Family Ties Read online

  Family Ties

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Read More

  Copyright

  This book contains views and language on nationality, sexual politics, ethnicity, and society which are a product of the time in which the book is set. The publisher does not endorse or support these views. They have been retained in order to preserve the integrity of the text.

  For my family and all the loving ties that bind us.

  Chapter One

  Morwen Killigrew gazed out of the long drawing-room windows as the children’s chatter died away. The governess took little Charlotte to the nursery, and the others were taken off to school in the carriage after bidding their mother a noisy goodbye. Through the open windows, Morwen breathed in the fragrance of rose petals as a soft breeze tossed a scattering of them on to the dew-drenched lawns, as if to herald the end of summer.

  Another season gone, another one beginning. And into Morwen’s mind came the thought that soon they would start loading the clay blocks from the works on the moors on to the sturdy trucks of what everyone called Ben Killigrew’s railway.

  Just for a second, no more, Morwen felt an enticing tug of nostalgia. To be up there on the moors, dancing in the wild wind, glorying in the scents of heather and yarrow. To be part of it all, amid the twice-yearly rituals of moving the clay from pit to port that she had once known so well. To cheer the loads away with the Pit Captains and the clayworkers, the kiddley-boys and the fresh-faced bal maidens, as she herself had once been…

  There were some clayfolk who still maintained stoutly that, despite the good that the railway had done to St Austell town, there was nothing to compare with the sight of the old clay waggons, piled perilously high with blocks, careering through the steep, narrow streets of the town, a danger and an excitement to all in their path as the iron wheels struck sparks off the cobblestones… it was easy to speak of it fondly in retrospect, when all such danger was past.

  Ben’s rail tracks were well-established now, their route safely redirected since the disaster ten years ago that had caused one death, and the subsidence from old rogue tin workings on the moors had questioned the very future of Killigrew Clay. But undoubtedly the railway had made the clayworks and its ever-growing white mounds of waste more acceptable to those who once bitterly resented the constant flurries of clay dust that used to hang like a pall over town and people alike, drying the mouth and dulling the hair and clothes.

  ‘Folk should be grateful for it,’ Morwen’s father, Hal Tremayne, used to chuckle. ‘They’re getting a free supply o’ medicine by swallowing the clay dust. ’Twill stop their belly-aches and freshen their breaths, if not their tongues!’

  Morwen smiled now, remembering the flashing blue eyes of her father, inherited by all his family. But Hal’s eyes were not quite so lustrous now, she thought, with a stab of anxiety. Nor was Hal’s voice as hearty as when he’d roared for the clayworkers to rally to the side of the new young owner, Ben Killigrew, when times were bad.

  Hal had been justifiably proud of his status as Pit Captain, and then Works Manager for Killigrew Clay, Morwen thought lovingly. But, lately, much of her father’s old fire seemed diminished…

  The door of the drawing-room opened behind her, and she turned quickly to smile at her tall, handsome husband. As if suddenly in need of reassurance from a shadow she couldn’t quite dispel, she moved quickly to his side, hands outstretched. And Ben took her instantly in his arms, still as captivated by her as when he’d first seen her defying his haughty aunt in the streets of St Austell in what seemed a lifetime ago.

  He hadn’t realized then, of course, that the fascination he’d felt in those moments would turn to love. He’d little thought that Morwen Tremayne, bal maiden at his father’s clayworks, would become so all-important in his life.

  She had known it though, Ben thought, a little smile teasing his mouth.

  Morwen, with her fey Cornish ways, still vowed that it was meant to be, that when his gentleman’s pin had scratched her cheek as she lurched against him in the street, he had branded her with his mark.

  It was no more than a charming tale… and one that a hard-headed businessman should not dwell upon, perhaps. But when Morwen was in his arms, he was never the clay boss that his workers knew and respected, as they had respected his father before him, but ever her lover and husband, champion and friend…

  ‘Well, dar?’ he said softly, using her own parents’ private endearment that they had claimed as their own. ‘Why such a look of sadness? Do you hate the damp mornings so much? You were very pensive at the window—’

  ‘It’s nothing. A goose walking over my grave, perhaps—’

  Ben tipped up her chin and looked steadily into her face. Fine lines fanned out from the lovely, expressive eyes, but her mouth was as full and mobile as ever. No glint of silver yet highlighted the glossy blue-black of her upswept hair, but there was a maturity in the face of a once-lovely girl who was now a beautiful and sensual woman, and the mother of his children.

  And he knew her too well…

  ‘What’s worrying you, Morwen? I insist that you tell me.’

  She heard the old imperiousness in his voice, and was reminded of a time when she was a child, and the snot-nosed owner’s son had come to Clay One pit years ago with his father, old Charles Killigrew, inspecting the Works and the clayfolk there as if they were specimens on a glass plate. And she and her brothers, and her Daddy and Mammie too, had all guffawed at the young man in the stiff college clothes who didn’t know what it was to dirty his hands by an honest day’s work. Now they all knew differently, and Morwen’s eyes softened, knowing that Ben’s irritation with her was because he cared. She gave a small unconscious sigh.

