Despite her position, in which she should be able to say anything she liked to such as this young man and receive nothing but a respectful answer, Kerensa coloured a little. She respected other people’s privacy and the right to run their own lives as they chose. ‘Sir Oliver mentioned it to me. We were talking about you and the Kings. I was worried about how you would manage to live without a boat. I wasn’t prying, Bartholomew.’

He studied her face. ‘Fair enough. Yes, things are better with us owning the Young Maid but life’s still very hard.’

‘Of course,’ Kerensa agreed.

‘I want to be rich,’ Bartholomew said suddenly, raising his voice and holding his head up proudly, ‘exceedingly rich. Then my mother can live out the rest of her life as she began it, in comfort and plenty. Did you know she was the daughter of Joshua Mildern, the ship’s chandler in Marazion?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘He doesn’t even acknowledge us.’ Bartholomew put her shoe down and fished something out of his breeches pocket, fitfully turning it over between his fingers. ‘I can never understand why my mother married my father, she was much too good for him.’

‘Didn’t you like your father?’ Kerensa asked, mesmerised by his fidgeting.

He exhaled deeply and tightened his lips before answering. ‘He was a miserable sod. Hard-working and sober I grant you, but too proud for his own good, and ours, and thoroughly boring. I remember when you brought over some clothes for us. A shirt for me, dresses for the girls, something for the little ones. Mother was so pleased we had something decent to wear to church, but what did he go and do? Put a stop to it, just to serve his own rotten sense of pride, didn’t matter how any of us felt about it. Mother used to confide in me, she said it did you good as well, giving to others in your new position as Lady of the Manor. He hurt all of us back then.’ Bartholomew searched her face. ‘You didn’t like him, did you?’

Kerensa coloured again, knowing a lie would hurt more than the truth. ‘No, not very much.’

A trickle of fear tightened her stomach as she thought of the many different complications if Bartholomew and Oliver ever found out the truth of Samuel’s parentage, that Samuel and Oliver had the same father. Samuel had told Kerensa this himself, when he had stopped her gifts to his family, and he had asked her to swear to keep it a secret, pointing out that he hated Oliver as much as he did Sir Daniel Pengarron for siring him and deserting his mother.