White Rivers

by White Rivers (retail) (epub)

  Skye nodded, preferring to forget that traumatic and horrendous visit when Albie had thrashed about in the bed like a madman, threatening to harm everyone near him before he was sedated. And wishing she could also forget the way his face changed as the drug relaxed all his muscles, and seeing in him the flamboyant and youthful brother her mother had loved.

  ‘And I’ll be in touch about further arrangements as soon as possible, Mrs Norwood.’

  Nick ignored Theo now, making Skye the central figure in the procedure. Before the rest of them made thankful exits, he had one last comment to make.

  ‘There’s no need to do anything about the studio yet, providing it’s securely locked up. Once everything is proceeding, I’ll put the legal wheels in motion, then the studio can be cleared out, and put on the market.’

  Skye shuddered. Poking and prying through Albie’s studio was something she didn’t want to think about, nor to take any part in. But yet again she seemed to hear her mother begging her not to let it be left to strangers to touch Albie’s personal, intimate belongings… some of which would surely still belong to her, since Skye knew full well that he had never truly been able to let Primmy go…

  As Betsy bustled in with a tray of tea and home-made scones for those who weren’t making hasty excuses to get away, Skye suddenly found Nick at her side. He handed her his business card, which included details of the Bodmin chambers, and his home telephone number and address in Truro. She barely glanced at it, and just stuffed it inside her glove.

  ‘Please let me help you when the time comes,’ he said quietly. ‘Adam tells me your father will be leaving for America soon, and you shouldn’t deal with this alone. Since you have shown more consideration towards your uncle than the rest of them, there may be items at the studio that will upset you. From the look of things, none of these charmers will want to be involved in any of it.’

  She looked at him mutely. She didn’t want to be involved, either, but she was. And so was he.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  * * *

  ‘Now then, cuz, what the hell are you making such a song and dance about these German fellows for?’ Theo yelled at her, when the rest of them had finally gone, and they were alone in his study. ‘We need to get on with this export order for Kauffmann’s at a fair rate now. They’re bloody good workers, and keen to learn, and I see nothing wrong in it—’

  ‘You wouldn’t, you stupid oaf,’ she screamed at him, her temper exploding, and wondering how he could be so bloody, bloody insensitive as to go on at her so, right after the distressing family council about Albie. She needed time to recover herself, even though she knew this confrontation was long overdue. But she was too vulnerable right now, and he knew it, damn him.

  ‘So tell me,’ he snarled, arms folded as he glared across his desk at her. She didn’t sit down. She stood there, taut and furious, knowing she was at a disadvantage, but uncaring.

  ‘They’re Germans,’ she screamed again, aghast at the blatant prejudice she hadn’t even known still simmered inside her, but unable to stop it.

  ‘So? Their orders put bread and butter in your mouth, same as mine. They ain’t going to taint your precious pots.’

  ‘Tell that to the clayworkers! I’ve been up to Clay One, Theo, and I’ve spoken to a number of them. Oh, I grant you that the German boys are good-looking and agreeable enough, but the clayers only tolerate them because they’re doing the menial jobs. But some of the Germans are boasting that they could do the work far quicker and with better equipment.’

  ‘Maybe we should see this better equipment then. I’m always open to a bit o’ streamlining.’

  ‘You suggest that, and I doubt that you’ll have any Cornishmen left to work at Killigrew Clay.’

  Theo suddenly stood up, knocking over his chair as he did so, and leaning right across the desk, an inch away from her face. She flinched, but she didn’t move away.

  ‘You know your bloody trouble, don’t you, woman? You can’t forget that the war’s a long time over. We’ve got to make progress and forget that we were ever enemies. Anyway, these young buggers were only infants when the war began.’

  ‘And there would be plenty of Cornish boys of their own age working in the pit now, if their fathers hadn’t been part of the Killigrew Pals’ Battalion that was wiped out in a single day,’ she whipped out, close to tears. ‘If you can’t see how these boys are a constant reminder of that, then you’re an even bigger fool than I took you for.’

