Violet v-5

by Jane Feather

  Tamsyn had felt her uncle's arrival, just as she'd felt his eyes on her. As the music died, she smiled at her partner and excused herself, refusing his eager offer to accompany her into the supper room.

  She walked steadily across the floor. Cedric's eyes met hers as she approached.

  “Oh,” Lucy said, relieved at the diversion. “Permit me to introduce Lord Penhallan, Tamsyn. Viscount, this is my brother's ward, Senorita Baron. She's come to us from Spain, the Duke-”

  “Yes, I have heard the story,” Cedric interrupted rudely. “It's common knowledge in the neighbourhood.”

  “Of course, how stupid of me,” Lucy murmured, flushing.

  Cedric made a briefly dismissive gesture and said, “How do you do, Miss Baron?”

  “Well, I thank you, senor. JJ She smiled sweetly as she bowed. “It is an honor to meet you.” Her hand fluttered toward the locket at her neck before she said, “Please excuse me, I have promised this dance, and I see my partner waiting.”

  She walked off without a backward glance, but the hairs on the nape of her neck stood up as she felt his eyes on her back and the force of that speculative, menacing gaze swept over her.

  Lord Penhallan watched her for a minute; then he said shortly, breaking into Gareth's elaborate recitation of a race he'd seen at Newmarket, “Good night, Lady Fortescue.” His massive bulk spun with extraordinary agility, and he was gone.

  “Well!” Lucy said, outraged. “What a horrible man! How could he be so rude? What did he come for if he was going to leave the minute he arrived?”

  “No telling,” Gareth said. “But the Penhallans are all toplofty… think they're too good for everyone else.”

  “Not a St. Simon,” Lucy said, drawing herself up to her full height. “St. Simons are as good as Penhallans in anyone's book.”

  “Yes, I daresay,” Gareth said soothingly. “But Lord Penhallan is mighty powerful in the government. It's said the prime minister never makes a move without his approval.”

  “Well, I think he's detestable. Thank goodness he's gone.” On which note Lucy went off to ensure that the tables in the supper room were being replenished.

  Julian re-entered the house through a side door and thus missed Viscount Penhallan's brief visit. He glanced into the salon. The company was thinning, but Tamsyn was still dancing. He crossed the floor and lightly tapped her partner on the shoulder. “Forgive me, but I'd like to claim a guardian's privilege, Jamie.”

  The young man relinquished his lady with a jerky bow and went to lean disconsolately against the wall.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “Oh, yes,” Tamsyn said, but she sounded distracted, and he could feel the tension in her body as he turned her on the floor. There was an almost febrile glitter to her eyes, and her skin was flushed.

  “How much wine have you had?” he asked, steering her off the floor.

  “A glass, no more.”

  “It must be excitement, then.” Smiling, he took his handkerchief and wiped her damp brow.

  “It is my first party since I was seven,” she said with an answering smile, but the attempt at mocking humor lacked conviction.

  “I'm going to London in the morning,” he said abruptly, realizing as he said it that he'd only just decided what to do.

  “Oh?” She looked at him, and her dismay was a clarion call. “Why?”

  “I have Wellington's business to see to.”

  “But you weren't going for another two weeks.” She nibbled her bottom lip, frowning. “Why so sudden, Julian?” There was a look in his eye that filled her with a deep apprehension. He looked like a man steeling himself to jump off a cliff.

  He didn't immediately reply but drew her backward into a deep window embrasure. His voice was low and grave. “Come back to Spain with me, Tamsyn.”

  Whatever she'd been expecting, it hadn't been that.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.” He brushed a wisp of hair from her brow.

  “Come back with me and we'll go campaigning together. And we'll stay together and enjoy each other until it's over.”

  Until it's over. Her heart wept at the finality of the words and the closed mind of the man who couldn't embrace a future with the woman who loved him because she didn't fit the right mold.

  “But I haven't done what I came here to do,” she said quietly.

  “Does it really mean that much to you, Tamsyn?

