The Bad Luck Bride (The Brides of St. Ives #1)(22)
“To protect us from all the evil forces in St. Ives?” Alice asked with a smile, for St. Ives was perhaps the most tranquil place in all of England.
“No, dear, we need a baritone.”
For some reason, that struck Alice as terribly funny, and she bent over with laughter and was soon joined by her mother and sister.
“We need a little music in this house,” Elda said when she’d calmed. “I think having Henderson about would make all the difference.”
*
“I’m sorry, sir, but Lord Berkley is not at home.” Henderson eyed the black crepe tied on the door knocker before turning his attention back to the solemn-faced butler, and remembered the earl’s Cavendish Square butler had been wearing a black band. When he’d seen the obvious sign of mourning, he’d nearly turned around and left. Feeling a bit like a cad, he’d turned the bell on the door anyway, wondering vaguely why he hadn’t seen any signs of mourning at the earl’s London home. When his own great-grandfather had died, they had shrouded the home in black, changing the curtains, draping the mantel in black, and hanging black wreaths even though not a single person within the home had tolerated the old man.
“I was not aware of a death in the family. Please do accept my apologies. May I leave my card and this letter?”
“Of course, Mr. Southwell,” the butler said, quickly reading his card.
“I’m staying at the White Hart Inn in the village if Lord Berkley would like to reach me.”
The butler bowed and shut the door, leaving Henderson feeling a bit at odds. If the man was in deep mourning, the last thing he would want to do was discuss the deaths in India when his own grief was still raw. He mounted his rented horse, grimacing a bit as he did so; it had been weeks since he had been astride and his muscles were feeling the pain. Before turning the horse back down the long, curving drive, he looked back at Costille House, a medieval home, with a massive stone tower and tiny arched windows built for the archer’s bow. Nothing had been done to modernize the hulking home that overlooked St. Ives Bay and he could almost imagine himself wearing knight’s armor. The home was visible from the Porthmeor Beach, a large expanse of soft white sand where he and Joseph would sometimes fish, a mystical and somehow comforting presence on the cliff above them. He would like to see the inside and hoped to hear from Lord Berkley soon.
As he headed down the long drive, he wondered what to do with the rest of his day. He suspected most of the men he’d spent time with as a lad were in London for the season.
Pulling out his watch, he noted it was about half an hour before tea. And it was also about a half hour’s ride to Tregrennar and Alice. He rode along a narrow dirt-paved road lined with stone walls covered by some sweet-smelling flowering vine. Trees made a canopy overhead, the air cool in the shadows. Abruptly, the road gave way to brilliant sun and the heartbreaking blue of the sea to his right and the charming village of St. Ives in the distance.
St. Ives was known by some as the Naples of Cornwall, due to the large, curving bay and its temperate climate. It never got very hot, nor very cold, and few locals could recall ever seeing a snowflake fall even in the deepest part of winter. A narrow isthmus connected the village to a peninsula, known by locals as the Island, for once it had been separated from the mainland. He and Joseph, and occasionally Alice, had explored the Island and its Cornish ruins, imagining what it must have been like when the isthmus had been used by smugglers to bring in their wares. From his vantage point, St. Ives, with its centuries-old gray buildings constructed in a hodge-podge, looked more European than English, and Henderson guessed that was part of its charm. It looked as if it had always been there, tucked between the sea and the heather-covered hills. The harbor below was clogged with fishing boats and small schooners, the beach dotted with smaller boats, hauled up on the beach and above high tide. Tall hedgerows nearly obscured the water from time to time, but Henderson didn’t care. He could still smell the sea, and hear it crashing ashore on the beach below. Perhaps when he was done with India he could buy a little cottage and just gaze out over the ocean for hours. His grandfather’s own country estate held little appeal to him; he hadn’t been back in more than four years and had no desire to see its stark walls again. He missed his grandparents, but his mother’s toxic presence was enough to keep him away.
When he reached the intersection that would either bring him to the Downalong and its rows of tightly packed homes and his hotel or up to Tregrennar, he stopped. Just above the cabbage trees, he could see the very top of Tregrennar’s roof. At that moment, his stomach grumbled and he pulled the horse slightly to the left, toward Tregrennar, feeling as if he were somehow sealing his fate—whatever that might be.
*
The wind coming up from the bay whipped at Alice’s skirts and threatened to pull her well-anchored bonnet from her head. If it hadn’t been so very windy, it would have been quite warm, though not nearly as warm as London was in mid-July. Gathering her wool coat around her, Alice looked out over the white-capped bay, taking in the sights and sounds of her childhood home. Truly, it was a good thing Northrup hadn’t showed up to the church. He lived in Manchester and Alice didn’t care much for that section of Britain; too cold in the winter and hardly warm at all in the summer. St. Ives never got too hot and never too cold and in the summer it seemed as if it were gloriously sunny all the time. It wasn’t true, of course, for the storms that raged ashore from the Atlantic could be fearsome, but whenever Alice thought back on her childhood it was always sunny. And from the time she was fifteen, her summers had been filled with Henderson.