Violet v-5

by Jane Feather

  She'd come across Gareth Fortescue's type before. Lord Pendragon had been a case in point. Such men habitually examined all women who might be considered even vaguely eligible to receive male attentions. It was second nature.

  She took the glass he offered. “I understand from the colonel that your family home is in Sussex. I've never been there. Is it as pretty as Cornwall?”

  “Softer,” he said. “We have a quieter sea and the South Downs instead of the blasted moors. Bodmin, Exmoor… and of course Dartmoor; that's in Devon, but it's close enough.”

  “We crossed Bodmin Moor on our way here. It was certainly a bleak, unfriendly spot.” She sat down, returning his scrutiny. He had a large, sensuous face with fleshy lips topped by a bushy curled mustache, gray eyes under drooping lids, curly dark hair. Attractive in his way… and he knew it.

  The frankness· of her gaze startled Gareth. He was accustomed to covert assessments of his charms; women didn't in general make their interest quite so blatant. He stroked his mustache in a habitual gesture and smiled, his eyes narrowing.

  Tamsyn supposed he couldn't help this performance.

  Kindly, she changed the subject. “You're something of a judge of horseflesh, I gather.”

  “I pride myself on being so,” he said, taking a seat opposite her, his inviting lethargy banished by enthusiasm for the topic. “But I've never seen an animal like that beast of yours. You must be a capital rider.”

  “The colonel has his reservations on that subject,” she said demurely, taking another sip of sherry.

  “On what subject?” Julian inquired from the doorway.

  Tamsyn looked up quickly, seeing him now with the eyes of acknowledged love. He was in morning dress, gleaming tasselled Hessians, coat of gray superfine, plain waistcoat, and cream pantaloons, his cravat simply tied. She was so accustomed to seeing him in uniform that it always took her a minute to adjust to his civilian dress. She glanced at Gareth, also informally dressed, but his cravat fell in elaborate folds, and he wore several gold and diamond fobs in his striped waistcoat. His coat didn't sit as well on his shoulders, Tamsyn thought critically, suspecting pads. And his thighs in the skin-tight pantaloons were a mite pudgy.

  “My horsemanship, milord colonel,” she replied. “I was about to explain to Sir Gareth that I was permitted to ride Cesar only around the grounds.”

  Her smile was both complicit and appealing, and it stunned him. There was a quality to it he didn't remember seeing before. Something beyond the sensuous, inviting mischief her smiles usually implied. She took another sip of her sherry, draining her glass, as she waited for a response to what she hoped he would accept as an overture.

  “There's nothing wrong with your horsemanship, Tamsyn,” he stated, keeping his voice light, hiding his response to that smile. He turned aside to pour himself sherry. “Not when it comes to mountain passes. It's just a trifle unorthodox for the English countryside.”

  “May I have some more?” She extended her empty glass.

  He refilled her glass and offered Gareth the decanter.

  “I imagine Lucy's still fussing with her dressing.”

  “Women,” Gareth said largely. “You know what they're like.”

  It seemed a frequent refrain of his brother-in-law's, Julian reflected acidly. He glanced again at Tamsyn; she was trying to hide her laughter, and his own sprang unbidden into his eyes.

  “Not all women, Sir Gareth,” she said sweetly.

  “Convent-reared Spanish girls are taught to eschew all the vanities. Hence my short hair. It makes one's toilette very simple.”

  “Ah… ah, yes, of course,” Gareth agreed, somewhat nonplussed. He examined her again over the lip of his glass. A most unusual-looking girl, he concluded. But there was something devilishly appealing about her… devilishly inviting… despite the short hair and the slight figure in the unadorned gown.

  “Am I late?” Lucy came tripping into the room, a vision in her dark-blue silk gown over a half slip of cream lace, a diamond comb in her soft hair, that had been coaxed into ringlets drifting over her bare shoulders.

  “It was worth waiting for, my dear,” Gareth said gallantly, taking her hand and raising it to his lips.

  Lucy blushed, unaccustomed to compliments from her husband. Suddenly she became aware of a curiously charged atmosphere in the drawing room, a pulsating tension as if something forbidden and dangerous lurked below the surface. She looked at the other three and could detect nothing in their expressions to explain such an odd sensation.

