Killigrew Clay Read online

  ‘It will have to wait, dear. We must leave in five minutes precisely, or your father will be cross.’

  Richard Carrick’s laborious lawyer’s manners had rubbed off on his wife. There were times when Jane found the two of them stifling. She was normally dutiful, but wondered how it would feel to break away from all the conventions. To be free and unfettered, like the wild ponies of the moors… and knew that her parents would be shocked if she ever voiced such a thing.

  She tucked a wisp of her red-gold hair into the ornate comb she wore that evening, her tresses upswept to reveal the swan-like neck her mother admired so much. The mark of a lady… as though all those poor girls with shorter stems to their heads were somehow lacking. Jane smiled at the thought, and prepared to enjoy the evening.

  Why shouldn’t she? She and Ben Killigrew were good friends. They had an understanding, though not the kind her mother fondly imagined it to be. Mary Carrick just wouldn’t listen to things she didn’t want to hear, though Jane had tried to tell her often enough. It was Mary’s own fault if she continued happily in her dream-world…

  * * *

  As the time drew near for the Tremaynes to leave for Killigrew House that evening, the more nervous Morwen became, and more annoyed with herself for feeling that way. They were only people, like themselves… but not like themselves, and that was the trouble.

  She didn’t like to feel inferior. She wasn’t inferior, except in some folks’ eyes. She remembered the townslady that Charles Killigrew had called Hannah that afternoon, and felt a smile curve her mouth. Did the woman think Morwen was touched by the plague, because she worked at the clay pit?

  ‘You look a real picture, Morwen, don’t she, Bess? A real beauty!’ Hal said, as he came downstairs.

  He was resplendent in his best shirt and breeches, his neck-cloth tied formally at his throat, and threatening to strangle him as he shrugged into his jacket. Bess nodded, her critical eyes noting how the bright ribbons enhanced the muslin dress, but it was Morwen who enhanced it more.

  Their family was a credit to them, but Morwen was her only daughter, and to Bess, Morwen was the icing on the Tremayne cake. Morwen glowed with a mixture of excitement and nervousness, and Bess knew it. But she would surely not be outshone by anyone at the Killigrews tonight.

  The boys were more curious than excited, though Sam, the eldest, could think of better ways of spending the evening. At twenty, he was courting a girl from Penwithick, a couple of miles away, and going down to St Austell that night would take him that much farther away from his Dora.

  Jack had come round from his sulks, and Bess gave a final tweak to his hair as the Killigrew carriage-wheels sounded outside. Matthew had met the Killigrew nephew once or twice, and said carelessly he’d find something to jaw about with him. Freddie just found it hard to keep still, as always.

  ‘Look to your manners now,’ Bess warned them all as Hal ushered them outside, grand as royalty, knowing that they were watched and envied by their neighbours.

  The Killigrew manservant held open the carriage door as they all climbed inside.

  ‘Drive on, please.’ Hal called out when they were all seated, which reduced the younger ones to helpless giggling.

  ‘Daddy, you sound so fine!’ Jack said. ‘And he’s so stiff and starchy—’

  ‘And employed by Charles Killigrew, same as you and me, boy,’ Hal said. ‘I reckon that makes us level, no matter that he looks as though there’s a bad smell under his nose.’

  ‘It puts you up a peg, Father,’ Sam put in. ‘You’re a pit captain. Any fool can drive a carriage if he can hold a pair of reins. ’Tis a skilled man who can coax the clay from the ground and see it through ’til ’tis loaded on the waggons for the port. Don’t sell yourself short, Father.’

  ‘Our Sam wants to be a pit captain,’ Freddie taunted.

  ‘Why shouldn’t he, you little mudlark?’ Bess asked, holding on in the swaying carriage as it went over ruts and dips in the track down to St Austell. ‘Ambition’s fine and healthy, so long as it doesn’t become an obsession—’

  ‘What’s an obsession?’ Freddie said at once.

  Jack ruffled his hair, to Freddie’s fury after being slicked down for the evening. ‘’Tis what you have with butterflies and grasshoppers, ninny!’ Jack laughed.

