Violet v-5

by Jane Feather

Tamsyn hungrily absorbed the clean lines of his back, the lovely, taut buttocks, the long, muscular length of thigh. “Why not?”

  He turned and she lost interest in the answer to the question, jumping off the bed with a little predatory whoop like a huntsman on the track of the fox…

  “Why won't I wear the rubies?” she asked some considerable time later. “They will go beautifully with the gown that Josefa is making for me. It's silver lace, opening over a half slip of cream silk, with a demitrain. I haven't the faintest idea how I'm to manage the train it catches in one's feet most dreadfully. I shall probably trip down the stairs, or fall flat on my backside in the middle of a dance.”

  Julian blew away a tickling strand of silver hair from his nose. “I doubt that, buttercup. You seem to be a natural dancer.”

  “It's my Spanish blood,” she said. “You should see me dance at fiesta, all swirling skirts and castanets and a lot of bare leg.”

  “Very appropriate for a small reception in a sleepy Cornish village,” he observed.

  Tamsyn wondered if he knew just how big this small party was going to be. He'd evinced no interest in the details at all.

  “Anyway,” he said, reverting to the original topic.

  “You may not wear the rubies because young unmarried girls wear only pearls, turquoise, garnets, or topaz. Anything more serious would be considered vulgar.”

  “How stuffy'“

  “Very,” he agreed. “And the other thing you must remember is that ingenues do not put themselves forward in any way. You may not dance unless a partner has been properly introduced to you, and you may dance only once with each partner. When you're not dancing, you must sit by the wall with the chaperons.”

  “You are not being serious?” Tamsyn pushed herself up against his chest and stared down at him in the dim light behind the bed curtains.

  “Never more so,” he said, grinning at her dismayed expression. “But this is the part you wish to play, remember.”

  “And you really enjoy rubbing it in, don't you?” She glared at him, but her eyes were still glowing from their loving.

  “Maybe,” he said, still grinning. “However, you may dance more than once with me, since I'm your guardian… oh, and it would be perfectly acceptable for you to dance several times with Gareth.”

  “Thank you. What an entrancing prospect.” She flopped down beside him again. “Oh, I meant to say…” She bounced upright again. “I don't know how much this is all costing you, but since it's all part of my plan to make my debut, of course I expect to pay for it. So if you would give me an accounting…”

  “Oh, a ruby will probably cover it,” he said carelessly. His throat suddenly tightened as he remembered the Aladdin's cave in Elvas, when she'd offered him her treasure and he'd misunderstood and been wild with fury at the thought that she would pay him as if he were some hired lackey. But what she was offering him were the glorious treasures of her body and her wonderfully inventive imagination.

  “What is it?” Tamsyn saw the tautness of his features, the grim set of his jaw when a minute before he'd been laughing, his eyes heavy with sensual pleasure, his expression soft and amused in the way she loved.

  He didn't answer, merely pulled her down to him again, rolling her beneath him. Tamsyn was still puzzled by the strange change in him, by the roughness of his body on hers, the urgency of this suddenly rekindled hunger. But she allowed herself to be swept up in his passion, to adapt the contours of her body to the hard one above her, to take him within herself, to lose herself in the rhythm of his body because the weeks were galloping by and Cedric Penhallan was approaching her net… and it would all too soon be over.

  “Goodness me,” Tamsyn murmured, examining herself in the cheval glass the following Saturday. She'd become accustomed to seeing herself in gowns, but the light cambrics and muslins she'd worn hitherto hadn't prepared her for this image. The gown left her shoulders and arms bare, and was cut low across her bosom, revealing both the upper swell of her breasts and the deep valley between them..

  She rarely gave her body more than a passing thought and was as comfortable in her skin as she was clothed, but drawing attention to parts of her anatomy in this way struck her as almost indecent. She remembered Cecile describing some of the gowns she'd worn as a debutante, cut so low that her nipples were barely covered. And she remembered how Cecile had laughed, her violet eyes mischievous as she'd demonstrated with her fan how she used to draw attention to her bosom while seeming modesty to hide it.

