A Castle in Cornwall Read online

  I remembered her promise from before, in the car park at the Pavilion. "Of course." I closed the lid of my computer. "What do you want to discuss?" It wouldn't be cake flavors or flower colors, I knew. This was about Josephine's secret, whatever it was.

  "I want to thank you for keeping my secret a few days ago," she said. "I'm sure you've already guessed why I'm here."

  "Truthfully, kind of," I said.

  "I have to talk to someone, I suppose ... and I suppose it might as well be you, since you've found out already," she continued. "And I feel I owe you an explanation. I don't want you thinking that afternoon was something it wasn't."

  "I don't have any clue why you were really there," I said. "I can't tell your mother anything too terrible, if that's what you're afraid of." I sat up and tucked my legs beneath me as Josephine sat down in the chair closest to my window. She gazed at the garden outside.

  "The boy in the car park. I don't know his name," she said. "I've never met him. I don't know anything about him at all. He's a complete stranger to me."

  I hadn't expected this. "So why were you following him?" I asked.

  She hesitated. "I met Kristofer when I was fifteen," she said. "I was on holiday at a skiing lodge." I imagined Gemma's thrill if she found out this tidbit of the bride's past. "His school was close to my own, so we saw each other sometimes. We texted and emailed each other. He was sweet." She smiled. "He told me even then he intended to marry me. He gave me a silly little ring he won at a holiday fete, and said it was so I would know he was in earnest. Then when I went to Oxford, he came, too."

  "Were you two close?" I asked.

  "Very." She lifted her gaze to mine. "Don't think I didn't love Kristofer — don't love him, I mean," she corrected. "We were extremely close, and spent every moment we could manage together ... at least until someone found out about us." She sighed again.

  "By 'someone,' I'm guessing you mean the press," I said. "Or your families."

  "A little of both," she said. "It was our families first. Spies on social media are everywhere, so it was only a matter of time before they knew. Mummy was upset at first, I had to persuade her I knew what I was doing — but she got over it quickly enough after Kristofer's proposal was public. Then we were together publicly, with all sorts of chaperones and lots of people asking questions about our future, and how soon we would be married. I guess you could say all the magic ... all the thrill of being in love ... was lost in the formalities of duty."

  "Kristofer didn't give you those gifts, did he?" I asked, softly. "The ones on your table."

  Josephine didn't meet my gaze. "A few months ago, I got the first note," she said. "From an anonymous stranger who just wanted to wish me a happy birthday. After that ... there were a few small gifts, a few more short letters. Nothing, really. Harmless...kind...I should have tossed them into the dustbin, but I couldn't."

  She rose and parted the curtains, looking out at the garden's flower urns spilling over with vinca and red ivy. "I wanted to know who he was. That's why I hired a private detective. I'd used a tracing app to find out the location of his messages — somewhere in Copenhagen, so I knew it was someone possibly from my past. Stefan was the one who took those photos. He had traced the mobile signal to a park."

  "But no name?" I said. "No face, no address — not even from the cell phone trace?" I knew that spying software was pretty impressive these days, and simple to use...not that most people I knew bothered to hide their location, but shouted it out to everyone on social media.

  "The mobile was a disposable one. The detective lost his trace shortly afterwards. Then, a few days ago, I received another message. He doesn't text very often, and the user location is usually encrypted — but, just this once, it showed a location, at the Pavilion in Penzance. I called Stefan, of course, but I wanted to go myself. I wanted to see him...just to see what he was like. Just to know if — if the reason he sent me those gifts and notes was something I needed to know."

  "A secret romance," I said. That wasn't so hard to believe, given the books and DVDs I had seen in Josephine's room — ones full of second chances for love, and improbable matches.

  "You see why I can't possibly have my mother know about this," she continued. "It's harmless, it's nothing. But she would see it as an utter disaster. She would think I'm planning to run away without a second thought on the matter. She would think it's foolish to even wonder about him."

  "Is it?" I asked. "I mean, you chased this guy through a car park. That's not a normal way to meet someone who might just be a friend." I met Josephine's eyes firmly for this question. There was no possibility that she didn't know this, too.