  “Shall we go in to dinner?” Julian put down his glass, offering his sister his arm.

  Gareth, with alacrity, offered Tamsyn his, and they went into the dining room. Julian drew out the chair at the foot of the table for Lucy, and she looked startled, then laughed. “I've never sat here before. But I suppose I must… just until you get a wife, Julian.” She gave him a shy smile as she took her place. His eyes were unreadable and he made no response, merely taking his own place at the head of the table.

  Lucy was flustered, wondering if she'd said something indiscreet, but she couldn't imagine how such a self-evident truth could be construed as tactless or inappropriate. She glanced at Tamsyn, who was helping herself to a dish of devilled chicken legs with hungry enthusiasm. Gareth, busily approving the Claret in his glass, also didn't appear to notice anything untoward in her statement, so she decided it was just her brother's manner. He'd never welcomed personal comments.

  Tamsyn, however, had heard both the remark and the conspicuous silence it generated. Perhaps Julian found the subject uncomfortable in her presence. Maybe he thought it would be indelicate to refer to the possibility of marriage in front of his mistress. It was probably just one of those gentlemanly conventions Cecile had told her about. Thrusting the melancholy conclusion to the back of her mind, she picked up a succulent chicken leg and took a delicate bite.

  Julian noticed Gareth's eyes fixed on Tamsyn across the table as she deftly stripped the meat from the bone with her teeth. His brother-in-law was fascinated by her, and Julian could understand why. There was something astonishingly sexy about Tamsyn gnawing on a bone.

  “Tamsyn, in polite English society we don't eat with our fingers,” he corrected, before Gareth's fixed stare became too obvious. “I know I've mentioned it before.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot,” she said hastily, putting the bone down and licking her fingers. “It seems silly to use a knife and fork, though, when fingers and teeth are so much more efficient.”

  Gareth's laugh resounded around the room, bouncing off the paneled walls. “Very silly,” he agreed. “There's far too much nonsense about such things. Why shouldn't one eat with one's fingers if one wishes?”

  “I imagine Spanish customs are very different from English,” Lucy said with a rather rigid smile. “It must be hard for you to remember everything.”

  “It is,” Tamsyn said frankly. ''I'm hoping you won't mind helping me, Lucy. I'm sure your brother would be glad to be relieved of some of the burden. I know he finds it onerous.”

  Her smile deepened as she looked at Julian, and two dimples appeared beside her mouth. He wondered why he hadn't noticed them before. Her cheeks were a trifle flushed, her eyes very bright. The footman refilled her wineglass, and Julian found himself counting. It was her third glass of wine, after two glasses of sherry.

  She continued in this unusual fashion throughout dinner. The only effect it seemed to have was to make her sparkle. Julian knew from experience that Tamsyn rarely did anything without purpose. Clearly she wanted to make up their quarrel.

  Gareth was obviously fascinated with Tamsyn, his eyes following her every move, his rumbling laugh greeting her every sally, and Lucy became increasingly silent. Tamsyn was not encouraging him in the least, but then that wasn't necessary to get Gareth Fortescue's attention.

  When the ladies withdrew to the drawing room, Gareth sniffed his port appreciatively. “Lively little thing, isn't she? I'd always thought Spaniards were devi
lish strait-laced with their women… convents and duennas and so forth. But that chit's as lively a piece as I've come across.”

  “You always did have a delicate turn of phrase, Fortescue,” Julian said with a touch of ice. His brother in-law had imbibed heavily and was looking very flushed, his eyes a trifle unfocused.

  “Oh, beg your pardon, St. Simon.” Gareth smiled expansively. “No offense meant, of course. Dear little innocent, of course. Father was some Spanish grandee, didn't you say?”

  “And a close acquaintance of Wellington's,” Julian stated.

  “Wealthy, I should imagine? These grandees tend to be, I gather.” Gareth hiccupped and selected a grape from the bowl in front of him.

  “So I understand.”

  The subject was not proving promising, and even Gareth finally got the message and lapsed into a doleful silence. The prospect of the long summer months in the company of his unforthcoming and strait-laced brother in-law, with no Marjorie to spice the mixture, began to seem less attractive than it had.

