Nor was it really fair to Mark, who was still looking at me with concern. I made an effort, and met his gaze brightly. ‘I’m fine.’
He seemed prepared to take me at my word. His own attention was distracted by the dogs, who had gone wild because Felicity was coming out to meet us from the greenhouse.
Her good spirits, at least, were as buoyant as ever. Dancing her way through the onslaught of leaping dog bodies and wagging tails, she said, ‘It took you both long enough. Wait till you see what we’ve done!’ As we neared the doorway to the greenhouse she slipped in behind Mark, covering his eyes with both her hands. ‘Don’t look, not yet. You either, Eva. Close your eyes.’
‘Felicity, what … ow!’ Mark whacked his elbow on the door frame as he tried to step through blind.
‘All right. Now.’ Lifting up her hands with an enthusiastic flourish, she revealed the latest triumph she and Susan had achieved. They’d painted. Everything was green and ivory, beautifully elegant and restful. For the first time, it looked less like an old greenhouse than a tea room in the making.
Even Mark was forced to say a heartfelt, ‘Wow.’
And that one word, because it came from him, was all the benediction that Felicity had hoped for. I could see it in her eyes, her brightened smile, and once again I marvelled that Mark couldn’t see it for himself. She said, ‘Of course there’s still the floor to do, and all the rest, but doesn’t it look wonderful?’
It really did. I told her so.
Susan was cleaning the paintbrushes in the new sink that the plumber had just installed, but when she saw us she turned off the water and came across. ‘Well, brother? What do you think?’
Mark was still looking up. ‘I think maybe you might have a tea room.’
‘I told you.’ But she seemed pleased, too, to have won Mark’s approval. ‘Now all we have to do is bring the tourists in, and Eva’s got a start on that already. Did she tell you that she’s found a duke who might have some connection to Trelowarth?’
‘Really?’ Mark turned. ‘Who would that be?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘The Duke of Ormonde.’ I’d forgotten all about him, but for the benefit of Mark and Felicity I gave an account of his career, how he’d fought against the Jacobites initially and then switched sides and tried to bring the young King James across to take the throne when Queen Anne died. ‘He was raising a rebellion right down here,’ I said, ‘in Cornwall, only Parliament got wind of it and voted to arrest him as a traitor, and he took off into exile.’
‘A Jacobite rebellion? Here in Cornwall?’ asked Felicity.
‘I know,’ said Susan. ‘That’s what I said. But it’s quite romantic, don’t you think?’
Mark asked, ‘And how’s this duke connected to Trelowarth?’
If I’d had Fergal’s gift for lying I’d have answered that I’d read somewhere the Duke of Ormonde might have had a blood relation living here in 1715, but as it was I only glanced away and shrugged and said, ‘I haven’t really got it all worked out. I’ll have to do a bit more research, yet.’
Susan said, ‘You should ask Oliver. Remember him?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, of course. I just bumped into him Wednesday, in fact, in Felicity’s shop.’
‘Did you?’ asked Felicity. ‘He didn’t mention that to me.’
I felt the quick surge of new interest all round.
Susan asked me, ‘And what did you think of him?’
‘Well …’
‘He’s filled out a bit, hasn’t he?’ Susan grinned. ‘Who knew he’d grow up to look like a film star?’
Mark said, ‘I should imagine Eva’s seen her share of film stars, Sue.’
‘Well, I’ll take him, if she doesn’t want him. The point is,’ she told me, ‘if it’s history you’re after, he’d be a good person to go to, because he knows all sorts of obscure things. He researched a lot, when he set up his smugglers’ museum. If he doesn’t know the exact facts you’re after, he might point you in the direction to find them.’
Mark looked doubtful. ‘Would he be open on a Sunday?’
Susan said, ‘If the museum’s closed, he only lives upstairs. I’m betting if you knocked he’d come and open up.’
‘Especially,’ Felicity said, teasing, ‘for the right sort of a customer.’
Oliver’s museum was along the harbour road, and it was open. The force of the wind blew me in through the door and I had to lean all of my weight on the heavy wood to make it swing shut behind me and latch.
Inside, everything smelt of the salt of the sea and the old plaster walls and the wood dust that came from the floorboards. Brass ship’s lanterns hung from the dark weathered beams overhead to create the illusion the room owed its brightness to them, not the more modern pot lights set into the ceiling. The ceiling itself seemed unusually low at first, but like most very old cottages here, this one’s floor had been hollowed out so that it actually sat at a level below the street outside. Once I’d gone down the two steps from the door I could stand without bumping my head.
It was rather like stepping below decks, I thought, on a ship. With the posts and the beams and the lanterns and barrels and ropes worked so cleverly into the big room’s design, I almost expected the floor to roll under my feet when I walked on it.