by Violet
“Look, Tamsyn,” he tried. “I realize it’s hard for you to understand. Lucy must seem like some precious flower to you. A rare orchid in a hothouse, she’s such a tender—”
“Oh, estúpido!” Tamsyn exclaimed, forgetting all her resolutions to be conciliatory and feminine and loving under this disgustingly sugary misrepresentation of the facts. “For your information, your precious, tender little sister has been so violently shocked by the marriage bed and that insensitive lout of a husband you allowed her to marry that she’s unlikely ever to recover if someone doesn’t do her a kindness and open her eyes to the realities.”
Julian tore off his cravat with a rush of relief. He glared at her, his eyes points of blue fire. This Tamsyn he could deal with. “When it comes to my sister, I’m not in the least interested in the opinion of an unschooled, misbegotten hellion who’s never learned to obey convention.”
“Oh, pah!” Tamsyn declared in disgust. “Convention!” she mocked. “Convention as applied to women. It doesn’t apply to Gareth, does it? He can go spreading his favors around to all and sundry, and that’s considered perfectly acceptable.”
“No, it’s not!” Julian snapped, pulling his shirt out of his britches and tossing it to the floor. In the passion of the moment it didn’t occur to him that stripping off his clothes in front of the naked Tamsyn might be offering a mixed message. “As it happens, I hold no brief whatsoever for Gareth’s indiscretions … any more than I do for yours.”
“And what of yours?” she retorted. “These indiscretions, as you so delicately phrase them, take two. I haven’t noticed you being a particularly unwilling partner hitherto, milord colonel.”
Her eyes flashed, and her small body was rigid with angry conviction. “If there’s one thing I cannot abide, it’s a hypocrite.”
“I am not in the least hypocritical where my sister is concerned,” he snapped, kicking off his boots. “I will not have her innocence sullied by your experience!”
“Sullied!” Tamsyn exclaimed. “You dare to accuse me of sullying your sister as if I were some loathsome piece of scum! The only person who’s sullied Lucy is her damned husband. And so I tell you.”
Bending in one fluid movement, she grabbed up his discarded shirt. “If you’d done the decent thing by your sister, if you’d really cared for her, you would have given her a few of the facts of life and she wouldn’t be in this position now. I bid you good night, Colonel, I’ve no time for blind hypocrites.” And she pushed past him to the door, shoving her arms into the sleeves of his shirt as she did so.
“Don’t you walk off like that! Come back here.” Forgetting that the one thing he’d wanted was Tamsyn’s absence from his room, Julian grabbed her arm. “Explain yourself!”
She twitched free and darted sideways out of his reach. “You work it out for yourself, sir.”
He sprang forward, and in the same moment Tamsyn grabbed the water jug off the washstand. Her eyes were living coals.
“Oh, no,” he said softly. “Don’t you dare.”
“I dare,” she said, and hurled the contents at him.
In the room across the hall, Lucy shot up in bed at the roaring bellow of an outraged bull. “Whatever’s going on?”
“God knows.” Gareth pulled himself up sleepily. He’d been about to sink into the blissful world of alcoholic slumber and now sat blinking in the dark, trying to decipher the thumps and bangs. “Sounds like a fight of some kind.”
“A fight?” Lucy pushed aside the bedclothes. “Who could be fighting in the house at this hour … at any hour?”
Gareth listened, his head to one side. There was another shivering crash, a bellow that definitely came from his brother-in-law, followed by a squeal of rage in a much higher range.
“Good God,” he said again. “It’s coming from your brother’s room.” He swung out of bed, shoving aside the curtains. “It couldn’t be an intruder, surely.”
He’d reached the door, Lucy on his heels, when the sound of St. Simon’s door opening and then violently slamming made them both jump. The door opened again immediately on the slam.
A finger to his lips, Gareth gently eased their door ajar, and they peered into the dimly Ht corridor, eyes stretched at the extraordinary sight before them.
Julian, wearing only his britches, water dripping from his hair, leaped after the slight figure of Tamsyn, clad only in his discarded shirt.
