Dark Pirate

Rose made a small, choking sound that was closer to a giggle than a sob, then blew her nose and straightened her shoulders.

‘A non-alcoholic cider, please,’ she said.

Her eyes followed him as he moved away to the bar. There was a negligent, animal grace about his movements that made him look totally appropriate in this setting. A wild, lawless Cornishman if ever there was one! And how different from Martin, whose aggression so often dwindled to mere bluster…Yet somehow there was a savage aura of controlled power about this Cornishman that made Martin seem boastful and florid in comparison. He must draw women to him as relentlessly as moths to a naked flame. Well, she wasn’t fool enough to be burnt a second time. All the same, an uneasy tingle of excitement sparked through Rose’s body as she watched the stranger striding back from the bar with her drink. He set it down in front of her and then stretched out his hand.

‘I’m Greg Trelawney,’ he announced. ‘One of the locals. And who are you?’

‘I’m Rose. Rose Ashley,’ she replied, feeling slightly unnerved by the warm, firm clasp of those fingers. It was as if a powerful electric current had surged through her at his touch. ‘I’m from Australia.’

‘Welcome to Polperro,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Although I’m sorry your welcome has been such a poor one. Well, we’ll see what we can do to sort that out in a minute. Now have a drink and catch your breath. Cheers!’

‘Cheers!’ agreed Rose.

The sweet, sparkling cider with its strong taste of apples did help to revive Rose, but, even more than that, the presence of the man opposite her had the effect of distracting her from her immediate problems. How could she concentrate on a lost pocketbook when Greg Trelawney was gazing at her with that intent, brooding expression?

‘Now, tell me about this pocketbook of yours,’ he urged when at last she had emptied her glass. ‘You say you had it last on the cliff-top?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Rose.

He pushed away his empty glass and rose to his feet.

‘Well, we’d better go up on the cliffs and look for it,’ he announced briskly. ‘Chances are you’ve dropped it somewhere and it’ll soon be found. Folks here are very honest, you know. I reckon we’ll turn it up in the next hour or so.’

‘Oh, but you don’t have to help me,’ protested Rose. ‘I can’t possibly take up so much of your time.’

He gave a low growl of laughter at that. A laugh that reverberated in his chest and made his dark eyes glint.

‘I’m not busy. I’ve finished for the day and I’d be better off helping you than wasting my time and money in a pub. Eh, Jimmy?’

‘That’s right, Greg,’ agreed the barman. ‘You give the lass a hand and don’t you worry, my dear. If so be as you don’t find ‘un, you come back here and we’ll sort something out.’

Rose darted a stricken look from one man to the other. Of course she wanted to find the pocketbook and the sooner the better. But she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to tramp around cliff paths with a man who made her feel like a lovelorn teenager. Still, what else could she do?

‘Thank you,’ she said at last in a strained voice. ‘I’ll do that.’

The Smuggler’s Rest was only a few steps away from the precipitous path which led up over the rocks to the cliff-top. Greg bounded up the steep slope like a mountain goat, so that Rose had to hurry to keep him in sight. It was a stiff climb, with jagged brown rocks jutting out into the path and pink erigeron daisies spilling out from cottage gardens. As they neared the top of the path, the dry-stone walls which marked the boundaries of neatly tended gardens gave way to a wild landscape of breathtaking beauty. Only the distant line of the horizon marked out the division between the vivid dark blue of the sea and the paler blue of the sky. Overhead the sun shone with an almost Mediterranean heat, gilding the wings of an occasional gliding seagull and warming the rocks that flanked the path. Down below waves smashed noisily against the cliff face and fell back in a seething white turbulence of foam.

Shading her eyes against the brilliance of the sun, Rose gazed down at the Net Loft—a dry-stone building on the cliff at the west side of the harbour entrance, its walls fashioned from mellow grey stone smudged with yellow-green lichen. For a moment she stood still, hot and breathless from the climb and momentarily distracted from her worries by the beauty of the scene. Seagulls wheeled and shrieked overhead and the air was charged with enticing scents—brown earth as rich as chocolate fudge and with the same sweet, heavy smell, gorse bushes in full flower and the bracing salt tang of the sea. What an amazing place this was! But Greg seemed oblivious to the setting and was clearly impatient of her delay.

‘Right, where did you go when you were up here?’ he demanded.

‘I sat on the bench over there for a while,’ she said, wrinkling her forehead thoughtfully. ‘And then I went for a walk further up the cliff.’

A search of the tussocky green grass beaded with raindrops in the area around the bench revealed nothing, so Greg set off further up the cliff path. Here the manicured cottage gardens gave way to wire netting tangled with blackberries, ivy, dock and thick stands of stinging nettles. As they reached the gorse bushes on the headland a cloud of orange and brown butterflies rose at their approach, but there was no sign of a pocketbook on the ground where Rose had stood earlier to admire the view. Greg searched thoroughly, but at last came back to her, shaking his head.

