Parties for her schoolfriends, including more recently a theatre matinee, and a hilarious trip to an ice rink. Always a cake with candles, and the warmth of arms round her. The knowledge that she was loved and treasured.
She’d tried hard to be brave, telling herself it didn’t matter that the day had been ignored this time. That next year it would be different. Knowing that it probably wouldn’t.
Until eventually she’d escaped down to the cove, the place where she’d been happiest since she arrived at Penvarnon, and once there, sitting on her favourite rock, had found her eyes blurring as she was suddenly tipped over some edge into a morass of loneliness and pain, where tears were the only relief.
And once she’d started to cry it had been impossible to stop, and she’d lain, hunched and shaking with her sobs, on the hard, flat surface.
She’d been pushing herself upright again, hiccupping a little as she tried to drag a strand of drenched hair away from her face, when she saw him.
Saw Diaz Penvarnon emerging from the sea, completely nude, the salt drops glistening on his body as he strode through the shallows to the beach, as unaware of her presence as she’d been of his. Until then.
The sound she had made, however, a small choking cry of shock and embarrassment, had brought his head round sharply, and he’d stared at her, brows snapping together.
He’d said, with a kind of resignation, ‘Oh, God,’ then walked to the folded towel waiting on a patch of shingle, winding it swiftly round his lower body.
Then he’d walked across to her, grim-faced. ‘Rhianna Carlow,’ he said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to be by myself,’ she said huskily. Her eyes were gummed with weeping, and her face was hot with mortification as she pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘I thought all your visitors had gone and you’d left as well.’
‘Didn’t you see there was someone swimming and figure they might like some privacy too?’ he asked harshly, then paused, his attention arrested as he saw her distress. He went on more gently. ‘Come on, it’s not that bad, surely? You must have seen a man without his clothes before?’
She hadn’t, as it happened, but she didn’t say so.
‘It—it’s not that.’ She swallowed another sob.
‘Then what’s wrong?’ He was frowning again, but as if he were puzzled rather than angry. ‘There must be something.’ He sat down beside her, his hand cool and damp on her shoulder through the thin tee shirt. ‘Don’t cry any more. Tell me.’
She bent her head, her voice catching on the words. ‘It’s my birthday—I’m thirteen—and no one remembered…’
He said, almost blankly, ‘Dear God.’ Then he was silent for so long that she glanced at him, wondering, and saw the tanned face hard and set as he stared at the sea.
She felt nervous again, and moved restively, dislodging his hand. She said haltingly, ‘I’m sorry. I’m stopping you getting dressed. I—I’ll go. My aunt will be looking for me.’
‘Doubtful,’ he said. ‘In the extreme. But don’t run away. I’ve got an idea that might improve matters.’ He added drily, ‘And my clothes are in The Cabin, so you don’t have to worry. I won’t be blighting your adolescence a second time.’ He sent her a brief, taut smile. ‘So, wait here until I’m decent again, and we’ll walk back to the house together.’
She had a belated but pretty fair idea of what she must look like, and was tempted to ignore his instructions and bolt while he was in The Cabin getting dressed. But something told her that he, at least, was trying to be kind, so it was only good manners to wait and hear what he had to say.
She did what she could, scrubbing fiercely at her face with her sodden hanky, and combing her hair with her fingers.
When he came out of The Cabin, she joined him, eyes down, and they walked up the track side by side.
He took her straight round to the stable block, where Miss Trewint was cleaning the paintwork on their front entrance.
She checked, her lips thinning. ‘Rhianna, where have you been? I hope and pray you haven’t been making a nuisance of yourself again.’
‘On the contrary,’ Diaz said. ‘I found her in the cove, like a sea urchin on a rock, and she’s been excellent company. So much so that, with your permission, I’d like to take her out to dinner to celebrate her birthday.’
He paused, and the older woman gazed at him open-mouthed, her face warming with undisguised annoyance.
‘Unless you have something else planned, of course,’ he added smoothly. ‘No? I thought not.’ He turned to Rhianna, who was also staring at him, dumbfounded and totally lost for words, but with an odd little tendril of disbelieving joy unfurling inside her too.
‘Wash your face, sea urchin,’ he directed. ‘And I’ll be back around six-thirty to collect you.’
Kezia Trewint found her voice. ‘Mr Penvarnon, this is nonsense. There’s absolutely no need for you to go to all this trouble…’
‘Now, there we disagree.’ His smile held charm, but it was also inexorable, and Rhianna felt a faint shiver between her shoulderblades. ‘So—six-thirty. Don’t be late.’ And he was gone.
Alone in the moonlight, Rhianna let herself remember…
Aunt Kezia, of course, had not bothered to disguise her anger and bitterness at this turn of events.
‘Barely out of childhood, and already throwing yourself at a man.’ She chewed at the words and spat them out. ‘And a Penvarnon man at that. The shame of it. And he must have taken leave of his senses.’
‘I didn’t throw myself,’ Rhianna protested. ‘He felt sorry for me and was kind. That’s all.’
‘Because you told him the suffering orphan tale, I suppose? All big eyes and no bread in the house.’ Miss Trewint scrubbed at the paintwork as if determined to reach the bare wood beneath it. ‘And what will Mrs Seymour have to say when she hears? We’ll be lucky to keep our place here.’
Rhianna stared at her. ‘Mr Penvarnon wouldn’t let us be sent away—not for something he’d done,’ she protested.
‘So you think you know him that well, do you?’ Miss Trewint gave a harsh laugh. ‘Well—like mother, like daughter. I should have known.’ She paused. ‘You’d better get ready, if you’re going. You can’t keep him waiting.’
Rhianna went up to the flat. Whatever Aunt Kezia said, she thought rebelliously, she wasn’t going to allow it to spoil the evening ahead—the prospect of being taken out to dinner as if she was grown-up.
But she couldn’t entirely dismiss the older woman’s unpleasant remarks, especially when she recalled Carrie’s reluctant confidences.
She knew in her heart that Grace Carlow had been a good and loving person, and that she couldn’t have—wouldn’t have—done anything wrong. All the same there was a mystery there, and one day she would get to the bottom of it and clear her mother’s name.
But
