Читать книгу Regency Surrender: Sinful Conquests - Louise Allen - Страница 18

Chapter Eight

His kiss was not tentative, nor respectful. Certainly it took no account of where they were. Cris turned from the stair, took her in his arms and swept her back against the front door, the length of his body pressed against hers, the thrust of his arousal blatant, thrilling. Tamsyn twisted and got her hands free so she could lock them around his head, the shape of his skull imprinted on her palms, the heavy silk of his hair caressing across her fingers.

Her mouth was open to him, his tongue forceful, demanding that she open more, let him taste her, explore her. She pulled back so she could nip at his lower lip, making him growl, low and thrilling, the sound reverberating from his chest to her breast, before she drove her own tongue into his mouth, refusing to allow him mastery. If this was to be nothing else, there would be equal desire, equal responsibility.

They broke apart, panting. Tamsyn wondered if she looked as stunned and wild as he did, with his hair tousled, his eyes dark. She reached behind her, turned the doorknob and staggered back on to the porch, pulling him with her. ‘Summer house.’

Without waiting to see if he was following her she ran across the lawn, round the corner of the dense shrubbery that sheltered one side of the garden, and into the little summer house that looked out over the beach. Cris followed her, the door banging closed behind him. Tamsyn collapsed on the bench, her knees failing her.

Cris stood with his back against the door as though glad of its support. ‘What in Hades was that?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been on the edge of an avalanche in the Alps and it was rather less violent. It was certainly less frightening.’ She realised that he was smiling. It transformed the austerity of his face, changed him from beautiful to real.

‘I thought a kiss would be...’ Nice? Do not be ridiculous. ‘I wanted to kiss you again.’

‘You will get no argument from me on that score.’ He still had not moved from the door.

‘I noticed.’ She could feel her lips twitching into an answering smile. It had not occurred to her that there might be anything amusing in giving in to this attack of desire. ‘That is all it can be, you realise that? Just a kiss. This is quite inappropriate.’

Cris’s smile deepened at the prudish word. ‘With so many other people around, perhaps. But lovers have always found ways and means to be together.’

‘We are not lovers.’ Tamsyn found she had lost the desire to smile.

‘Not yet.’ Cris pushed away from the door and went to sit at the other end of the bench, out of touching distance unless they both stretched out a hand. ‘There was something, there had to be, right from the start, in that moment of madness on the beach. I am not married, Tamsyn, and you are not an innocent. What is to stop us?’

Reputation, risk, prudence? ‘And you are not committed to anyone?’ she asked, wondering suddenly why such an attractive, eligible man should be unattached.

He did not answer her immediately and when she looked at his profile she found he had closed his eyes as though to veil his thoughts.

‘Cris?’ she prompted.

His eyes opened and when he turned his head to look at her the smile was on his lips alone. ‘No, I am not committed to anyone.’ He got up, a sudden release of energy like an uncoiling spring. She jumped. ‘You are correct. This is quite inappropriate. You might have been married, but that does not give me the right to treat you like one of the sophisticated London society widows. They know the game and how to play it and they move in circles where these things are understood.’ Cris opened the door and stepped out on to the daisy-spangled lawn. ‘Forgive me.’

By the time she had realised what he was doing and had reached the door, he was striding away towards the house. The front door closed firmly behind him. A succession of Jory’s riper curses ran through her mind.

Damn him! That was not about me, or at least, not entirely about me. There is someone and I made him think of her. Now you have got exactly what you told yourself you wanted, Tamsyn Perowne. You got your kiss and that was all. You are safe, respectable. And frustrated.

The tables had turned so fast she had been taken completely unaware. One moment she had been hesitant and he eager, the next she had pushed aside her qualms and he was backing away. She tried to make some sense of those past few hectic minutes. Cris had been a gentleman—once he had stopped kissing her like a ravening Viking pillager. She had said it would be inappropriate and he had agreed. And, just as she was telling herself that she should seize this opportunity and argue against herself, her question about other women had stopped him in his tracks. He had said there was no one else now, but she must have made him face a memory that hurt.