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ she said heavily. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever see it again.’

In spite of her good intentions she could not keep a faint tremor out of her voice. What was wrong with her? After all, she wasn’t dead or injured. The events of the last two months must have been more of a strain than she realised. To her surprise, Greg suddenly caught one of her tendrils of long brown hair that was fluttering in the breeze and wound it round the end of his finger. Rose stiffened at his touch, although it was undoubtedly friendly rather than threatening. All the same, she darted him a swift, nervous glance as he tidied the errant strand back over her shoulder.

‘Well, it’s not the end of the world,’ he said with a touch of his earlier impatience. ‘Just come back to the pub with me and we’ll report it missing. After that we can see about getting you back to your hotel.’

‘Hotel!’ wailed Rose, as the realisation of a fresh disaster suddenly struck her. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Four thirty-five.’

‘Oh, no! I’ve missed’the bus!’

‘Bus?’ queried Greg. ‘Where were you going to?’

‘Pisky Bay,’ replied Rose.

‘Pisky Bay?’ he demanded, his brows meeting in a thoughtful frown. ‘Are you sure? There’s nothing there but three or four cottages.’

‘I know,’ agreed Rose. ‘Actually, I’m the new owner of one of them. My great-aunt Em died recently and left it to me.’

A look of dawning comprehension spread over his craggy features.

‘Oh, then you’ll be Emily Pendennis’s great-niece,’ he said. ‘Yes, I heard she’d left her cottage to a lass from foreign parts. But wasn’t there talk of your mother coming here as well?’

Rose gave a wry smile at the efficiency with which the bush telegraph seemed to be operating. After the vast, impersonal sprawl of Brisbane, she found it strangely warming to find a community so intimate that everyone knew each other’s business. Far from being annoyed by it, she was oddly moved.

‘That’s right,’ she admitted. ‘My mother was supposed to come with me, but unfortunately she was taken ill just before we were due to leave Brisbane. Nothing really serious, but she had to have an operation and my insurance policy wouldn’t allow me to cancel my airline ticket. In any case, my mother urged me to come and she’ll be joining me in a few weeks, as soon as she’s well enough to travel. We’re hoping to open a bed-and-breakfast place in Aunt Em’s old cottage.’

‘You’ll be staying on here, then?’ asked Greg, and for an instant something disturbingly sensual lurked in his eyes.

Rose might be alarmed by that momentary spark of warmth but she couldn’t help feeling flattered by it. In all the three years she had spent with Martin, he had only seemed to make her aware of her deficiencies, that her nose was too snub, her hips too rounded, her legs too short, her skin too pale. Now, with this rugged fisherman darting her a swift sideways glance from under half-closed lids, Rose suddenly felt that she was a de-sirable woman. The thought sent a flood of colour rushing into her cheeks and made her step back a pace from him.

‘Yes,’ she muttered. ‘At least for a while.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ he said mildly. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help you out, just say the word. This is only a simple fishing community and we’re all good neighbours hereabouts.’

If he had asked her to go out with him, Rose would have retreated in alarm and refused immediately. As it was, his manner was so casual that she began to think that she had imagined that brief flare of attraction between them. What an idiot she was! Obviously Greg was only trying to be kind…

‘Oh, I’m sure you are,’ she agreed with a rush of enthusiasm. ‘This village seems absolutely enchanting and I’m thrilled to think that my roots here go back for centuries. You see, I’ve always hated big cities and wished I could live somewhere small and quaint. Well, I’d say Polperro is the kind of place that time has passed by, where people still enjoy old-fashioned pleasures. Going fishing, gardening, spending time with their friends, having a quiet drink in the pub. I can almost imagine that I’m still in the eighteenth century here. Actually, when I first saw you I thought you looked exactly like—’ She broke off and flushed with embarrassment, aware that his eyes were on her with a frankly amazed expression.

‘Like what?’ he prompted in his husky Cornish voice.

‘Like a smuggler,’ she admitted.

Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed, an incredulous, pitying laugh that made her feel a complete fool.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in confusion. ‘I suppose it sounds silly really.’

An expression mid-way between contempt and amusement flitted across his face.

‘You’re not far out, in a way,’ he replied. ‘Just between you and me, in my youth there was the odd bottle of brandy I brought back on my fishing boat from France that never paid duty in any Customs office.’

‘You’re a fisherman, then!’ she exclaimed with interest. ‘I thought you must be. You looked like one, somehow. Exactly the way I imagined a Cornish fisherman.’