by Louise Allen
‘Stop fidgeting, it isn’t like you.’ Gabriel watched him, lids half-lowered over his gypsy-dark eyes. ‘I like your fierce little widow.’
‘She isn’t mine.’ Cris dropped into the nearest chair and reached for the wine. ‘We may have a…thing. For a short while, that is all.’ That was all it could be, of course. He knew exactly the sort of wife he needed, his father had explained that to him, young as he was. Marquesses married for dynastic reasons—connections, land, bloodlines. Tamsyn stirred his blood, but she was an obscure widow of a scandalous marriage without any of the attributes that would make a permanent connection acceptable in his world. But, as a widow, then a discreet affaire was perfectly acceptable.
‘A thing.’ Gabriel rolled his eyes. ‘Are you quite certain that my friend Cris de Feaux has not been kidnapped by smugglers who put you in his place? I am missing the articulate, smooth, cynical man I know.’ Cris lobbed a walnut at him. He caught it one-handed and cracked it between his long card-player’s fingers. ‘Joking aside, if there is something wrong, tell me, I’ll help.’
‘I know. And there’s nothing wrong with me.’
Liar. My brain is scrambled eggs, all the blood in my body is heading straight for my groin and I have no idea what I’ve been thinking for the last few months.
‘But there is plenty amiss here. I’ll be interested to hear what you found out about Chelford tomorrow. Meanwhile, pour me some more of that excellent port and tell me the latest London news.’
*
‘You are here already?’ Cris followed the thread of lamplight across the grass to the dark lantern that was set on the step of the summer house.
‘I am always prompt.’ A hint of laughter, a suspicion of a nervous tremor, a suggestion of excitement. He could not see Tamsyn’s face in the shadows, but he knew, quite certainly, that they would be making love that night.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Follow me.’ She picked up the lantern and handed him another, its shutter closed so that only the heat of it and the smell of burning tallow told him it was alight. She crossed the lawn, heading away from the lane, opened the shutter of her lantern a little to show him the stones sticking out of the wall to make a stile and climbed nimbly over. ‘We can open the lanterns more now,’ she said as the ground began to rise. ‘This sheep track winds around the side of the headland, we’ll be out of sight of the house in a moment.’
She walked steadily up the steep path, moving with the confidence of someone who was both fit and familiar with where she was going. As they climbed the moon came out, full and brilliant, painting the short turf with abrupt black shadows. They gained the top and Tamsyn strode out, not waiting to see if Cris followed her, then turned abruptly, right on the edge.
‘Take care!’ He reached for her as she dropped out of sight, then relaxed as he saw she was on a lower path, cutting down below the lip of the cliff by about the height of a tall man. Once they were down it became flat and smooth, just wide enough for one person. Tamsyn ducked, moved sideways and, with an unexpected creak of hinges, vanished into the cliff face.
Cris opened the shutter of his lantern to show a squat hut, built back into the face of the cliff. From what he could see in the flickering lamplight it had been constructed from sea-weathered wood, perhaps hauled up from the beach below. The roof was turf and in the moonlight he could make out the needle-point leaves and round heads of sea thrift, sharp against the midnight sky.
He bent to get under the low lintel and found a square space, long enough for a tall man to lie down in. Across the back was a platform of crude planks. Tamsyn dragged a metal trunk out from under it and Cris crouched to help her, inhaling the scent of old lavender as she opened the lid and hauled out a thickly padded quilt.
They spread it on the planks, then added the pillows she took from the trunk along with a pile of blankets. Tamsyn patted the bed they had created. ‘Close the half-door and come and sit here.’
It was divided like a stable door and he did as she asked. All that was visible as they sat there was the sea, filling half the view with the sky above and the reflection of the moon trailing silver across the waves. Tamsyn sighed and leaned into his side, so Cris put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in snugly.
‘An old haunt of yours?’
‘It must have been a looker’s hut once.’ He made a questioning sound and she explained. ‘A watcher for the Revenue service. But it was long abandoned when Jory and I found it as children. Later, when things were…difficult, I would sleep here sometimes because it is so peaceful.’
