Witching Hour

Mr Donleven gave the order to the hovering waitress, then turned back to Morgana. ‘Has your cousin given any indication of his plans for the house? Does he intend to live there himself?’

‘I don’t know.’ Morgana shook her head. ‘But I would have thought it was unlikely.’

‘You mean he might be prepared to sell?’ Mrs Donleven broke in rather too eagerly, and Morgana turned an astonished look on her.

‘Mother!’ Rob’s frown was thunderous. ‘You know we agreed we wouldn’t say anything.’

‘Say anything about what?’ Morgana said rather desperately, and Mr Donleven leaned forward conciliatingly.

‘Oh, it was just an idea that my—that we had.’ He gave her an uneasy smile. ‘We’ve always admired the house, you know, and we thought if it was coming on the market at the right price …’

‘Because it could be made charming,’ his wife intervened, and then flushed as if it suddenly occurred to her that she had been less than tactful.

‘Yes, it could,’ Morgana agreed wryly, thinking of the expensive transformation that had overtaken the Home Farm in recent years. But although it had become a charming, and even luxurious home, she supposed she could have guessed that it would only ever be second-best in Mrs Donleven’s eyes while Polzion House was only a mile away. She sees herself as the lady of the manor, she thought, and what a fool I was not to see it coming.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Rob asked her eagerly, and she turned a rather blank look at him.

‘About what?’

‘About the possibility of our buying the house.’

She gave a defensive shrug. ‘It isn’t really any of my business,’ she parried. ‘Any discussions would have to be with the new owner and his solicitors.’

‘Well, I know that, of course.’ There was a dawning puzzlement in Rob’s eyes as he studied her. ‘But how would you feel about it, Morgana? That’s important too. And it would be a solution, wouldn’t it?’

A solution to what? she asked herself stupidly. All she could see were more problems, proliferating like weeds, and judging by the fleeting expressions of alarm she had noticed on the faces of both Mrs Donleven and Elaine, she guessed that although they might covet Polzion House, the prospect of her permanent company there, presumably as Rob’s wife, had as little appeal for them as for her.

She sought to temporise. ‘I don’t really know what to say. It’s all been rather a shock.’

‘Of course it has,’ Mr Donleven interrupted soothingly. ‘We shouldn’t have mentioned it. This is neither the time nor the place.’ He gave his wife a warning glance, then determinedly changed the subject, leaving Morgana to pursue her reeling thoughts.

Polzion House was like a carcase with the vultures clustering round it, she told herself almost hysterically. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get away. Mr Donleven, she knew, was a wealthy man, and could undoubtedly afford to pay any inflated price that Lyall Pentreath might place on the property. But the idea of Mrs Donleven and Elaine in particular queening it there was oddly abhorrent. And Rob must be mad to think she would ever seriously contemplate sharing her old home with his mother and his sister, she thought confusedly.

Even if they all thought the world of each other, it would be a difficult situation. As it was, it would be impossible.

At that moment, the waitress came to tell them their table was prepared. Morgana could not say that she particularly enjoyed the meal that followed, but Mr Donleven did his best to lighten the atmosphere with some amusing anecdotes of personalities in the City with whom he was in almost daily contact, and which to Morgana were merely names in the newspaper, or faces on television. She found his accounts of board-room coups and averted take-overs less than fascinating, but she appreciated his attempts to keep the conversation away from more personal issues.