  ‘Don’t make fun of the boy, Jack,’ Hal frowned, smoothing down the curling dark hair into Freddie’s nape again. ‘If you and Matthew had more of Sam’s application to work, you’d both mebbe enjoy it more.’

  ‘Enjoying grubbing about in wet clay from morning to night?’ Matthew said sceptically. His mother’s eyes glinted.

  ‘It’s good enough for your father, and puts food in your bellies and clothes on your backs—’

  ‘Leave it, Bess,’ Hal said lazily. ‘Don’t get all steamed up before we get to the Killigrews’. Matthew has a right to his say, and ’twon’t make no difference in the long run. He’ll be up for his shift tomorrow, same as the rest on us, so we’ll stop arguing right now. I’ll not have us arriving at the big house snapping like a pack of curs.’

  When Hal used that deceptively idle tone of voice they all knew it was time to stay silent. He was the most easygoing of men until he was riled. His family and his workmates knew that the soft, complacent tone often marked the calm before the storm. His sons had learned to be wary of its warning sign.

  The conversation became more general, but Morwen’s thoughts weren’t on the little trivialities among them. She tried not to think about Ben Killigrew either, because she didn’t want to admit that the snot-nosed owner’s son she remembered was vastly different from the handsome young man who’d caught her in his arms that afternoon. She didn’t want to think of him, nor of the fine folk they would meet soon, that could turn her stomach inside-out. With every turn of the carriage-wheels, they got nearer, and her hands got clammier.

  She thought of what her mother had said about ambition. Had her father had ambitions to become a pit captain? It had just seemed like a natural progression to Morwen, moving up from one job to the next until he had mastered them all, and earned his new status. And Sam… yes, Sam would have ambitions to be a pit captain. Sam always strove to be the best in anything he did.

  Morwen began playing a private game, assessing her family. She presumed Bess had achieved her ambition, of being a wife and mother. There was rarely any discontent in her mother. Matthew… Morwen frowned. Sometimes it was hard to know Matthew. He was the secretive one of the family. He might have ambitions too, though Morwen couldn’t guess what they were.

  Jack merely wanted to be like Sam, who was his idol. Freddie was the joker, too young to bother his head about the future. That was all of them… except herself. Morwen examined her square-cut fingernails. What ambition did she have? It had never entered her head before. To be like her mother? Was that such a bad ambition? To love and marry and have children…

  She thought of John Penry, the son of one of her father’s waggoners, who made no secret of his fancy for her. John’s sister, Celia, was Morwen’s best friend, and worked beside her at the pit. The two of them had jested over John’s red-faced attentions to Morwen, making jokes over how they’d be related if John ever married Morwen.

  Was that the sum total of her ambition? To wed a nice enough clayworker’s son, whose smiles and yarns didn’t stir her blood one jot? Was that the meaning of wedded bliss that some of the older bal maidens whispered about so coarsely? It had to be more than that. Her Mammie and Daddy didn’t coarsen the physical side of love the way those old biddies did, teasing her and Celia and the younger ones unmercifully at times with their wild talk.

  Bess had calmly explained it all to Morwen one day, in simple, loving terms, and Morwen had accepted the facts as naturally as breathing. Even to finishing off Celia’s sketchy education on the subject. Celia’s mother had died long ago from a fever, and it wasn’t something a girl learned from her father.

  Morwen’s thoughts ended as she realised the carriage was
trundling through the cobbled streets of St Austell town now, the movement enough to break every bone in her body. She had been thinking about ambition, and thought that one of Freddie’s names for her was the most apt. She was a dreamer… as for marriage being an ambition, she supposed it all depended on whom you married.

  * * *

  ‘We’re here,’ Hal said tersely, his voice telling Morwen that he too was uneasy. Rightly so, she thought, gaping at the sudden blaze of lights from the windows of the big house. So many windows, with criss-crossed panes and gleaming facets of glass. Behind them would be the Killigrews… Morwen ran the tip of her tongue around her dry lips. Once out of the carriage, she followed her father to the great oak door of the house, her legs as wobbly as jelly. No matter how many times she told herself the Tremaynes were invited guests, it all seemed totally unreal.

