The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (12 page)

Turning toward a hopelessly lethal snarl of dead raspberry vines strangling browned roses, I hoped that he believed me to be gardening innocuously.

“You need not stay,” I told him as I pushed the vines back. “I am quite happy to be alone.”

“But I am not.”

My head whipped around. He shifted uncomfortably, eyes lowered as if he were only now hearing his words and piecing together how they must sound. It was proof that he was more socially inept than even I was, making his rudeness a little more forgivable, but an insistent call from within the raspberry vines distracted me before I had a chance to voice my annoyance.

Here I am.

Without stopping to think, I eagerly pushed back a ruin of thorns and curled leaves.

My breath caught. I had revealed a lavender-colored rose.

“Bring me that, if you please,” came Roger’s curt command.

“I’m not sure I should.” The rose’s deep scent crept into my senses until I felt slightly giddy. I had always loved roses.

“There will be more, if you cut it correctly.”

A laugh was born in my throat over the notion that the dour Roger Penwyth should teach an earth-affinitied witch about growing roses, but it died when I saw that he had sprawled atop the stone in bone-deep exhaustion. His whipcord legs, burdened with silver spurs, were flung out at an angle. A shaking fist pinned a sketchpad to his knee.

“Are you quite well?” I asked. “You do not perhaps have a fever?”

“No fever. I am a trifle . . . done in. I’ve been walking the towans since . . . last night I think.”

It was afternoon now.

“I’ve had some news,” he said moodily at the incredulous look on my face. “I suppose I lost track of the time.”

“You did not see any lights, did you?”

He gazed at me in astonishment before breaking into a breathtaking smile that made me blink, dazzled by the show of teeth within the solemn face. “No lights. The knackers know to leave off me. Now, bring me the rose.”

Still woozy from the power of that rare smile, I broke the bud at the joint without further protest and brought it to him. Immediately he fell to sketching it as if it were a bone brought to a starving dog.

“Should you have come here?” I asked after a few moments.

He did not answer or pause his sketching.

“Perhaps you should have called at the house first, and ask permission to be on the grounds. Lady Penwyth--” I faltered at Roger’s stony expression. “Lady Penwyth might find it . . . offensive . . .”

“There’s not much in this world that I care about, least of all Jocasta Penwyth’s sensibilities. I don’t give a goddamn if she is offended.”

“But sir, this property is private.”

“For that matter, you haven’t asked for ‘permission’ to be in the walled garden, so keep your bleats about propriety to yourself.”

It was a flaying of rare perception and efficiency, and done in a tone that held nothing more than a mild rebuke. All the same, I winced.

He saw it. A sound came from his throat, like a strangled moan. “Forgive me my manner, Miss Eames,” he muttered. “They want for a little . . . polish.”

“They want more than polish, sir. They want a blacksmith.”

“You’re right. I don’t have much opportunity to trot them forth. You will take no notice?”

The entreaty was of a different sort than his cousin Damon would have practiced. Damon would have asked forgiveness with a wicked smooth grin knowing that all would be forgiven; Roger’s appeal came from an anxious darkness that was never certain of anything.

“How did you know that I don’t have permission to come to the walled garden?” I asked, beset by anxieties of my own.

“Because you wouldn’t be here if you had.”

“Why?”

He took up his pencil-strokes again. “They let no one come here. Sir Grover shuts this place up and hopes that if he can’t see it, it will disappear.”

“I believe he means to overturn the walls and put the garden to the plough,” I said sorrowfully.

“Does he? Then he is a fool.” A few more swipes with the pencil. “Can you guess what used to stand here?”

The spirits of long-dead monks, their tonsures ragged and their robes stained with poverty, flowed silently by. “An abbey?”

“Very good, Miss Eames. At one time an order of Irish Dominicans took up residence on this part of the Hundred. But there are things in this garden that are much older than a religious house, and perhaps, some say, older than the Cornish themselves.”

Disembodied eyes stared at me reproachfully. “Yes,” I said. “I can feel that.”

“Ah.” Another of his furtive glances, shot under lids lowered to the pad. “Do you know aught of the Lost Hundred?”

“The Lost Hundred . . . oh, Lyonesse.” The Reverend Sprull’s dry prose sprang to mind. “Of course. It is purported to have sunk into the sea.”

“Purported, eh? What a fancy word,” he said mildly. “Not all of it went under, you know.”

“I do know,” I replied stiffly. “You said the cranes are still looking for it.”

“Did I? I had forgotten.”

Roger pointed charcoal-stained fingers toward the tumbled part of the wall where one could glimpse the violet moor meeting the sea. “Over at the edge of land, Lyonesse’s city of Llyr stood, they say, built of pink granite and red shingle, a jewel on the end of a spit of land they called The Praa.

“Three tides from north, south, and west met at The Praa, making the waters calm, the fish sweet, and the air soft. A Roman emperor was said to live there in his aged infirmities, as did a prince of Gaul. Winter was always short, and the folk there grew tall and full-fleshed.”

He stopped.

“What happened?” I prodded when he took to examining the tip of his blunted pencil in intense concentration.

“What always happens to places blessed by the gods.” He fished a penknife from his waistcoat pocket. “A cataclysm destroyed it, in this instance a storm lasting three days. The tides raised beyond measure in a violent swamp of water. When it was over, The Praa crumbled and the sea swallowed up Lyonesse’s beautiful blushing Llyr.”

Screams echoed faintly in my head and I shuddered.

Roger turned his eyes westward. “There are only remnants left, and most are disguised by ignorance and time.”

“I suppose the giant’s ring is one such thing.”

“The what?”

