Captive of Sin by Anna Campbell Page A

Tulliver whipped the horses to a canter as they turned for the house. Gideon settled into his corner and stared out the window.
    The sun plunged toward the sea in flaming glory by the time they passed through a crumbling stone arch and into the paved courtyard in front of Penrhyn. A closer viewing revealed the house was shabby and unkempt, but nothing could destroy the enchantment it laid over Charis. An enchantment indelibly part of the yearning she felt for its master.
    “Parts stretch back to the fifteenth century, although most of it is Elizabethan.” They were the first words Gideon had spoken since that tense, revealing moment on the rise.
    “It’s beautiful.”
    He gave a short, caustic laugh. Through the dimness, she read the derision on his face. “Believe me, your enthusiasm will wane when you get inside to a cold house and damp sheets and a makeshift supper—if we manage any supper at all.”
    “I don’t care.” His cynicism couldn’t damp her pleasure in Penrhyn. The ancient stones breathed warmth. The house had been loved, and it would be loved again. It was old and knew how to wait.
    Holcombe Hall was a cold white Palladian pile. Architecturally perfect. Built for a Marquess of Burkett last century when the Farrell family still had money and prestige. She’d hated it from the moment she’d arrived there after her mother’s marriage to the late Lord Burkett. God rot his miserable soul.
    As the coach slowed, two men dashed out to hold the tired horses. Four women hurriedly lined worn steps rising to a heavy door.
    “Let the circus begin,” Gideon said bleakly. With a savage movement, he opened the door and leaped to the ground before the carriage reached a complete stop.
     
    Gideon sucked air into lungs constricted with an anger he didn’t understand. He hadn’t expected his return to his boyhood home to be so fraught with emotion. But at the first sight of the old house, he’d felt crushed between the urge to escape and the yearning to stay forever.
    Another deep breath in a futile attempt to calm his galloping pulse. The essence of Penrhyn overwhelmed his senses, cleared the last sour traces of yesterday’s laudanum. And brought back a thousand agonizing memories.
    Still he drank in the air—tangy with salt and wild thyme and sun on old stone and good Cornish earth. He was home and the sweet, fragrant reality split his heart in two.
    “Sir Gideon, welcome home!”
    The familiar voice wrenched him from distraction. He straightened and fought to mask his tumultuous reactions. He met a shrewd blue gaze in a lined face. A face he knew. Behind the tall, rake-thin old man, the staff bowed and curtsied.
    Surprise and something approaching pleasure stirred. “Pollett? Elias Pollett?”
    The man’s eyes shone bright with welcome. “Aye, lad…Sir Gideon.”
    Pollett had been his father’s head groom. Even when Gideon was a boy, Pollett had seemed old. Gideon’s memories of his family were unfailingly desolate. His memories of the local people less so. Mostly they’d ignored him. Which was kinder than any treatment he’d received from his father. But Pollett had been an ally as far as he was able. He’d secretly taught Gideon to ride after Sir Barker abandoned his son as a hopeless case.
    “How did the solicitors know to give you a position?”
    “I never left, sir. A few of us stayed to see the house secure until you got back from furrin parts and took charge.”
    Took charge? What a joke. Gideon wasn’t even sure he intended to remain. Although the scents of sea and wild herbs insisted he belonged here. Demanded he accepted he was a Trevithick to the bone. Like all Trevithicks, born at Penrhyn and fated to die at Penrhyn. As much part of this place as the cliffs and the waves and the wheeling, crying gulls.
    “Before that, I was Sir Harold’s bailiff.” The slow, deep roll of Pollett’s Cornish accent fell on Gideon’s ears like music. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”
    They might