Читать книгу Regency Surrender: Sinful Conquests - Louise Allen - Страница 12

Chapter Two

So, his mermaid in a dowdy cap was a widow, was she? Cris winced as the cracked corner of his mouth kicked up in an involuntary smile at the sharp defiance in her voice, then the amusement faded as the other man, the magistrate, began to bluster at her.

‘He wasn’t the only tricky one in this household. I wouldn’t put it past the pair of you to have rigged up some conjuror’s illusion—and don’t open those big brown eyes at me, all innocent-like. I know the smuggling’s still going on, so who is running it if your husband’s dead. Eh? Tell me that.’

‘Smuggling’s been a way of life on this coast since man could paddle a raft, you foolish man.’ Cris liked the combination of logic and acid in the clear voice. ‘Long before Jory Perowne was born, and for long after, I’ll be bound.’ Mrs Perowne spoke as though to a somewhat stupid scholar.

‘Don’t you call me a fool, you—’

‘Penwith, you must not speak to Mrs Perowne in that intemperate manner.’ That was the doctor, he assumed.

The magistrate swore and Cris threw back the covers, swung his legs off the couch and realised he was clad only in a nightshirt that came to mid-thigh. With a grimace he draped the top sheet around himself, flung one end over his shoulder like a toga and stalked around the screen, which, mercifully, was sturdy enough not to fall over when he grabbed its frame for support after two strides.

His mermaid—Tamsyn—swung round. ‘Mr Defoe, kindly get back to your bed.’ She sounded completely exasperated, presumably with the entire male sex, him included. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

‘In a moment, ma’am.’ The two men stared at him. One, young, lanky, with a leather bag in his hand, lifted dark eyebrows at the sight of him. That must be the doctor. The other had the face of an irritable middle-aged schoolmaster complete with jowls and topped with an old-fashioned brown wig. ‘You, sir, used foul language in the presence of this lady. You will apologise and leave. I imagine even you do not require the doctor to explain the difference between me and a man two years dead?’ His voice might be hoarse and cracked, his eyes might be swollen, but he could still look down his nose with the hauteur of a marquess confronted with a muck heap when he wanted to.

Predictably the magistrate went red and made gobbling sounds. ‘You cannot speak to me like that, sir. I’ll see you—’

‘At dawn in some convenient field, your worship?’ He raised his left eyebrow in a manner that he knew was infuriatingly superior. His friends told him so often enough. The anger with his own stupidity still burned in his veins and dealing with this bully was as good a way to vent it as any.

‘Mr Penwith, my husband was five feet and ten inches tall, he had black hair and brown eyes and his right earlobe was missing. Now, as you can quite clearly see, Mr Defoe is taller, of completely different colouring and is in possession of both his ears in their entirety. Now, perhaps you would like to leave before you make even more of an ass of yourself?’ Tamsyn Perowne, pink in the face with the steam from the bath, her brown curls coming down beneath that ludicrous cap, was an unlikely Boudicca, but she was magnificent, none the less.

Cris locked his knees and hung on grimly until the magistrate banged out of the room, then let the doctor take his arm and help him back to the couch. Somehow his muscles had been replaced by wet flannel, his joints were being prodded with red-hot needles and he wanted nothing more than a bottle of brandy and a month’s sleep.

‘You stay that side of the screen, Mrs Perowne,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll just check your shipwrecked sailor for broken bones.’ He began to manipulate Cris’s legs, blandly unconcerned by the muttered curses he provoked.

‘Nothing is broken. I swam out too far, got caught by the current and almost drowned. That is all that is wrong with me. Idiocy, not shipwreck.’

‘Where did you go in?’ Tregarth pushed up one of Cris’s eyelids, then the other.

‘Hartland Quay.’

‘You swam from there and then got yourself out of the current and into this bay? By Neptune, sir, you’re a strong swimmer, I’ll say that for you.’ He produced a conical wooden instrument from his bag, pressed the wide end to Cris’s chest and applied his ear to the other. ‘Your lungs are clear. You’ll feel like a bag of unravelled knitting for a day or so, I’ve no doubt, and those muscles will give you hell from overwork, but there’s no harm done.’ He pulled up the bedding. ‘You may come round now, Mrs Perowne. Keep him in bed tomorrow, if you can. Feed him up, keep him warm, let him sleep and send for me if he throws a fever. Good day to you, Mr Defoe.’