Tamsyn went down the slope of the lawn and took the steps to the foreshore. The sea had always helped her think, but now, as she watched the Atlantic waves come rolling in to end a thousand miles’ journey in a frill of harmless lace on the sand, she knew there was nothing to think about. She wanted Cris Defoe, beyond prudence and reason and despite knowing quite well that he would leave this place very soon, whatever she felt or wanted. That meant that she had a decision to make. Was she capable of seducing a man—and would it be right to do so?

* * *

‘Muscles paining you, sir? Would you like a massage?’ Collins got up from the window seat looking out to the track up towards Stibworthy and put down what looked like a book of German grammar.

‘No. Thank you.’ Cris bit back the oath. His fault, his temper, and no need to take it out on Collins. He would think about what had just happened later when he had his breathing under control and some blood had returned to his brain from where it was currently making itself felt. ‘I need paper and ink. Wax. And a seal.’

‘Not your own, of course, sir.’ Collins removed a key from his watch chain and opened the large writing box that sat on the dresser. ‘The plain seal?’ He laid a seal on the table in front of the window and set out paper and an ink stand with steel-nibbed pens, then struck a flint to light a candle. ‘Which colour wax, sir?’

‘Blue.’ Cris picked up the seal and rolled it between his fingers. His own seal ring, securely locked away, showed the de Feaux crest, a phoenix rising from flames, a sword in one clawed foot. From Ash I Rise, In Fire I Conquer. The crest was an ancient pun on the similarity in pronunciation between feu—fire—and Feaux. This version showed only the flames, but it was known to his friends.

‘Cipher, sir?’

He thought about it, then shook his head. ‘No. Can you see anyone in this household opening a guest’s correspondence?’

Gabriel Stone was in London, up to no good as usual, and perfectly placed to send Cris information about Franklin Holt, Viscount Chelford. Gabe might be Earl of Edenbridge, but he was also a gambler, a highly successful, ice-cold, card player, and he would know just what Chelford was about, whether he was in debt and any other scandal there was to be had.

Send whatever intelligence you can find—and especially anything about Chelford’s relationship with his aunt, Miss Holt, of this address, and his inheritance of her estate after her death.

He put down the pen and stared out of the window as he ran through the things he wanted Gabe to find out.

He wished he could ask him to send down a couple of burly Bow Street Runners, or better still, a couple of doormen from one of the tougher gambling hells, but they would stick out like daffodils in a coal cellar down here. Then his eyes focused on the stony track and he smiled. Of course, that would kill two birds with one stone. He dipped the pen again.

You recall that little incident in Bath and our two Irish friends? If you can locate them and send them here with their equipment, I have use of both their old trade and their willingness to use their fists.

All correspondence should be directed to Mr C. Defoe.

He folded and sealed the letter, addressed it to The Earl of Edenbridge, then folded it within a second sheet and addressed that to his solicitor in the City, sealing it for the second time. However scrupulous his hostesses might be about other people’s correspondence, there was no need to raise questions over letters to the aristocracy.

‘Thank you, Collins. If you take that down I am told someone will take it to the receiving office in the village. That will be all for the moment.’

Alone, he got up and prowled around the room as he finally allowed himself to think about Tamsyn and that kiss. It was like unravelling tangled string, sorting out what he felt, what he ought to feel, what she wanted—what was right. She was not an innocent, but neither was she experienced with men other than her husband, he could tell that. Whatever she had been doing since Jory Perowne’s death, Tamsyn had not been sharing the beds of any local gentlemen. This was a tiny, unsophisticated community where everyone knew everyone else’s business and where a reputation lost would be common currency within hours. If this...attraction...flirtation...madness...whatever it was, went any further, then he would have to be very careful indeed.

And what was he thinking of anyway? Part of his anatomy was sending him very clear signals indeed, but it had been months since he had lain with a woman, not since he had set eyes on Katerina. He could simply be suffering from an attack of lust, which was something very different from what he had felt for Katerina. To have even thought of another woman while he was seeing her every day had been impossible. But she was far away and unobtainable and always would be, and he, as he kept reminding himself, was not cut out for celibacy.