  A maid showed them inside. They entered a large drawing-room filled with heavy, solid furniture and deep carpets, and what seemed like a host of people. All were elegantly and beautifully dressed, the men in finest wool cloth, the women in shimmering taffetas and silks, and every one a lady, born and bred. Morwen took one horrified look around, and wanted to die.

  Charles Killigrew stepped forward at once, his greeting a shade too hearty in the small silence in the room. The earlier guests looked a trifle startled at this sudden influx of visitors. Hal nodded briefly to a middle-aged man and his wife, recognising the man as the Killigrew accountant Charles had brought to the pit on several occasions. Charles introduced them as the Gorrans.

  Next, they were introduced to a handsome-looking trio, the parents clearly wealthy, the girl pale and lovely with hair like spun gold above the beautiful green gown that bared the soft milky flesh above her small breasts. These were the Carricks from Truro.

  Across the room was a young man with a look of Ben Killigrew about him, just as dark, just as handsome, but swarthier and a little shifty about the eyes. Morwen saw her brother Matthew nod to him as if he knew him well. Her heart thudded as she recognised the townslady she’d brushed with that afternoon, with her thin-lipped companion, and discovered who they were. She could hardly have made a worse impression on Ben’s aunt, Morwen thought desperately.

  She suddenly realised that Ben Killigrew was moving towards the Tremayne family now, and everyone began talking at once, as though to impress on each other that if Charles wanted to invite these strange people to his home, then it must be the right thing to do, and they must be made to feel welcome. Morwen’s cheeks burned. They didn’t belong here…

  Ben squeezed her hand, and his eyes laughed down into hers. She felt strange, not knowing how to react, all her confidence gone. His fingers curled around hers for a moment and then released them.

  ‘Forgive me for not recognising you this afternoon, Morwen,’ he grinned. ‘I hadn’t expected a little firecracker to turn into such a lovely young lady!’

  He was making fun of her, she thought furiously.

  ‘Why should you have known me? We hardly live in the same world, Mr Killigrew!’ Humiliation made her voice husky. It was normally soft, and he found it immensely attractive. She lowered her eyes to hide her fury. Not knowing the reason, to Ben it was perfectly charming.

  He didn’t dare tip his finger beneath her chin to make her look at him with those fabulous blue eyes, although he dearly wished he could. He wanted more, he realised with a stab of desire. He wanted to know if Morwen Tremayne was as prim as she looked right now, standing as stiff as board. He wanted to feel her bend, to yield to him as she had done so accidentally that afternoon. The sudden need of her startled him.

  ‘My name is Ben,’ he said gravely. ‘We have no need to be so formal, especially when I have your blood on my shirt, if only a tiny spot. Surely that fact is of some significance!’

  He patronised her, Morwen thought, as his eyes lingered on the small graze on Morwen’s cheek where his neck-cloth pin had scratched her. Yet she had the ridiculous feeling that if convention had allowed it, he would have leaned across and kissed the mark. She flinched as though he had, as though she captured the imaginary touch of his lips and held the memory close.

  ‘I apologise for branding you, Morwen,’ he went on when she said nothing. ‘I don’t normally treat young ladies so—’

  ‘It’s nothing. It will soon fade. It was my fault for not looking where I was going.’

  She stopped, hearing the agitation in her voice, and knowing that although the mark would fade, Ben Killigrew’s words might be more prophetic than he intended. Branded… it was just how she felt, and how she had been feeling from the moment she fell into his arms.

  As though she were blessed, or cursed, with old Zillah’s second sight, she knew as surely as the sun rose and set, that hers and Ben Killigrew’s paths were destined to cross. What she didn’t yet know, was whether the shivery, almost intoxicating feeling inside her, was due to apprehension or delight.

  Chapter Three

  Charles felt expansive, telling the young folk to get to know one another, while the older ones did the same. Ben offered a plate of canapés, which Morwen was relieved to see were only tiny biscuit bites. She saw how the other young lady smiled up at him, as though they shared secrets. She felt the answering, irritating prickle of jealousy at the glance…

  She wasn’t jealous of Ben Killigrew’s attentions to Miss finelady Jane Carrick, she told herself furiously. It was something more basic than even that sensation. A feeling that however fine Morwen had thought herself in the beribboned muslin dress, she knew she didn’t really fit in here in these grand surroundings.

