Penmarric Read Online Free PDF Page A

pointed out so painstakingly, no good looks. To the married seamstress and unwed chambermaid at Oxford I might have seemed rich and aristocratic enough to be attractive, but to young girls of my own class and their aspiring mamas I was a nonentity.
    However, it was exciting to be in London even if the Season did not measure up to my expectations, so after receiving my father’s letter I resolved to stay on in town and make the best of the situation. I did toy with the idea of joining him at Morvah, but he had not asked me to stay, and I was too proud to arrive on his doorstep uninvited as if I were a wayward puppy running up to his master for a pat on the head.
    I was just walking down Piccadilly one morning on my way to Bruton Street to inspect some chambers which were for rent when I met my mother face to face outside the Royal Academy.
    “Mark!” She greeted me as if it were four days, not four years, since we had last met. “You’re just the person I wanted to see! Have you heard the news?”
    “What news?”
    “Good heavens, don’t you read the obituary column of The Times? Your cousin Raymond Penmar is dead! He was abroad apparently—Egypt—and caught cholera. Dead in two days, of course. Terribly sad for Giles. Now listen, Mark. Think what this means. All Giles has now are those two adopted children of his, Harry and Clarissa, and they’re not Penmars at all, not even his own flesh and blood. And I hear young Harry is very wild and so Giles is probably disappointed in him …”
    I listened, too disgusted by her attitude to speak, yet too overcome by the force of her personality to turn my back and walk away. The next moment, before I could protest, she was propelling me into Green Park and forcing me to sit down beside her on the nearest bench. “…I wrote to you at Gweek—didn’t you get my letters? How fortunate that I should meet you like this! God moves in Mysterious Ways sometimes, but he does nonetheless move.”
    “Mama—”
    “Now don’t be disagreeable. Mark. It’s absolutely imperative that we discuss this together …”
    There was no escape. Once we were seated on the bench I crossed my arms and glowered at the lush grass at our feet, but she was too excited to take any notice.
    “… so I wrote to Giles—a letter of sympathy, naturally—and said …”
    She had had the truly amazing insolence to write to this man who had just lost his only son and suggest that now that I was his only surviving male relative (she had, as usual, forgotten Nigel’s existence) he might agree to devise Penmarric to me in his will.
    “I pointed out,” she said, “that it was a point of Honor that the estate should remain in the family.”
    I was speechless, but at last at the moment when I had summoned the words to tell her what I thought of her she said triumphantly, “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong! You thought Giles would be too offended to reply, didn’t you? Well, he wasn’t! I had a reply to my letter within the week and the letter was everything I could have wished for.”
    “Are you attempting to tell me—”
    “Yes,” she said, “I am. Giles wants to see you. We are invited to Penmarric.”
    I was speechless again. But suddenly I found myself remembering Penmarric, the huge rolling moors of North Cornwall, the tors capped with granite, the graystone walls and square church towers of a strange and distant land. And I thought of that house with its turrets and battlements rising from the cliffs, a shining dream which I longed to cloak with reality but which I had thought would forever lie beyond my reach.
    “Is it really so surprising to you?” my mother was saying abruptly. “Blood usually does run thicker than water, you know.”
    I said nothing. I was still thinking of Penmarric.
    “Mark, there is something I feel I should discuss with you. I had no intention of mentioning it before, but now that your Inheritance has reached such a crucial stage and so much