White Rivers

by White Rivers (retail) (epub)

  ‘How are you, Skye?’ she heard Albert’s slurred voice ask a few minutes later. ‘The babes played their parts well, but you don’t look up to par now, if I might say so. I didn’t know you’d taken to drinking more than is good for you.’

  He grinned at his own forced joke, and she shrank away from him as his drink-sodden breath filled her face. How could her mother ever have loved him? But in their halcyon days, he hadn’t been this odious, creepy old man whom Skye didn’t even like touching her. He had been dashing and flamboyant, and she could still feel pity for him – if she tried hard enough.

  ‘Weddings always make me a bit sad. Silly, isn’t it, when they should make one feel just the opposite.’

  ‘It depends on the wedding,’ Albie said darkly. ‘Though I can’t say I care for throwing everybody together for the occasion as if they’re the most sociable of folk. Half of ’em would probably prefer to cut each other’s throats, given half the chance.’

  Skye began to laugh. ‘Oh, come on, how can you say that?’

  ‘Easily. Look at Charlotte now, playing up to the monied folk for all she’s worth, and dying to get her corsets off if the strained look on her face is any indication. And there’s Em, wishing she were back wi’ her pigs. Theo can’t stand any of ’em, nor your pompous husband, and as for you, my pet—’

  ‘Yes? What about me?’ she said quickly, ignoring his snide reference to Philip. ‘I only said weddings made me a bit sad, but I’ve got no arguments with anyone here.’

  ‘I could see that by the way the Pengelly brother’s taken a shine to you, and the way you responded, even though you tried not to show it. He’s got a shrewd eye that sorts out the gold from the dross.’

  ‘I don’t like to hear this kind of talk, Uncle Albert, and Philip wouldn’t like to hear it either.’

  ‘Well, I’ll not be the one to tell un,’ Albie slurred. ‘You mark my words, though, that one’s got his eye on you.’

  She was glad to get away from him as the bride and groom approached on their informal chat with their guests. Adam’s eyes were full of mischief now that he was a married man with the dreaded formalities behind him, and he was more confident than usual towards his elegant new relative.

  ‘Went well, didn’t it, cuz? I told our Nick he’d get the surprise of his life when he saw you.’

  ‘Did you? Why was that?’ she said, fixing the smile on her face, but wondering if it was a weird conspiracy for folk to link them together. First Albie, now Adam…

  ‘Well, knowing of your reputation as part-owner of the pottery, and then our Ethan’s comments about you, he began to think you were a real harridan,’ he chuckled. ‘And we had no intention of putting him right.’

  ‘I told him he was mean, Skye,’ Vera put in, ‘but that’s what brothers are like, and I’m sure Nick has formed his own opinion of you by now. You look marvellous, by the way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So what do you think of my clever brother?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Clever? In what way is he clever?’ She realised she knew nothing about him or his life, except that he had moved away from Cornwall. She didn’t care, either…

  ‘Well, being a lawyer and all that learning stuff. Poor Vera got lumbered with less than the cream of the family, I’m thinking,’ he said with a laugh, but as Vera told him off in teasing terms, Skye had no doubt that they had both got exactly what they wanted. Lucky them.

  So Nick Pengelly was a lawyer. That explained the educated voice, and the slick way he had delivered the wedding speech, in such contrast to Adam’s awkward, but none the less sincere words.

  ‘When do you plan to leave for the honeymoon?’ she enquired, moving the conversation away from the focus of attention that Nick seemed to have become.

  ‘As soon as it’s decent,’ Adam said meaningfully. ‘I’ve had more than enough socialising and I want my wife to myself.’

  Vera laughed, her face blush-red. ‘I don’t mind you saying that in front of Skye, but you just stop short of saying it in front of my mother or anybody else, you hear?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ he replied. ‘You see how she’s got me hogtied already, cuz?’ But the way he said it confirmed again that it was the only place he wanted to be.