  Her cheeks burned. "I don't know," she said. Her gaze dropped lower. "I don't know what I feel. I know that I care about Kristofer. I do," she said. "But I feel as if this person knows me — knows things about me that no one else really does. The words in some of the notes, the little gifts that fit the things I love or find funny ... there's only a handful of people in my life who knows those things. And to have a stranger know them, too seems like too much. If this is a friend I've lost somehow, I need to know. And if —"

  She didn't finish, but she didn't have to. A small part of Josephine was wondering if she had missed a second, very different, chance for romance. One without royal ties and a demanding wedding's plans.

  "You said this wasn't about Kristofer," I said. "It's kind of hard for it not to be. Since you're basically two weeks away from marrying him."

  "But if our life is to be like these past weeks — full of people controlling us, coordinating our every move, scrutinizing our every decision — I'm not sure that I want it." She sighed. "I've had that already with Mummy, even before my father was gone. And I want to be free, to travel and to work on the foundation." She looked at me again. "Imagine if the people you love are only happy while they're controlling you. Wouldn't you run away from that? Even if you loved someone who couldn't?"

  Kristofer couldn't run away, of course. That was probably unacceptable for someone in a family like his, even if they were a dozen places removed from the throne. But a mysterious boy who traveled across Europe and sent flowers in secret to his crush, was probably exactly the kind of boy who possessed that freedom. In Josephine's place, the future she wanted might not fit with Kristofer's world. The version of it she was seeing up close these days, anyway.

  "So what are you going to do?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "What could I possibly do?" she asked. "Except continue as things are. It will grow easier in time, I suppose. I can always hope it will improve somehow." The other option would be worse, I thought — the one in which she and Kristofer found their future together impossible.

  "There's one thing you need to do, though," I said. "And that's decide now whether to stay or go."

  "Now?" she said. "How can I?"

  "If you can't make the life you want as Kristofer's wife, you can't leave later, not after your wedding," I said. "Not without making things worse. And if you're going to stay ... harboring a secret crush will only hurt both of you in the end."

  "Don't you see how difficult it is for me to do any of those things?" she said. "It isn't that I don't want to decide what's right, but the choice isn't simple. What would you have me do?"

  "I think a girl like you can figure out a way," I said. "You've already managed to hire a private eye who either keeps his mouth shut or doesn't know who you really are. You're creating a foundation to help children. That's pretty impressive for someone so young, who's been battling family issues the whole time." I couldn't help thinking her secret admirer was particularly right about her gifts.

  "It's much easier to create a charity for books and music than tell someone I care about that their life seems terribly stifling to me."

  "You've managed to hold your own life together despite your parents' lives falling apart," I pointed out. "That couldn't have been easy. So don't let two pushy families determine what you do with it now."

  Jos
ephine was quiet.

  "Just ask yourself if you love Kristofer enough to fight to have him in your life — and fight to make that life what you want it to be," I said. "Or if you think it would be easier to let him go and make that life on your own. It would be easier to figure it out now than later, Josephine. And a lot less painful for both of you."

  It wouldn't be easy. This wasn't advice I wanted to give anyone, but with her standing in my room, and me the only one who knew her secret, I had to do it.

  "Then I would have to choose," Josephine sighed again. "And either way, I'll have to tell him the truth about how I feel now."

  "It's pretty heavy to deal with," I said. "But you owe it you. And to him."

  A long silence followed. "What if I don't decide?" said Josephine, at last. "Will you still keep my secret?"

  "Of course," I said. I felt disappointed; Josephine was giving up already, it seemed. "I'll always keep my promise," I added. "After all, it's your decision what happens, not mine. If you do this, you're doing it for you. Not because you feel threatened that someone else will bring it crashing down."

  "Thanks," she said again. She rose. "Thanks for listening." But that was all she said before leaving me alone again.