  None of her family looked easy, except perhaps Freddie, and he was too young to sense the hostility from Ben’s aunt, or the heartiness with which Charles Killigrew tried to make his unlikely guests mingle. Matthew seemed able to converse with the unruly cousin, but as for Morwen herself…

  She found the contrast between Jane Carrick and herself taking on ridiculous proportions in her mind. Jane was small and genteel in her beautiful gown, while Morwen felt herself to be all shapes, her dark hair slipping and sliding from the pins with which she’d tried to tame it that evening.

  Miss Carrick might be very nice, but Morwen knew they had absolutely nothing in common. They had nothing to say to one another, no point of contact…

  ‘Mr Killigrew tells me you’re a bal maiden,’ Jane said suddenly to the strange, beautiful girl in the extraordinarily decorated dress.

  ‘I work for Mr Killigrew, like the rest of my family.’

  Morwen was unsure if the girl was being condescending or not, but made sure that Miss finelady knew she wasn’t ashamed of an honest day’s work.

  ‘I’ve never met a bal maiden before—’ Jane was just being curious, and if Morwen hadn’t seen Ben’s grinning face behind Jane right then, she might not have been quite so tart.

  ‘I assure you we’re quite normal. We don’t have two heads or anything!’

  Jane reddened, sipping her drink before answering evenly, refusing to be provoked.

  ‘I can see that. You’re very pretty, Morwen. I thought what a charming name it was, that’s all. Where does bal maiden come from?’

  ‘I don’t know, miss. It may be a charming name, but the work’s often far from charming. It ruins your hands.’ Morwen stopped, biting her lips. What would this girl care about ruined hands, when her own were soft and white, and didn’t know the meaning of work? The gap between them yawned wider.

  ‘Please don’t call me miss,’ Jane said quietly. ‘My name is Jane. We’re all equal here.’

  Until the instant they stepped outside Killigrew House and went their separate ways! The Carricks in their own carriage, home to Truro; the Tremaynes to the humble moorland cottage in the borrowed carriage.

  What was wrong with her tonight? She had never thought her circumstances lacking before. The Tremaynes had a sound roof, enough food, and love to spare. She saw her mother across the room, and felt a fierce renewal of family pride. Bess had dignity of her own,
even beside the snooty Hannah Pascoe and her friend.

  Morwen’s resentment seemed directed toward Ben Killigrew and his Miss finelady Jane. By now, Jane had turned from the sullen bal maiden, and was chatting with the Tremayne boys. Sam knew his manners, and Jack was quite sweet, like the baby, Freddie, Jane thought. If Matthew and Jude Pascoe were getting their heads together, then she didn’t mind too much if Matthew ignored her.

  ‘I’ve known Jane since we were children,’ Ben told Morwen, as though he thought it necessary to explain.

  ‘Really?’ She tried to sound disinterested.

  ‘She’s pretty, isn’t she?’

  His tone should have alerted her. She should have sensed that he was baiting her to see her reaction, but she didn’t.

  ‘Very!’ She was heavily sarcastic. ‘I’ve never seen such a lovely, well-dressed, prettily-mannered young lady—’

  ‘Aren’t you overdoing it a little?’ Ben was laughing at her now, and it suddenly struck Morwen that they seemed to be holding a private little conversation in a roomful of people. ‘I only said Jane was pretty. So are you, in a different way—’

  ‘A more common way, you mean!’ Her voice might have frozen anyone else, but not Ben Killigrew. He was enjoying these spirited replies.

  ‘Are you always so touchy?’ he teased her.

  ‘That’s how your aunt sees it,’ Morwen retorted. ‘She said I was every bit as bad as the bal maidens are painted. Wild and unruly – and what she meant was common!’

  Ben leaned forward to fill her glass with more sparkling fruit cup, cool and refreshing.

  ‘I don’t give a damn what my Aunt Hannah thinks,’ he said arrogantly. Morwen was about to answer just as imperiously, when his aunt’s voice seemed to float across the room towards her.

  ‘Your daughter thinks a railway track from the pits is a necessity, Mr Tremayne.’ Hannah’s voice was amused, as though a young girl’s views could be discounted.