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he could only surmise that he was an artist.
    He would have liked to get up, but for the moment he felt too ill. He must just lie here until his strength returned. Since he had nothing more to occupy his mind, he would think of Morwenna and that look in her eyes …
    ‘Will you take this tray up to him?’ Morwenna asked when Bess entered the kitchen. She had prepared a plate of hot crispy bacon with eggs and bread fried in the fat, also a mug of grog made from ale spiced with cinnamon and a dash of brandy. ‘He was awake and he may be hungry or thirsty.’
    ‘This is food for a hearty appetite,’ Bess observed. ‘If he is sick he needs porridge or gruel to ease his hunger.’
    ‘I think he would throw it at you. He cannot yet leave his bed for he is dizzy, but there is little wrong with him—though he claims he does not know his own name or from whence he came.’
    ‘You think he lies?’
    ‘I don’t know. Michael mustn’t suspect it or you know what will happen—but he ought to leave this house as soon as he is able to walk.’
    ‘Aye, I know it. Give me the tray. I’ll ask if he wishes for anything more.’
    ‘I emptied the pot and will bring it up with a can of water. It’s my day for cleaning the bedchambers, though my brothers will sleep clear through the morning if I know them.’
    ‘Least said the better, lass. They were out helping to rescue men from the sea last night. No need to say more.’
    Morwenna nodded as Bess picked up the tray and went out. She cut a slice of cold ham, placed it between a thick slice of bread and munched it as she waited for the water to boil. A part of her was eager to see the stranger again, though her common sense told her she would be best to let Bess care for him. By his manner and his look he was gentry, though perhaps like her he had little money. Why would he make his living as an artist if he were wealthy?
    She shook her head. It was unlikely—though, sometimes, rich aristocrats spent time sketching simply to amuse themselves, of course. Twenty gold coins were not a fortune, but it was more than Morwenna had ever owned in her life.
    A little smile touched her lips as she thought how handsome he was, but she shook her head almost at once. She was a fool to daydream over a stranger. She could not deny the instant attraction she’d felt, but he was unlikely to have felt the same.
    It was because she seldom saw anyone other than her brothers, of course. Morwenna had no life of her own, nor any amusement or pleasures outside of what she made for herself.
    Bess was always telling her to go to her mother’s sister in London, but she knew her aunt to be an unkind, bitter woman. She’d buried two husbands and she had money to spare, but she was unlikely to spend it on the daughter of a man she despised.
    ‘My sister, Agnes, never forgave me for marrying your father,’ Morwenna’s mother had told her when she was ill. ‘She warned me that he would break my heart or drive me to an early grave. It is not your father’s fault that I am sick, dear heart. I was always sickly, which was whymy sister warned me against marriage to a man like William Morgan. I needed a gentle, kind man, but I loved him and I followed my heart. I do not regret it, though the bitter winds here have been my undoing.’
    Morwenna had mourned her mother more than her father, though she knew that he, too, had grieved deeply, and despite his denials it was love of his dead wife that had caused him to neglect his own health and die of an infected boil on his neck. Morwenna would have cleansed it and bound it for him, but he would not let her touch him. At the end the physician told her that the poison had seeped into his blood and led to the fever that ended his life—but perhaps he had not wanted to live. He had quarrelled fiercely and often with his eldest son and ruined the family with his gambling and bad investments, though no man could govern the weather and a risky cargo lost at sea was the