  ***

  I stretched out on the garden's grassy lawn after a long day of helping Ms. Krensky sort the guest's replies and debate the merits of the seaview garden for the wedding portrait. Lying here, surrounded by urns of flowers which seemed suspended above me like the hanging gardens' floral clouds, I watched the daylight slip away, and listened to the sound of the sea far below. It reminded me of home — the home I had found, not the one I was returning to. I was still reconciling myself to this last part, one which involved my leaving.

  At home, Matt was no doubt sorting through his things, sorting our possessions into boxes that we would both examine and debate before taping closed. A few weeks from now, Rosemoor would stand empty — would our landlady Mathilda lease it again? To some horribly careless person who persuaded her to put the worn-out old armchair by the dustbins on the curb, and cover the walls in some horrible modern paper?

  I shuddered. Best not to think about it. Think about pleasant things instead — like coming back to find our cottage waiting for us, and the seedlings of Matt's beloved plants in bloom in spite of his absence. Not of goodbye parties, but welcome home ones —

  My mobile rang. My heart leaped, imagining Matt's number would be on the screen, and that our thoughts were connected across the distance — but it was my mother's instead. She couldn't be more thrilled about our coming to America, even if it was as temporary as I made it sound.

  I sighed. It wasn't the call I had hoped for, but it was a voice I loved, so I would have to answer it. Maybe a conversation about the life I left behind would help reconcile me to it more quickly.

  ***

  Kitty:

  "Now ... fair Hippolyta our nu — nuptial hour draws on pace. Four happy days bring in another moon. But — oh, methinks how slow this old one wanes. She lingers my desires like a stepmo—dame or a dowager..."

  Randy had a puncture in Truro and was late for rehearsal, which meant we needed a stand-in, so Millicent appointed Nathan to read his lines. 'Read' being a bit of a stretch, maybe. Pauses abound.

  "... I wooed thee with my sword and won thy love, doing thee injuries —" Nathan paused and re-read that line silently, as if not sure it was correct. "But I will wed thee in another key, with pomp. And triumph and with revelling."

  He gave it a bit of enthusiasm in places, but it was still creaky. I heard a faint snort of laughter from Lyle and wanted to poke him hard in his stomach with my elbow. Only he wasn't the only one who was having to hold back a laugh this time — and besides, I knew that Lorrie wouldn't like me injuring her onstage paramour, whom she found rather dishy in real life, too.

  "Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke!" Peter, also a new addition to the company, launched into Egeus's speech. Unlike Nathan, he overdramatized his lines, making a weird contrast.

  "He's not exactly improving, is he?" said Rosie, observing Nathan helping Gerard with the shabby old rust-colored curtains of velvet. "Still a bit wooden when he delivers — have you worked with him, love?"

  "A little. But he's not exactly possessed of a lot of time," I said. Even with me and Nathan not da—I mean, not hanging out after hours, regular rehearsals and lots of petty work-related bits and bobs took up the extra time. I was helping with the flowers for Lady Amanda's friend's hush-hush wedding, and Nathan had spent a night or two in London after some meetings.

  Right now, he was watching as Lyle and Martin rehearsed their lines in the scene with Puck, a fun, lighthearted scene they were both enjoying. They were both joking around a bit in between. Lyle had been a regular at the cast's table in the pub these past few nights, and had charmed the lot of them in no time in his usual way.

  "He has a decent Shakespearean elocution," observed Gerard of Lyle. He was collecting props as Nathan leaned against the stage, watching them, too. "I wish he would speak a bit quicker, though, and pick up the pace of this scene."

  "I wish he were six feet under his own concrete," said Nathan. With a bit more venom than he was wont to use. Gerard looked slightly startled.

  "Kidding — kidding," said Nathan. His smile wasn't altogether real, though. I knew his smile well enough to be sure of it.

  So he was jealous of Lyle. Couldn't he see I wasn't daft enough to be interested in a conceited git like him? When I was stranded in Land's End, knocking around between the shopping village and the kid's park, handing stuffed animals to tourists and counting coins, it was one thing. But not after I was finished being lonely on my own in that place, or being bitter at Mum and the village for all my mistakes.

