Return to Cornwall (Books 1-6), page 1
Return to Cornwall (Books 1-6)
By Laura Briggs
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2022 Laura Briggs
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Cover Image: “Cornish manor.” Original art, “Country house” by Marrishuanna, “Luxury old fashioned houses buildings” by Christos Georghiou, and “Spring Ribbon,” by Zandiepants. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Cover Image for Wedding Vows and Cornish Ribbons: “Cornish Village.” Original art, “Evening winter village scene” by Stekloduv and “Spring Ribbon,” by Zandiepants. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Cover Image for Cornish Sweets and Wedding Treats: “Cornish Bake Off.” Original art, “Country House” by Marrishuanna, and “Country house” and “Sweet treats” by Elena Mikhaylova. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Cover Image for Spring Roses Under Topaz Skies: “Cornish Village in Spring.” Original art, “Quaint Village Street with Water Scene” by Terry Katz, and “Spring Ribbon” by Zandiepants. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Cover Image for Cornish Gold at Summer’s End: “Autumn in Cornwall.” Original art, “Country house” by Marrishuanna, “Luxury old fashioned houses buildings” by Christos Georghiou , and “Spring Ribbon,” by Zandiepants. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Cover Image for Walnut Mince Pies at the Frost Fete: “Cornish winter village”. Original art, “Evening winter village scene” Stekloduv and “Spring Ribbon,” by Zandiepants. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Cover Image for Secrets and Sunsets in Azure Bay: “Cornish Coast”. Original art, “Lighthouse on coast of sea, structure of lighthouse on shore.,” by Mspoint and “Spring Ribbon,” by Zandiepants. Used with permission. http://www.dreamstime.com/
Table of Contents
Wedding Vows and Cornish Ribbons
Cornish Sweets and Wedding Treats
Spring Roses Under Topaz Skies
Cornish Gold at Summer’s End
Walnut Mince Pies at the Froste Fete
Secrets and Sunsets at Azure Bay
Dear Readers,
Is this your first visit to Cliffs House in the village of Ceffylgwyn? If so, I hope you’ll enjoy the cosy settings and quirky characters that make these stories pure escapism for so many readers. But if you’ve been here before, then you’re probably familiar with my other series about event planner Julianne, beginning with the novella A Wedding in Cornwall, where our fish-out-of-water heroine landed a job planning events at a Cornish manor house—all while falling in love with the handsome Poldark-esque gardener, Matthew Rose.
A lot has changed for Julianne since that first brush with adventure. She and former assistant Kitty now run their own firm that specializes in ‘rescuing’ weddings that need a helping hand. She’s also a happily married mother of two (with a few surprises still to come in that department). And she’s still got a penchant for problem solving that entangles her in everything from a runaway bride’s nuptials, to a bit of Valentine’s matchmaking, and even an investigation of the town’s so-called haunted wood.
Fans of the original series may be excited to see the return of hen night planner Teagen in the pages ahead, as well as a visit from former Cliffs House chef Dinah. And, of course, there are some new faces to welcome to the village, including those of the charming police sergeant Charlie and the affable new school teacher Ben. So settle back and binge your way through Julianne’s latest collection of adventures, filled with laughter, romance, and plenty of excitement.
Wedding Vows and Cornish Ribbons
by
Laura Briggs
Chapter One
Squeezing produce for freshness was my Wednesday afternoon date with the local greengrocer's produce baskets. I think of it as one of my 'mom' duties, because six years ago I could have cared less if a tomato or mango needed a few extra days to ripen — that was before certain fruits or veggies became the only guaranteed bit of vitamins I could ensure another human being consumed, and therefore must be 'just right.'
Currently, my daughter eats tomatoes, bananas, and radishes, for some weird reason, but thinks all peel-and-eat citrus fruits are too sticky. Whereas her brother won't touch anything that ever had leaves on it unless it's covered in a generous helping of mustard ... so, more weird. But parents know this is how the world turns, usually with jelly sandwiches for kids and a glass of pinot for mommy at the end of yet another food battle, but I am trying to gain the upper hand in the war. I want green stuff in my kids' diets, and I do not want me and Matt — adorable as he is about doing the dishes — scraping peanut butter or pickle off any plates this week.
"I thought Matt grew his own tomatoes," said Kitty, who was looking at some stalks of asparagus like they were little plastic-wrapped spears and not a vegetable to be consumed.
"Some kind of worm is eating his plants, and he doesn't have the time to remove all the pests, so I'm filling the gap with market ones," I said. "At three tomato sandwiches a day, I can't keep a big enough supply."
"Sylvie still isn't eating anything but sandwiches," Kitty surmised.
"How can a kid be so stubborn? It's like it's in her genes or something," I said, pretending it wasn't obvious where she inherited them. "I put the kibosh on any more fish fingers and chips in the house until school starts. I'm thinking of sneaking in shredded carrots and celery with the cheese."
