The Loving Cup Read Free

I am wiser and older and cleverer than most of those I play with, I generally win. Enough, at least, to survive. But-now I have married a de Bertendona. Does that mean anything to you ?'
    'I fear not.'
    'Amadora, I am about to tell them of your family. Will you permit me?' 'If you shall have the wish.'
    'I shall have t he wish. The de Bertendonas are an old Spanish family - impoverished, they say, by the war, but still the possessors or estates. Amadora's great - five or six times great grandfather - commanded the vessel that brought Philip the Second, King of Spain, to marry Queen Mary of England in — when was it? I don't know, about 1554. His son commanded a squadron of the famous Armada, and indeed commanded squadrons in each of the succeeding armadas. Each following son has been a distinguished hidalgo. Amadora's father is a member of the Cortes and a poet. I have married well, uncle. Can you doubt it? But had Amadora been a serving wench in a tavern I should still consider I had married well. So much do I love and esteem her ..."
    'Steam,' said Amadora, pushing her hair back. 'That is new word. How shall I steam ?'
    'Esteem,' said Geoffrey Charles. 'Love, care for, venerate, cherish, admire - that's as far as I can gol But as to the future, who can see it? If the war ends, then we shall return, with perhaps enough money to put Trenwith to rights and to set us up as landed gentry of a very small but comfortable type.'
    'It may not be so long,' said Captain Blamey . 'Napoleon is reeling.'
    'Well ... There is this truce he has agreed to on the eastern front. Of course it has come about because of his defeats in Russia and in Poland - but also because of Wellington's successes. He has sent Soult, I gather, to try to repair the defeats in the Pyre nees. He must not be underesti mated. There are decisive battles still to come.'
    Amadora put her hand on her husband's arm. 'Talk not of battles now.'
    He put his other hand over hers. 'It is a new thing for me. Always before I had nothing but myself to lose. Now I have all the world to lose. Pray the Lord such good fortune does not turn me into a coward.'
    'Coward?' said Amadora. 'Who is this coward? But we shall talk nothing of battles now. What is fated will happen.'

Chapter Two
    I
     
    Jeremy Poldark had been to St Ann's on business and cut across the cliffs on the way home. Skirting the workings at Wheal Spinster, which was a Warleggan mine, and observing the now silent engine house of Wheal Plenty - also a Warleggan mine but closed by them last year - he circled Trevaunance Cove and took the cliff path for Trenwith. It was not uncommon for him to walk these days. Journeys on foot took longer and gave him more time for thought. The more tired he was at night, the more prospect there was of sleep.
    A young man to whom life had offered few complexities until he met Cuby Trevanion, nothing had ever seemed quite simple since. He had struggled with protest, impulses in his own blood that he could not rationalize, followed by actions that he could hardly condone yet saw with an instinctive fatalism as part of a pattern of revolt that he could not alter. Even now he had not yet come to live with it.
    As he climbed one of the stiles he saw a handsome grey horse cropping the grass near a hedge which separated one field from the next. The horse was saddled and the reins hung loosely about his neck as he quiedy tore at the grass. It was a side saddle. Jeremy jumped down and walked towards him. The horse gave no sign of knowing that he was being approached.
    'Hey-no,' Jeremy said soothingly. 'Come, come, what is this? I don't know you, my beauty. Have you been straying a little and lost your way?'
    The horse shook his head, making the bridle rattle, and showed a white eyeball. Jeremy, who knew a good deal about animals, saw how taut the muscles were.
    Bees were humming in the hedge. No other sound.
    'Where's your mistress, eh? Has she gone to pick flowers? Should you not be tethered, my