Page 73 of The Cornish Inheritance

Hetty yawned again. “I need to go back to sleep. This is far too early for me.”

“Think. Please.”

Hetty snuggled down into her bedcovers. “We-ell, when I was in the garden yesterday, I glimpsed him with Mr. Trefusis.” She gave a little shiver. “I hid behind a bush when I saw them coming.”

Little wonder. She wouldn’t want to bump into Trefusis in the gardens if she was alone. And Yves wouldn’t count as much of a chaperone.

“And?”

“Once I’d hidden, I couldn’t get away, so I had to stay crouched there while they walked past. I couldn’t help but overhear. Yves has such a loud voice. He was asking Mr. Trefusis all about the mines. And Mr. Trefusis was telling him how exciting they are and what the tunnels are like.”

That didn’t surprise Caroline at all. Yves had been curious about the mines when they’d gone to Wheal Jenny, although a little put off by the sight of the miners.

“What did Mr. Trefusis say to him?”

“I couldn’t hear everything once they were past my bush, but I heard this bit. He told Yves he’d first been down a mine when he was younger than Yves, and that he’d loved it. He said it was like exploring—a big adventure. He’d gone along the beach here and found the old adit in the cove beneath Penmar Head and got in that way, because his father had refused to let him go in by the ladder shaft.”

Caroline had heard of people’s blood running cold but had never thought it could be true. Now she discovered it was. Icy fingers ran down her spine. Trefusis had told Yves there was an entrance into the mines from the beach and called going into it an adventure. What self-respecting, red-blooded boy would balk at the challenge? He would see it as exciting and illicit—two things that would make it even more attractive to him.

Without even thanking Hetty, Caroline sped from the room, her feet leading her straight to Nat’s bedroom door. She rapped hard on it and, a moment later, he opened it. His hair was tousled and he needed a shave, and his shirt was undone to reveal dark hairs curling on his muscled chest. Dark bruises shadowed his ribs. If she hadn’t been in such a panic, she might have admired the vision.

“Caroline.” He hastily buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his trousers, then pulled his braces up over his shoulders. “What can I do for you?” He must have been able to see from her face that something was very amiss.

“Can I come in?” She kept her voice down low, glancing up and down the corridor, fearful lest anyone should spot her.

He stood back. “Of course. If you think it appropriate.”

“I do.” She stepped inside, closed the door behind her and leaned against it. “Yves has gone missing.”

He drew his bottom lip under his teeth, his blue eyes troubled. “Missing as ‘he’s in danger,’ or he’s just out on some boyish prank?”

“The former.”

“How do you know?”

Caroline repeated what Hetty had told her. “And he’s taken Folly, whom he’s never ridden before. How he got a saddle on her, I have no idea.” She was only a large pony really, but nevertheless, reaching her back would have been hard for him. Could someone have helped him? Trefusis, perhaps?

Nat sat down on his chair and started pulling on his boots. “I know the adit Trefusis referred to. I’ve been in there myself as a boy, and I can tell you, it’s not safe. The roof is shored up in places with ancient, rotted wood, and when the tide comes in, it floods the bottom of the mine. Plus, there are shafts cut in the floor from time to time, and they stay full of water.”

“Oh my God.”

He grabbed his jacket. “Can you give me a hand with this? We have to go after him. I’ll tell…” His voice trailed away.

Caroline nodded. “Yes. Who can we tell? No one. If we tell Trefusis he’ll insist on looking for him himself, and if he finds him, well, I expect he’ll find him already conveniently ‘drowned’ or ‘buried’ by a fall. And we’ll be none the wiser.”

He grimaced. “We don’t have time to get other help. We have to go alone. Come on.”

*

As it wasstill early, Mrs. Treloar wasn’t up yet, but Trefusis might well have been in the estate office, so Nat led Caroline out through a side door and they skirted around the stables to the path to the beach. If they were lucky, no one would have seen them leave.

