Sara Craven - High Tide At Midnight

The door opened and the women came in carrying a tray, which she placed down on the sofa table. Again Morwenna was the recipient of one of those searching looks.

‘Is—is something wrong?’ she asked.

‘You have a look of someone I know. Can’t bring to mind who it is, but I daresay it’ll come to me.’

Morwenna’s heart skipped a beat. Was it her mother that this woman recognised in her? She was quite aware that there was a resemblance, but before she could ask further, a door banged nearby and Zack’s voice shouted pettishly, ‘Inez!’

The woman tutted and moved towards the door. ‘Dear life, doesn’t he go on,’ she remarked placidly, and went out closing the door behind her.

Morwenna studied the tea tray with slight amusement. It had been laid with a tea towel, and bore in addition to a fat brown earthenware teapot, a cup and saucer, neither of which matched, and a small plate holding two buttered cream crackers. But the tea itself was strong and fragrant, and by some miracle not made with teabags. She sipped it as if it was nectar.

When she had finished, she leaned back against the shabby, comfortable cushions and closed her eyes. She felt warmed through, and oddly at peace in spite of her inner uncertainties. All kinds of curious images began to dance behind her shuttered eyes, and it was pleasant to lie back and contemplate them while the warmth of the fire began to dissolve away some of the ache from her tired limbs.

Trees danced in the wind, and dogs with eyes as big and golden as the headlamps on a car went bounding through the night, baying at the moon. And somehow Biddy was there too, the wind filling her black cape. ‘Private road,’ she seemed to be saying over and over again. ‘Private road. Keep out.’

Morwenna had no idea how long she had been asleep or what had disturbed her, but she was wide awake in an instant and sitting up startled. It was much lighter in the room and she realised that someone had switched on the powerful lamp which stood on the desk.

It was a man, and she knew as soon as she saw him that it was the man she had encountered in the lane. Her instinct, she saw, had not misled her. He was dark, as dark as the stormy night outside the windows, tall and lean. His face was thin and as hard as if it had been hewn from the granite cliffs—a high-bridged nose, a jutting chin, firm lips and dark, hooded eyes that stared down at her mother’s paintings spread on the desk in front of him.

Men who looked like that, she thought dazedly, had once sailed ships bringing contraband from Brittany into the coves along this coast under the noses of the Excisemen. And men who looked like that could even have hung lanterns on lonely rocks to lure unsuspecting shipping to a terrible doom.

He must have sensed her eyes on him because he looked up, and Morwenna found herself shrinking from the mixture of angry disbelief mingled with contempt that she saw in his face.

She tried to tell herself that she was still asleep and that her dreams had crossed the frontier into nightmare, but then he spoke and she knew that it was all only too real.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he said. ‘And what are you doing here? You have two minutes to answer me before I have you thrown out.’

FOR a moment Morwenna was stunned into silence, then impetuously she jumped to her feet, regardless of her hair which had come loose from its topknot and fell about her shoulders in a silken shower.

‘And just who are you,’ she raged, ‘to speak to me like that? And how dare you open that parcel? It was for Mr Dominic Trevennon—a private matter. But you have the unmitigated insolence to walk in here and….’

‘I can’t imagine who has a better right,’ he interrupted with icy hostility. ‘You are the intruder here, not I. And your time is running out, so I advise you to answer my questions.’

Her head came up defiantly. ‘I need tell you nothing,’ she said. ‘I wish to speak to Mr Trevennon and no one else.’

There was a long electric silence. Then,

‘I suppose,’ he drawled, ‘that it’s just within the bounds of possibility that you aren’t playing some devious provocative game of your own to attract my attention and that you really don’t know who I am.’

For a minute Morwenna felt numb. Her eyes travelled over him desperately rejecting what her brain told her was the truth.

‘No!’ she whispered. ‘It—it’s not true. You can’t be….’

‘But I assure you I am—what was it you called me?—the uncrowned king of Cornwall. And this’—he showed his teeth in a mirthless smile—‘is my castle.’

‘No!’ Morwenna pressed her hands against her burning cheeks. ‘It’s you that’s playing some game. You can’t be Dominic Trevennon. You’re not old enough.’

He laughed contemptuously. ‘If that’s an attempt at flattery….’

‘It isn’t,’ she said flatly. ‘By my reckoning the real Dominic Trevennon must be in his sixties at least.’

He showed no surprise at her statement. Instead he nodded slightly as if her words had only confirmed what he himself already knew.

‘Now,’ he said very quietly, ‘tell me who you are and what you want in this house.’

She could have ground her teeth. Instead she held on tight to her self-control. ‘I’ve obviously been under a misapprehension,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I can only apologise, and leave. May I have my pictures, please—and their wrappings?’ She held out her hand, but he ignored the gesture completely.

‘Not without an explanation,’ he said. ‘You had enough to say for yourself when we met earlier. Why this sudden reticence? You wanted to ask me a favour—remember?’

She gave a bleak little smile. ‘Not you,’ she said. ‘Someone else who clearly doesn’t exist any more. Your father, perhaps, or….’