As Clem returned to his family, Oliver went quickly to Luke’s room. The sight of his own gathered there melted the uneasiness that Clem’s visit had put round his heart. Kerensa looked up and smiled warmly as she sat cradling their baby beside Luke’s bed. Luke was wide awake and quiet on his pillows. Kane and Olivia were sitting on the foot of the bed holding hands and wriggling their stockinged feet in the bedcovers. Oliver grinned as a mischievous glint came into Luke’s dark eyes and he poked his tongue out at his brother and sister. Tomorrow he and Kerensa would ride to Marazion to tell another brood of brothers and sisters that they were part of the Pengarron family too.

Chapter 31

Jenifer Drannock looked proudly at all her children. At her request they had gathered round her bed after breakfast. They were all burning with curiosity, wanting to know why she had asked them to dress up and be on their best behaviour. Naomi and Hannah, her two eldest daughters, were secretly worried that Jenifer had felt her end had come and wanted one long last look at her children before she died. Charles and Jack, grumbling at having to wear neckcloths, wanted to get down on the floor and play, but warning looks from their big sisters kept them in line. Cordelia, the baby of the family, tiny and elfin-faced, looked like a sweetmeat wrapped in fancy paper in her frilled and flounced silk dress. Only Bartholomew looked the part, as a man of means, wearing his suit of tailored clothes with a natural, elegant flair.

‘We must be expecting someone, Mother,’ Hannah said, tidying things unnecessarily, ‘or you wouldn’t want us all up here like this else, would you?’

‘You’ll see, soon enough,’ Jenifer said, her children becoming still so they could hear her faint voice.

‘Are we having company, Mam?’ Charles asked with an expression on his face that usually wound his mother round his little finger.

The others looked at Charles eagerly then quickly at Jenifer. Charles had a knack of wheedling out secrets, but not this time. Jenifer just smiled mysteriously, then sighed. She was unsure how her children would take the news she and Sir Oliver Pengarron were soon to tell them. Bartholomew, of course, would not be surprised, and as an admirer of the baronet she was certain he would be delighted. Hannah and Naomi had always maintained that Bartholomew’s suspicions that they, or he at least, might have Pengarron blood in their veins was nothing more than wishful thinking. The three little ones, Charles, Jack and Cordelia, were too young really to understand, but Jenifer thought they would be excited in varying degrees.