  Tamsyn swallowed the lump in her throat and turned to Josefa. “So what do you think, Josefa? Do I look at all like Cecile?”

  Josefa's bright black eyes darted up and down the slender figure. “To the life, querida,” she pronounced, and her own eyes misted; then she smiled and bustled over, bending to smooth down the skirt and adjust the train.

  There was a tap at the door. “May I come in?” Lucy popped her head around. “Oh, Tamsyn,” she said, coming fully into the room. “How beautiful you are.”

  “Nonsense,” Tamsyn said, blushing slightly. ''I'm thin and brown-skinned, and my hair's unfashionably short.”

  “No,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “You're quite wrong. You look wonderful. Different… but lovely.” She turned to examine herself critically in the mirror. “I quite liked this gown a minute ago, but now it seems dull and boring compared with yours.”

  “Nonsense,” Tamsyn said, laughing. “You're fishing for compliments. Shame on you, Lucy.”

  Lucy laughed self-consciously and patted a ringlet into place. She knew she looked both pretty and elegant. However, she thought, examining Tamsyn's image in the mirror, Tamsyn's appearance took one's breath away… perhaps because she was so unusual.

  “Well, if you're ready, let us go down. I'm sure Julian and Gareth are already downstairs.”

  “You go on,” Tamsyn said, suddenly needing to gather her thoughts. “I'll follow in a few minutes.”

  Lucy hesitated, then went off with an equable shrug of her creamy round shoulders.

  Tamsyn went to the window, drawing aside the curtain, gazing out across the lawn to the sea. It was a delightful summer evening, a crescent moon swinging low on the horizon, the first pale glimmer of starlight against the darkening sky.

  Cecile had once described her favorite gown. It had been of silver lace and cream silk. Tonight her daughter would appear to Cedric Penhallan in the same colors. A vastly different style of dress, of course. Where Cecile had worn swaying side panniers and a tightly corseted bodice, her daughter wore a slip of a gown that glided like gossamer over her figure. But her violet eyes were as deep and luminous as her mother's, and they glowed against the pale shimmer of her gown. Her hair was the same burnished silver, and her frame was as slight and slender.

  Would Cedric Penhallan see his sister?

  She touched the locket at her throat, drawing strength and determination from the images of Cecile and the baron smiling beneath the delicate filigree silver. Then she went to the door, her step vigorous, the energy of purpose coursing through her veins.

  Julian was in the hall, waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase with a degree of impatience. The first guests could arrive at any minute, and he wanted to be certain Tamsyn hadn't committed any serious solecisms, like smothering herself in rubies and diamonds.

  He saw her in the shadows at the top of the stairs and called up to her. “Hurry, Tamsyn, people will be arriving at any minute.”

  She came running down the stairs toward him with her usual impetuous vitality, one hand carelessly holding up her skirt, her half train swishing behind her. ''I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep you waiting.” She jumped the last step and flashed him a smile, tilting her head to one side in her robin imitation. “So what do you think, milord colonel? Will I pass muster?”

  “Good God,” he said softly.

  “Is something wrong?” Her smile faltered.

  “Yes,” he said. “Ladies don't hurtle down the stairs as if all the devi
ls in hell were on their heels. Go back and come down properly.”

  “Oh, very well.” With an exaggerated sigh Tamsyn gathered up her skirts again and scampered back up the stairs. At the top she stopped, turned, laid one hand on the banister, and floated gracefully down the curving sweep to the hall.

  Julian stood, one hand on the newel, one foot on the bottom step, watching, his critical expression masking his whirling senses. The exquisite gown did nothing to disguise the deep currents of sensuality that flowed through her, glowing in her eyes and in the translucent depths of her skin. The pale colors and delicate material merely accentuated her thrumming vibrancy. And he wanted to catch her up in his arms, bury his lips in the delicate curve where her neck met her shoulder, inhale the mingled honeyed scents of her skin, run his fingers through the shining cap that clung to the small, well shaped head.

  He wanted to claim her. Hold her in his arms, secure in the knowledge and rights of possession. He wanted to proclaim his possession to the world.

