, even with bribery."

  "That was sweet of you," I said. "Rosie's so right about you."

  "Enough about Rosie and romance novelists," said Matt. "I'm only interested in what you think of me. I'll even prove it, if you have no objection."

  He nudged me over far enough that he could slide into the chair, too. His arms surrounded me as he suddenly pulled me onto his lap, and I let out a shriek of laughter in surprise. And even though it was far too crowded for both of us, I didn't have the slightest objection to this at all.

  This was the one thing I hadn't needed to miss in Seattle: Matt's strong arms and reassuring presence in my life. I was never luckier than when he insisted that I couldn't leave without him. And no matter where I found myself in the future, it would be with him, because he was the one thing I was sure I couldn't live without.

  ***

  "I haven't heard a peep from that room since yesterday," said Dovie. "She didn't touch her breakfast tray. Of course, she shouted a bit when I brought it — didn't want to be disturbed. And when she opened the door, I saw a disaster on the other side — books lying open, lots of crumpled paper."

  "Won't let you have a bit of a tidy, I suppose?" said Old Ned. He was having a bite at the fish and chips shop — a sandwich that I suspect was left over from last night's euchre match. But it was easier to give Ned a pint or a bite for free than to let him continually hint for one, especially since he never seemed to have the proper change.

  "Well, I should be off, I suppose," said Dovie. "Thanks again for the pasties, love," she called to Charlotte, who was busy dishing the next order.

  Crumpled paper and a short temper. This didn't sound good at all.

  At Cliffs House, I found Gemma huddled at the kitchen table before an open notebook — one that looked suspiciously like Rowena St. James's in style and color, I noticed. She was scribbling furiously, then erasing the lines every few seconds, a deep scowl on her face.

  "Good morning," I said, as I popped the sack containing my lunchtime 'oggy' into the refrigerator. Gemma looked up with a glare.

  "What’s so good about it?" she demanded.

  "Er ... it's sunny?" I said. "It's springtime? We have nothing to do except tidy the drawing room, and meet with Lady A about the upcoming benefit?"

  "Hmph." Gemma looked down at her notebook again.

  I exchanged glances with Michael, who looked extremely longsuffering as he cleaned his stovetop. I hazarded a guess that he'd been on the receiving end of Gemma's short temper, too.

  "Novel going well?" I asked, as Gemma's pencil scrawled a line furiously across the page.

  No answer. Writing apparently makes people extremely grumpy. I was glad now that I abandoned my journal when I did.

  With Lady Amanda's permission, Gemma had temporarily taken over Kitty's old work space, which was now strewn with all sorts of brochures for exotic and exciting locations. The Bahamas, Quebec, Sydney, Prague, and Paris among them. An open travel guide to New York City had lots of circled paragraphs, and there were printed pages from Wiki on Manhattan life and culture, from Wall Street to Broadway. Gemma was leaning heavily towards a foreign connection, I surmised from it.

  She spent her afternoon break with more of the same. She looked up at me as I was printing out a spread sheet for Lord William's files. "Have you ever been to New York, Julianne?" she asked. "Is it anything like ... well, like Seattle?"

  "Umm...once or twice," I said. I had attempted to see the ball drop at Times Square with Aimee one year in college — and had gone to a Broadway play with Matt while he was teaching in America. "But it's different visiting it as a tourist than living there," I said. "It kind of has its own culture. Most American cities are like that. You know, the way London is different from a place like Yorkshire or Liverpool, for instance."

  "Is it like the movies?" she asked. "You know. You've Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally?"

  It was and it wasn't, of course. But I wasn't quite sure how to explain that to Gemma, just as she could never quite explain real-life British cultural differences to me when I was confused. "You know how London isn't exactly like real London in the movies?" I began, using that as a starting point.

  "Yeah, 'course I do," she said. "They have the wrong accents loads of times. They're always having Brits do or say things nobody would really say. And they get slang and profanity wrong in loads of movies."

  "It's like that," I said, "in the movies about Manhattan. They tend to lose a lot of ... 'cultural nuances,' let's say. And they remove a lot of stuff that isn't exactly atmospheric, for the romantic ones."

  Gemma had been watching New York-themed romantic comedies lately, I knew; they had replaced Parisian ones like French Kiss the past few days.

  "What about dialogue?" she persisted. "You know, language, words. Do they get those bits right, at least?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "I'm sort of ... writing a bit of dialogue," said Gemma. "Just fooling around a bit, you might say. The characters are American, and I'm trying to make it sound authentic."

  Learning to Write was the title of one of the books on the desk. So was Write Out Loud! Tips for Better Dialogue. I was guessing that Gemma had ordered them this past week, too.

  "Let me read it," I offered. Gemma laid aside her pencil and turned her notebook around to face me. "Just those two pages," she said. "I was trying to create a bit of atmosphere, so I picked a deli. Delis are everywhere in New York, right?"