  What kind of life would you have in England, even supposing you found your mother's family and persuaded them to accept you? This isn't right for you, you know it isn't.” He gestured to the emptying room, where the musicians still played, though desultorily now. “Let's go back to Spain. We can be together there in a way we can't here.”

  “Do you care for me?” Her voice was small, her face as pale now as it had been flushed before.

  “You know I do,” he said, touching a finger to her lips. “That's why I'm asking you to do this.”

  “But we have no future together? No real future?” His silence was answer enough.

  “I suppose not,” she said dully, answering her own question. “A St. Simon could never have a future with an illegitimate brigand. I know that.” She tried to smile but her lip quivered.

  “That sounds so harsh,” he said helplessly.

  “The truth often is.” She stepped backward and her eyes focused, the sheen of tears vanishing as anger and pride abruptly came to her aid. She would not permit this man to look down upon her, to decide she was not good enough for him. The daughter of El Baron and Cecile Penhallan had no need to stoop to placate and beg a St. Simon. “No, I can't come back with you. I will do what I came here to do. But I absolve you from the contract, milord colonel, since you can no longer see your way to honoring it.”

  She was pure Penhallan now, cold and arrogant, and he fought his own surge of anger at her insolence.

  He bowed stiffly. “Of course, you may stay at Tregarthan for as long as you wish. Lucy will continue to sponsor you, I'm sure. I believe you'll find her a more appropriate sponsor than myself, anyway.”

  Appropriate! What had that to do with anything? She turned from him with a curt gesture of farewell, her mouth hard, her jaw set. “I bid you Godspeed, Colonel, and a safe journey.”

  He stood there in the embrasure as she walked away, across the nearly deserted salon, and out of the room. Silently, he cursed his own stupidity in making the offer that he'd known she wouldn't accept. He had made it partly for himself, but also partly for her, a desperate attempt to prevent her from discovering who she was and the inevitable hurt that would follow when Cedric Penhallan laughed her from his door.

  But it was done now, and he wouldn't wait until the morning to set off for London. If he left just before daybreak, he would reach Bodmin in time to break his fast, and he could cross the moor in daylight.

  Tamsyn went up to her tower room without a word to anyone. Josefa was waiting for her, dozing in a low chair by the fireplace. She sprang up full of eager inquiry as her nurseling entered, but her eagerness changed to a cry of distress as she saw the girl's face.

  “I don't wish to talk of it tonight,” Tamsyn said. “Go to bed now, and in the morning we'll talk, the three of us.”

  Josefa left reluctantly, but she knew the tone-she'd heard it often enough from the baron, and one didn't argue with it.

  Tamsyn shivered as a sudden gust of wind blew through the open window. She could hear the surf pounding on the beach as the wind rose. Hugging her breasts, she went to the window. Clouds scudded across the moon in an ever-thickening band, and the soft sea breeze had suddenly changed into a cold, damp wind. The glorious spell of summer weather seemed to be breaking.

  She could hear the voices from the driveway as carriages were called for and the last of the guests left, hurrying now to get home before the weather turned.

  Tamsyn didn't know how long she stood at the window, watching the storm clouds gather, feeling the increasing sharpness of the wind as it rattled the
panes of the open window and set the curtains swirling immobile figure. The first drops of rain woke her from her reverie. She closed the window, drew the curtains to shut out the now unfriendly night, and undressed, her mind working furiously, finally overcoming the paralysis of shock.

  She hadn't expected Julian to bring everything to a close so abruptly. If only it hadn't come on the heels of her encounter with Cedric, she knew she would have responded differently. But she'd been too absorbed in the encounter that had opened the game of vengeance to think clearly, to respond intelligently to anything outside her immediate preoccupation. Cedric had known who she was-the recognition had been clear in his gaze as he had picked up the glove she'd thrown at his feet. She had wanted to play with him a little, let him see her moving comfortably in this society, let him wonder what she intended, wonder about her history. And Julian had blundered into her excitement, dropping a bombshell into her carefully constructed scheme, throwing all her plans awry. So instead of analyzing his proposal, working out how it could bring them closer together, she'd heard only the words and reacted with blind emotion. And blind emotion was an indulgence she could not afford. Not in her schemes of vengeance, and not in her schemes of love.