‘Difficult? You mean when your husband died?’
She was silent for a moment as though thinking his simple question through. ‘Yes. It was my special place when I wanted to be alone and being alone helped sometimes.’
‘Tamsyn.’
‘Hmm?’
It had to be said. ‘You know I am not staying, that I will be gone in a week or so.’
‘Of course.’ She wriggled upright and the air struck cool where she had been pressed, warm and soft, against his side. ‘We are about to have the conversation about not getting attached and do I really want to do this and you respect me, but…’
There was a trace of amusement in her voice, so he let himself be frank. ‘Yes, that was exactly it. You may rely on me to be very careful, but if there are consequences, I also rely on you to let me know.’
‘Of course,’ she said abruptly. ‘I am not worried about that.’ The shimmer of amusement had gone now, she sounded almost sad. This businesslike discussion was neither erotic nor romantic, he supposed.
‘Tamsyn, if this does not feel right to you, we will go back now. And don’t think I am going to sulk, or leave immediately or be less anxious to help you and your aunts.’ He turned on the hard bed, reaching to caress her cheek. ‘This matters to me, my mermaid. I’ll not hurt you.’
‘Mermaid?’ She laughed, low and husky, the sound like an intimate caress. ‘I thought you were a merman, coming out of the sea like that. If you wish to make a woman cautious, you should not appear looking quite so desirable.’
‘I was ice-cold, half-drowned and probably covered in goosebumps.’ He began to nuzzle her neck and she tilted her head to give him better access.
‘I did not notice the goosebumps. I noticed the muscles and how blue your eyes were and your…proportions.’ Her hand slid to the fall of his breeches in graphic demonstration. Her breath was coming in little gasps now as his flesh rose to meet her hand.
Cris lifted his head to look at her in the dim lantern light. ‘My proportions? It was freezing, I doubt I had any proportions to speak of.’
‘Oh, yes, you did. I was most…ah…impressed.’
‘Hussy.’ Ridiculously flattered, he stood and closed the half-door, then fully unshuttered both lanterns. ‘If we are going to take any clothes off, I want to keep warm, regardless of how well I stand up to the cold.’
‘You first.’ She was sitting with her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped around them, her chin resting on her knees, those great dark eyes watching him. Cris stripped as fast as he could, given that he had to stoop under the low ceiling. It was not cold, but it was cool enough not to want to prolong undressing. And besides, he was beginning to desire nothing more than to be skin to skin with Tamsyn now, to discover whether her body was as tempting warm and dry as it had been wet and shivering.
He sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots and she reached out to run her hand down his spine, lingering over each bump of vertebrae. ‘I love your back.’
It was difficult to pull off a pair of Hoby’s boots when a desirable woman was beginning to twine herself around you. Cris persevered, resisting the temptation to tear off her clothes, rip open his breeches and take her with his boots on. It was an arousing prospect, but he did not know her well enough to judge whether she would find that exciting or insulting.
Barefoot, he stood up to pull off his breeches and she came up on her knees, her hands slidin
g over his torso, her mouth trailing down his ribs. Cris stilled, breathing hard, his hands arrested on the fastenings of his falls as he tried for some self-control. Much more of this and she would have him spending like a green youth. He could not remember when a woman had made him quite this aroused so fast.
He kicked off his breeches and to his relief she sat back on her heels and just looked. ‘If you touch me, I won’t answer for the consequences,’ he warned as she gave a low hum of approval.
‘Very well.’ She began to undress with a straightforwardness that matched his own, shrugging off a simple gown to reveal nothing beneath it but bare woman.
Cris almost swore, swallowed the oath and kept his eyes fixed on her fingers as she pulled the long braid of her hair over her shoulder and began to loosen it. ‘Your hair is beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’ She bent her head and shook it so the mass of dark brown shifted and fell, wavy from the plait. When she looked up it covered her breasts, shadowed the junction of her thighs as she knelt on the bed. ‘Cris…’ Her voice trailed away, then she seemed to gather her courage. ‘I have only slept with one man before. I will not have the skills of the lovers you are used to.’
