Another Life: Escape to Cornwall with this gripping, emotional, page-turning read. Sara MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ a sharp command to his son.

      ‘Thomas – get thy shirt on, we have company.’

      The boy looked up startled and noticed the women for the first time. He stared straight at Isabella with vivid blue eyes, so deep they were almost purple. With an easy and laconic grace he unhooked his shirt from a piece of wood and pulled it over his head, then with a curt nod turned back to his work.

      Ben Welland led Helena and Isabella to the edge of the yard and opened one of the stable doors into a workshop. Isabella hardly listened to the conversation between her mother and the carpenter. She was feeling very odd indeed.

      Isabella’s chest of drawers lay in a corner covered with a sheet.

      ‘I hope this pleases thee, Ma’am.’

      Ben pulled the sheet away and Helena and Isabella gasped. A small, exquisitely carved piece of furniture was revealed. Helena had ordered a chest of drawers for Isabella’s room and this far exceeded her expectations.

      The wood was plain and light with capacious drawers, polished smooth as an apple; but it was the work on the front of the drawers and all around the edges of the top of the piece that was so skilfully done. Instead of brass handles there were round knobs carved in the shapes of leaves and flowers.

      With a cry Isabella moved forward to touch and look closer. There were slender trees and birds nestling among the flowers. Squirrels and tiny dormice, all carved to fit the piece and make it seem as one piece of wood.

      ‘Mr Welland,’ Helena exclaimed, ‘this is an exquisite piece. I have never seen a piece of furniture like it. I know your work and expected it to be beautiful, but this … Isabella?’

      ‘It is perfect, Mr Welland. It is … wonderful. I thank you so much for it. Mama has had my room newly decorated, and this … I love it! I truly love it.’

      Mr Welland was well pleased, but he was a dour Yorkshireman and not given to excess. ‘Well, Miss, don’t take on. It is my son, Tom, thee has to thank. I carved the piece, but it was Tom who wanted to try the decoration. He said the wood lent itself to shape and there is no doubt he was right.’

      ‘It looks as if he will one day be as good a carpenter as his father,’ Helena said diplomatically.

      ‘Aye, and more so. He grows bored sometimes with the plainness of wood. He sees shapes where others do not. I let him have his way with the drawers on the understanding if thee did not approve or thought it too fancy, he must make more plain ones for thee.’

      Helena smiled. ‘How could we not approve? For a gentleman’s room it might be too ornate, for a young girl it is imaginative and skilfully done. Is this his first work of this kind?’

      ‘Aye, it is, Ma’am.’

      ‘May we thank him?’

      Mr Welland hesitated and Helena, noticing, said, ‘You must be proud of him?’

      Ben Welland looked at her with eyes that were possibly as vivid as Tom’s once, and were now the colour of a faded sky.

      ‘Aye, Ma’am. I am proud, but I hope to keep the lad with me. Keep him here in the yard. But he is restless for more intricate and complicated carving, for which I know he has the skill. Trading ships are being commissioned faster than we can build them and we could not live by furniture alone, fancy or no. Tom has always been skilled with a piece of wood, even as a bairn.’

      Helena smiled again, understanding. ‘But, interesting as boatbuilding is, Tom will need more imaginative work one day and you are afraid of losing him. Our praise of his work might hasten that day.’

      ‘Yes, Ma’am, I believe so. But it is his due and I cannot deny him.’

      He turned and they followed him out into the sunlight again. Ben called out to his son and the boy turned and stood awkwardly in front of them. Helena congratulated him on his work and assured him that he would be rewarded above the original price mentioned. She also told him that when people saw Isabella’s piece he was sure to gain more commissions.

      Isabella, staring from beneath the shadow of her hat, believed Tom Welland to be the most beautiful person she had ever seen. At the mention of her name, Tom’s eyes turned to her, and she said, her face reddening, ‘Thank you … it is lovely.’

      She turned away abruptly and walked to her horse. Tom watched her and when he saw she was going to mount without help he moved forward. He cupped his hands so that she could put her small foot into them and carefully lifted her to the saddle. Ben Welland was busy helping Helena onto her horse.

      Isabella gathered the reins in her small, gloved hands. When she looked down the boy was still watching her, his face grave, but she had a distinct suspicion that he might be amused by her. She said suddenly, ‘Please do not make another chest of drawers the same as mine for anyone else. I wish mine to be the only one or it will be spoilt, the magic will be gone.’

      Her brown eyes met his blue and he held them. The amusement was gone, they held a sudden regard that struck her like lightning. Her bodice felt suddenly too tight, her breasts against the cloth ached. She turned her horse abruptly away before he could answer, brought her whip lightly down on the mare’s flank so that the horse leapt out of the boatyard with Helena behind her.

      Helena had witnessed Isabella’s confusion and she sighed. The boy was uncommonly handsome as, probably, the father had been before him. Helena’s thoughts of the morning returned. She was right, Isabella was no longer a child but a young woman with a passionate body difficult to control.

      How to tell her, Helena wondered, without putting her off marriage forever, that the men women were often attracted to were not the ones, in general, suitable to marry.

      Isabella was now a long way ahead. They had entered the stony cliff path that led down to the cove. Helena did not call out or try to catch up, she wanted to let Isabella compose herself. She would have to talk to her, but not yet, not the second her daughter discovered desire. She must let her have privacy and time to accept her changing body.

      Helena remembered her own first thunderbolt of unfulfilled yearning for a friend of her brothers … Claudio … that was his name.

      Isabella had reached the bottom of the cliff path and turned her horse to wait for Helena to catch up. Helena was not concentrating. She was back in Rome, remembering the beauty of a young body. Why, she had almost forgotten what desire felt like …

      Her mare stumbled on the loose stones and Helena realized she was holding the horse’s head too tight and loosened the reins.

      Isabella was having trouble holding her horse. It was plunging and dancing, impatient for a gallop by the sea. Helena called out to her, ‘Let her go, she will unseat you. I will be right behind you.’

      Isabella swung her horse round and started to canter towards the edge of the sea. Helena’s horse whinnied in frustration, wanting to be off the stony path onto the sand. Helena spoke to it soothingly.

      ‘Wait, wait, we are nearly at the bottom … steady now, wait till we are off these stones.’

      At last they reached the bottom of the cliff and the beach lay tantalizingly ahead. Isabella was already melting into the distance. Helena’s horse leapt forward, snorting with excitement. The stones skidded under its feet, and as it lurched Helena was thrown forward СКАЧАТЬ