I colored. His expression was one of pitying tolerance, as if I had not grasped the significance of the tale. “That is what I call that rock over there.” I indicated the hollowed-out stone perched on its fellow.

Roger half-rose to see what I was pointing at. “That’s the weight from a merrow-catcher,” he said brusquely, and sank back down.

“A what?”

I had made the mistake of looking sideways at Roger. He whirled in my vision, and I forced myself to look at him direct.

“A merrow-catcher,” he repeated as if I were a simpleton. “You tie a net to the ring and throw it overboard. Merrows were said to tangle up in the nets.”

“And what is a merrow?”

“Ah, no one quite knows, do they, except that they dwell deep in the sea. A fisherman who catches one alive might be granted good fishing and calm waters for the rest of his days. If the fisherman tried to capture one and failed, however, the sea-folk would teach him a lesson. They would sink the skiff, drown the hands, and eat their flesh, leaving picked bones upon the shore in heaps.”

He was being deliberately lurid. “What Cornish fancy,” I murmured. “Merrows don’t really exist.”

“Neither do witches, do they?”

I stared at him.

“Or so philosophers and practitioners of logic and reason say,” he continued easily. “S’truth, we’ll never know if the sea-folk are fact or fancy. They all left for the deeps when Lyonesse sank.”

I laughed, shakily. “That’s a mercy, then. They sound like horrible creatures.”

His eyes lifted from the sketchbook into mine. “Hadn’t you heard? We Penwyths are supposed to have merrow blood flowing in our veins.”

My chest took a blow from my heart. “Really?”

He smiled, another brilliant, shy show of teeth. He was teasing me.

“It would explain the Penwyth disdain for your fellow man,” I said a little testily.

He laughed, and over thick heartbeats I felt a rush of elation at making Prometheus momentarily forget about the vulture.

“There must be a story about how it came to be,” I prodded.

“Of course. And it’s sordid too, as the best stories always are.”

“Then I would like to hear it.”

“A Penwyth princess too willful for her own good was tricked into lying with a merrow as she swam at the tip of The Praa. She gave birth to a son with distinctly green skin and red eyes--the sure sign of merrow-blood.”

I cocked my head, examining him. “I see no trace of green in your skin.”

“Time dilutes such distinctions.”

“What happened to the princess?”

“Her father had her killed.”

I blanched. “That’s horrible!”

“It was a savage age. He did keep the son.”

My happy mood crumbled. An awkward silence fell, broken only by sparrow-chirps.

“I should go,” I said pointedly, casting a glance skyward at the sun slinking into late afternoon. “It’s growing late.”

Instead of answering, he held up his sketch.

I gasped. I had no idea when he finished it, for I thought I had my eyes fixed fairly attentively upon him as we conversed. I looked upon a fully completed portrait of myself . . . but was it me?

He made me beautiful. My wild hair fanned out in limpid curls instead of a wiry scraggle, and my thin, indistinct features glowed with the heat of good health and beauty. A plentitude of flora surrounded me, and when I peered closer I could see a cunningly subtle line of fanciful mermaids and their merrow-consorts watching me from the shoreline on the horizon.

“Oh,” I breathed. “It’s not very like, is it?”

He was stowing away his pencils in the leather bag. “It’s what I see.”

I blinked stupidly at him, at a loss over his ragged gallantry. He was disinclined to help me ease the awkward moment like any well-bred gentleman should do. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying my flattered discomfort, if the upward quirk of his mouth were any evidence.

To change the subject and diffuse the charge in the air, I thanked him for the plant he sent me yesterday.

“It survived Jocasta? Then I am happy you like it.”

“I have it in my chamber,” I said carefully, unwilling to reveal how much I knew about his conflict with Lady Penwyth. “Should I let it have full sun? I’ve never seen a plant like it before, and I know nothing of its properties.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll come to know it soon.”

The comment cut close. I thought about what Damon had said about madness flowing in the blood of the Lyhalis Penwyths. Madmen saw things others did not.

“And how does Damon get on?” Roger asked, bitingly.

I jumped. Roger’s train of thought matched mine too exact for comfort.

“He is in good health,” I babbled. “Very much occupied with his diversions. I hardly ever see him.”

Roger’s eyes narrowed as they rested on me, causing me to blush. “Yes, my cousin is a busy fellow. His malleable manner opens doors better left closed to him.”

His mood had changed, and with it, the easiness between us.

“I really must go,” I said, backing away with awkward limps. “The afternoon is quite murdered, and I must dress for supper.”

Roger rose with feral grace. His strength had returned. Deftly he slung his leather saddle pack over his shoulder in a ripple of developed muscle glimpsed in the gap of the ruined collar. Damon may have possessed a languid elegance, but Roger was all coiled power.

“For you,” he murmured.

He held out the rose.

Automatically I reached for it. As I did so, I made another mistake. I looked up at him out of the corner of my eye, undone by shyness to look him full, and the world behind him smeared.

He, however, remained etched sharply against the blurred background. The careless dress, the dilapidated state of his figure sent desire burning a prickling path into my belly.

He saw it. And in his eyes there was an answer.

I threw the rose down, turned, and ran.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Like a wounded hare that had gnawed her foot from the hunter’s trap, I stumbled into the dusk toward the refuge of the Hermitage.

The weight of Roger’s gaze burdened my flight. An alien sizzle raged in my blood, heated by those eyes. I sensed that if I let myself fall into the green depths, I would be sucked down a violent eddy in desire so deep I would never break the surface.

I repeated Damon’s name over and over like a talisman. It was Damon whom I loved, I told myself fiercely, Damon with his merry lighthearted love-play, as frothy as spun sugar and just as sweet. That was true love, one I could understand.