Once out of sight of the house, they ran, and as they burst out of the dunes onto the beach, Nat was relieved to see the tide a good way out, and the wet sand marked by a single telltale set of hoofprints heading toward the cliffs of Penmar Head. If they were lucky, they should have several hours in which to find Yves before the tide cut off Penmar Cove. If he’d been foolhardy enough to go into the adit alone, that was. There remained the chance that he’d either not been able to find it, or had seen it and been frightened off. But there were no returning hoofprints.

At least when Nat had gone exploring the adit as a boy, he’d been with Jacka, and they’d had the sense to take a ball of string with them. Nat had just read about Theseus in the labyrinth of Knossos, and Ariadne’s helpful ruse had been fresh in his mind.

He’d brought several candles and a supply of matches with him this time, trusting his own knowledge of the mine workings. Experience had taught him how dark a mine adit could be. If only his shoulder wasn’t aching so much, but at least his headache had gone, although the back of his head remained tender to the touch.

Once down on the hard, wet sand, they could move faster than they had done in the dunes. Caroline jogged along by his side, her face creased with worry, as they followed the clear trail of hoofprints. What was that foolish, but bold, boy thinking of, going off on his own like this? But he had no friends to take with him. Poor little chap lived such an isolated life away from other children. No wonder he craved adventure.

Penmar Head seemed to have retreated into the far distance, but they reached it at last, and headed around the rocky foot of the imposing headland where it stretched out across the sand in long, jagged fingers. On the summit, the shape of Wheal Jenny’s engine house and chimney rose up against a cloudless blue sky. If only he’d taken the boy down a few levels the other day, by the ladder shaft, then he might not have been so curious about the inside of a mine. Or he might have made it all worse. After all, mining ran deep in the blood of the Treloars.

Penmar Cove was a small inlet curved into the foot of the headland, with high cliffs rising behind it edged by tumbles of fallen rocks. Now, where was that adit? There was only one, he was sure. Thank goodness. Something moved between the piles of boulders, drawing Nat’s attention. For a moment he thought it was Yves, before the chestnut shape of Folly wandered into view, reins trailing on the sand.

He approached her, holding out his hand, and she approached, soft eyes relieved to see him. Her stirrups had been adjusted short enough for Yves, but there was no sign of him. He put her reins back over her head. “If the tide comes in, and she’s here in the cove, she’ll drown.” He led her around the outcropping cliff and rocks into Morgelyn Bay, ran her stirrups up, tucked the buckle end of her reins behind them and gave her a smack on her rump that set her trotting off across the beach. She’d be safe now and probably find her way home.

“I don’t see any cave entrances,” Caroline said. “Is it even still here?”

Nat nodded. “I very much doubt it’ll have been hidden by a rock fall. We don’t get many of those here. Wrong kind of rock. This way.” He held out his hand and helped her onto the barnacle- and mussel-covered rocks. They scrambled across the banks of slimy weed, feet scraping on the coarse shells. The dips and crevices of all sizes that sheltered rock pools would have transported Nat back to the days of his carefree boyhood, had their mission not been of the most urgent.

“These rocks are covered as the tide comes in,” he said. “You can tell by the covering of seaweed and shellfish. And out here, it’ll be well before high tide itself. We have to hurry. If we’re still in the cove when the sea comes up to these rocks, we’ll be stuck.” He squinted up at the sheer cliffs. “And these are unclimbable.”

Caroline regarded him for a moment out of determined eyes. “Then you are right. We shall have to hurry. Folly’s being here only reinforces my conviction that this is where Yves has gone.”

Nat turned back to the cliffs, scanning their rocky crevices. He hadn’t been here for… what was it? Fourteen or fifteen years. Treading in his youthful footprints, he scrambled over a particularly large boulder, and there it was.

The jagged, dark mouth of a cave, maybe five feet high by three feet wide, opened up before him, the path to it as rough as the rocks he and Caroline had been clambering over. He paused to survey it, a little daunted by the prospect of entering this adit, but not about to admit it to his companion. If she was prepared to go into it in search of Yves, then of course he was too. He tightened his grip on Caroline’s hand. “Come on then.”