‘You have the skill to bring me to my knees,’ he said, and went down on them beside her, pulling her beside him on to the mattress and dragging the blankets up over them. ‘I desire you intensely. Can you doubt that?’
‘No.’ She buried her face in the angle of his neck and shoulder, suddenly shy, it seemed. But her hands were not shy, or clumsy.
‘You are sure?’ He had never doubted his self-control before, now he knew that a few more moments of this and he was lost.
‘Sure.’ Tamsyn slid under him, like the sea creature he had imagined her as, and her damp, hot, softness met his desperate body and he drove into it and stopped, almost shuddering with the pleasure of it, his weight on his elbows, his forehead resting on hers. ‘Ah…’ she murmured, and her hands fastened on his shoulders and her legs curled around him until her heels were in the small of his back.
‘You are perfect,’ he said on a breath that was almost a gasp. ‘Perfect.’ Then he ceased to know where her body ended and his began as they moved together. It was as though they had done this a thousand times together and yet never before. There was a rightness, a harmony, balanced by a freshness and the wonder of discovery. Somehow he hung on until her eyes opened wide and then closed in ecstasy and she convulsed around him. Somehow he found the strength to withdraw and find his release, straining against the strong, soft, wonderful body in his arms.
For a while he lay dazed, conscious only of their heartbeats, their breathing, the sound of the sea crashing far below. Then he rolled to one side and Tamsyn came with the movement, curling around him, her head on his chest, her body relaxed and trusting. Her lips moved against his skin with silent words, or, perhaps a kiss, then she was still. He sensed her slipping into sleep and closed his own eyes.
But oblivion would not come. He was utterly relaxed, utterly satisfied, warm, content and completely awake, and his mind was apparently determined that he would enjoy none of it. A few months ago, before Katerina, he would simply have been grateful to have experienced such mutually satisfying lovemaking. The fact that he hardly knew Tamsyn, that she was from another world completely, would not have mattered. They were mutually attracted, he could make love with her without compromising her and it would have been a perfect idyll, one that would be ended naturally with a departure that she expected and accepted.
But now he could not help examining his motives, his desires. He was not in love with Tamsyn, but he no longer knew what that meant, not after the shock of self-realisation over Katerina. Was he just using her? But she was not an innocent and she had her own needs, too. The urge to toss and turn, pummel the pillow, had to be suppressed because of the woman draped, limp and trustful, over him.
He should return to London, find a suitable bride, court her, wed her, he told himself. And then stay faithful to her. Gabe the ultimate cynic, was prepared to believe that their friends, Alex and Grant, had fallen in love, but to hear him talk about this was as rare an event as finding a unicorn in the back garden. According to him the remaining two disgraceful lords had no excuse for tying themselves to some woman’s apron strings. If he explained his thinking to his friend, Gabriel would laugh at him, tell him that this attack of conscience, of sobriety, was the onset of old age.
Cris opened his eyes and stared up at the weathered old wood of the roof while Tamsyn’s curls tickled the underside of his chin. If twenty-nine was old, then he might as well open that door, go back down the cliff and walk back into the sea to finish the swim that had brought him here.
Chapter Twelve
‘What is wrong?’ Tamsyn swam up out of the sleepy, satisfied haze and found Cris beside her, his arm heavy across her waist. She could feel the tension in him, despite the sprawl of his long body. ‘I can hear you thinking.’
He laughed, an almost convincing sound, but she had come to know him very quickly over the past week and he was not amused.
‘Are you regretting what we have done?’ she demanded, wriggling round so she could sit up and look at him properly.
‘No.’ This time the smile was quite genuine, a small, sensual twist of his lips. ‘I was brooding, that’s all. Gabriel would say I am getting old.’
‘Truly?’ Feeling wicked, she slid one hand under the blanket and explored. ‘I don’t think so.’
Cris caught her hand, but did not move it from where it lay, her fingers lightly curled around the hardening length of him. ‘Mentally old.’