  * * *

  For once, Skye was thankful when Oliver started playing up and she could use him as the excuse to get her children home. They were all tired, and she had a lot of thinking to do. But why did she? She couldn’t explain the strange feelings that had come over her, and she was glad that presumably Nick Pengelly would soon be leaving to resume his legal career, wherever it was, and she was unlikely to see him again.

  Even as she thought it, her mind cleared, and the nonsense of going to consult old Helza vanished. Why was there any need, when their paths would never cross again?

  When they retired to bed that night, she turned to Philip with a rush of affection, holding him close to her and pressing her warm lips into the hollow of his throat, to which he immediately responded.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he said, humouring her. ‘Have I suddenly become God’s gift to womanhood?’

  ‘No, just God’s gift to me, and to blazes with the rest of them,’ she murmured, unable to resist smiling at the irreverent thought. But she held her breath all the same, because Philip could so easily revert to being his most pompous self again, if he thought she was being too daring.

  She had long ago realised that he always had to take the initiative, and it was something that constantly frustrated her. Love-making should be a mutual enjoyment, but in Philip’s eyes, that meant the man was always in control. An American author had written a book with progressively modern ideas on the subject, and Skye had secretly read and devoured its concept, but so far she had never dared to put any of the ideas into practice. Philip would be shocked to think she even knew about them. And for now, she was more than content to have his loving arms around her, to feel his hands reaching for her, palming her breasts, and for his mouth to be seeking hers and kissing her with an urgency that stimulated all her senses. He was her husband, her lover and her best friend, the way he had always been, and there was no room for any other in her life.

  * * *

  The honeymooners had gone off to their blissful heaven, and Emma and Will had returned to their pigs and sheep, and for everyone else, life quickly returned to normal.

  Philip left the house early on Monday morning, while the girls clamoured to be taken out for the day. Their tutor had arrived that morning with a bad cold, and rather than have the whole household sniffling and snuffling, Skye sent her home. However long ago it was now, the lingering memories of the flu epidemic were still too real in people’s minds to take any chances. But now she had the girls pestering her to take them out for the day. God bless Oliver, thought Skye, who was still content to spend half the day sleeping or playing with his toys in the care of his nanny.

  ‘All right,’ she gave in to her daughters with a smile. ‘You can choose where you want to go, as long as you both agree. I want no squabbling, mind. So what will it be? The seaside to collect shells, or the moors to collect wild flowers for pressing? Or we could go into Truro and look around the town like tourists, or go visit Aunt Charlotte or Aunt Betsy …’

  Celia pulled a face at the thought, and Wenna squealed impatiently. ‘I don’t want to see that horrible Sebby again,’ she wailed. ‘And Justin’s a baby, always doing what Sebby says.’

  Skye hid a smile. Justin was all of a year younger than Wenna, but in her eyes that made him a baby.

  ‘Where then?’ she said impatiently. ‘I’m not going to drive around aimlessly, so if you can’t make up your minds, we’ll stay home and make some candy.’

  ‘Cook won’t like that,’ Celia said loftily. ‘Anyway, I know where Wenna wants to go.’

  ‘Do you? And where’s that?’ Skye saw her younger daughter’s face go bright red as Celia began to chant.

  ‘Wenna wants to go to the pottery to see soppy Ethan Pengelly! S
he’s gone all soft over him, just because he treated her like his little pet at the wedding.’

  ‘I’m not soft over him!’ Wenna screamed. ‘And he’s not soppy. He’s nice, and you’re just in a huff because he didn’t take any notice of you.’

  ‘For pity’s sake you two, stop acting up this way. The pottery’s not a bad idea, anyway, because I promised to look in on things while Adam’s away. So stop glowering at your sister, Celia, and go fetch your coats.’

  She was sure it was quite unnecessary to check on anything at the pottery, but Adam was so conscientious that he had almost begged her to do so. And it was her domain. If she had never felt quite at home at the clayworks, and didn’t understand half of its intricacies, at least she knew what the pottery was all about.