  Theo said nothing for a moment, and then sat down again, hands clenched, and his face a furious colour. ‘Well, it’s too late. We have to get these orders out fast now, if they’re to get from the German factory to the shops in good time before Christmas. ’Taint no good having a pile of goods arriving on Christmas Eve, when all the shopping’s been done. In fact, to speed things up, I’m thinking of sending a couple of the boys to work in the packing shed at White Rivers. Will that please you?’

  ‘It will not!’ she said, incensed. ‘How dare you be so high-handed? White Rivers is as much my concern as yours, and you had no right to do any of this without consulting me.’

  ‘Well, since you were out of the country at the time,’ he sneered, not even seeing how his words wounded her, ‘I had no intention of sending a message by carrier pigeon over the water to ask your permission. The day I ask any woman for permission to do any damn thing is the day I pack it in.’

  Skye turned on her heel. As if her brother’s cruel death hadn’t been enough, the last few days had been terrible, answering folks’ enquiries, fielding off rumours about Albie, and then culminating in this ghastly afternoon. There had been no time, until now, to confront Theo about the Germans, and now she didn’t know if she felt shame or outrage, or both.

  She just had to get away from him. Her father had gone back to New World, and she had said she’d go to the college and wait for Philip to take her back. Now, she didn’t even know if she could bear to do that. He’d assume she had gone home with her father, anyway. And he’d want to know everything that had happened, and in the end he’d wash his hands of Albie, the way he always did.

  Or perhaps not. In Philip’s perverse moods it was just as possible that he would act as though he didn’t know or care where she had been that day, and not even refer to it. Either way, Skye didn’t want him. She definitely didn’t want him.

  At that moment, something seemed to die within her. All the years they had shared together; all the dangerous months in France, never knowing if they were going to get out of that evil war alive; all the closeness, all the love… all of it was slowly dying within her, and she couldn’t hold on to it. She couldn’t get it back…

  Skye left Killigrew House, hurrying through the Truro streets, seeing no one, hearing nothing, as if her mind was a total vacuum. She walked and walked, hardly realising she had reached the river, and for once its meandering beauty didn’t touch her. On the far side of the bank was Albie’s studio, but her senses simply refused to acknowledge it. It didn’t exist, any more than she did herself in those disorientated moments.

  ‘For God’s sake, Skye, be careful,’ she heard a voice say close beside her. She felt a hand on her arm, pulling her back from the glittering, beautiful water’s edge, and for a moment she couldn’t focus at all.

  She couldn’t see the face of the man with sunlight behind him, until he moved out of its aura, and Nick Pengelly appeared before her for the second time that day. A nervous laugh that turned into a sob tore at her throat, because he surely couldn’t think she had been going to throw herself in…

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to do anything stupid,’ she said painfully. ‘I just had to get away from them all, and Lord knows what you must have thought of them.’

  She was babbling, aware that he kept hold of her arm, as if he still wasn’t sure of her intention. She felt her mouth tremble. She didn’t know either. She had always thought herself so strong. She had come through a war, for pity’s sake, and seen and c
oped with unmentionable horrors from the trenches in the field hospital… and now she felt as though she was slowly disintegrating. Without knowing that she did so, she leaned against the tall, hard body of the Pengelly man, as Philip called him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘You must think me terribly feeble…’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘You should know by now that I think you’re the most marvellous person who ever lived. As for the rest of your wretched family – I’ve seen and dealt with far worse in my profession.’

  Her heart was doing its rapid jungle beat again, and she gave him a crooked smile, needing to take any hint of intimacy out of his words.

  ‘Is this the usual bedside manner you employ for foolish clients, Mr Pengelly? Maybe you should have been a doctor instead of a lawyer.’