‘A sudden attack of responsibility? That is very ageing.’ She tried to make a joke of it, but he only frowned.
‘No. I’ve always been responsible, I think.’ He shrugged. ‘I was brought up to be, to accept who I was, what I needed to do to fulfil that role.’ There was an edge of bitterness there that puzzled her. What kind of burdens had his upbringing laid on him? ‘Whatever hell I might have been raising, I always did what needed to be done, looked after the people who relied on me.’
‘As you are doing here,’ Tamsyn pointed out.
‘I don’t like men who try to get what they want by intimidating those who can’t fight back.’ He winced as she closed her fingers rather too tightly. ‘I know you can stand up for yourself, but you shouldn’t have to. I told you I wouldn’t stay long. I must go home, settle down, stop doing things like this.’
She found her fingers had curled into claws. Cris closed his eyes as she let them rake gently over his hot flesh instead of digging them in. ‘What exactly is this?’
‘Making love without commitment.’ His hand tightened over hers, moved.
‘There is someone you should be settling down with? Someone to whom you should be committed?’ She kept her voice light, surprised by the sharp lance of envy.
‘No, there is no one.’ His face was slightly averted, she wished she could read it. ‘There should be. Duty. Responsibility again, I suppose.’ His hips rose as she stroked down and up. ‘Ah. That is so good.’
‘If there is no one, then you are not being unfaithful.’ She thought his face tightened, but that might simply have been the effect of what she was doing to him. ‘I believe you are simply experiencing the melancholy and introspection that sometimes comes after lovemaking.’
‘La tristesse, the French call it. Well, I’m not suffering from melancholy now.’ He kicked away the blanket, reached for her and held her so he could torment her right nipple with teeth and lips. Then he suddenly let go and she collapsed on to the bed with him in a tangle of limbs and kisses, and forgot jealousy, and worry, in bliss.
*
‘Tamsyn, dear, have you been sleeping properly?’ Aunt Izzy peered anxiously at her over the fruit bowl in the middle of the breakfast table. ‘You look a trifle heavy-eyed.’
‘I am sure Tamsyn is perfectly relaxed, dearest,’ Rosie said before Tamsyn had a chance to collect herself from her improper rec
ollections. Her aunt’s smile was bland. She knows.
As for the expression on Mr Stone’s face, the man was looking so innocent that it was bound to be false. Presumably he was quite well aware what had passed last night between his friend and herself.
‘Too much time spent with the account books, that is all I am suffering from,’ she said. ‘I am looking forward to our picnic lunch. That will wake me up.’
They went their separate ways after breakfast. The two men strolled down to the waterside, deep in conversation, presumably to do with whatever business had brought Gabriel Stone there in the first place. Aunt Rosie went for her hot soak to get herself, as she said, ‘In prime condition for my jaunt.’ Aunt Izzy shut herself in the kitchen with Cook to create the perfect picnic luncheon and that left Tamsyn staring at the farm’s feed bills and trying to focus.
She had to get the accounts straight in case they were sent any more invoices following the mischief with the bank and the damage to their reputation for creditworthiness. It was important and urgent and every time she smoothed her hand over a page in the book all she could feel was Cris’s skin under her palm. When she nibbled the end of her pen, all she could think of was his mouth on hers, and once she let her mind wander along those paths, then the heaviness settled low in her belly and the little pulse started its wicked beat between her thighs, and her breasts ached.
I want him again. Now.
It frightened her, a little, the intensity of the need. She had been celibate for all the long months since Jory had died, that must be it. She was a young woman, used to lovemaking. Of course she missed it, even though she had submerged the need as deep as her grief for Jory. That was why last night had been so magical. She took the word, turned it in her mind, shivered. There was something charmed about the way Cris had come to her out of the sea, almost out of the jaws of death, something other-worldly about his blond beauty, those haunting blue eyes. If she was not an adult, modern woman she might start imagining things, supposing he had come from some mysterious world of Celtic legend to help her. She had read Scottish tales of Selkies, seal people who came out of the sea to seduce human beings. They would always return to the water, leaving their earthbound lovers desolate.