  A lot of them were closing now, due to expense and changing dietary habits, even the legendary ones — but I didn't want to point this out right away. "They were definitely a cultural staple," I said.

  "It's just some exercises," she said. "Practice, I mean. It's not part of my book, really."

  I glanced over the pages. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Gemma was wringing her hands a little, although she was trying to hide it under the desk.

  "Well," I said, taking a deep breath. "It's definitely very real. The subject, I mean. Maybe a little too real?" I sneaked a glance at Gemma as I stated this. "Maybe a little less about the weather and more about their feelings. Like why they always come to this deli, for instance. That might be a nice thing to throw in."

  "It is just for practice," said Gemma. "What about the rest of it? You know ... is it American enough?"

  I hesitated. "In places it is," I said, hedging a little.

  "It's loads different from our English, isn't it?" said Gemma, hopefully. "Those lines?"

  "You got some parts right. Definitely," I said. "Like 'you guys,' for instance. I don't know if they say it in New York
, but it's very American. And remembering to say 'in school' is really good."

  "I reckon some parts are still a bit wrong, though."

  "Not many Americans say things are 'brilliant' when they're good," I admitted. "In America, it basically just means smart ... or dumb, if you're being sarcastic."

  "So what else don't Americans say?" Gemma had her pencil at the ready now, poised to take notes.

  "Okay ... 'lovely' isn't used a lot, especially by American guys. And 'get your wiggle on' is a phrase pretty much no American would ever say. Especially the average guy." I racked my brain for obvious examples. "And a jumper is a 'sweater' in America...only girls wear jumpers. They're basically pinafores. And while 'ya'll' is very American, it's kind of ... southern American. New Yorkers wouldn't use that. Just go with the 'you guys' for that one. But not for people with advanced academic degrees, necessarily."

  "Oh," said Gemma, who was writing these down as fast as she could. "Anything else?"

  "You can say 'a coffee' here, for instance, when your hero is asking your heroine to go out for one, and that's fine. But you can also just say 'for coffee,' for instance, and it would sound American. Generally, a coffee refers to just the one you're getting, not necessarily the whole experience...or, like I said, it can mean you're going out for coffee, too. Maybe it's a regional thing? I'm not sure." I was making this too complicated. Every culture had a hundred speech nuances for even the simplest sentence, it seemed. How many were there in America, broken down state by state, city by town?

  "This is hard," Gemma said. Her page was full of notes, the pencil lines traveling from edge to edge.

  "Writing dialogue for another culture would be hard," I agreed. "Even for really successful writers. I mean, look how many bad English characters are on American television programs and books —"

  "Ugh. The worst," said Gemma, sticking out her tongue.

  "— and, honestly, there are a lot of pretty awful depictions of Americans on British TV, too," I said. "I don't think I could get England right, even after living here for two years."

  "So you're saying I won't be able to do it for America, either." Gemma sounded slightly deflated. "Especially since I've never been across the Pond. I thought maybe it would be easy, since there's so many movies and books ... and since you could answer my questions about it."

  "With practice, you'll be able to get some of it right," I said. "Readers on this side of the Pond don't always care about the little things that foreign writers get wrong about Americans. Or English people, for that matter. And a lot of American readers overlook the same kind of mistakes when they like the story, you know. It's fiction, after all. You're not trying to write an American's memoirs or anything."

  "But I want to get it all right," said Gemma, sighing. "I want to really impress readers, and make it seem real. I wish we had a writer's circle in the village. If there were lots of us, we could help each other out. Swap tips, and that sort of thing."

  "Why don't you start one?" I suggested. Gemma looked taken aback.

  "Me? I can't do it," she said. "I haven't the proper influence. Not like Lady A or you do," she said. "And you want the right sort for that circle — a bit brainier, with a sense of culture. Most of my friends aren't interested in that sort of thing, anyway. Not unless it involves free sweets."

  "You're brainy enough," I countered. "And you might be surprised how many of your friends secretly want to be writers." I remembered my friend Nate had once suggested that every human being secretly harbors the desire to tell a story on paper.

  "Or maybe a book club. That would help. Does anybody 'round here read American books? Or French ones?" she said. "Maybe I could talk to them."

  I suggested she try some online groups for readers and writers, or that she try putting up a notice at the lending library and see if anybody was interested in joining. By the time Gemma's break was over, she had already ordered two books on American dialogue, and one on European cultural quirks. Building a research library, she told me. "Just in case it becomes handy in the future."

  I left her busily rewriting her dialogue exercises as I collected my planner and went to meet with Lady Amanda. I thought about dropping a hint to her about the writer's club Gemma was so keen on, but I decided I should wait a few more days, just in case the rest of her dialogue exercises proved too disillusioning.

  "I can't wait to see the new novel," said Lady Amanda, who had lost interest in discussing the house's diary in favor of the topic of romantic novels, which was one of her favorites. "It's amazing that the village actually inspired a writer! And this after two years without a book — I was beginning to think Rowena St. James would never write another one. Not since critics thought A Heart in the Dark lacked the spark of her previous books, anyway. They were a tad harsh, I thought."