‘I’m not—’ Not Mr Defoe. I’m Anthony Maxim Charles St Crispin de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore. With no calling card, no money—and no breeches, come to that, which left him precious little aristocratic dignity. Tamsyn, Mrs Perowne, had misheard his mumbled words. The family always used the French pronunciation of their name, but apparently that did not survive gargling with half the Atlantic.

The doctor had gone and Tamsyn was standing at the foot of the bed, hands crossed neatly at her waist, cap perched on her curls, looking for all the world as though butter would not melt in her mouth and not at all like a woman who would call a magistrate an ass or kiss a naked stranger in the surf. He could tell her that kiss might have saved his life, but he suspected that would not be welcome.

‘The broth is coming, Mr Defoe.’

Yes, he’d stay a commoner for a while, it was simpler and he had no intention of broadcasting his recklessness to the world. He nodded his thanks.

‘Where should we send to inform someone of your safety? I imagine your acquaintance will be very anxious.’ She took a tray from the cook and laid it across his thighs. ‘Try to swallow the broth slowly, it will soothe your throat as well as strengthen you.’

In his experience women tended to fuss at sickbeds and he had been braced against attempts to spoon-feed him. Mrs Perowne appeared to trust him to manage, despite the evidence of his shaking hand. His arm muscles felt as though he had been racked. ‘Traveller,’ he managed between mouthfuls. ‘My valet is at Hartland Quay with my carriage.’

‘And he can bring you some clothes.’ She caught his eye and smiled, a sudden, wicked little quirk of the lips that sent messages straight to his groin. One muscle still in full working order. ‘Magnificent as you look in a toga, sir, it is not a costume best suited to the Devon winds.’

Had he really kissed her in the sea, or was that a hallucination? No, it was real. He could conjure up the heat of her body pressed to his, the feminine softness and curves as their naked flesh met. He could remember, too, the heat of her mouth, open under his, the sweet glide of her tongue. Hell, that made him feel doubly guilty, firstly for forcing himself on a complete stranger and secondly for even thinking about anyone but Katerina. Who can never be mine. He focused on the guilt, a novel enough emotion, to prevent him thinking about that body, now covered in layers of sensible cotton.

‘You will stay in bed and rest, as the doctor said?’

Cris nodded. He had no desire to make a fool of himself, fetching his length on the floor in front of her when his legs gave out on him. Tomorrow he would be better. Tomorrow he might even be able to think rationally.

‘Good.’ She lifted the tray and he saw the strength in the slim arms, the curve of sleek feminine muscle where her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. She swam well enough to take to the sea by herself and he’d wager that she rode, too. ‘We know you are stubborn from the way you tried to get up the lane by yourself instead of waiting where I left you. I’ve just spoken to them and the lads said you were crawling.’

‘I was getting there. If I hadn’t been weakened by that...encounter in the sea, I could have walked.’ Even as he said it, he could have bitten his tongue. So much for apologising, something that Lord Avenmore rarely had to do. Apparently Mr Defoe was more apt to blunder than the marquess was. He certainly had an unexpectedly bawdy sense of humour.

‘An encounter, you call it?’ There was a definite spark in the brown eyes and the colour was up over her cheekbones. Indignation seemed to make those brown curls fight free of the cap, too. His one functioning muscle stirred again, complaining that it was in need of exercise. ‘That, you poor man, was the resuscitation of the half-drowned. We do it a lot in these parts. I’ll fetch you pen and paper.’

And that apparently dealt with the apology. Mrs Perowne was not in the common run of gentry ladies, it seemed. Nor did her late husband seem to have been the kind of man he would have expected to be the owner of this elegant old house, not if the local magistrate was after him with a noose and his widow referred to him as a tricky bastard. That clod of a squire had spoken with unfeeling bluntness about her husband’s death and yet she had stood up to him, covering her emotions with defiance and pride.

The puzzling Mrs Perowne returned with a writing slope under one arm and a small bowl in the other. ‘I’ll just bathe your eyes, they look exceedingly sore.’

Cris thought he probably looked an exceeding mess, all over. His hair had dried anyhow, his skin felt as though he’d been sandpapered and doubtless his eyes were both red and squinty. And he needed a shave. What his friends would say if they saw him now, he shuddered to think. Collins, when he arrived, would express himself even more strongly. He regarded the Marquess of Avenmore as a walking testimonial to his own skills as a valet and did not take kindly to seeing his master looking less than perfect.

