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little girl enough on his own without Bryony adding to it.
    She rose quickly and reached to close the curtains against the setting sun. Outside, seagulls wheeled high above the windswept cliffs behind the house, their mewling cries mingling with the crash of the surf against the rocks at the base of Cadgwith Cove, far below. Bryony paused with her hand on the faded chintz and watched the dying sun glint off the water and cast long purple shadows over the gorse and boulder-strewn cliffs.
    The wild and desolate beauty of the familiar scene filled her with a poignant, aching sense of joy. But it was followed too swiftly by an unexpected surge of loneliness, and an uneasiness that was close to fear.
    She jerked the curtains shut and turned back toward her daughter with determined cheerfulness. "Shall I sing you a song? What would you like?"
    "'Six White Horses.'"
    Bryony smiled and settled on the edge of the miniature sleigh bed. Madeline always asked for 'Six White Horses.'
    "'Six white clouds, flying o'er the sea,'" Bryony sang softly. "'Be six white horses, that will carry me...'"
    Madeline's long lashes fluttered against cheeks rosy from a day spent with sun and sand and sparkling sea. Slowly the child's breathing eased, and she slept.
    The song ended, but Bryony lingered at the side of the bed, gazing down at her daughter's sweetly parted lips, at the silky golden hair spread out over the worn linen. Her heart filled with fierce, desperate love for this child... and a deep, festering anger toward the careless man who had hurt her. Who was always hurting them both.
    She kissed Madeline's forehead and stood up, her hands moving restlessly over the barely perceptible swell of her belly. By spring she would have another child. It was a thought which brought her, once again, that disturbing sense of trouble. She pushed it away.
    The big old house settled quietly into dusty shadows as Bryony descended the single flight of bare wooden steps. The thump of her unfashionably sturdy shoes echoed in the stillness. When Bryony was a little girl, a Persian runner with vivid blue and red and gold swirls had carpeted the grand staircase that rose proudly from the slate-floored hall of Cadgwith Cove House to the half dozen or so bedrooms above. In those days, her sea captain father had still been alive, and her mother's gay, musical laughter had filled the house with sunshine and love. But Captain Peyton and his vibrant wife were dead six years now, lost together in a boating accident in the treacherous waters off the cove. This past June, Bryony had decided that the tattered, threadbare stair runner had become dangerous, and she'd had it taken up.
    A rattle of crockery from the kitchen told her Mrs. Pencarrow would be putting dinner on the table soon. Mrs. Pencarrow was expecting Oliver home, too. He'd flattered and teased the old cook-housekeeper into making roast chicken with bread sauce, his favorite. Bryony sighed, foreseeing more wounded feelings that would need soothing tonight.
    She pushed open the swinging door that led to the ancient, sandstone-flagged kitchen. The kitchen was the oldest part of Cadgwith Cove House, thick-walled and low-ceilinged and dark with the smoke of ages. It smelled wonderfully of roasting chicken and the fresh apple pie set to cool on the stone sill of the open casement window.
    "Madeline's asleep, Mrs. Pencarrow," she said to the stocky, gray-haired woman who stood at the stove and stirred her bread sauce. "I'm just going out for a quick walk along the cliffs before dinner." She lifted the latch on the stout kitchen door and tugged it open. "I won't be long."
    "The cliffs?" Mrs. Pencarrow swung around to shake her wooden spoon at Bryony. "The cliffs, is it? When you know you should be upstairs dressing for dinner like the lady your da woulda wanted you to be, rather than scrambling around on the sea cliffs like a hoyden?"
    But Bryony only laughed and pulled the heavy, weathered door shut behind her.
    A warm