He smiled. “They will be most gratified. I shall relay your message. Is there some other way in which I might be of help?”
“Thank you, Mr. Maudling, but no.” The sky beyond the window had grown dark and threatening. “I’d best hurry. It appears to be about to rain.”
There was no reply awaiting her at the post office. Riding back to the house, the dark clouds fulfilled their promise and opened with a deluge. When Laura arrived home, her habit was soaked through, and she ran straight up to her bedroom tochange.
When she came down again, she found her aunt in her usual chair in the library. “This is a cold house, Laura.”
“I’m sorry you’re cold. Are you miserable here? I gave instructions only to light fires in rooms we use.”
When she told her aunt the news, Dora nodded sagely. “The question I asked about Nathaniel’s mother revealed much suffering.”
Laurasneezed.
“Come closer to the fire, child. You should not have been out riding in this weather. You might have caught a chill.”
Laura took a chair by the fire, sighing as warmth spread through her cold limbs. “Why would Nathaniel’s father cast his wife out?”
Dora tilted her head. “The baby wasn’t his?”
“That’s the logical explanation, but if not his, then I wonder whose it was. It still would have been Nathaniel’s brother or sister.” She sighed. “How could his father be sure? He might have been wrong.”
“Don’t be naïve, darling girl. Of course he would have known. Some men might turn a blind eye and bring the child up as their own, once an heir had been produced. Apparently, he wasn’t one of them.”
A smile tugged the corner of Laura’s mouth. What would her spinster aunt know of such things? Her smile faded at the thought of the woman whose life was mapped out in the paintings in the gallery. Her death had denied Nathaniel a happy childhood. Laura’s head began to throb, and lights danced before her eyes. “I think I’ll lie down for a while.”
Dora’s eyes widened. “Lie down in the daytime? I do hope you haven’t caught a chill.” She sat up. “Might you be pregnant?”
“This seems very much like a cold. I’ve not been sleeping well of late.”
“You have been disturbed by something or other since you arrived from Cornwall,” Dorascolded.
Laura climbed the stairs, her legs leaden. It was probably only worry about Nathaniel. What could have prevented him from answering hertelegram?
***
The storm had battered Wolfram for four days, flooding the roads and cutting off Wolfram Village from Penzance. The gale-force winds uprooted an old oak on the village green. Horizontal rain pelted anyone who had the courage or the necessity to leave their homes. In oilskins, Nathaniel worked beside Hugh and the farm workers, tying down sheeting to cover bales of hay and shepherding livestock into the shelter of barns and stables. They returned to the abbey for a hot meal to find a man from the village with terrible news: a ship had foundered on therocks.
Snatching up his telescope from the study, Nathaniel raced up into the tower with Hugh behind him. Leaning over the stone parapet, he located the three-masted vessel in danger of breaking up, battered ruthlessly by the mountainouswaves.
“There are men still on board,” Nathaniel yelled above the roar of the wind and sea. He wiped the end of his telescope. “They’re trying to launch a rowing boat. They’ll never succeed. We’ll have to get out there. Are you up for it?”
“I’ll say.”
“Ask for volunteers in the village,” Nathaniel called as they ran back down the winding stairs. “Find a fisherman prepared to take his boat out.”
Hugh gave a grim nod. “I’ll see you at the wharf.”
Nathaniel thanked God for Hugh. He was a fine man and a great asset to Wolfram. Since Mallory’s death, he feared he’d leave for a more attractive position that a man of his capabilities would have no difficulty finding, but so far, he had stayed. Nathaniel had been tempted to confess his fears concerning Amanda to Hugh, things which he’d never told another soul, but in the end, he thought better ofit.
At the dock, two men joined them on the small fishing boat. They headed out to the foundering ship. The precipitous waves were filled with floating boxes, ropes and debris, while the men still on board the sinking vessel struggled to stack the rowboat lashed to the side with theirgoods.
“What the devil? They’ll go down. Greedy to the end,” Nathaniel cried, his words caught by the roar and flung away. A man’s body floated by them. Nathaniel reached down to grab him, but he disappeared beneath the surgingwaves.
Hugh shook his head. “He’s gone.”
They reached the boat as, with a thunderous crack, a mast fell across the deck, pinning a man beneathit.
“I’ll go and get him,” Nathanielshouted.
