Authors: Sara Craven
with you.'
'I wouldn't want to hear about them,' he said derisively. 'Not that
there'd be very much to discuss—it isn't a very ardent affair.'
Before she could back away, he reached out suddenly and took her
bare left hand in his. 'Haven't you warned him, Morgan le Fay, that
he needs to put his seal on you in this way, if no other?'
'That's not true,' she said defiantly. 'I don't need a ring to prove
how . . .'
'I wasn't only talking about a ring,' he said, and pulled her towards
him. His mouth seared hers, blocking off the cry of protest rising
in her throat. Then her lips parted helplessly, and she clung to
him,, glorying in her submission at his storm of kisses raged over
her face and throat. His hands travelled down her body, moulding
her against him, making her urgently aware of his mounting desire.
She flattened her hands against his chest, feeling the racing of his
heart under her palms. When he released her, his face was
feverishly flushed and his eyes glittered down at her.
'Tell him it's over,' he said harshly. 'If you don't, then I will.'
'No!' She wrenched herself free and stood facing him, her breasts
rising and falling stormily.
'Don't be a fool,' he said. 'You may look like your grandmother,
but you don't have to act like her. You don't want Donleven. You
want me, and you know it, but you won't admit it. I'm still the
enemy, the outsider who's robbed you of your treasure, your home.
Well, you can have the bloody thing if it's so vital to your
happiness. I'll make it over to you, lock stock and barrel. You get
the house, and I get you. Is it a bargain?'
'No,' she repeated, helpless tears filling her eyes. 'How dare you
think you can buy me! I—I love Rob.'
'You'd probably love a dog if you had one,' he said cruelly. 'Don't
confuse whatever lukewarm attachment you may have to
Donleven with what you feel for me.
They don't occupy the same universe. I've seen you with him,
remember?'
'And I've seen you with Elaine.' Her voice shook. 'What part of
your universe does she fill? If you want me to admit that you turn
me on, then I do. I confess it all—not that there was ever much
room for doubt; you made sure of that. But I'm not proud of it, and
unlike you, Lyall, I want other things as well as passion—things
like respect and affection, that you wouldn't understand. I couldn't
be what you want. I'd end up despising myself. It just wouldn't be
worth it,' she ended chokingly.
'There'd be compensations.' His eyes lingered disturbingly on her
mouth. 'I'd make it worth it, Morgana.'
'You couldn't.' She was close to tears. 'We want different things.
We don't even speak the same language.'
His face hardened. 'You're really going to do it, aren't you?' he
said. 'You're going to emulate your grandmother, and let the man
you want walk out of your life. You're as big a coward as she was.'
'How dare you say that?' she gasped.
'Oh, I dare,' he shrugged. 'It isn't part of the story as I heard it, but
something I managed to work out for myself. She should have
gone with him. She should have called her husband's bluff and
damned all the social conventions of her day to hell. But she was
plain scared, and she let two lives be ruined because of that fear.
And that's not romantic, Morgan le Fay—-it's pitiful. But I'm not
Mark Pentreath. I'm not going to hang about in the background,
eating my heart out while you enliven the dullness of your life
with fantasies about what might have been. Be a coward, Morgana,
but you'll be one alone.'
'I want to be alone,' she said raggedly. 'Any sort of loneliness
would be better than the misery of being with you. I wouldn't
crawl to you if I were dying!'
She turned and ran out of the room, and down the stairs, not daring
to look back, but with the memory of the bitterness of his face
etched indelibly on her mind.
MORGANA folded the last letter and put it back in the case. She
looked across the table at her mother, who was still deeply
absorbed in reading, and gave a little sigh.
Elizabeth put her own letter down and shook her head. 'What a sad
and unnecessary waste of two lives,' she said gravely. 'And you
say Lyall has a similar collection from your grandmother.'
'So he says.' Morgana paused. 'Did you never have any idea?'
'None.' Mrs Pentreath gave a small, wintry smile. 'This was just
one more thing your father chose to keep me in the dark about. I
wish he felt he could have trusted me.'
'Oh, love, it wasn't that, I'm sure.' Morgana put out a hand and
squeezed her mother's arm. 'He just didn't want you to worry about
things.'
'And that, of course, was the greatest worry of all,' her mother said
quietly. She sat in silence for a few moments, her eyes brooding as
if she was recalling memories that were not totally pleasing to her.
Morgana touched the split leather. 'Just before we cut it open, I
found I was hoping it would be recipes—or knitting patterns. I
really didn't want it to be true.'
'Why not, darling?' Mrs Pentreath's eyes searched her daughter's
face anxiously. 'It's ancient history now. No one can be hurt by it
today.'
'I think it's touched all of us in different ways,' Morgana said. She
gave a little sharp laugh. 'At least, I'll never believe in romance
again.'
'That sounds odd coming from a girl who's engaged to be married,'
Elizabeth said drily. 'What do you want to do with these letters?
Keep them?'
Morgana shrugged. 'As you say, it's ancient history.' She gathered
up a handful of the letters and walking across to the range, dumped
them on the burning coke, where they shrivelled and turned brown
before bursting into flame.
'Rather drastic,' Mrs Pentreath observed mildly. 'They were part of
the family archives, after all.'
'What family archives?' Morgana's tone was wry. 'Let's face it,
love, the Pentreaths are over and done with. Polzion will be run as
a conference and holiday centre in the New Year, and Lyall has no
intention of either living here or using the name. So—
sic transit
gloria
Pentreath.'
