The Courageous HEART

Kerrith was in dire straits – could she really pass herself off as a fine lady?

- Michael Malaghan

Cornwall, 1799

The vast, cold sky was pressing down against the moor, as clouds of hard grey and deep purple kept the daylight at bay and darkened the carpet of bracken. The constant, chilling mizzle had long since soaked through the layers of the woman's dress, plastering her thick auburn hair to an angelic face – and dripping uncomfortably down her back.

Even in her bedraggled state, few could have distinguished her from Lady Charlotte Trenlow. The hair, the luminous beauty undimmed even by the foul weather, the bright, indigo blue eyes, and her figure shown to its fullest in the garnet-red gown, were all reminiscent of the lady of Trenlow Hall.

However, Lady Charlotte was warm and dry in her drawing room, while Kerrith – her former maid – was tramping miserably between craggy, black moorland outcrops.

It had been a morning of most disagreeable goings-on and dreadful consequences at Trenlow Hall, which normally slumbered passively in its stone and rose-red brick splendour – coddled in the arms of a thickly wooded valley, with the moor brooding both beyond and above.

First there had been Kerrith's indescribable horror at discovering Lady Charlotte locked in a passionate embrace with a man who was certainly not her husband.

Kerrith had come upon the scene by complete chance. Lady Charlotte's white-and-tan toy spaniel, Charlie, whining and scratching at a door in the east wing of the hall, had been the cause.

'Tis but an unused children's nursery, my pet,' Kerrith had assured the pretty creature, stroking its drooping ears, which resembled ladies' silken hair. She had pushed open the door to prove that other than a dappled-grey rocking horse, some wooden toys and a cot, the room was empty. But she had been wrong.

And never before had Kerrith observed such a wild and feverish kiss, one which had undoubtedly blotted out all sounds from the agitated dog.