  So later that morning she was driving away from New World and up to the moors above St Austell town; the air was so clean and fresh on that April morning that Skye opened her car window and breathed in the mingled moorland scents with an almost sensual pleasure.

  There were already half a dozen motors parked outside White Rivers, and she was gratified to think that the tourists were discovering their whereabouts so early in the season. Much of that was due to David Kingsley’s generous advertising in The Informer newspaper, she acknowledged.

  ‘Can I try to make a pot, Mommy?’ Wenna asked tentatively, at which Celia hooted.

  ‘You couldn’t make anything with those fat little fingers, could she, Mommy?’

  ‘Yes, I could,’ Wenna said, almost in tears. ‘Ethan would show me how.’

  ‘Ethan won’t have time for messing with little girls, you ninny. He’s supposed to be working. Isn’t that right, Mom?’

  Before Skye could think of a suitable reply, she registered that Celia was in danger of turning into as pompous a little prig as her father if she wasn’t curbed, and then two familiar figures emerged from the pottery. Her heart leapt as she saw them.

  ‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise,’ Nick Pengelly said, coming towards the trio with his arm outstretched to shake Skye’s gloved hand. ‘Ethan promised to show me around, so I thought today was as good a day as any. It seems as though we both had the same idea.’

  ‘But Mrs Norwood – Skye – won’t be here as a visitor, Nick,’ Ethan put in quickly, visibly nervous at the assumption. ‘And I should be getting back to my work.’

  ‘I’m sure the rest of them can spare you for a while, Ethan,’ Skye said gently, reassuring him. ‘It’s not every day your brother visits with you, and I’m sure he’ll want to know what you’re doing before he returns to—?’

  ‘Plymouth,’ Nick supplied. ‘I share a practice with my partner there, at least for the time being.’

  ‘Oh? Isn’t it permanent then?’ She held her breath. It was no business of hers, and it didn’t matter to her whether he practised his lawyer’s trade in Plymouth or Timbuktu.

  ‘Our Nick’s thinking of coming back to Cornwall,’ Ethan said eagerly. ‘Me Mam’s ailing and me Dad’s away with the pixies half the time, so Nick thinks it might be best now that our Adam’s wed and moved out.’

  ‘Now, don’t you go jumping the gun, Ethan. I only mentioned the possibility, and it’ll take some thinking about,’ Nick chided him.

  As the two older ones seemed suddenly tongue-tied, Ethan smiled down at the two little girls. ‘Do you want to learn how to throw a pot, then?’

  ‘Yes!’ screamed Wenna excitedly.

  ‘No thank you, and she’ll never be able to do it, but it’ll be fun watching her try,’ said Celia.

  ‘Is it all right, Mrs Norwood – Skye?’ Ethan asked, suddenly remembering their owner-apprentice relationship.

  ‘Of course it is,’ she said, laughing. ‘Go on, all of you, and I’ll join you in a minute.’

  She watched them go, aware that now only the two of them remained, herself and Nick Pengelly, and the sensuous scents and whispering bracken of the moors all around them.

  ‘Well, I suppose we shouldn’t stand out here forever,’ she said, after what seemed like an endless moment.

  ‘Shouldn’t we? I can’t think of anything more desirable than being with you forever.’

  Skye felt her heart begin to drum more loudly. She spoke in a low, troubled voice. ‘Please don’t say those things to me, Mr Pengelly.’

  ‘It’s Nick, remember? And since I have so little time to be here, there seems no point in dressing up all my feelings with fancy words.’

  She ignored the last part of his sentence. ‘You didn’t mean it then – about coming back to Cornwall permanently?’

  ‘Would you want me to?’

  She was getting progressively more agitated at the tone of this conversation. His voice was rich and possessive, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop imagining how it would sound and feel as the timbre of it deepened against a woman’s skin in more intimate surroundings. She gave a small shiver.

