The Landower Legacy by Victoria Holt Page A

sat face to face in the trap, my trunk on the floor between us and as we left the town behind and came into the country lanes, Miss Bell seemed very relieved. I guessed she had regarded the task of conveying me to Cornwall as a great responsibility.
    ” ‘Tis a tidy way,” our driver Joe told us, “and it be a bony road. So you ladies ‘ud better hold tight.”
    He was right. Miss Bell clutched her hat as we went along through lanes where overhanging branches threatened to whisk it off her head.
    “Miss Tressidor be expecting you,” said Joe conversationally.
    “I hope she is,” I could not help replying.
    “Oh yes, ‘er be proper tickled like.” He laughed to himself. “And you be going back again, soon as you’m come, Missus.”
    Miss Bell did not relish being called Missus, but her aloof manner had no effect on Joe.
    He started humming to himself as he went on through the lanes.
    “We’m coming close now,” he said, after we had been going for some time. He pointed with his whip. “Yon’s Landower Hall. That be the biggest place hereabouts. There’s been Landowers here since the beginning of time, my missus always says. But you’m already met Mr. Paul and Mr. Jago. On the train, no less. My dear life, there be coming and going at Landower these last months. It means something. Depend on it. And there’s been Landowers here since …”
    “Since the beginning of time,” I put in.
    “Well, that’s what my missus always says. Now, there you can see it. Landower Hall … squire’s place.”
    I gasped in admiration. It was a magnificent sight with its gatehouse and machicolated towers. It was like a fortress standing there on a slight incline.
    Miss Bell assessed it in her usual manner. “Fourteenth century, I should guess,” she said. “Built at the time when people were growing away from the need to build for fortification, and concentrated more on homes.”
    “Biggest house hereabouts … and that’s counting the Manor too … though it runs it pretty close.”
    “Living in such a house could be quite an experience,” said Miss Bell.
    “Rather like the Tower of London,” I said.
    “Oh, there’s been Landowers living there for …” Joe paused and I said: “We know. You told us. Since the beginning of time. The first man to emerge from primeval slime must have been a Landower. Or do you think one of them was the original Adam?”
    Miss Bell looked at me reprovingly, but I think she understood that I was a little overwrought and more than ever indulging in my habit of speaking without wondering what effect my words might have. During the journey I had still been part of the old life; now the time was coming for a change—a complete change. It is only a visit, I kept telling myself. But the sight of that impressive dwelling and the memory of the two men on the train whose home it was, made me feel that I had moved away from all that was familiar into a new world—and I was not sure what I was going to find in it.
    I was overcome by a longing for the familiar schoolroom and Olivia there looking at me with her short-sighted eyes, reproving me for some outspokenness, or with that faintly puzzled look which she wore when she was trying to follow the devious wanderings of my comments.
    “Not far now,” Joe was saying. “Landowers be our nearest neighbours. Odd they always says to have the two big houses so close. But ‘tas always been so and I reckon always will.”
    We had come to wrought-iron gates and a man came out from a lodge house to open them. I judged him to be middle-aged, very tall and lean with longish untidy sandy hair. He wore a plaid cap and plaid breeches. He opened the gate and took off his cap.
    “Thank ‘ee, Jamie,” said Joe.
    Jamie bowed in a rather formal manner and said in an accent which was not of the neighbourhood: “Welcome to you, Miss Tressidor … and Madam …”
    “Thank you,” we said.
    I smiled at him. He had an unlined face and I wondered