Marguerite Kaye - Invitation To A Cornish Christmas

‘Don’t you have other matters to attend to?’

‘I’m beginning to realise that if I wanted to, I could tend to estate business twenty-four hours a day. But I don’t want to. Bligh deprived me of a walk with you the other day, and legal business took up all of yesterday. I’ve earned a break, but I know that your work must come first, I don’t want to…’

‘I work to eat, it’s true, but I reckon I too have earned a break. Do you think the weather will be kind enough to us to allow us to go further than the beach?’

‘I made a special plea to the weather gods,’ Treeve said, ‘in the hope that I could persuade you. The clifftop path from here towards Porth Leven is beautiful.’

‘I’ll fetch my cloak,’ Emily said.

Treeve’s pleas to the weather gods had been answered, it seemed, for it was a lovely afternoon, the skies pale blue with a weak lemon sun, the breeze as gentle as it was possible to hope for at this time of year. Crossing the top of Budoc Lane by St Piran’s church they avoided the village, making for the path that hugged the clifftops.

Emily was wearing one of her favourite dresses of russet-and-cream-striped wool. She had dressed carefully yesterday morning too, in another of her favourite gowns, telling herself that she was merely getting the use out of them, knowing perfectly well she was hoping Treeve would call.

‘Are you immune to the cold?’ she asked, hugging her cloak around her, for he was hatless and gloveless, without even a greatcoat.

‘Try standing on the open deck of a ship in a storm,’ he replied. ‘The cold I never mind, it’s being soaked to the skin that gets to you.’

‘What about the heat? Have you been to the tropics?’

‘I’ve been around the world several times over. I always laugh when I hear people in England complain about the weather. True enough, we have a bit of everything, sometimes all four of our seasons in a day, but it’s all in moderation.’

‘I’ll try to remember that,’ Emily said, smiling. ‘The next day I’m confined to my cottage by the torrential rain, unable to work because it’s as dark at midday as midnight.’

‘What do you do, on those days?’

‘It might sound stupid but sometimes, when it’s really wild, I like to go outside. There’s something so—so elemental about the storms here, you know? Standing on the headland, with nothing in front of you but the horizon, on days like that it can feel as if you’re the only person left in the world.’

Treeve cocked an eyebrow. ‘And that’s a nice feeling, is it? Is that why no one even knows about your little cottage industry? I mentioned it at dinner to the eldest Miss Treleven and…’

She came to an abrupt halt, turning towards him angrily. ‘You told her I was a silversmith!’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘I don’t want people talking about me. I mean,’ she amended, for her words had sounded disproportionately defensive, ‘that I prefer not to be the subject of gossip.’

‘I was expressing my admiration, not gossiping.’

‘You hadn’t even seen my work at that point.’

‘My admiration was for your determination to make your own way in life, Emily, for the guts it must take, and the skill to make a living for yourself and, to use your own words, to “cut your cloth to suit your purse.”’

Embarrassed, she felt her cheeks heating, but she could not keep the resentment from her voice. ‘I also told you that I don’t want to be pitied.’

‘It seems to me, it is you who sees yourself as a pitiful creature. I certainly don’t, and nor did Miss Treleven.’

The truth of his words were like a punch in the stomach. ‘I was too hasty,’ she said stiffly. ‘I apologise.’

‘Don’t look so stricken. Whatever travails you’ve endured since your father died…’

‘Are my business, no one else’s.’

Treeve put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to meet his gaze. ‘Don’t be so defensive. I didn’t ask you out here to interrogate you. Some polite conversation—you know, a little give and take.’

She smiled reluctantly. ‘I’ve largely forgotten how to make conversation.’

‘Would you like to put some practice in?’

‘Yes, please.’ She liked the way he met her eyes, so straight on, the way he looked at her, not through her, the way he listened to what she said, even if by listening he saw through her enough to tell her a home truth or two.

The wind had blown his hair across his face. Without thinking, she reached up to push it back. He caught her hand. She held her breath as desire flared unmistakably in his eyes, as her body responded, heat prickling her back, tingling deep inside her. He kissed her, but only by brushing his lips on her glove. When he let her go, she felt absurdly disappointed.

‘Look at this.’ Treeve made a sweeping gesture. ‘On days like this, I can see why my brother always said there was nowhere like it in the whole world. Perhaps Cornwall is in my blood after all.’

He had turned them both to face towards Penzance. The tide was out, so the long crescent of beach which stretched almost all the way to Porth Karrek was revealed, and the cobbled causeway leading out to St Michael’s Mount, the tiny rocky island topped with a fortress, was clearly visible. ‘I always think it is some sort of strange ship, moored to the mainland by a stone rope,’ Emily said.

‘There’s another similar island just off the coast of Brittany you know, called Mont St Michel. They were both priories, up until about four hundred years ago or so. Shall we press on?’

They headed off along the path, just wide enough for them to walk two abreast as it hugged the clifftops, giving breathtaking views out to sea. Treeve pointed out a number of lethal-looking rocks similar to The Beasts, visible only because the tide was low. Little London, The Frenchman, The Bears, each had their own special name, and if they had any particular meaning, according to Treeve, it was long forgotten. What each was remembered for were the wrecks they had been responsible for, so many of them that Emily wondered why any fisherman would risk their life in these waters.

‘It’s true,’ Treeve answered her, ‘the Cornish coast is the most treacherous in all of England, the sea can turn from flat calm to a storm in the blink of an eye, but our fishermen must fish, or they will starve. They need to follow the shoals of pilchards wherever they go, regardless of the danger.’

‘Did you ever sail here?’

‘Of course I did. My father taught Austol and I to sail in the harbour when we were very young—he wouldn’t allow us to venture out of Porth Karrek until he was happy we knew what we were doing, because of The Beasts. My father was an excellent sailor.’

‘So it runs in the blood, your own affinity with ships and the sea?’

‘It does, though my father, like my brother, had no interest in any sea beyond this one.’

‘While you wanted to sail them all?’

‘Something like that.’ He frowned. ‘It wasn’t only a case of wanting to see the wider world though, I didn’t relish the prospect of being constrained by the boundaries of their world.’

‘And be obliged to become a vicar, to boot.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Heaven forfend. Truly.’

‘You wanted to be your own man,’ Emily said. ‘I can understand that. I have worked very hard to become my own woman.’

‘Yes, it’s something we share, our refusal to be hidebound. Though it comes at a price. I am master of my own ship, but I still have to obey orders. What’s more, the navy has a book of rules and regulations as thick as—I was going to say Jago Bligh’s skull, but that would be unfair. He’s not the least bit stupid, merely stubbornly attached to the old ways, like most of the village. You’ve experienced that, Emily. You had to swear Bligh’s niece and nephew to silence about their swimming lessons, for heaven’s sake.’