  ‘I just wish I knew what ailed Daddy, Ben,’ the words were almost dragged from her. ‘He’s been acting so strangely of late. He’s slowing up, dar, and I see it more and more every day. I don’t know how my mother would live without him—’

  It was out in the open now, no longer a silent fear in her own head, but a shared thought. And although there was no one in the world she would rather share it with, once voiced it became a real threat to the serenity of her world.

  ‘I’m sure you’re imagining things, Morwen.’ But he spoke briskly, and by that small fact alone she knew he was disguising his real opinion. She felt a lump clog her throat as he went on talking with false cheerfulness.

  ‘If it makes you feel easier, I’ll try to persuade him to have a word with Doctor Pender. Better still, try to persuade your mother. Bess could always get round him. It’s something we men have to put up with from our Tremayne women.’

  His teasing brought the ghost of a smile to Morwen’s mouth, and Ben capitalized on it.

  ‘And in case you’re thinking it’s a pity your witch-woman of the moors can’t give you some of her evil pot
ions to spirit away whatever’s wrong with Hal, then good riddance to her is all I can answer to that!’

  She bristled against him, as he had expected. He didn’t mind a good argument with his wife. It invigorated him, and they usually finished up in each other’s arms, with neither the victor, which was a very satisfactory arrangement.

  ‘You didn’t always scoff at old Zillah.’ Her voice was a sweet breath against his cheek. ‘She said I’d marry a tall, dark-haired man, and that came true, didn’t it, my ’andsome!’

  She lapsed into the sing-song patois of the Cornish, as glad as he was to lighten the atmosphere. Ben laughed, holding her tight in his arms, and kissing the tip of her nose before his mouth eventually found hers.

  No matter that the Master and Mistress of the house still found delight in such informality in the sedate drawing-room, for there was none to see, and Ben Killigrew would have cared little if there had been observers. Even so, such sweet moments had become rarer over the years, and were therefore more precious to Morwen.

  ‘I sometimes think there’s something of the witch about you, my dar,’ Ben said. ‘But only in the sense that you can twist me around your finger without my even noticing it.’

  ‘Can I?’ she wheedled unconsciously. ‘Then you’ll agree with what I was saying last night—’

  He let her go abruptly, and it was as though a chill little wind blew into her heart as she saw him frown.

  ‘Morwen, why are you so unreasonable about this? Any woman should be overjoyed at the chance to go to London. I can show you all the places you’ve ever heard about—’

  ‘I never heard of any on ’em,’ she said smartly, annoyed that her old speech patterns betrayed her anxiety. What would she do in London? Out of her depth; out of place; even as Ben Killigrew’s wife, while he revisited places he’d known as a college boy, invited now to return and be made an Honorary Governor.

  She caught her breath. It sounded so grand: Ben Killigrew a Governor of Ormsby College. It was a great honour for one of barely thirty-five years to be offered such a position, and it was all due to the success Ben had made of Killigrew Clay. But what of his wife, Morwen wondered? One-time bal maiden, who had married the young boss, and was now expected to be his hostess in the smartest of London sets for the brief time they were there…

  Her heart went cold at the thought. Here in her own domain, it was possible. But in London, far away in upcountry England, which might as well have been an alien land to her, she would be all fingers and thumbs. Besides, the children would miss her, and her father wasn’t well, and her mother relied on her company more and more now all the boys had left home… oh, there were endless reasons why she shouldn’t accompany Ben to London…

  ‘You’re being ridiculous, Morwen,’ Ben was as distant as a church steeple now. ‘You’re coming to London with me, and that’s final. It would be the height of discourtesy to refuse.’

  ‘I couldn’t go if I was ill, could I?’

  ‘But you’re not ill, and you’re not going to be, are you?’ His dark eyes dared her to fabricate sickness to prevent the journey. She shook her head quickly, and the sleek dark coils of hair threatened to break loose from their pins into the flyaway wildness of the moorland girl.

  ‘No, Sir.’

  Her sarcasm was lost on him. There were more important matters to attend to. A clay boss was always beset with worries, even though there was a boom in the demand for china clay right now. Ben was experienced enough to know that when prices could rise so dramatically in a fluctuating market, they could fall just as quickly, and it was well to keep plenty in the coffers for such an eventuality.

  As an afterthought, before he left the house for his weekly discussions with the Killigrew accountant, Ben gave his wife the news he had been saving.

  ‘I thought we might go to France for a short holiday next year. I can’t spare more than a couple of weeks at most, but once the spring despatches have gone, I daresay Killigrew Clay won’t fall apart without me—’

  He couldn’t say more, because Morwen was back in his arms again, her eyes as brilliant as sapphires. Ben’s throat tightened with love for her. She was sometimes so beautiful he could hardly believe she was real, and his, all his…

  ‘Oh Ben, you know how I’ve longed to go abroad! Can we really go in the spring? What of the children? They’ll miss us so much – or can we take them all with us—?’

  He stopped her hurtling words with a laughing kiss.