  "It was no The Lightkeeper's Heart," I conceded, "but it wasn't a bad story, really." I hadn't enjoyed it as much, but then again, I wasn't a dedicated romance reader. Not like my friend Aimee, who would never miss a St. James release.

  "Well, it might have had a teensy bit less fire than the others, but I still enjoyed it," said Lady Amanda. "I always think to myself, 'how do they come up with so many stories like that?' After all, someone has to meet and fall in love in every one of them. Or break up and reconnect, or coax someone else into a romance."

  "Fortunately, we don't have to worry about it," I said. "Just enjoy it." Although that didn't explain why I was worried before. I guess for the sake of Ceffylgwyn's literary debut ... and for my own remarks that inspired part of the story. It was as if my love for the village and the cliffs themselves was at stake in this venture, as if Rowena's success would prove the depth of my devotion.

  Deep down, I knew full well that it would be nothing like what Matt and I experienced, of course. Or the version of Kitty's story I related, or even a taste of Rosie's wild romantic past. It probably wouldn't even be a real Cornish village she depicted in the story, only a name and a few colorful details for readers. I knew it would really have nothing to do with us, or with anything at all except for Rowena's talent.

  Two people and a wide open space for them to fall in love. That was how Rowena St. James described it. So was that the problem with her story — Ceffylgwyn was too crowded for her storytelling style?

  "I wish I had met her. Then maybe I'd have a literary counterpart in her novel," said Lady Amanda. "Do you fancy the literary me as a ginger? Or do you think she'd be kind and make it auburn?"

  "I think maybe you should talk to Gemma," I said. "She's aiming for a more exciting tale — she would let you customize any number of personal details."

  "Maybe I can talk her into making me the heroine," said Lady Amanda.

  I wondered if I had worn that same smile when I pictured myself popping up in a romance story ... but Matt was right about me getting ahead of myself this time. I was nowhere near being immortalized in Rowena St. James's novel, as I was about to learn.

  ***

  Matthew sipped his coffee. "I was thinking it might be nice to visit Falmouth today," he said. "I'd like to see how the gardens are getting on in my absence. It's a lovely spot for a walk. Only it looks like rain ... so I suppose we'd best see a movie in Truro instead." He had spent the first week or two of our return looking after some heirloom specimens in a local historical garden, which was the place he referred to as our morning's destination. Now, however, he was changing his mind as he gazed at the view from Charlotte's pasty shop, where the sky was pearl grey despite our best hopes.

  "It might not rain," I said. "It can't be Cornwall's most drizzly spring ever. See, there's a little sun between the clouds." I pointed towards a little glimmer of light visible through the window, using a chip for my demonstration, one I popped in my mouth afterwards.

  It had been a drizzly morning, which was why we were having an early lunch at Charlotte's. Our Saturday shopping was in two sacks at Matthew's feet, mostly canned supplies for stews, soups, and Matt's tasty shepherd's pie. Charlotte to
pped off our coffee cups as I contemplated having one of her delicious jam pies. I had missed her pies in America ... and now that I was here enjoying them, I was forced to miss American doughnuts, just as Pierre the bake off judge had predicted.

  You'll always be missing something, I thought to myself. No matter where you are. Unfair, isn't it?

  The door to the shop burst open suddenly. "There's been an accident off the wharf!" The dripping figure of Andy, Gemma's boyfriend, proclaimed this as he stood in the shop in his wellies and rain slicker, his breath coming in short gasps from running. "A little sailboat took in a big wave."

  "What?" Charlotte nearly dropped her coffee pot. "Is anyone drowned?"

  "Nearly. That writer from the inn," he said. "Gone over the edge of the boat, and the whole thing's likely to go under if they can't tow it in. Wallace saved her — he wants Dennis and some of the others to see if they can haul in the boat."

  My own cup clattered into its saucer as Andy spoke. Had Rowena been hurt? Had she been alone out on the water? A choppy day like this — the sea was unpredictable, with even seasoned locals taking care not to miss even the slightest trick of either wind or waves.

  "I'll call him." Charlotte hurried to the shop's telephone and dialed her husband's mobile number.

  "Where's Rowena?" I asked.

  "Still with Wallace. He was out on the water — saw it happen," answered Andy. I pushed my chair back and rose from the table, reaching for my own canvas jacket. Matt rose, too.

  "Where are you going?" he said. "Julianne, wait here. I'll get the car and we'll fetch the doctor and drive him to wherever Rowena is."

  "Wallace's at the boat shack. Reckon that's where she is, too," said Andy.

  "That's not far," I said. "I'll go see if she's all right. She doesn't really know anybody in this place but me and Rosie, so she may need someone." I pulled on my coat and opened the door. No doubt Rowena was shaken up by what happened, if she was conscious — she didn't need to be alone with a stranger until help came, especially one as rough around the edges as Wallace Darnley seemed.