  She climbed into bed, pulling the bedclothes up to her chin.

  If Julian was going back to Spain, then she would go with him. Half a loaf was better than none, and half a loaf could grow.

  Rolling over, she blew out her candle and lay in the darkness, listening to the rain now beating heavily on the window. The crash of the surf could be heard clearly above the rain, and the night grew ever wilder.

  She loved him, loved him as Cecile had loved the baron. The only love of her life… a love for all life. And if he could only offer her half of himself, then for now she would take that. But she had to tell him so. And then she had to deal with Cedric. But in the light of this new scheme, how was she to do that?

  An answer would come to her in the morning. As soon as she'd rested and was calm again, she would tell Julian that she'd changed her mind.

  The storm abated just before daybreak, and in the damp chill Julian swung onto Soult, his portmanteau strapped to the saddle behind him. The sky was gunmetal-gray, the sea dark, the lawns sodden, the gravel of the parterres studded with puddles. He glanced upward at the east tower, at the ivy-garlanded window overlooking the drive. Then he turned his face north and cantered down the drive.

  Tamsyn, hollow-eyed after a sleepless night, stood at the window and stared into the rain-dark morning as Julian rode away. Had he gone so soon? How could he be so perverse as not to know that she would change her mind once her temper had died down?

  She moved in a whirlwind, racing out of her room, down the back stairs, out into the stable yard, and up the stairs to Josefa and Gabriel.

  “Och, little girl, steady now,” Gabriel said, leaping from his bed as she came in, her eyes wild. “Tell me, now.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his barrel chest so that she couldn't have spoken if she'd wished to.

  But at last she was able to tell them what had happened. “I have to go after him,” she.said simply, sitting on the end of their bed, her hands twisting in her lap. I love him… it's like Cecile and the baron, it's something I can't do anything about. It hurts.” She looked between them. Josefa's eyes were bright and sharp and Gabriel pulled at his chin.

  Slowly, he nodded. “Then we'd best be on our way. Josefa will stay here. She'll no' relish charging around the countryside riding pillion behind me.” He glanced at the woman, who nodded phlegmatically. It wouldn't be the first time she'd waited behind while they'd gone off on some campaign or another.

  “I'll tell Lucy that we have some vital business in Penzance and we'll be back in a week or two.”

  “You're coming back for the Penhallan, then?” Tamsyn looked at him in helpless uncertainty. “Yes, I must. I promised the baron… and Cecile… In my mind, I did. But I don't know anymore, Gabriel. I don't know what will happen.”

  “Och, aye, dinna fash yourself, bairn. What will be will be,” he said comfortably. “I should go and ask Miss Lucy for the direction to the colonel's house in London. Best we know where to find him.”

  Tamsyn flung her arms around his neck. “What would I do without you… without you both?” Tearfully, she hugged Josefa, who had been calmly dressing herself all the while.

  “We should pack some clothes,” the woman said, patting her back. “It's not seemly to make such a journey without clean drawers.”

  “No, Josefa,” Tamsyn said meekly, allowing herself to be hustled out of the left room and into the dark morning, hearing Gabriel's low, reassuring chuckle behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE HOUSE ON AUOLEY SQUARE HAD A SMALL GARDEN AT the back, reached through a gate from the mews. Lucy had said that her brother's book room opened onto the garden.

  Tamsyn sat in the railed garden in the center of Audley Square as dusk fell, waiting for Gabriel to return from his reconnaissance. She was pleasantly weary after five days of riding close to fifty miles a day. Their horses were now stabled in a coaching inn near Charing Cross, where Gabriel would also stay that night, while Tamsyn sprang her surprise on the colonel.

  She hoped a pleasant surprise.

  She could, of course, walk up to the front door and bang the knocker, but she had a taste for something a little more dramatic, something in keeping with the shocking abruptness of Julian's departure.

