Chapters (50)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- The Pengarron Sagas
- The Harvey Family Sagas
She was not thinking about Luke today. A small figure in her riding clothes, she was watching a solitary man in a small anonymous boat, out past the drift of the waves that lapped the shore. His jet-black hair was touched by the shine of the sun, as were the oars as they flashed in and out of the water. His powerful arms took him from the crab pots to the lobster traps that bore the coloured buoys of the Kinvers. He was looking seawards, bending over his pots and traps, hauling them in and emptying the contents into baskets.
Cordelia was waving to him with both arms, her hat in one hand, swishing it through the clean fresh air, its bright red ribbons like banners and heralds to her cause.
‘Morgan! Morgan!’ she shouted his name again and again, and she let out the shrill, whooping cry of the sort her male cousins had made as boys when locked in war games. Morgan did not look round. He could not hear her. Gentle as the sea was today, it retained an unrelenting thunderous roar.
The cove, like the numerous others along the coast was hemmed in on either side by towering cliffs. Many of the coves when fully exposed by the ebbing tides were joined to their neighbours, but the overreach of the cliffs here denied this tiny stretch any such freedom. Cordelia was afraid that Morgan, on his way towards the east point and then Porthcarne, where he would land his harvest, would miss her. He only had to look up to see her but he kept his head down, as if tired, as if defeated.
Scrambling down from the rocks she ran to the shoreline and was splashing in the water. ‘Morgan! Morgan!’
He was moving away from her and Cordelia began to scream his name at the highest pitch of her voice. It seemed she would have to climb back up the cliff and ride all the way to the village, and she so wanted this encounter to be just between the two of them. She was sure it would be a reunion, a special time, with this man who was as gentle as the waves that caressed the shore, who had never been out of her mind for a minute since she had forsaken Polgissey. She had needed no persuasion to come to him after Alicia had visited her room last night.
‘Cordelia, please open the door to me. I’m bringing you news of Morgan Kinver.’
This, and only this, after the pleadings of almost everyone else in the manor, had got her off her bed of humiliation and misery.