Sara Craven - Witching Hour

Eventually she spoke, breaking rather impatiently across her mother’s comments about the harvest of apples from the Home Farm’s orchard, ‘Did the missing heir turn up then?’

‘Yes, eventually.’ Morgana’s tone was short, and she picked up her drink and sipped it.

‘The whole thing sounds so incredibly unlikely.’ Elaine’s eyes were fixed on her face. ‘It all sounds like the plot for one of those old-fashioned romances.’

‘Well, I can assure you that there’s little of the old-fashioned romantic about my cousin Lyall,’ said Morgana, and instantly regretted it, because Elaine’s gaze sharpened with interest.

‘Dear me,’ she drawled. ‘Have the sparks been flying already?’

‘I hardly think that’s any of our business, Elaine,’ her father broke in repressively.

Elaine shrugged unrepentantly. ‘That doesn’t make it any less fascinating,’ she said. ‘On the contrary. So what’s he like, Morgana? Tall, dark and handsome?’

‘He’s tall,’ said Morgana, keeping her voice deliberately cool. ‘And I suppose some women might find him attractive.’

‘But not you?’ Elaine probed.

‘Certainly not her.’ Rob laid a hand over Morgana’s and smiled at her possessively. ‘Morgana only has eyes for me, haven’t you, love?’

Out of the corner of her eye, Morgana saw his mother glance at them quickly, then away, confirming her suspicions that Mrs Donleven would not break her heart if Morgana was forced to move far away from Polzion, and well out of Rob’s orbit. She wished suddenly that it was possible for her to lean across the narrow oak table that separated them and say, ‘Look, you have nothing to worry about. I like Rob enormously, but I’m not in love with him. Even if I’d been my father’s heir, I would still feel the same.’

But she and Mrs Donleven had never been on terms of sufficient intimacy for her to even to venture on such a comment. Besides, it was hardly the topic for a supposedly pleasant social occasion, and she had no wish to hurt Rob, although she supposed it was inevitable that their parting would be accompanied by a certain amount of pain, less on her side than on his, she was forced to acknowledge, and found herself wondering why she should suddenly be so sure of this.

She took the menu Elaine handed her with a condescending smile and studied it, the neat copperplate in which it was written dancing meaninglessly in front of her eyes.

‘Well,’ said Elaine, ‘attractive or not, he certainly seems to have given you food for thought.’

‘Is it any wonder?’ Morgana countered lightly. ‘He’s now the legal owner of the house I live in. If someone arrived to dispossess you tomorrow, I imagine you’d also be a little on edge.’

‘It’s a bad business.’ Mr Donleven shook his head. ‘Did you really have no idea what would happen? Didn’t your late father give you any kind of warning?’

As Morgana shook her head, she reflected that Martin Pentreath hadn’t been the kind of man who dealt in warnings, merely in optimism which was generally unfounded.

‘From what I can gather from our solicitor, my father preferred to ignore the other branch of the family altogether. For some reason, he genuinely believed that Giles Pentreath had died a childless bachelor. Of course, if he had done so, or if his child had been a daughter as well, then everything would have been entirely different.’

Mr Donleven sighed and drank some of his whisky. Morgana could guess what he was thinking, that if he had been in Martin Pentreath’s shoes he would have done everything possible to discover the truth beyond all doubt, and then taken some kind of action to protect his family from the eventual blow. There was little excuse to offer for her father’s ostrich-like behaviour, she thought sadly.

Rob bent solicitously towards her. ‘What would you like to eat, love?’

‘Oh—melon, I think, and fillet steak.’ She put the menu down. ‘I’m not very hungry.’

Mr Donleven gave the order to the hovering waitress, then turned back to Morgana. ‘Has your cousin given any indication of his plans for the house? Does he intend to live there himself?’

‘I don’t know.’ Morgana shook her head. ‘But I would have thought it was unlikely.’

‘You mean he might be prepared to sell?’ Mrs Donleven broke in rather too eagerly, and Morgana turned an astonished look on her.

‘Mother!’ Rob’s frown was thunderous. ‘You know we agreed we wouldn’t say anything.’

‘Say anything about what?’ Morgana said rather desperately, and Mr Donleven leaned forward conciliatingly.

‘Oh, it was just an idea that my—that we had.’ He gave her an uneasy smile. ‘We’ve always admired the house, you know, and we thought if it was coming on the market at the right price …’

‘Because it could be made charming,’ his wife intervened, and then flushed as if it suddenly occurred to her that she had been less than tactful.

‘Yes, it could,’ Morgana agreed wryly, thinking of the expensive transformation that had overtaken the Home Farm in recent years. But although it had become a charming, and even luxurious home, she supposed she could have guessed that it would only ever be second-best in Mrs Donleven’s eyes while Polzion House was only a mile away. She sees herself as the lady of the manor, she thought, and what a fool I was not to see it coming.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Rob asked her eagerly, and she turned a rather blank look at him.

‘About what?’

‘About the possibility of our buying the house.’

She gave a defensive shrug. ‘It isn’t really any of my business,’ she parried. ‘Any discussions would have to be with the new owner and his solicitors.’

‘Well, I know that, of course.’ There was a dawning puzzlement in Rob’s eyes as he studied her. ‘But how would you feel about it, Morgana? That’s important too. And it would be a solution, wouldn’t it?’

A solution to what? she asked herself stupidly. All she could see were more problems, proliferating like weeds, and judging by the fleeting expressions of alarm she had noticed on the faces of both Mrs Donleven and Elaine, she guessed that although they might covet Polzion House, the prospect of her permanent company there, presumably as Rob’s wife, had as little appeal for them as for her.

She sought to temporise. ‘I don’t really know what to say. It’s all been rather a shock.’

‘Of course it has,’ Mr Donleven interrupted soothingly. ‘We shouldn’t have mentioned it. This is neither the time nor the place.’ He gave his wife a warning glance, then determinedly changed the subject, leaving Morgana to pursue her reeling thoughts.

Polzion House was like a carcase with the vultures clustering round it, she told herself almost hysterically. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get away. Mr Donleven, she knew, was a wealthy man, and could undoubtedly afford to pay any inflated price that Lyall Pentreath might place on the property. But the idea of Mrs Donleven and Elaine in particular queening it there was oddly abhorrent. And Rob must be mad to think she would ever seriously contemplate sharing her old home with his mother and his sister, she thought confusedly.

Even if they all thought the world of each other, it would be a difficult situation. As it was, it would be impossible.

At that moment, the waitress came to tell them their table was prepared. Morgana could not say that she particularly enjoyed the meal that followed, but Mr Donleven did his best to lighten the atmosphere with some amusing anecdotes of personalities in the City with whom he was in almost daily contact, and which to Morgana were merely names in the newspaper, or faces on television. She found his accounts of board-room coups and averted take-overs less than fascinating, but she appreciated his attempts to keep the conversation away from more personal issues.