‘If you would give me the bowl I will bathe them myself.’ He had his pride and being tended to while he looked like this did nothing for his filthy mood.

‘Very well.’ She set the writing slope on the chair beside the couch, handed him the bowl and dragged the screen around the bed. ‘My aunt, who suffers from severe arthritic pain, will be taking one of her regular hot soaks shortly. We will try not to disturb you.’

‘Mrs Perowne?’

She looked around the edge of the screen. ‘Mr Defoe?’

‘I am in your aunt’s bathing chamber, occupying her couch. I must remove myself to another room.’

‘If you do, you will agitate her. She is worried enough about you as it is.’ She smiled suddenly, a wide, unguarded smile, so unlike the carefully controlled expressions of the diplomatic ladies he had spent so much time with recently. ‘Rest here for the moment, control your misplaced chivalrous impulses and we will find you another chamber at some point.’

Misguided chivalrous impulses. Little cat. She was obviously unused to men who actually acted like gentlemen. Cris twisted the water out of the cloth in the basin and sponged his eyes until the worst of the stinging subsided, then put the bowl aside and reached for the writing slope. Beyond the screen people were moving about, water was pouring into the tub, steam rose. This might be the edge of the country and manners might be earthy, but they certainly possessed plumbing that surpassed that in any of his houses.

He focused on the letter to shut out the sounds of either Miss Prichard or Miss Holt being helped into the bath. Collins was rather more than a valet, more of a confidential assistant, and he could be relied upon to use his discretion.

...pay the reckoning and bring everything to...

‘Mrs Perowne, if I might trouble you for a moment?’

‘Sir?’ She was decidedly flushed from the steam now. Her pink cheeks and the damp tendrils of hair on her brow suited her.

He recalled her leaning over him to turn on the tap as he lay in the bath and forced his croak of a voice into indifferent politeness. ‘Could you tell me how I should direct my man to find this house?’

‘Barbary Combe House, Stibworthy. If he asks in the village, anyone will direct him.’

‘Thank you.’

Barbary Combe House, Stibworthy. Do not enquire in the village for Mr Defoe as I am not known there, having come by sea. Ensure you bring an appropriate vehicle.

C. Defoe

Collins would not fail to pick up on that. The interior of Cris’s travelling coach with its ingenious additions and luxurious upholstery might go unnoticed, but not if the crests on the door panels were left uncovered. It had caused enough of a stir at Hartland Quay to have a marquess descend on a waterside inn, but with any luck the gossip would be fairly localised.

He folded the letter, wrote the address and found a wafer in the box to seal it with, then forced himself to relax. The doctor’s advice had been sound, but despite it, when Collins arrived tomorrow he would be out of here and away from the curiously distracting Mrs Perowne. Back to London, to the normality he had fled from.

Eyes closed, he willed himself to sleep. The room was quiet now, with only the sounds of someone moving about as they tidied up. He was exhausted and yet his eyes would not stay closed. Cris stared at the ceiling. He could always sleep when he needed to, it was simply a matter of self-discipline.

He seemed to be somewhat short of any kind of control just at the moment. He hadn’t had enough focus to notice when he was in danger of drowning himself and he couldn’t even manage to fall flat on his face on a beach without kissing the local widow before he did so. And he was the man the government relied on to settle diplomatic contretemps discreetly, and, if necessary, unconventionally. Just now he wouldn’t trust himself to defuse an argument between two drovers in the local public house, let alone one between a brace of ambassadors over a vital treaty clause.

It had all begun when he had first set eyes on Katerina, Countess von Stadenburg, the wife of a Prussian diplomat at the Danish court. Tiny, blonde, blue-eyed, exquisite and intelligent. His perfect match. And she wanted him, too, he could see it in her eyes, in the almost imperceptible, perfectly controlled gestures she made when he was close, the brush of fingertips on his cuff, the touch of a shoe against his under the dinner table, the flutter of a fan. That one kiss.

But she was married and he was the representative of the British Crown. To have indulged in an affaire, even if Katerina had been willing, was not only to dishonour her, but to risk a diplomatic incident. And he did not want an affaire, he had wanted to marry her. Which was impossible. Honour, duty, respect gave him only one logical course of action. He concluded his business as fast as possible and then he left, taking his leave of her under the jealous eye of her husband as casually as though she was just another, barely noticed, diplomatic wife, a pretty adjunct to her husband’s social life.