  In the drawing room Lucy was struggling to recover her equanimity as she took the hostess's place behind the teacups. “Do you drink tea after dinner in Spain?”

  “Not in general.” Tamsyn regarded Lucy thoughtfully. It seemed to her that Julian's sister was in need of a little sisterly guidance. The question was: how to dispense it without giving too much away?

  Lucy poured tea. “We always put the milk in afterward,” she offered a shade stiffly.

  “Why is that?”

  “So that one can adjust the strength,” Lucy said.

  “You can't tell if you put the milk in first.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Tamsyn agreed, taking a seat on the sofa beside Lucy. “I must remember that. Tell me about your husband.”

  “Why would you want to know about him?” Two spots of color burned on Lucy's cheeks as she handed Tamsyn a cup.

  Tamsyn took a sip and decided that now was not the moment for tea. “Because I think you need some help,” she said candidly, discarding her teacup. “After only ten months of marriage a man should still be sleeping in his wife's bed. And if you're not careful, that husband of yours is going to start some serious wandering.”

  “Oh, how could you say such a scandalous thing?”

  Lucy clapped her hands to her flaming cheeks. “What could you possibly know about such things?”

  “I'm Spanish,” Tamsyn said vaguely. “We're perhaps a little more open about these matters.” She rose to her feet and went to the decanters on the sideboard. She'd have to slide carefully around her cover if she was to help Lucy, but their earlier conversation combined with an evening in the company of Gareth Fortescue had made it very clear to her that young Lucy needed some help.

  She poured herself a glass of wine, sympathetically regarding the girl's flushed and bemused indignation. “Do you care for your husband, Lucy?”

  “Of course I do!” Tears sparked in the china-blue eyes. “And he cares for me.”

  “Yes, of course he does.” Tamsyn sat down again, cradling her wineglass. “But he's older than you, and a deal more experienced. Do you enjoy being in bed with him?”

  Lucy stared at her, dumbfounded.

  Tamsyn nodded. “You were a virgin, of course. And I don't suppose he thought to discover what pleased you. Men like that often don't.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Lucy was struggling for words, unable to believe she was really hearing this. “I don't want to talk about this… it's horrible… it's not decent.”

  “Oh, for heaven's sake, Lucy. If you don't talk about it, how will you ever learn to make love? And if you don't learn, then you won't learn to enjoy it, and neither will your husband. And then you really will be in a pretty pickle.” She drank her wine with a matter-of-fact nod. “Cecile was always telling me about the prudishness of the English and how women weren't expected to know anything about pleasuring… In fact, when she was a girl, it was considered quite shocking for a woman to enjoy coupling.”

  “Cecile?” Lucy said faintly.

  “My mother. She would have talked to you just as I am, Lucy, so please don't be offended.”

  Lucy stared at this extraordinary girl who was regarding her with an air of confident authority that made her feel like a patient with a physician.

  Before she could gather her wits, however, Julian and Gareth strolled into the drawing room.

  “Lucy has been explaining to me the correct way to pour tea in the drawing room,” Tamsyn said. “May I pour for the gentlemen, Lucy?”

  Lucy moved away from the tea tray, aware that Tamsyn had noticed her hands were not quite steady. When Julian suggested she play, she went to the pianoforte reluctantly. Her head was so full of what she'd heard that her fingers were all thumbs, and after two muddled and discordant attempts at a folk song, Gareth said with a degree of brutality, “Oh, for God's sake, Lucy. Spare our ears. It sounds like a tribe of cats on the prowl.”

  Lucy dropped the lid of the instrument with a bang.

  “I beg your pardon.” She got up and returned to the sofa. “I'm sure you'd prefer to hear Tamsyn play. I'm sure she counts it among her many accomplishments.”

  “I don't play the pianoforte, only the guitar,” Tamsyn said readily, ignoring Lucy's petulant tone. She'd shocked the girl and would renew her tutorial in the morning, when Lucy had had a chance to absorb what she'd heard.

  “How exotic,” Lucy murmured.

  “Not where I come from,” Tamsyn responded. “It's considered a minor accomplishment.”

  “Like other things, I imagine.”

  “Possibly.”

  Julian frowned as Lucy's barbed comments flew and Tamsyn batted them gently back without any sign of hostility. But Lucy was radiating antagonism.