  ‘There’s a certain similarity,’ Nick agreed, unwilling to admit how those simple words bedside manner had fired his blood and stirred his loins.

  He told himself again that she was a married woman, and he couldn’t risk any scandal – then reminded himself in the same instant how fate had thrown them together. His partner had wanted to dissolve their Plymouth practice; his parents had needed him, but now that he was near at hand, they seemed to have had a second lease of life, however temporary; and he had been called in to deal with the tangled fortunes of the Tremayne dynasty, by whatever name. If that wasn’t fate playing with him, he didn’t know what was.

  And now he held this beautiful, sensual woman in his arms, and he wished he could hold her there for ever.

  Skye became aware that they were in a very public place, and that people were glancing their way. It simply wasn’t done for strangers to be standing so close, even if she knew in her heart that they were never strangers. She shivered, not wanting to believe in a force larger than herself that was racing her towards a place she knew she shouldn’t go. Fate should help people, she thought angrily, not test them to their limits. The anger helped her to speak more curtly.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m acting so unlike myself. I must go.’

  ‘You can’t go anywhere yet. You’re far too agitated. Come and take tea with me. Doctor’s orders,’ he added.

  She didn’t even smile. ‘I can’t. My husband – my children will be waiting for me. I shouldn’t stay here any longer—’

  ‘But you will. Won’t you?’

  She didn’t speak for a moment, and then, ‘Just tea then,’ she said, weakening.

  ‘Of course.’

  There were several tearooms in the twisting streets of the town nearby, and she kept her eyes downcast as he tucked her hand in his arm and walked her briskly away from the river and the sight of Albert Tremayne’s studio. She walked as if she was in a dream, still caught up in the drama of past days, not wanting conversation and not offering it.

  She hadn’t even realised they had turned into a tree-lined residential street, until she looked up, startled, at the tall house where he was unlocking the front door.

  ‘Where are we?’ she said.

  But she knew. Of course she knew, and instinctively she shrank back. But Nick kept her arm squeezed to his more firmly so that she couldn’t pull away.

  ‘My house. It’s more private than any noisy tearooms, and I promise you I’m a dab hand at making tea. It’s one of the advantages of living a respectable bachelor life.’

  She didn’t know if that was meant to reassure her. She only knew, with an instinct that Granny Morwen would have applauded, that if she once stepped across this threshold, her life was going to be changed for ever.

  ‘This isn’t a good idea,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think I’m never alone with a female client in my chambers?’ he answered coolly. ’I have a reputation at stake, as well as your own, my dear Mrs Norwood. Do you think my intentions are anything but honourable towards you?’

  For a frisson of time she wanted to shriek at him: Yes, yes, yes, I think your intentions are anything but honourable towards me… and it’s what I want, what I need and what I crave… She flinched as if frightened that the words were written clear across her face.

  ‘I would never do anything to harm you, Skye. All I’m offering is tea,’ she heard him say quietly, and she was lost.

  He was indeed a dab hand at making tea, as he put it, and she stayed far longer than she had intended. But he was charm itself, putting her at her ease, and showing her all around the small house he had bought, with all the eager pleasure of a child showing off a new toy.

  She was bemused and enchanted by this side of him that she suspected few other people ever saw. He could probably be a hard and ruthless lawyer in court, but here, on his own territory, he was a man any woman could love.

  ‘I really must go soon,’ she murmured, as she finished her second cup of tea. ‘I said that if my father didn’t take me home from Theo’s, I’d meet my husband at the college.’

  They both heard a church clock strike the hour, and she looked at him in dismay at realising how late it had become.

  ‘Then I’ve kept you here far too long, and I’m sure he will have left the college by now,’ Nick said. ‘You must let me drive you home instead.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not necessary. I can take a taxicab. I seem to be putting you to so much trouble.’

  ‘My dear Mrs Norwood,’ he said, using her full name like a caress once more, in a way that made her nerve-ends tingle, ‘don’t you know that nothing I do for you would ever be too much trouble?’