  He took her hand as she reached him, raising it to his lips in a formal salute. “Try to remember for the rest of the evening not to gambol like a colt.” Then he released her hand and turned back to the drawing room.

  Tamsyn bit her lip. She hadn't expected fulsome compliments, but something other than a schoolmasterly castigation would have been nice.

  Over the next two hours, as the house filled with a laughing, chattering crowd, Julian watched her. She stood beside Lucy at the head of the stairs as Lucy welcomed the stream of guests and introduced Tamsyn. He noted with wry appreciation how, while she spoke English fluently, she adopted an exaggerated Spanish accent that made her seem even more exotic and foreign than she appeared. And he saw how the young men gathered around her, laughing uproariously at her every conversational sally, gazing with rapt admiration into her glowing face. And the older men, taking advantage of the license of age, touched her arm and patted her hand, and she smiled up at them and flirted with an innocent charm that clearly entranced them.

  It was an amazing performance, Julian thought. No one looking at her now would credit the fierce, lean warrior that he'd first met; or the indomitable fury of Badajos; or the weary, blackened powder monkey on the decks of the Isabelle. All those characters were his, he thought, with an overpowering surge of longing in the maelstrom of his confusion. This consummate performer belonged to the room. She was acting a part and only he knew it.

  But the essential Tamsyn belonged only to him. And he wanted to leap forward, sweep her out of that circle of besotted, spotty youths, and proclaim his possession to the world.

  Madness. Utter madness. He was as seduced by her performance as the rest of the room. He- knew what she was. An illegitimate, half-breed brigand without a scruple to her soul or an ethical bone in her body.

  “Amazing likeness, isn't it?” a voice quavered at his elbow.

  He snapped out of his reverie and turned with a polite smile to the ancient lady beside him, bent double over a silver-topped cane. “Lady Gunston, how are you?”

  “At ninety-six, young man, one doesn't answer such a question,” she said with a cackle of laughter. “Help me to a chair and procure me a glass of negus; I can't think where that ninny has disappeared to.”

  Julian obeyed with a smile. Letitia Gunston was a local institution. She never refused an invitation, and her long-suffering companion, almost as old as she was, bore the social round with almost as much fortitude as she endured her employer's acerbic and continual complaints.

  “Here you are, ma'am.” He handed her the negus and sat down beside her. “I added a little extra wine, knowing how you like to taste it.”

  Lady Gunston cackled again and took a critical sip of the sweetened flavored wine and hot water. “I've had worse.” She nodded and allowed her rheumy eyes to wander around the room again. “Quite an astonishing resemblance, don't you think?”

  “Who, ma'am?” He leaned closer to catch the thin voice.

  “That gal.” She gestured with her stick across the room. “Haven't seen her before. But she's the spitting image of Celia.”

  “I don't follow you, ma'am.” Julian’s blood seemed to slow.

  She turned to look at him. “No, of course not. Celia died when you were still in short coats, I should imagine. Lovely gal, she was, but a mite too lively for propriety. Never knew what she'd be up to next.” She laughed, coughed vigorously, and took another hearty swallow of negus.

  “Celia who, ma' am?” He was very cold, his entire body suspended, waiting for the information he knew was coming… the information that would bring his adventure with a brigand to a close.

  “Why, Penhallan, of course. Celia Penhallan, she was. Died of some fever in Scotland.” Lady Gunston nodded her head again, peering across the room to where Tamsyn was dancing with some young scion of local nobility. “The hair's the thing,” she mused, her voice dropping so Julian had to lean even closer to catch her words. “Never seen hair that color before. Can't see her eyes, though.”

  “Violet,” Julian said, his voice seeming to come from a great distance.

  “Ah, yes, they would be.” The old woman smiled, toothless and smug. “Celia had violet eyes.” Her head jerked suddenly, and she said, “Fetch that ninny of mine, young man. It's time I went home.”

  Julian went in search of Miss Winston. He was moving through a void, his mind numb. He saw the old lady to her old-fashioned berlin. The liveried footman half lifted her inside, little Miss Winston weighed down with an armful of cloaks and spare reticules struggling up behind her. The driver touched his cocked hat cracked his whip, and the cumbersome vehicle lurched down the driveway.