“Come back here!” Julian’s fierce whisper echoed in the deserted corridor.
“Go to hell!” Tamsyn hissed over her shoulder, losing speed for a fatal instant as she did so.
Julian grabbed the collar of his shirt. “You’re not getting away with it, mi muchacha!”
With a deft wriggle Tamsyn shrugged out of the shirt and raced on, leaving him holding the empty garment.
“Fiera!” Julian’s voice was still a whisper, but now the stunned audience, cowering in the shadows, heard both laughter and powerful determination.
He sprang forward and tackled Tamsyn, diving for her waist, sweeping her off her feet. For a moment her body arced through the air; then she came to rest across his shoulder with a low wail of indignation.
“Espadachín! Miserable cur!” She reared up against his shoulder, pummeling with her fists, forgetting the need for quiet in her outrage.
“I should settle down, buttercup,” Julian said, his voice soft, his tone affable, as he turned back to his room. “You’re presenting rather a tempting target at the moment.”
“Oh, I’ll kill you,” Tamsyn declared, dropping forward again. “Gabriel will cut out your black, hypocritical heart and I’ll catch your blood in my hat.”
Julian’s low laugh lingered in the corridor as he went back into his room with his burden, closing the door quietly behind him.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Gareth murmured, looking down at Lucy. “I’ll be damned!” He became aware of his own powerful arousal and the swift surge of blood in his loins. The sight of Tamsyn’s naked body curved over Julian’s shoulder, glowing under the candlelight, had excited him almost beyond bearing.
“So that’s what she meant,” Lucy whispered, gazing up at her husband. “She said she knew things …” Her voice faded as she saw Gareth’s expression. She was aware of a strange tingling sensation in her body, little prickles of excitement in her belly, and she wondered what it could be.
“Lucy,” Gareth said huskily. His palm cupped her cheek as he read the almost bewildered thrill in her eyes, the flush on her cheeks. Could she also be affected by that scene? She didn’t move away from him, and he lifted her against him, feeling her skin soft and warm, the rich curve of her bottom beneath her nightgown. Her nightcap fell off as she moved her head against his shoulder. He bent and laid her gently on the bed.
For the first time she allowed him to remove her nightgown, and when he touched her, she was moist and open, although her limbs became abruptly rigid, her expression taut with apprehension.
“It’ll be all right,” he said softly, hardly able to contain himself, but somehow managing to control the vigorous surge of his entry so that she didn’t tighten against him as she had always done in the past. It was over very quickly, but when he rolled away from her, he knew that for once he hadn’t hurt her, and his own explosion of pleasure had seared him to his toes.
Lucy lay thoughtfully in the darkness, listening to Gareth’s gradually deepening snores. She felt most peculiar, but also quite pleasantly relaxed. But she had the unshakable conviction that what she had just experienced was as nothing to what Tamsyn was experiencing in Julian’s bed.
She was Julian’s mistress. How exotic, and how shocking. No wonder she seemed so different, and no wonder she’d offered her opinion so freely. Well, in the morning Lucy would seek more of those opinions. She certainly had a new perspective on her straitlaced brother, though. An involuntary giggle escaped her, and she turned her face into her pillow. She’d take his strictures a little less to heart in future.
Gareth wasn�
�t sure how to greet his brother-in-law the following morning, but Julian’s “Good morning” over the breakfast table was accompanied by an imperturbable smile and the civil invitation to look over his stud and take any horse that met his fancy, with the exception of Soult.
“I rode Soult from Badajos to Lisbon,” Julian explained. “But the rest of my campaigning string is in the charge of my groom in Spain.”
“When do you expect to return?” Gareth piled kedgeree onto his plate and sat down, filling his tankard from the jug of ale.
“By October at the latest. I have to be in London again next month.” He wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin to the table. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, Gareth, I’ve work to do.”
He strode to the door just as it opened to admit Tamsyn, in a high-necked, long-sleeved dress of sprigged muslin. “Good morning, milord colonel.”
“Good morning, Tamsyn.” His voice was cool, his eye amused, as he noticed that she had chosen a costume that covered every inch of her skin. They’d both acquired a few bruises in the night’s rough-and-tumble.