  ‘All five of them? I think not, dar! Your mother will have a wonderful time looking after them. We’ll ask her and Hal to live here while we’re away, then everything will run as smoothly as if we were still here. It won’t be too hard on your family. Think about it, my love, and perhaps it will soften the blow of going to London!’

  He threw her a last kiss and was gone, while Morwen was still going over his words in her mind. It was bribery, of course, she thought wryly. He knew how she longed to see France and the beautiful fairy-tale chateaux she had read about. That was the bargain: play the lady in London, and the reward would be a holiday in France.

  Morwen bit her lip. She was a lady, she reminded herself. She was Killigrew’s lady… and after fourteen years of being Ben’s wife, she should know how to behave like one! She had learned the art of taking tiny bites of food, of playing the pianoforte moderately well, of making polite conversation with the most boring of people. She had tidied up her speech, as she preferred to call it, and remembered to say Mother instead of the familiar Mammie when she spoke to Bess – at least, in public.

  She idled the morning away. It wasn’t so hard to be a lady, she thought, with a glimmer of a smile, even though some of them were so starchy they didn’t seem to be living at all, but more like waxwork figures. She had made Ben laugh many times by mimicking some of the townsladies who came to her afternoon teas. Soirées, she reminded herself, the smile turning into a wide grin. What she gave at Killigrew House were soirées …

  She wondered how many other young matrons did the same thing most afternoons at four o’clock. Her brother Jack’s wife in Truro often did so. Annie was a Boskelly, daughter of the Boskelly boat-builders, in which Jack was now a partner. Annie had been brought up to do things right, and invitations to her little tea parties were much sought after.

  Morwen’s mother never put on such airs, Morwen thought affectionately. Bess Tremayne took a back seat in everything now, letting the world pass by, and revelling in the fact that her family was thriving. Once an industrious seamstress, glad of bits of sewing work for the gentry, Bess contented herself now with making small items for the grandchildren, having no need for the scrapings of finer folk.

  Only two things jarred in Bess Tremayne’s life: the death of her eldest son, Sam, in the terrible rail disaster ten years ago; and the loss of her best-loved son Matt, to the gold-fields of California.

  Not that Matt was dead, Morwen thought quickly, although he had seemed so during the years when they never heard from him. But then he had made contact again, and for all the Tremaynes it was as if the sun had begun to shine once more, although there had been no more than a spasmodic correspondence between them ever since.

  Did Matt’s wife, Louisa, give little tea parties in their Californian mansion, Morwen wondered? Did their son, Cresswell, act the polite little man, with the same dreams in his eyes that his father used to have? Cresswell would be ten years old now, the same age as her own Justin. Morwen often wondered about him, all those thousands of miles across the sea, and whether family bonds made the two boys anything alike.

  * * *

  ‘Mrs Killigrew, there’s a person here to see ’ee.’

  She started as the housekeeper made the announcement. Mrs Horn didn’t like visitors so early in the day, and Morwen hid a smile, thinking that at times the elderly woman acted more as if she owned the house than Morwen did herself. She took the card from the salver, frowning at the strange name.

  Wainwright… Randell E Wainwright… she was sure s
he knew no one of that name… and yet somewhere in her memory it sounded vaguely familiar…

  The gentleman who was ushered in was unknown to her. He was as tall as Ben, but leaner. His clothes were obviously expensive, and he had the air of someone well used to good living. He was a fine-looking man, in his early thirties, Morwen guessed in those first inquiring seconds, and probably a little older than herself. His eyes were deep brown, with a velvety look about them. Morwen caught her thoughts up short with a little shock, for never, since the heady days of falling in love with Ben, had she really noticed or cared about another man’s appearance. The self-knowledge made her cooler than usual with a visitor.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Wainwright. I’m afraid my husband is not at home at present, and he won’t be back until late this afternoon—’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Ma’am, it’s not your husband I’ve come to see. It’s you.’

  His voice was deep, interrupting her sudden flurry of words. But it wasn’t just the voice that made her pause… it was the accent. It wasn’t the slow and melodious Cornish, nor the rounded vowel sounds of someone city-educated like Ben. Nor was it the clipped flat Yorkshire voice of Tom Askhew, one-time reporter on The Informer newspaper. Morwen couldn’t place it at all, and then she realized what the man had said.

  ‘To see me?’

  Randell Wainwright smiled. Oh yes, he was very good-looking, Morwen thought faintly.

  ‘I was told that you were beautiful, but I hadn’t been prepared for quite such a pleasurable surprise, Mrs Killigrew. Nothing I was told about you did you justice.’

  Swift, hot colour rushed to Morwen’s face. The shock of such a blatant compliment from a stranger made her overlook his earlier words for a second or two. This was not the way people behaved in polite company! Morwen had learnt that much since becoming one of the St Austell society ladies… but there was undeniably something in this man’s demeanour that intrigued and attracted her, despite herself.

  Perhaps it was his very candour that was akin to the naïvety of the moorland folk; the clayworkers who had no need of arch comments and decorous remarks that meant nothing, and believed in good plain speaking and judged a man by his ability to be fair and honest.