  The click of the gate made her jump, and she realized how very nervous she was-as apprehensive as if the man she was intending to surprise was a stranger one whose reactions she couldn't predict-instead of a man whose life and bed she had been sharing for the last four months.

  Gabriel's boots scrunched on the gravel path winding through privet hedges to the middle of the garden where Tamsyn sat on a stone bench.

  “Well, it seems simple enough,” he said without preamble, sitting beside her. “The gate from the mews is locked, but I can put you over it without difficulty. The colonel's book room has two windows, both low, easy for you to hitch yourself up without my help.”

  “Not open, I suppose.”

  “They might be. If they're not, you'll have to break one of the panes. You can do it easy enough with a stone wrapped in cloth. It shouldn't make too much racket.”

  “Unless the colonel's in the room,” she mused. “If he is, then I can simply knock on the window.”

  “You wouldn't consider the door, I suppose,” Gabriel remarked mildly. “Seems so much simpler.”

  Tamsyn smiled. “Simpler but a lot less amusing.”

  “Aye, I daresay. And I suppose it'll be less amusing in broad daylight, too.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “So let's get some supper and come back when it's full dark… about ten o'clock.”

  They ate in a dingy chop house in Piccadilly, and Tamsyn drank several glasses of porter, trying to quiet the little devils of anxious excitement dancing in her belly. She couldn't understand why she should be so nervous. She knew the man; she knew his body almost as well as she knew her own; she knew his moods and the way the light changed in his eyes; she knew what it meant when he held his body in a certain fashion, when his mouth quirked, when those mobile red-gold eyebrows twitched and his eyelids drooped lazily, half concealing the bright-blue eyes.

  And she knew his anger. But why would he be angry? She was simply here to tell him she'd changed her mind, and she was ready to go back to Spain with him… ready to accept the limited liaison that was all he thought he could offer.

  Gabriel said little, concentrating on his mutton chops and wine, but his mild gray eyes were sharply assessing. He wasn't at all sure about the wisdom of this enterprise, and if.the truth were told, he wished Colonel, Lord St. Simon to the devil. Tamsyn may have decided she'd found the love of her life, but he could wish she'd settled on someone easier to handle and more conveniently situated than this uncompromising English lord.

  If the English lord ha
dn't turned up, Tamsyn would have found some man like the baron, and they'd all be living contentedly in the mountains, doing what they were good at.

  And pigs might fly, Gabriel thought with a dour smile. “Let's get on with it, lassie.” He pushed back his chair. “You're fretting yourself into a frazzle.”

  “No, I'm not,” Tamsyn denied, but she couldn't hide her relief that the waiting was over. “You'll wait in the mews until I'm in the house?”

  “I'll wait until you let me know I can seek my bed,” he asserted.

  They walked briskly and in silence back to Audley Square. St. Simon's house was lit up, and a lantern hung over the front door. “Perhaps he has visitors,” Tamsyn said, the possibility occurring for the first time.

  “Once you're in the house, you can wait until they leave,” Gabriel said calmly. “If there's only a skeleton staff, you should be able to dodge them, and you've a decent plan of the house.”

  “Yes.” Tamsyn slipped her hand into the pocket of her britches. Lucy had said that Julian kept a very small caretaking staff in the London house because it was used so rarely. It had been very easy to engage her in a casual discussion of the house, and with very little prompting she'd sketched a floor plan to illustrate her description. The paper now crackled reassuringly against Tamsyn's fingers. If Julian was not alone, or wasn't in the house, then she could make her way upstairs and into his bedchamber.

  The mews was quiet, only the soft shufflings and whickers from the horses bedded down for the night. The night was overcast, but a lamp glowing in a round window above the stable block where the head groom lived threw a puddle of golden light on the clean swept cobbles. Tamsyn and Gabriel slipped soundlessly through the shadows, Tamsyn's bright head covered by the hood of her dark cloak pulled tight around her.

  The gate into the garden was locked as Gabriel had expected. “Up you go.” He lifted Tamsyn easily, setting her atop the gate.

  She dropped from sight immediately, then whispered from the other side, “There are lamps lit in the book room.”