  Julian stood in the doorway, listening to the strains of music, the muted voices, an occasional burst of laughter wafting from the rooms behind him. Lucy had surpassed herself, he thought distantly. If this was her idea of a small reception, he dreaded to think what she'd do with a proper ball.

  Celia Penhallan. Cecile. But how did Celia Penhallan become Cecile, the mate of a Spanish robber baron? How did a death in Scotland square with an abduction in the Pyrenees?

  Cedric Penhallan presumably would know the answer.

  He walked out on the driveway and turned to the side of the house, heading for the dark seclusion of the orchard. His absence wouldn't be noticed for a while in the crush inside, and he couldn't face returning to the social inanities, the fatuous smiles, the mindless chatter. Not until he'd cleared his head.

  Penhallan blood ran in her veins. The blue blood of one of the greatest families in the land. But it was bad blood. Tainted with the ruthless ambition of the viscount and the vile and vicious antics of the twins.

  God in heaven! In those delicate blue veins so clearly visible beneath the white skin of her wrists, the blood of an outlaw mingled with the blood of a tyrant. He thought of the way she stood, the arrogant tilt of her chin, the way her eyes flared if she was challenged, the set of her mouth if it looked as if she wasn't going to get her way. Penhallan traits, every one. And the ruthless determination, the blind pushing for her own goals, the way she swept all obstacles from her path.

  But Cedric Penhallan would never acknowledge her, even if her claim was cast iron. Not only would his personal pride never permit him to acknowledge a relationship with such a creature from such a wildly impossible background, but if he accepted her claim of kinship, he'd have to explain publicly that the death and the burial and the ceremonious mourning for his sister had all been a sham. And why, in the name of grace, had he perpetrated that hoax? Knowing Cedric, to avoid some scandal. Perhaps Cecile… Celia… had run away from home. Had fled to Spain to escape her brother's long reach, and Cedric had simply concocted an explanation for the public domain. It made perfect sense.

  Julian's head felt as if it were going to burst. He loathed the Penhallans and everything associated with them. Twenty years ago Cedric had manipulated the lives of those around him for his own purposes, and Tamsyn was the unforeseen product.

 
And that unforeseen product was beginning to raise Cain with his own view of his world and all his preconceived ideas of the future of Lord St. Simon of Tregarthan. In some perverse fashion he was caught up in a web of Penhallan spinning, and that old manipulation was now at work on his own life.

  He faced it clearly, but it did nothing to clarify his present turmoil. It was inconceivable that he should make a life with Tamsyn, and yet he found he couldn't formulate the thought of leaving her. He couldn't imagine what it would be like now to live his life without her.

  And should he tell her what he'd discovered? Would it do her any good to know? Cedric Penhallan would laugh in her face, destroying that eager dream to discover a family who would make up for the loss of her own.

  While Julian was walking through the orchard, Cedric Penhallan drove up to Tregarthan. He was deliberately late, and his hostess had left her post at the head of the stairs long before he strolled up them.

  He paused at the double doors standing open onto the main salon thronged with brightly clad women like so many butterflies and their more somberly dressed escorts. The musicians were playing a waltz, and he saw Celia's daughter immediately, twirling gracefully in the hold of a young man in scarlet regimentals.

  Cedric remained standing in the door, fixing his gaze on the slight figure. Celia had worn those colors, he remembered. And she too had danced with that lively grace.

  “Lord Penhallan, we're honored.” Lucy hurried across the room toward him, sounding breathless and startled. Her eyes darted in search of Julian, who surely should be there to greet this important guest, but there was no sign of her brother. She bowed and shook hands with the viscount.

  “May I procure you a glass of wine… Oh, Gareth.” With relief she saw her husband a few paces away. “Gareth, here is Lord Penhallan.”

  Gareth too looked for his brother-in-law. He didn't feel in the least competent to deal with a man who moved in lofty circles far out of his own orbit, and who was gazing at him with a look of derision from beneath his bushy gray eyebrows. But he searched manfully for a suitable topic of conversation and asked his lordship about his stud.