'Don't you mind?'
'There's very little point in minding. We haven't been such an
admirable family that we deserve any kind of memorial. We've run
the gamut from wrecking and smuggling to sheer bloody-
mindedness, after all. Perhaps it's just as well we're just going to
fade away.'
'But I thought it meant a lot to you. At times I was afraid it meant
too much.'
'Perhaps it did once,' Morgana said in a low voice. 'But it's no
longer mine to care about. And besides . . .' She stopped. She'd
been about to say that people mattered more than places, but
remembered just in time whom she was quoting. She said, 'And
besides, I'll be leaving here soon.'
'You mean—to be married?' Mrs Pentreath was startled.
'No, that isn't what I meant.' Morgana sat down again at the table,
clasping her hands lightly together on the scrubbed surface. 'I'm
going to get a job away from here.'
'But what about Lyall?'
Morgana shrugged. 'I don't think he'll make any difficulties. It's—
it's amused him to make me dance to his piping for a while, that's
all.'
'Is it?' Elizabeth asked very gently. She hesitated. 'Does he—is he
serious about Elaine Donleven?'
'I don't know.' Morgana forced a smile. 'But it makes no
difference, because he certainly isn't serious about me.'
'Oh, my dear! And yet there were times when he looked at you,
and I thought . . .'
Morgana shook her head. 'Simple old-fashioned lust, Mother, not
anything that mattered.' She saw her mother's anxious expression
and added, 'And no, I didn't succumb to it, in spite of considerable
temptation.' She rose. 'I'd started taking some of my things up to
the flat. I'd better get back to it. It will be nice to have a place of
our own again.'
'Why, yes.' Mrs Pentreath didn't sound too certain.
Morgana grinned at her affectionately. 'We shall be allowed
visitors,' she pointed out. 'It would be a shame to deprive Major
Lawson of his after-dinner chats.'
Mrs Pentreath went slightly pink. 'He's very pleasant company,'
she said with dignity. 'And please stop looking so—
knowing.
You're as bad as Elsa.'
'What's Elsa been saying?'
'Altogether too much,' Mrs Pentreath returned. 'Sometimes she
really goes too Tar.'
Morgana laughed. 'Perhaps, but it's too late to bring her under
control now.'
As she went upstairs, her smile faded as she remembered only too
clearly what Elsa had prophesied for her—'Grief and misery, pain
and woe.' The burning ache deep inside her bore witness to the
accuracy of that.
Wincing, she paused in the gallery, staring at the portrait of Mark
Pentreath, now, after so many years, at the side of the woman he
had loved. A sigh shook her as her eyes went to the portrait of her
grandmother—Morgan le Fay, who had cast her innocent spell,
bewitching the wrong man, and suffering for it for the rest of her
life.
But at least she had her letters, she thought unhappily as she turned
away. Whereas I—I shall have nothing at all.
Morgana was still quiet that evening, sitting beside Rob in the
lounge at the Polzion Arms, and eventually he became irritable.
'What in the world's the matter with you? You can't still be
brooding over this business with your grandparents? For God's
sake, Morgana, it's past and done. I can't imagine why van Guisen
had to tell you about it.'
'Presumably because he thought I would want to know the truth at
last,' she said.
'It isn't even as if you could change anything,' Rob said
unanswerably. 'You .worry me, darling, dwelling on the past like
this. It's the future you should be concentrating on—our future.' He
put his hand over hers. 'When are you going to let me announce
our engagement.'
Staring down at the table top, unable to meet his gaze, she said,
'There's no hurry, is there?'
'There certainly hasn't been, but in just over a week it will be
Christmas. That's a good time to make it official— an ideal time.
My parents are having a party on Christmas Eve. We can make it a
double celebration.'
'Are you sure that's how your parents will regard it?'
He stirred uncomfortably. 'They may have been a little— surprised
at first, but they're more than reconciled now.
'Thank you,' she said with irony.
Rob groaned. 'I definitely didn't mean, that as it sounded, darling.
But they're not the ones who matter anyway. You know how I feel
about you. I want to be able to stand up in front of the world and
tell it that you belong to me.'
His words made her feel guiltier than ever. She picked up her drink
and took a hasty sip. Rob was watching her, not anxiously, but in a
puzzled way.
'Well, darling?'
'I need some time to think—I told you that. And Christmas is
always a busy time for us at the hotel.'
'Oh, come off it, love.' He sounded sceptical. 'You aren't exactly
packed to the doors. And even van Guisen won't expect you to
wait on him hand and foot over Christmas.'
'I don't know what his plans are.' Morgana made her voice neutral.
'But I doubt very much whether he intends to spend Christmas at
Polzion. He has a family in the States, after all. I'd have thought
he'd have wanted to spend the holiday with them.'
Rob grinned. 'Not if Elaine has anything to do with it. I don't
exactly welcome the prospect of the great Mr van Guisen as a
brother-in-law. He's altogether too much of a go-getter for my
taste. He's even had some tame accountant down to go over our
books at the stables, to make sure, I suppose, that we're solvent
enough to fulfil his requirements. That's if this riding holiday deal
goes through.'
'Don't you think it will?'
Rob shrugged. 'Hard to say. I'm not sure it isn't a takeover bid he
has in mind. He and Dad were skirting round a discussion on a
possible price for the Home Farm and stables only the other
evening.'
She gave him a startled look. 'Your father is thinking of selling the
Home Farm? But I thought he loved it.'