That's how serious I was about this, because I was feeling latent guilt for letting things slide into fast food nirvana the last couple of weeks, while we were finishing work on our business's event space for its grand debut. We'd fallen behind temporarily while planning Percy's wedding, but now that the earl had set off alone for South America, I had sent the petal cannons back to their owner and returned the tables to their vendor, and set my sights on the now-first official wedding of our event planning service.
"In my house, Nathan chucked out all the unhealthy stuff because of the baby, then went out and bought it back because he thought I'd have cravings," said Kitty, who passed on the asparagus. "He keeps pushing me to eat more veg. I told him I'd try." She inspected a cucumber, unenthusiastically.
I put a summer squash in my basket. "It's not like you live off trash food," I said, although I knew Kitty wasn't much of a cook, and Nathan wasn't much better. "Pasta, pesto, and curry are better than bangers and mash every night. Is he just concerned that prenatal vitamins aren't enough for you?"
"He thinks I should be a bit more enthusiastic about greens and stuff," she answered, wrinkling her nose over some wilted cilantro among the herb bundles. "It's not like I come by it naturally — mum doesn't know a ripe melon from a sponge. All she ever cooks with is frozen stuff. Stuff from tins." She tossed the herb bundle into her basket.
At two months — and counting — into her pregnancy, Kitty's slender build already betrayed the first slight evidence of the baby's bump, but I envied the fact that she wouldn't be a blimp by her last trimester. Somewhere along her ancestral way, Kitty had scored the good genes responsible for making her lean and tough, yet graceful as a cat, and made her dark, loose curls and fair skin a gorgeous combination of mystery that withstood Cornwall's sun without reddening — an advantage over mine, which tended to look a little baked after a day by the shore to a shade I called 'toasted marshmallow.'
Kitty was also several years younger than me and only on baby number one. Somehow I didn't think my experience was an advantage by comparison.
"He bought a cookbook," said Kitty, looking at onions now. "Mexican cooking secrets from some southern California grilled food restaurant he likes. Fresh food stuff. He says we'll learn to cook together — stuff with names like 'pico' and 'street tacos,' whatever those are."
"Fish tacos," I said, as I chose some brussels sprouts and wondered if they were mashed up in Heath's peanut butter, would he notice? "Maybe the doctor's appointment will reassure him." Kitty was due for a prenatal check-in at the clinic for her and the baby, her first one since acknowledging that it was a baby and not the stomach flu behind her condition.
"I figure he'll be worse. Nattering about healthy supplements and teas for morning sickness," snorted Kitty. "That's his sort of thing."
Nathan was the overly-concerned type, it was true. I could picture him filling up cabinets with vitamins and root teas, and signing up Kitty for some sort of mind-body pregnancy classes. He was the sort of guy who would buy books on what to expect when expecting, and read online articles on the Lamaze techniques. I needed to take a page out of his book, however, when it came to dedication to change.
"I'm making a vow to get control of my life again," I said, selecting a cauliflower, then putting it back. No way either of my kids would eat that. "Eliminate chaos and stress. I should sweep that layer of dust off the furniture at home. Try turning the tide in the sea of toys that has taken over my living room."
"Eat things called rutabagas?" Kitty held up one, arching one eyebrow.
"Anything I can disguise in cheesy pasta," I answered, although the vegetable I selected instead was so
I moved into the 'furrin vegetables' as my friend Dovie referred to them, the specialty imported foods that included exotic fruits and some very familiar garden varieties from the States, which is where I bought my favorite yellow squash fruits, okra, and a type of Indian melon that Matt liked. I reached for it at the same time as another customer, Cherish Dennai, the wife of a highly-successful business solicitor currently working in Truro, and the newest member of our local tourism council
"Fancy seeing you here," she teased, as we smiled. "And I thought my husband was the only one who liked these. They're not sweet enough for me."
"Me, neither," I said. "But Matt loves them, so I buy some for him to eat in his salads. When he eats them." Lately, to my chagrin, Matt had been too busy, relying on packs of nuts and raisins from his coat pockets for lunch, and tins of soup for dinner.
"I'm happy to find you two here," she remarked, noticing Kitty behind me, examining some dried berries — with lack of enthusiasm, yet again. "I had thought about stopping by your shop earlier today."
"Really?" I said. "Do you need our fabulous event planning services for your next dinner party?" I was joking — Cherish did a lot of entertaining, but not the kind of gatherings that required anybody else's time or instincts to plan.
"No, for a friend of mine," she said. "I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for your business, and it would help her with a difficulty involving her wedding."
A wedding. My ears perked up immediately. "How so?" I asked. "You know we're always keen on new customers." Frankly, any customers were fine, as most small business owners would confess.
"Her planner cancelled on her suddenly, due to a family emergency. It put her in an unfortunate position, because she was in the beginning stages of planning a very large formal wedding. She's a bit shy about whom to choose next, but I've told her that you've planned some very impressive events in the past."
Back when I was still an employee at the local manor Cliffs House, I had helped organize everything from celebrity weddings to an operatic star's private concert for television. These must be the ones Cherish meant, since Kitty and I had only planned smaller, local events since we opened our doors.