“Don’t let me keep you, sir.”
“I won’t. Termagant!” he added in a soft whisper. He flicked her cheek carelessly; the residue of passion still lurked in his eyes … that and laughter. He’d woken up laughing, convinced he’d been laughing in his sleep.
“Bully!” she mouthed, her own gaze sparkling.
“Virago!” He left on the whisper, and Tamsyn turned her attention to Gareth, who tried to pretend he hadn’t been straining his ears to catch the whispered colloquy.
“Good morning, Gareth. Is Lucy still abed?” She sat down and took a piece of toast from the rack. “Could you pass the coffee, please?”
Gareth obliged. “Lucy usually takes her breakfast abovestairs.” He found himself examining her covertly, his memory alive with the image of her body beneath her clothes. He wondered if she’d be open to a proposition from himself. He ought to be able to match whatever Julian was offering her. Unfortunately, he didn’t see how he could make such a proposal while they were both under St. Simon’s roof. A man didn’t poach on another man’s territory while he was enjoying his hospitality. But maybe while Julian was in London, he might sound her out.
The prospect brought a smile to his lips, and unconsciously he touched his mustache, smoothing it with a fingertip.
Tamsyn buttered her toast, wondering what could have brought that irritating smirk to his face. She fervently hoped it was nothing to do with her. Could he have heard anything last night? No, their voices in the corridor hadn’t risen above a whisper, and everyone had been asleep.
She left the breakfast parlor while Gareth was just settling into his second plate of sirloin. Those pudgy thighs weren’t going to get any the less so, she reflected, but one woman’s meat was another’s poison.
“Tamsyn, good morning.”
Lucy’s voice aptly broke into Tamsyn’s charitably philosophic reflection. Lucy was coming down the stairs, her expression both excited and a little shy.
“Good morning.” Tamsyn greeted her pleasantly, relieved to see that she seemed to have recovered her good humor over night. “I’m going for a walk. Do you care to accompany me?”
“Oh, yes, I should love to. I’ll just fetch my parasol and pelisse.”
“Oh, you won’t need those. It’s very warm out, and I intend to go to St. Catherine’s Point. It’s quite a scramble over the cliffs, so you won’t want to carry clutter.”
Lucy, expecting a gentle, chatty stroll through the shrubbery, was aghast at such a prospect; however, she said stoically, “No, of course I won’t. Are you leaving now?”
“If you’re ready,” Tamsyn said politely.
They were halfway down the drive when Gabriel appeared through the trees, on foot, a gun over one shoulder, a game bag over the other. “Where are you going, little girl?”
“To St. Catherine’s Point. Then into Fowey to buy some needle and thread for Josefa.”
He nodded, smiled amiably at Lucy, and continued on his way.
“Your servant is very familiar.”
“Gabriel is no servant, and don’t ever treat him as one,” Tamsyn said. “He becomes very upset. He was my father’s most trusted friend, and he looks after me.”
“You must do things very differently in Spain,” Lucy observed, feeling for a way to start the conversation she had in mind.
“You could say that.” Tamsyn struck out toward the steeply rising cliff path, her stride long and easy. Lucy puffed behind her, waving at flies that swarmed around her as the sweat started to break out on her forehead.
“You talk about things differently.” They reached the crest of the path and Lucy stopped, gasping in the cool breeze now blowing fresh from the sea stretched out below them. “I mean the things you said your mother had told you.” Her cheeks were hot, and she knew it wasn’t just the result of exertion.
Tamsyn’s laugh lilted on the wind. “Your mother didn’t tell you such things, I imagine?” She started off again, running down the path toward a ledge that hung out over the Fowey estuary, just above the ruined walls of St. Catherine’s fort, which once had commanded the entrance to the river as part of Henry VIII’s coastal defense system.
By the time Lucy had reached her, Tamsyn had kicked off her sandals and was stretched on her stomach, gazing down at the fort, and across the wide mouth of the estuary. A clipper, laden with china clay, was tacking out of the estuary to the sea.
