By chance I discovered how Fanny and I had been poisoned. It was shortly after Jessica had left when I took tea in the nursery with Benedict and he gleefully put spoonfuls of sugar in my tea.
“You’ve got a sweet tooth,” he chuckled. Then he said: “You like this sugar better than Jessie’s?”
Jessie’s sugar, he told me, had been kept in a bottle in her cupboard, and by standing on a chair he could reach it. He had brought it for my lemon barley when I was sick to make me get well quickly.
I went over to see Jessica at Chough Towers when her child was born. Being a mother had changed her in some way. I myself was pregnant at that time, and I understood the change; it almost made us friends. She admitted that she had read about the arsenic when Jenny bad died and had tried it herself now and then. She was horrified when she heard how Fanny and I might have been poisoned.
Well, that was all long ago, but I often think of that night when, rescued by my husband, I lay in bed in the island house listening to the storm, and how it wore itself out during the night, until the sound of the waves dropped to a murmur.
When it was light I got out of bed and stood at the window to watch the sunrise. Bevil was sleeping in a chair near my bed, and I did not wake him.
The sea was still, and only the brown edge to its skirt was an indication of how violent the storm had been.
And there was Menfreya touched with the faint rosy glow, and as I looked I remembered that morning all those years ago when I had looked and thought that the loveliest sight in the world must be Menfreya in the morning.
I thought of all that had happened there through the centuries and in my own short life and all that was yet to come.
Gwennan was gone; Fanny was gone; but I had Bevil, and we should go through life together.
Bevil had come to stand beside me, and we both remained at the window, looking across the sea.
“Who would believe that’s the same sea as the one that was raging last night?” he said. And he looked at me, and I knew that he read some of the thoughts that were in my mind.
Tragedy had come close, but luck had been with us.
Bevil was still shaken when he considered how miraculously my rescue had been timed.
“It’s like being given a chance,” he said.
“This day is starting well,” I answered. “Look at the sky. Arid look at Menfreya … It’s so beautiful in the morning.”