  ‘What you do has nothing to do with me, does it? We only met a few days ago, and I hardly know you.’

  ‘You’ve always known me, just as I’ve always known you. I knew you the moment I saw your mother’s portrait in your uncle’s studio. I knew then that this was the image of the woman I wanted to share my life with—’

  ‘For God’s sake, will you stop this! I’m going to join my daughters, and I’d be glad if you would leave me alone.’

  Skye went to push past him, and his hand reached out and held her. She felt the small caress of his thumb against her arm, and she shivered again.

  ‘For the moment. But anyone with an ounce of Cornish blood in them knows that you can’t deny what fate has in store for you. You’re not so colonial that you don’t know that.’

  She tried to sound withering, even though her voice seemed no more than a husk of sound to her right then.

  ‘And everyone knows that a clever lawyer has the wherewithal to twist any kind of fate to his own advantage, so don’t try to blind me with such nonsense.’

  She walked away from him then, and he made no attempt to stop her, but she felt decidedly wobbly as she entered the familiar confines of the pottery saleroom, and was greeted deferentially by the staff.

  She tried to smile and respond naturally, and then went through to the working area where her daughter Wenna was enveloped in a huge overall now. Ethan Pengelly stood close behind her, guiding her small hands over the misshapen pot she was creating, while she laughed delightedly and adoringly into his face. And giving Skye the most unwelcome sense of déjà vu.

  Chapter Five

  Nick drove away from the pottery at high speed, asking himself furiously what the hell was the matter with him. Skye Norwood was a married woman for God’s sake, and in his work he’d dealt with enough pain and misery in marriage break-ups to indulge in that kind of caper himself.

  He must be having a brainstorm, and the only way out of it was to get as far away from her as possible until the fever in his blood cooled down. For there was no denying, at least to himself, that he wanted her with a raging passion. Ever since he had seen her he hadn’t been able to sleep properly for thinking of her, and imagining her in his arms.

  He wanted her like hell – but ruining a woman’s reputation went against everything he believed in. Or so he had always thought, when dealing with other people’s marital problems. It was one of life’s ironies that the tables had finally turned on him, and the one woman he wanted in all the world was the one he couldn’t have.

  Anyway, whatever madness had possessed him speak to her as he had outside the White Rivers Pottery had probably been enough to frighten her off for good and all. And a bloody good thing too, he thought savagely.

  He drove back to his parents’ house, full of self-condemnation, and resolving never to see Skye Norwood again. The thought of coming back here to live was fast receding. There must be some other way of ensuring that his parents were cared for, and that all the burden didn’t land on young Ethan.

  His lawyer’s brain got to work. Providing the house w
as to be left exclusively to Ethan when his parents died, then a living-in relative was the obvious answer, and Nick could easily afford to pay all the expenses. There was a cousin down Penzance way who had lost her son during the war and her husband to the flu epidemic, and had found it hard to make ends meet ever since in her miserable rented cottage. She had always been fond of his mother, and might well fit the bill.

  Knowing how sensitive older folk could be, Nick knew he would need to sound things out with all concerned before he made any move, but already things were clearing in his mind. And since there was no time like the present for seeing what his cousin Dorcas might think, he told his mother he was taking a drive down to Penzance the following day.

  ‘Do you want to come? You always got on well with her, didn’t you?’ he said, sowing the first seed.

  ‘Aye, so I did, and ’twould be good to see her again, but the old un wouldn’t like me to leave him for a whole day, Nick,’ she said wistfully. ‘If he weren’t up to attending his own son’s wedding, then he won’t want me gallivanting off down south.’

  Nick hid a smile as she made it sound like the other end of the country instead of thirty miles or so away.

  ‘Then I’ll just give her your best, and tell her all about Adam’s big day.’

  So the next morning saw him driving down to Penzance alone, and finding his way to the little cottage on the windy hill where his cousin Dorcas lived. The buxom and homely woman gaped in astonishment when she saw who was standing there.