  "You don't fancy Lyle anymore, do you?" Lorrie asked, suddenly. She'd read my mind, and I started a bit in return.

  "No," I said. "If you do, you should know, though — he's a bit of a cad. Not just the way he was at school, either."

  "I know that part," said Lorrie. "I didn't expect him to have grown up entirely from the boy who smashed windows and vandalized village walls. But it's not as if I've got another option handy for nights at the pub, now is it?"

  "You'll have to fight Rosie for him," I said.

  "Rosie? She sees through the likes of him from a league's distance," said Lorrie, with a laugh. "I don't even know why I asked you about this, since you have a bloke already. Suppose it's just out of friendly courtesy."

  My bloke. They were all referring to Nathan that way. And I didn't correct them, the way I had in the past.

  "What's this I hear about you moving to Paris?" Andy leaned over the seat's back to join me and Lorrie in the third row. "Cushy job with a countess, I heard."

  "From who?" I demanded.

  "Gemma. Who else?" he said. "It's going around that you'll be living the high life in a posh apartment — wheeling the old lady to society galas for champagne and caviar."

  I forgot that Gemma was standing by when Lady Astoria was talking me into a job as her assistant. "Don't be spreading that around," I said, lowering my voice. "It's not something that one wants getting 'round — besides, I wasn't exactly charmed by Lady Astoria. When she says she knows her own mind, it's more like a declaration of war than a fair warning."

  Lorrie stifled a laugh. "You paint her as a battleship," she said. "I've been picturing some prunes and prisms old dame in a wig and the Queen Mother's dress."

  "Why on earth is she staying at that castle?" said Andy. "Gemma says it's for some sort of family meeting."

  "That's the truth," I said. We'd all been sworn to secrecy, so that was all he'd hear from any of us until after the wedding was announced in the society magazines. I made myself busy with my script, hoping he wouldn’t ask any more questions. Across the way, Nathan looked more depressed by the moment, as Lyle and Martin began their lines with Lorrie.

  I wanted to tell him he could quit, if he wanted to. I wouldn't cast it up to him later, e
ither. But I realized I would hate for him to go now. The way things had been, this was the only time we saw each other; and while that didn't exactly bode well for us, it was all we had right now.

  ***

  Julianne:

  It was good to be home. I dropped my overnight bag on the sofa at Rosemoor, momentarily deleting my mental to-do list: change of clothes, dress for wedding, pick up flowers, remind Lady Amanda to wash Edwin's favorite blanket. Kicking off my shoes, I plopped down in the battered armchair and released a long sigh.

  "Glad to be home, I gather?" Matthew kissed the top of my head. I lifted my gaze and smiled.

  "Yes, yes, and yes," I said. "Even if it's only for a few days, I'll take it."

  "The 'commandant' Krensky released her inmates, I gather?" He raised one eyebrow.

  "We'll be back in ample time to set up the hall and the garden," I said. "Besides, Lady Amanda was growing positively distracted by the coordinator's nagging little hints ... and the rather frosty royal in-laws are back."

  "That's a good thing, isn't it?" he said. "It means Kristofer and Josephine are reunited."

  "Mmhmm," I said. I had no idea how that reunion was playing out, really — since Kristofer's return, he had been swept away by his diplomat uncle and his military prince father to various conferences by phone or business meetings. While Josephine and her mother had slipped away in secret for a few days, because Mrs. Lewison had a necessary appointment in London.

  "I've got something to cheer you," said Matt. "Four lovely pasties, ready to heat and eat."

  "Sounds delicious," I said. "Gourmet cuisine."

  "Your mail is on the table in the kitchen, if you want to read it," he said. "Next to the tickets to the play."

  "Opening night?"

  "Of course," he said. "We don't want everyone spoiling the end for us, do we?" He gave me a wink as I collected my heels and carried them to our closet. I couldn't help but notice that most of Matt's books were gone from the shelves already. So were the paintings Constance had given us, the one of the cliffs and the one for our wedding, a miniature version of her famous 'Lilies of Marseilles.' I missed them already — their empty places on the wall looked lonely.