The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) by Ani Bolton

bodies, not that that isn’t common with the dangerous currents. The servants fetched Roger, for they knew something had gone amiss, and brought him to the Hermitage.”
    “Here?” I exclaimed, surprised.
    “Yes. Roger lived here until he had a terrible quarrel with my mother, and left. He was about fifteen years old, I think, but she did not stop him; they hated each other. I was glad he was gone, too. He was a beast to live with, I can tell you. Once he shouted at me in a horrid manner when I borrowed some sketching pencils and paper from his workbook. How was I to know I had spoiled his portfolio?” She sniffed in irritated reminiscence. “Mama had him whipped for insolence.”
    I thought of the haunted edge feathering Roger’s eyes, the famous green eyes inherited from his witch-mother. I thought too of my own marred bloodline, and felt a certain sympathy for him. “I don’t wonder why he was beastly. He had a lot to bear.”
    “I suppose.” Now that her story had finished, she moodily picked at the fraying edge of her linen sampler. “Where did you say Roger found you yesterday?”
    “At a place he called Tol-Pedn-Penwith.”
    My mind skittered from the memory; me, on the tip of the rocky tower, black chasm at my feet, arms spread, ready to fly . . .
    “Tol-Pedn-Penwith,” she repeated. “How did you get so far on your . . . oh lord.”
    A trace of guilt finally crept into her voice. I looked up quickly to find her shrugging. “Make sense that Roger would find you there,” she said. “He was probably coming home from visiting the woman he uses.”
    “He uses?”
    “Don’t be so ladylike. His lover . You do know what that is, I suppose? She lives out there, Roger’s woman.”
    “Roger has a lover?” My mind had difficulty grasping it. Roger did not seem the type to keep a woman, unlike, I realized reluctantly, the suave Damon.
    “Her name is Tamzin Fulby. She lives alone in an old tinner’s cottage near that tor. Lord, how I envy her independence! No one bothers her out there except for Roger.”
    Susannah eyed her sampler critically. “They say Tamzin is a witch. Would fit, too, if she is. Sons are like their fathers, so I suppose Roger inherited his taste for them.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    My head buzzed with Susannah’s story for the rest of the afternoon and most of the next day while I sorted beads at Lady Penwyth’s request. I did not wonder any longer about the source of Roger Penwyth’s melancholia--clearly it was the result of an unhappy history. But I was curious at what had happened between Lady Penwyth and Roger to make them dislike each other so much that he would leave the Hermitage at a fairly tender age.
    I also curious why Roger would take a witch for a lover when one had killed his father.
    I stole a glance at Lady Penwyth’s serene profile as she sat at the opposite end of the sopha table, absorbed in the beadwork. I held no doubt she could fly into a terrible temper, if Jenny’s whipped back were any indication.
    “And have you heard from my sister Sarah?” Lady Penwyth said as I stared at her, pondering. She had not looked up from the purse she had been embellishing with amber-glass beads.
    “I . . . no . . . that is, she sent me a letter begging me to mind my manner, and if you use the New Style calendar to mark the year instead of the Old Style, that I might be taught it. Oh, and she sends you her love, I forgot to say . . . ”
    “Of course she does, don’t trouble yourself over the omission,” she said, sleekly cutting off my stammers.
    Carefully she selected a fat bead gleaming with green-black iridescence, a beetle on the end of her needle. “I noticed a rather large box had come with the Express.”
    “Oh! My stepmother had sent me some things from a dressmaker in London.”
    “London! My word.”
    An elegant finger stirred the collection of beads.
    I had the sense that she was waiting for elaboration, so I continued. “It contained a tin of powdering