"We'd love to help, obviously," I said. "If she would like to meet with us, we would love to hear her ideas, and show her our portfolio."
"I'll call her and see if I can convince her to set up an appointment," said Cherish. "I'm very excited to see the new venue when it opens, by the way." She selected a melon for her basket. "Ta ta, ladies."
When she was out of earshot, I turned to Kitty and grinned. "Did you hear that?" I said. "Cherish is recommending us to her friends."
"She's the type who's always telling her friends to try little bistros and organic vegan pasties, I reckon."
"You know how keen she is on promoting local small businesses," I said. "We've been hoping we'd land clients from her friends, ever since she nominated us for the guest list for the local business and tourism council’s ball."
Cherish Dennai had helped us out by putting us on the business invite list for an exclusive charity fundraiser, just when we had given up hope that some of the business council's snootier members would ever take notice of us. If she was recommending us to her friends, it would be a wholehearted recommendation.
"You think she'll call?" Kitty gave me a look — not completely skeptical, but getting close.
"I think she will, and we need her to," I said. "We need posh clients to balance the regular ones — and we definitely need wedding clients like this one. We can finally build the reputation we've wanted."
We thought of ourselves as 'wedding rescuers' for anybody who found themselves suddenly overwhelmed by the big day's details, but that wasn't an easy angle to market, not in a place where people didn't routinely hire event planners for their big day. But a wedding like this one, if it made our client happy, would spread the word across the county in a big way. Society weddings had a habit of doing things like that.
"Speaking of weddings, we need to stop by and lock up since the workmen moved their stuff out of the barn today," I said. "One last inspection."
Our site's original work projection had been for autumn, but the expensive building crew that Nathan had chosen had done miracles in a matter of weeks. The supports stabilized, the electrical work finished, the floor laid — the price that they quoted had been worth it, in my opinion, even though Kitty was still guilting him for the choice. It hadn't come strictly out of our business budget, as the two of us had planned.
"Mum offered to come help clean, but I stopped by the manor one day and talked to Clemmie and Ella. They're coming to help clear away the dust now the crew's leaving." Kitty paid for her groceries right behind me. I looked back, wondering now if I should have tried for the cauliflower. Maybe mixed into some mashed potatoes, it would have gone undetected by my children's taste buds.
"Good," I said. "I'm getting excited about our first wedding," I said, since Percy's didn't count, having failed to reach the all-important ceremony. "It'll be our first official wedding rescue, and the bride was thrilled when I told her that tight deadlines are no problem."
"Who is she?" Kitty asked.
"I don't know her personally — she's not from the village, but she just moved to Par. She's some kind of interior designer, or so I gathered from what she told me when she called. She saw one of our cards in a florist's shop where she does business. She sounded excited to meet us."
"If it's the appointment on Saturday, I won't be there," said Kitty. "I have to meet with the caterers for the autumn wine tasting at the manor."
"They're not using Michael?" The chef at Cliffs House was a culinary genius, whose onion tartlets could cure the world's depression with a single bite of their delectable flakiness, I sometimes thought.
"It's the new society president. I tried to convince him, but he had some other place in mind," answered Kitty. She shrugged. "It wasn't worth the fight."
We walked out into the sunshine of a beautiful afternoon in Ceffylgwyn — the same sleepy Cornish village where I had moved nine years ago, when I was a young new event planner, hired by the local manor to plan events even more posh than whatever Cherish's friend had in mind. It had won me over in no time — the house, with its breathtaking view of the sea from on high — my charming employers, the quiet little village where everybody knew everybody, and, of course, the handsome botanist-turned-gardener-for-hire Matthew Rose. Even the feud over the village's correct — or Cornish — spelling of its name had me hooked.
Back then, jokes about his smoldering Poldark looks and his hidden genius flew over my head, but they came to land firmly after only a short season in this place. I put down roots, built a career, then built a business with my former assistant.
That was the second most important decision of my life, opening Save the Date with Kitty. We took over the building formerly tenanted by a local florist, but the pride of our operation was our new event site, which was almost ready after months of work.
I opened up the doors to the old barn, at the head of the paving stone path Matt had laid for us last week. It was dark inside, except for the rosy glow from the high window, which landed on the empty spot where we usually kept a jumble of furniture that we had now finally put into place.
We left the barn's interior its rustic self — old stone, old wood beams crossing above, where the old loft that had fallen through had been ripped out ages ago. The high window, once gaps for birds to fly inside, now covered by the rosy Tiffany-esque antique stained glass we had installed, giving the place a hallowed, cathedral-like feeling.
When it was still the old Russert barn, local kids would play here, and probably sneaked their first cigarettes and first kisses here, too — Kitty herself was one of them, a notorious juvenile apple thief in the Russert orchard's history. Now, some of those same kids would probably have their wedding breakfasts in these halls, and dance to the local troyls band or a deejay hired from Newquay.