Cris sat on the window seat and stared at a clump of gorse. It was sentimental tosh to feel that kissing another woman was disloyal to Katerina. She had never been his, he had never been hers, they had never spoken the words he read in her gaze, that he felt in his heart.

But the desire he felt for Tamsyn was shaking his certainty about his feelings for Katerina. Was it love? He felt uncomfortable with the doubt. It had certainly been more than pure lust. But was desiring Tamsyn just a selfish need to lose himself in a passionate encounter that he would walk away from in a few days?

Perhaps he should tell her who he was. Cris examined the idea and realised he was enjoying the freedom too much. For the first time as an adult he had none of the burdens of his title on his shoulders, none of the demands or the expectations. He was just Cris, a man who was attracted to a woman and who saw the need to protect her from the danger that threatened them. It would do them no good to know who he was, only make them feel awkward.

The whole thing was academic, anyway. He had kissed Tamsyn as though he was about to rip off her clothing, there and then in the hallway. He had almost had her standing up against the door, like some drab in a back alley, and he had topped off a thoroughly unpolished performance by informing her that she was not from the sophisticated world he inhabited. If Tamsyn would give him the time of day next time they met, then it was more than he deserved.

Something moved on the road. Cris focused and saw it was Jason, a satchel slung on his shoulder, riding up the track. The mail was on its way. Now he just had to remind himself who he was, what he was, and somehow recapture the man he had been before that wild impulse had sent him off the road at Newark, driving across country into oblivion.

* * *

There was absolutely nothing like a pile of account books for setting a woman’s feet firmly on the ground. Or, in the case of the farm’s accounts, in the mire. Nothing was adding up this afternoon, not the price of oats, not the farrier’s bill, not even the egg money. Tamsyn gritted her teeth, turned over a sheet of paper covered in crossings-out and started again. All that was wrong with her, as she was very well aware, was that her brain was off with the fairies, her body was pulsing with desire and more than half her attention was focused on listening for footsteps on the stairs.

‘Letters, Mizz Tamsyn.’

She jumped, sending her pen in one direction, the account book in another and a large ink blot on to her page of calculations. ‘Jason, you startled me.’

‘Sorry, Mizz Tamsyn.’ He came into the room and emptied the contents of the satchel on to the table. ‘You were daydreaming, it looked like.’

‘Er...yes.’

Dreams of night, not of day. Of beds and rumpled sheets and mindless pleasure. And impossible dreams. There had been a moment as she daydreamed that she had heard wedding bells. And that would never be. Her stomach cramped with remembered pain and she bit her lip before she could turn back to the waiting groom.

‘Thank you, Jason.’ She dabbed at the spreading blot, made it worse, screwed up the whole sheet in sudden exasperation and began to sift through the pile of post. Several newspapers, two days out of date, a notification from the circulating library that three novels she had asked for were now available. Several bills, including another from the farrier, an invitation to dine at the vicarage in a week’s time when the moon was full and the roads consequently less hazardous, and a letter with their solicitor’s seal.

Something about leases, or perhaps an answer to her query about buying that small warehouse in Barnstaple she’d had her eye on. The heavy paper, expensive, like Mr Pentire’s excellent services, crackled as she broke the seal and started to read.

‘What?’ The shriek hurt her throat, but that did not stop the next words being wrenched out. ‘The swine. The utter, unmitigated swine.’

There was a thunder of boot heels down the stairs, Aunt Izzy’s cry of, ‘Tamsyn? What is wrong?’, then the door flew open to reveal Cris with, of all things, a pistol in his hand.

‘What is it?’ He cast one searching look around the room, then strode in, jerked her out of the chair and into the curve of his arm. ‘Who was it? Where did they go?’

Aunt Izzy hurtled into the room, gave a cry at the sight of her niece in the clutches of a man holding a gun, and collapsed into the nearest chair. ‘What happened? Why do you have a gun?’