“No, she didn’t,” Lucy said, dropping to the grass beside her, wondering if she would get grass stains on her pale cambric gown. “The only thing she ever said to me about marriage was that there were some aspects that were not pleasant, but it was one’s duty to endure them.”
“Lie back and think of England!” Tamsyn said in disgust, chewing on a strand of grass. “And I don’t suppose your brother mentioned anything either?”
“Julian!” Lucy stared at her in horror. “He couldn’t talk about things like that to me!”
“Oh.” Tamsyn decided it would be dangerous to discuss Julian in such a context in case she inadvertently gave something away.
“I know it’s not at all respectable of me to want to talk about such things,” Lucy ventured.
Tamsyn laughed and rolled onto her back, squinting against the sun. “Respectability can make life very dull. I’ll wager you anything that Gareth would much prefer an unrespectable woman in his bed.”
“He has plenty of those,” Lucy said tartly, and then gasped, amazed at herself for saying such a shocking thing.
Tamsyn merely grinned. “But if he had one at home, then he probably wouldn’t need to wander off quite so often.”
“So what do I have to do to be unrespectable?” Lucy demanded. “Since you seem to know so much about it.” It was on the tip of her tongue to say what she and Gareth had seen in the night, but she was too embarrassed to admit to having watched in secret … and far too embarrassed to admit that they’d both found the watching curiously exciting.
“I’ll tell you, if you promise not to say a word to your brother. If he thinks I’ve been corrupting you, he’ll throw me out of the house.”
“Would he?” Lucy breathed. She found her brother thoroughly intimidating, but after what she’d seen last night, she couldn’t imagine Tamsyn accepting such a decree without a murmur.
“Probably,” Tamsyn said. “So you must promise.”
“I promise.”
Tamsyn smiled into the sunshine and began to impart to the wide-eyed innocent beside her some of the joys of love.
It was a very thoughtful Lucy who walked alone back to Tregarthan an hour later at a much slower pace than the one set by Tamsyn on the way to the point.
Tamsyn took the steep, winding path down to the town, deep in thought. It was gratifying to put someone else’s life in order, even if she couldn’t understand what Lucy could possibly see in Gareth Fortescue. He didn’t strike her as seriously unpleasant so much as lazy, conceited, and s
elf-indulgent. Quite usual characteristics of the English male aristocrat, if Cecile was to be believed. He wasn’t a man to be solely contented with the marriage bed, however satisfying that bed might be, but presumably Lucy would find it easier to accommodate her husband’s wanderings if she was herself no longer dissatisfied. They’d certainly seem less threatening to the stability of her marriage.
She made her purchases in the draper’s and strolled in the sunshine along the quay. David and Charles Penhallan saw her from the steps of the white Customs House, where they were talking with the Revenue Officer, a portly gentlemen who struggled daily with the paradox of having to do a job that went against his own interests. For a man who loved his wine and cognac as Lieutenant Barker did, preventing the Gentlemen from making their runs was the devil’s own work. He was an expert at turning a blind eye, and the smugglers generally let him know when it would be expedient for him to do so.
“Lord Penhallan was remarking only the other day that since he started using mantraps at Lanjerrick, his gamekeepers have noticed much less poaching.” He stroked his rotund belly and belched softly. Kippers for breakfast always sat heavily, but he couldn’t resist them. “I was thinking of mentioning it to Lord St. Simon. His bailiff was lamenting how many pheasants they were losing.…” His voice faded as he realized that he was talking to thin air. The Penhallan twins had moved away and were sauntering down the street.
Tamsyn walked back up the narrow, steep streets of the little town, pausing now and again to look over the jumbled roofs below her, looking down into small walled cottage gardens fragrant with roses, fishing nets drying in the sun, crab pots piled in corners.
Could she live here? Leave the wild passes and the soaring eagles, the smell of crushed thyme beneath her feet, the ice-capped mountain peaks, the clear, frigid mountain rivers? Leave the punishing summer sun for this gentle cousin; leave the air so sharp it pierced your lungs for this soft air, as gentle as spring rain?
