Penmarric by Susan Howatch Read Free Book Online Page A

to me than my mother’s.”
    “My dear Mark, don’t be so foolish!” he said at once; “Of course you must accept the situation. You have every right to inherit Penmarric by virtue of your mother’s claims, and if I’ve always seemed reluctant to discuss either your mother or her inheritance with you it’s only because I find it painful to speak of your mother, who brought me so much unhappiness, and repugnant to speak of her sordid quarrels with Giles Penmar. I also felt guilty because I felt I was failing in my parental duty by allowing you to see her and become involved in her quarrels, but what else could I have done? It takes a hard man to keep a son from his mother, and besides, I was afraid Maud would make all manner of distressing scenes if I refused to let you see her, and I think I would have hated that more than anything else on earth.” He laid his pipe on the table absent-mindedly and glanced out of the window. “However, if your mother’s quarrel with Giles Penmar is now at an end I suppose I should feel glad for her sake—and for yours—that the matter is finally settled. Penmarric will make a fine inheritance for you one day.”
    There was a pause. He picked up his pipe again. “It makes a certain decision easier for me too,” he said at last, and I could hear the relief in his voice. “Now that you’re so well provided for I need have no qualms about leaving Gweekellis Manor to Nigel.”
    I was on my feet before I realized it. I saw his startled expression and I believe he spoke, but I heard nothing he said because by then I was already shouting at him in a harsh voice that did not sound like my own, shouting that Gweekellis was mine—mine—mine because I was the elder son, and how dare he give it to Nigel and how dare he favor Nigel and how dare he treat me as if—
    The harsh shouting suddenly ceased. Panic made me feel as if I were suffocating. I began to back away toward the door.
    “Mark,” he said, much distressed, “Mark, please. I think you forget yourself.”
    I reached the door. My fingers groped blindly for the handle.
    “Your mother has been trying to turn you against me,” he said. “What has she been saying? You’d better tell me at once.”
    I was in the narrow hall and stumbling past the stairs to the front door,
    “Mark …”
    But I had escaped. I could not hear or speak or see, but suddenly I knew I was outside, for the air was fresh against my aching throat and the sea breeze ran light fingers over my hot cheeks and burning eyes. I began to run. Heather, coarse and tough, tugged at my trousers and scratched my shoes. I was on the moors, the desolate silent moors where there was nothing except my choking gasps for breath and my single-minded determination to run until there was no more strength left in my body. So I went on running, stumbling across the summit of the ridge, groping my way downhill into the valley of Zillan parish, and it was there in the porch of the parish church that I first saw Janna Roslyn and decided that despite everything that had happened I would stay on in Cornwall and postpone my return to London.

THREE
It was Count Geoffrey’s intention that at his death Henry should be content with the Kingdom of England, if he could secure it, and that the ancestral fiefs of the Angevin house should pass to his second son.
    —King John,
    W. L. WARREN
Henry was a young man, eleven years Eleanor’s junior…
    —Henry II,
    JOHN T. APPLEBY
    A FTER JANNA ROSLYN HAD left the churchyard and I had watched her until she disappeared from sight I walked slowly over to the grave where the red roses bloomed on the quiet grass.
    “Here lyeth JOHN HENRY ROSLYN ,” ran the inscription on the tombstone, “who died on the 15th day of May, 1890, aged 66 years. Also his wife REBECCA MARY , who died on the 12th day of April 1885, aged 58 years. May their souls rest in peace. This stone was erected to their memory by their devoted sons, JARED JOHN ROSLYN AND JONAS