‘What gun?’ The question came from the doorway where Aunt Rosie, grim-faced and clutching the poker in one arthritic hand, clung to the doorpost.

‘There is nobody, Aunt Izzy, please be calm. Cris, put that thing down and let me go. Aunt Rosie, let me help you.’

He beat her to the doorway, taking her aunt gently by the arm and thrusting the gun into the waistband of his breeches. ‘It isn’t loaded, which is more than I can say for this poker. Do let me take it, Miss Pritchard. Mrs Perowne, what provoked that scream?’

‘Pure temper.’ She picked up the letter and flapped it at them. ‘This is from Mr Pentire, our man of business. Our bankers wrote to him because they had received information that we were about to withdraw all our funds to meet sudden and unexpected debts. In effect, that our credit was no longer good. And half today’s post is bills—word must be spreading. Pentire has reassured the bank, but now we may expect a flood of demands for payment of all our accounts and it may take months for confidence in our credit to be restored.’

All energy gone, Tamsyn sank down in the chair and dropped the letter.

‘Can you afford to meet all your creditors in full?’ Cris asked.

‘Yes, I never let accounts run on and we always settle up completely. Luckily we are almost at quarter-day when the rents will come in. But it is the principle of the thing and it will put doubts into the minds of people who do not know us well. This must be the work of Franklin, I cannot believe anyone else has a grudge against us and would do a thing like this.’

‘But Franklin can have no grudge,’ Aunt Izzy protested. ‘I know you do not like him, dear, and I have to admit he is a sore disappointment as a nephew, but—’

‘But nothing,’ said Aunt Rosie. ‘Tamsyn’s right. The man wants us out of here. I just wish I could work out why.’

‘We are not moving and that is that,’ Aunt Izzy said, with remarkable firmness.

‘Forgive me, but does your right of possession here rely upon your residence?’ Cris hitched one hip on the table edge and looked round at the three of them. ‘If you move away, what becomes of Barbary Combe House and the estate?’

‘I retain ownership and the revenues,’ Izzy said promptly.

‘And your nephew knows this?’

‘Certainly.’

‘So he would not gain control of it until, forgive me again for being so blunt, your death?’

Izzy gasped, Rosie went pale. Tamsyn got a firm hold on her panicking imagination. ‘But Franklin offered you a house on his estate, Aunt Izzy. I agree he wants us out of here, but I do not think he is too worried about the estate as such. The farms brings in enough for our needs, but hardly the sort of income that will rescue him from some financial crisis, and land prices are very poor, so selling it would hardly help either.’

She looked at Cris and found his gaze fixed on her face. Of course, there was Jory’s mythical treasure. If Franklin got them out of the house he could helpfully supervise getting it prepared for tenants—all to help his dear aunt Isobel—and search to his heart’s content. ‘There is no need for alarm about your personal safety, Aunt Izzy.’ She directed a narrow-eyed look at Cris, daring him to say any more. ‘I have organised some watchers for the livestock and we are quite secure down here. Any stranger would be spotted a mile away, we are so remote.’

‘Of course. I am being over-cautious, and over-imaginative, too.’ Cris stood up. ‘I am sorry, Miss Holt, ladies, for alarming you.’

‘No need for that.’ Aunt Rosie was brisk. ‘You talk a lot of sense, we should take more care. Help me back to the drawing room, Isobel. No, you stay here.’ She waved a twisted hand at Cris as he came forward to help her. ‘Soothe Tamsyn’s ruffled feathers before she calls Franklin out for his idiocy.’ She gave a wicked little cackle of laughter. ‘I would lay several guineas on her being the better shot.’

Cris closed the door behind her and turned back. ‘My apologies.’

‘For what?’

‘For alarming your aunts...and for what happened in the summer house.’

‘They are made of sterner stuff than it might seem,’ she said. ‘And nothing happened in the summer house.’

‘That, perhaps, is what I should be apologising for.’