Her control had been complete, her polite, formulaic responses perfect in their indifference. Only her eyes, dark with hurt and resignation, had told him the truth. He wished, for the thousandth time, he had not looked, had not seen, and that he could carry away with him only the memory of her cool, accented, voice. ‘You are leaving the court, Lord Avenmore? Do have a safe journey, my lord. Heinrich, come, we will be late for the start of the concert.’

Finally he felt his lids drift closed, sensed the soft sounds of the house blur and fade. Strangely the eyes that he imagined watching him, just as it all slipped away, were brown, not blue.

* * *

‘Michael, take this and give it to Jason, please. Tell him to ride to Hartland Quay at once and find Mr Defoe’s man.’

‘Is he sleeping, dear?’ Aunt Izzy looked up from the vase of flowers she was arranging.

‘Yes. So soundly I thought for an awful moment that he had stopped breathing.’ Tamsyn closed the drawing-room door behind her and went to straighten the bookstand that kept Aunt Rosie’s novel propped at just the right angle for her. ‘He must be exhausted. I am certain it was only sheer cussedness that kept him going. It would be exhausting enough to swim that distance when the sea is warm, but it is still so cold, and with that current it is a miracle he survived.’ She picked up the cut flower stems for Aunt Izzy, then twitched a leaf spray.

‘He must be very fit, which is not surprising with that physique. You are fidgeting, Tamsyn.’ Aunt Rosie looked up from her book. ‘Did wretched Squire Penwith upset you, talking about dear Jory like that?’

‘The man is a fool. Dear Jory was a tricky—er...devil, but even he could not fly.’ She flung herself down on the window seat with more energy than elegance. ‘Yes, the squire upset me, with his blustering and his utter lack of imagination. And, yes, I still hate to think about that afternoon.’ She stared out over the sloping lawn at the sea, placid and blue in the sunlight, hiding its wicked currents and sharp fangs under a mask of serenity. Jory had lived with its dangers and its beauty and he had chosen it to end his life, which meant she could never look at it the same way again.

She lifted her feet up and hugged her knees. ‘And it worries me that Mr Penwith is of no use to us whatsoever with the troubles we’ve been having. I cannot decide whether he thinks we should suffer as payment for my husband’s sins, regardless of what crimes are committed against us, or whether he simply hates me.’

‘Or whether he is a lazy fool,’ Aunt Rosie said tartly. ‘A hayrick on fire—must be small boys up to mischief. Our stock escaping through the hedge—must be the fault of the hedger. Every single lobster pot being empty for a week—must be the incompetence of our fishermen. Really, does he think we are idiots?’

‘He thinks we are women, Rosie dear,’ Aunt Izzy said, hacking at a blameless fern frond with her shears. ‘And not only that, women who choose to live without male protection, which proves we are either reckless or soft in the head.’

‘Perhaps he is being bribed to look the other way,’ Tamsyn said. She had not mentioned it before because she did not want to upset Aunt Izzy. Even now she did not mention a name.

‘Bribed? By my nephew Franklin, I presume.’ Izzy might be vague, but there was nothing amiss with her wits.

‘He does want us out of here.’

‘Out of here and into that poky dower house on his estate where we will be safe and where he can look after us as though we were a trio of children or lunatics. The boy’s a vulture, Isobel,’ Rosie snapped, her fierceness alarming in one so frail. ‘He wants to get his hands on this house, this estate. He wants Barbary.’

‘Well, he can’t have it. Papa left it to me for my lifetime and I’ve a good thirty years left in me, so he will have to learn patience.’ Izzy picked up the vase and placed it on the sideboard. ‘His foolish little games won’t scare me out.’

So long as they stay foolish little games, Tamsyn thought, even as she smiled approval of her aunt’s defiance. She rested her chin on her knees and let her gaze rest, unfocused, on the sea. But why would Lord Chelford trouble himself over this one small estate, other than through pique at not being left the entirety of his great-uncle’s holdings when he inherited the title? Franklin was spoilt and greedy and he would soon get tired of this game and go back to his life of leisure and pleasure in London.

It was strange, though, that he should have made that offer to rehouse his aunt and her companion now. After all, Aunt Izzy had inherited the life interest in the Barbary Combe estate, the house and the contents when her father, the previous Lord Chelford, died five years ago and she had lived there for ten years before that.

It must be a sudden whim. Or perhaps she was misjudging Franklin, perhaps his intentions were good and the series of mishaps just after Izzy had refused his offer were nothing but coincidence and bad luck. Or perhaps the moon’s made of green cheese.