The House at Mermaid's Cove(15)

I glanced down at Ned, who looked as if he was about to cry. What had happened to him on Guernsey was unimaginably awful. He would have been too young when he was rescued to have any memory of his parents. His story was a chilling echo of something that had happened in Africa. A piece of wickedness whose legacy haunted me still.

“Go and tell the others,” Merle said to Ned. “Mrs. Graham will be cross if we’re late.”

“Do his parents know where he is?” I asked as he darted off across the beach.

She shook her head. “It’s been impossible to get letters to and from the island since the Germans took control.”

“They must be desperate.”

“I know. I can’t imagine not having my three with me. When the planes are flying over, and you hear about places being bombed, I think, well, if it happens to us, at least we’ll be together.” She brushed a wisp of blond hair from her face. “That must sound selfish—but the thought of them being somewhere else, living with strangers, hundreds of miles away . . .” She trailed off as the children came running up to us.

I was gathering up the blankets after waving them goodbye when Brock, Jack’s dog, came bounding across the beach. He jumped up, wetting my chin with sandy licks.

“Brock!” Jack wasn’t far behind.

The sound of his voice threw me into a panic. I was tongue-tied. Why had he kept back the fact that he was Lord Trewella? I had no idea of the proper way to address a viscount.

“Good morning!” He closed the distance between us. “Oh—you’re walking. Good.” However, he didn’t look pleased. “There’s something you need to do.” He ushered me into the boathouse. “I’ve got you one of these.” He handed me a buff-colored card, folded in two.

“What is it?”

“Your identity card—you just need to sign it.”

I opened it and scanned the inside. There was my name and my date of birth. And another line headed “Marital Status,” with the word Unmarried printed in bold black type beside it.

“How did you manage to get it so quickly?”

“It’s easier, with the house being used by the military.” He pushed his hair back from his forehead. “Without it, you’d be in danger of being arrested. Aliens need permits to get into Cornwall—it’s a protected area.”

Aliens. It sounded unpleasant. But that was what I was.

“I met someone from the house this morning,” I said. “The mother of the evacuees. Sh . . . she told me you have a title. I . . .” I trailed off. What could I say? I wish you’d told me? I’d never have had the impertinence to ask if I could stay here if I’d known?

He grunted. “The Fourteenth Viscount Trewella—at your service.” He made a mocking bow. “Would it have made a difference if I’d told you?”

“Well, I . . .”

“You would have behaved quite differently.” He finished the sentence for me. “We’re similar in that respect, Alice. You don’t want it to be known that you’re a nun because you’re afraid of being judged, of being put into a box. It’s the same for me: I’d rather be taken for who I am—not what people expect me to be.”

His eyes were lit with an intensity I hadn’t noticed before. I seemed to have hit a raw nerve. I wondered if he wished he hadn’t inherited the title. If, like me, he longed to reinvent himself, to shed a skin that had become too tight.

“It’s just that I . . . I don’t know what to call you,” I mumbled.

“You can call me what you like.” There was a hard edge to his voice now. “It really doesn’t matter. By the way, I’ve brought you these.” He tipped up the knapsack he was carrying. Shoes, Wellingtons, a gas mask, and a little alarm clock tumbled onto the floor. “I hope those boots will fit—you’ll need them when you come up to the farm. And you’ll need to carry the gas mask with you whenever you go out.”

I nodded. “We had them on the ship,” I said.

He reached inside his jacket. “This is a ration book,” he said, tossing it onto the bed. “We’ll need your coupons up at the house for buying what we don’t produce ourselves. I must get back now. Come on, Brock!”

His whole demeanor seemed different from before. I wondered what had happened since our last meeting to change his mood. The life I’d led had not equipped me to be the best judge of men, but to me, he seemed to carry his own climate with him. And today that atmosphere was dark and dangerous.





Chapter 6

My first day at the farm was Maundy Thursday. At the mission hospital that would have been a day of minimal duties and maximum prayer—the start of the holiest festival in the Christian calendar. But to the cows, it was a day like any other. They still needed milking. And when that was done, there were eggs to be collected, there was butter to be churned, and, Jack assured me, there was endless weeding and hoeing to do for the vegetables being raised on every available patch of earth.

I’d set the alarm clock to go off at six o’clock. I was ready, in my dungarees, with the emerald scarf knotted around my head, when Jack came with Brock to show me the way up through the valley. The path followed a stream that trickled out onto the beach. The trees that fringed the cove were tamarisk and pine. They gave way to copper beech, alder, and elm. But as we climbed higher, I found myself in a landscape that was more like a tropical jungle than an English woodland. Everything was giant sized. There were massive tree ferns and towering palms; great stands of bamboo rose forty feet high, some of the canes thicker than a man’s arm. Monster rhododendrons and camellias made splashes of color in the sea of green: vivid pink, burnt orange, saffron yellow, and delicate creamy white.