  ‘Nick, you promised—’

  ‘That I would never harm you, yes. And nor I will. But that doesn’t stop me wanting you.’

  She drew in her breath, knowing that marriage and children – and recent bereavement too – didn’t stop her wanting him, either. There was a matching fire in her veins, and she had to turn away from the desire in his eyes, fumbling for her hat and gloves, then feeling his arms go around her as he arranged her stole around her shoulders.

  Without realising that she did so, she leaned back a fraction towards him and she felt his hands tighten, then slide down her arms and turn her slowly round to face him, until she was held in the circle of his embrace.

  ‘I would never harm you, Skye,’ he said, for the third time that day. Like Judas, she thought faintly, or was that analogy better applied to herself, knowing she had already betrayed Philip, in thought if not in deed?

  But the notion was only half-formed in her mind before she felt the touch of Nick Pengelly’s mouth on hers, and then she was kissing him back with as much wild abandon as if there were only moments left in the world.

  ‘Please take me home,’ she murmured against his mouth when the kiss finally ended, yet keeping in the closest physical contact; once the contact was broken, so would be the spell. ‘I shouldn’t even be here – and I daren’t stay any longer.’

  And they both knew why… Shaken, Skye suddenly wrenched herself out of his arms, her face white where seconds before it had been hot with passion.

  ‘Of course I’ll take you home, and I’ll explain to your husband that you felt ill and needed to rest before returning. It’s a perfectly feasible explanation, considering recent events,’ Nick said, shaken himself. ‘And we need never refer to what happened here ever again – if that’s what you want.’

  She couldn’t lie to him. ‘It’s not what I want. It’s what has to be,’ she said simply.

  * * *

  Philip wasn’t concerned about her absence, except in the way her lateness might have disrupted his own plans. He had been invited to a gentlemen’s club with several colleagues in St Austell that evening. As the name implied, it was a meeting-place for men only, he informed Skye grandly, so there was no need for her to tart herself up.

  It was said so arrogantly that Skye felt herself siding vigorously with her daughter Celia’s currently expressed views that all males were “pigs”… whether they were a chief hog, like Theo, or a piglet in the making, like his offspring, Sebby. The thought, more attributable to
her daughter than herself, didn’t even amuse her.

  But it had been such an exhausting day for her that she was mightily relieved that Philip was going out; that she could have an hour with her children before she put them to bed; and then unwind after supper by taking a glass – or two – of wine with her father. She didn’t need Philip’s company.

  ‘So what was the council’s final decision?’ Philip asked, when he emerged from their bedroom, spruce and elegant in his dark evening attire.

  It was said as such an afterthought that Skye had to jolt her mind back to what he referred to, and then it came back to her with a rush. How could she have forgotten, even for a moment!

  ‘Dr Rainley’s looking out a suitable residence for Uncle Albie,’ she said delicately. ‘There’s no question of him ever returning to live alone. Once it’s all arranged, the studio will have to be disposed of, and actually, I’ve had an idea about that—’

  ‘Tell me another time. I’m late, but I’m sure your father will be interested.’

  He went off without kissing her goodbye or showing the slightest interest in what her idea might be. He just didn’t care any more, she thought sadly. And what was more, neither did she.

  But far from comforting her that at least they seemed to be growing away from one another at the same drifting tempo, it alarmed and upset her. Theirs had been such a wonderful, ecstatic marriage, and she could see it all crumbling away like sand through her fingers.

  Much later, when all three children were sleeping, and she and Cresswell had eaten supper and were sitting comfortably in the drawing-room with their glasses of wine, she broached her idea to him.

  ‘It’s only a thought as yet, but the kind of home best suited to Uncle Albie seems likely to be out of Cornwall. People will forget him – if they haven’t done so already,’ she added, ‘and he was too important a local artist to let that happen. As a family, we owe him more than that.’