  Gareth cleared his throat. “Think I'll take a stroll down to the village before bed. I daresay I'll see you all in the morning.” He bent over Lucy and pecked her cheek. “Good night, my dear. Don't stay up late, now. You've had a long journey.”

  Lucy's cheeks paled, and then the pallor was driven away by a crimson tide. Her eyes darted involuntarily toward Tamsyn, who studiously avoided meeting her gaze.

  The door closed behind Gareth, and Lucy stood up hastily. “I do find that I'm very tired. If you'll both excuse me, I think I'll go to bed.” Tears were heavy in her voice, and she dashed an arm across her eyes as she went to the door.

  “Bastard!” Julian swore as she left. ''I'm damned if I'll permit him to go whoring in the village while my sister lies weeping upstairs.”

  “Yes, very insensitive of him,” Tamsyn agreed. “But if you drag him back, he'll sulk. He's that type.”

  Julian regarded her with a frown, noticing the wineglass she still held. “Why have you been dipping deep this evening? I thought it didn't agree with you.”

  “Oh, it agrees with me, all right,” she said lazily, running a hand through her hair, her eyes narrowing seductively as she drew her knees beneath her in the big armchair. “But it tends to make me rather uninhibited, and it stimulates my imagination. Shall we go upstairs, since your guests have disappeared?”

  The prospect of a more than usually uninhibited and imaginative Tamsyn was heady indeed. Her violet eyes were luring him, the slight body curled in the chair radiated sensual invitation. A wicked, exotic invitation. And there would never be another woman like her.

  “Forgive me,” he said abruptly. “I've some work to do in my book room.”

  The rejection was so unexpected that Tamsyn stared stunned as the door closed behind him. Tears burned behind her eyes and she blinked them away angrily. She'd been offering an overture all evening, and he'd seemed to accept the end of their quarrel. But now to turn from her so coldly…

  But she wouldn't be defeated. Her mouth took a stubborn turn.

  Chapter Nineteen

  GARETH STROLLED BACK TO TREGARTHAN UNDER THE moon, dolefully contemplating the lack of entertainment to be found in a small Cornish fishing village. The taverns in Fowe
y offered a sad dearth of eager young wenches ready to dally with a well-heeled member of the Quality, although the landlady at the Ship had winked at him and allowed him a discreet fondle of her ripe bosom, leaning over his table as she served his tankard of gin and water. Unfortunately, her husband had appeared on the scene, genial enough on the surface but with a pair of massive forearms that rivalled the giant Gabriel's, with whom he'd been drinking in a dark corner of the taproom.

  Extraordinary-looking man, the Scotsman. Some kind of bodyguard apparently, all very rum. In fact, Gareth decided with a discreet belch, it was a rum business whichever way you looked at it Julian, far from his beloved battlefields, playing guardian to an unknown Spanish chit. Of course, if the Duke of Wellington had commanded it, that would explain it. A great stickler for his duty, was Julian.

  Deciding to take the cross-country route, Gareth swung himself over a stile, catching the toe of his boot in the top rung and almost plummeting headlong. Cursing under his breath, he regained his balance and continued across the field.

  The Penhallan twins had been in the tavern, drinking by themselves in a corner. He'd exchanged a nod with them, but they didn't move in his circles in London, so he hadn't felt a need to do more than that. There was something deuced smoky about those two… always had been. There was bad blood in the Penhallans, everyone said.

  Gareth lurched through a gap in a bramble hedge and paused. Behind and below him the lights of Fowey were all but extinguished, just a lantern swinging on the quay in case anyone decided to row across the river from Polruan at dead of night. Ahead, there seemed only an expanse of field and cliff top. He could hear the breakers on the shore way below at the base of the cliff. Damnation, surely he wasn't lost? He should have stuck to the lanes. He looked up at the star-filled sky, peered into the distance, caught a glimmer of light through a stand of trees ahead, and decided it must be the gatehouse of Tregarthan.

  With renewed energy he strode on and was immensely relieved when he identified the stone gatehouse at the bottom of the drive. His fob watch told him it was barely eleven o'clock. In London the night would just be starting, and all he had to look forward to here was an early night listening to the sea and the owls.