by Violet
“Good.” That suited Tamsyn. By the time Julian returned, she would be ready for him. She started up the stairs. “Have those packages brought up to his lordship’s apartments please, Belton, and could you send up two wineglasses and a corkscrew?”
The stalwart young man trotted after her, his arms filled. “Put them on the couch,” she instructed, dropping her own on the coverlet. “Thank you. And could you light the fire, please? It’s such a miserable day.” She waited as he raked ashes, laid kindling, and struck flint on tinder. The wood caught, a plume of fragrant smoke arose, and a flame shot up the chimney.
The lad carefully laid on logs, then stood up, wiping his hands on the seat of his britches just as a red-cheeked girl of about thirteen came in through the open door with the glasses and a corkscrew. She, too, couldn’t hide her curiosity as she glanced covertly at his lordship’s extraordinary visitor. A right little trollop, no better than she ought to be, old Mrs. Cogg in the kitchen had opined. Maisie had never before met someone who was better than she ought to be.
“Wonderful.” Tamsyn offered a somewhat distracted smile as the lad departed with a jerky bow, followed by the girl; then she flew across the room and locked the door behind them. She stood tapping her front teeth with a fingertip. How long did she have?
It took fifteen minutes to lay out her carefully selected picnic. Vintage claret, dainty shrimp barquettes, smoked oysters, dressed crab, strawberry tarts, and fresh figs. Nothing that couldn’t be eaten with the fingers.
The fire was crackling nicely now, the candles were lit, and the room, despite its oppressive furnishing, felt quite cozy. She threw off her gown, thrust it into a corner of the armoire together with her half boots, underclothes, and the cloak bag with her riding britches. Then she shook out the gown that had taken her hours to select. The blonde silk lace shimmered, soft and lustrous in the candlelight. She slipped it over her head, and the delicate material, the painstaking work of a dozen Chantilly-lace makers, caressed her naked body, as sensuous as a spring breeze.
She stepped up to the cheval glass and examined herself. The gown had cost a small fortune, but the effect was everything she’d aimed for. It was as demure and virginal as a bridal nightgown. The wide, exquisitely edged sleeves reached her elbows, drawing attention to her delicately rounded forearms and tiny wrists. Her neck rose slender and graceful as a swan’s from three tiers of lace ruffles, and her almond-shaped eyes were huge and luminous, their deep violet startling against the creamy pallor of her face and gown, the silvery sheen of her hair.
Experimentally, she fastened a band of white velvet ribbon around her hair. The effect was astonishing. It accentuated the air of childlike innocence that was somehow not what it seemed.
Tamsyn turned slowly, examining herself in the mirror. Her bare feet peeped from the embroidered lace hem, and the material drifted down her body, the lace so fine that her skin glimmered beneath.
She felt as she had when she’d planned her Aladdin’s cave, as seduced by the game as she knew Julian would be. Her loins were moistening, her nipples hardening, and her spine tingled.
She unlocked the door, cast one final look over the inviting table, and curled up in a massive black-leather armchair beside the fire.
Julian, after a relatively satisfactory session with the prime minister, had repaired to Horseguards to see what old friends and colleagues he might usefully find, and then to the Admiralty to discover what ships were sailing to Lisbon in the next week. A frigate, escorting a convoy of merchant shipping, was due to set sail from Portsmouth under a Captain Marriot by the end of the following week, and it looked like the likeliest passage he would find. The captain would need to be officially informed that he’d have four passengers on the voyage, and Julian would need to get the requisite instructions from the appropriate admiral, but that wouldn’t take more than a day or two.
Feeling very cheerful, Julian went back out into the drizzle, to where a damp urchin was holding Soult. The lad caught the sixpence with a cheeky grin as his lordship mounted, and ran off, biting the coin to test its mettle as if he couldn’t believe the largesse.
Julian rode home, left his horse in the mews, and entered the garden through the gate. He glanced up at the window of his bedchamber. It was closed against the rain, but light shone warm and welcoming from within.
An involuntary smile crossed his eyes, and his heart jumped with pleasure at the thought that Tamsyn was waiting for him.
He entered the house through a side door and strode upstairs, encountering no one, which didn’t surprise him. He never entertained at home and was so rarely in residence himself that Belton and Mrs. Cogg managed to run the house with the help of a lad for the heavy work, and a kitchen maid. Most of the rooms were kept under holland covers anyway.
He entered his bedroom and then stopped. Tamsyn was a tiny figure in shimmering pale lace framed against the heavy black leather of the armchair, swallowed somehow in its depth. Smiling, she uncurled herself and stood up.
“Have you had a trying day, milord colonel?” she said softly, coming toward him. “I’ve prepared a picnic for us.”
He stared at her, his breath suspended. Dear God, she was wearing a ribbon in her hair! And the gown, so demure and yet so unutterably wicked. She looked as virginal, as innocent, as a child in the schoolroom, but her skin glowed in luminous promise beneath the material that stroked over her hips and outlined the soft swell of her breasts, the hard, dark tips of her nipples.
His head swam as she stepped closer to him and lifted her face in sweet demand for a kiss. Still speechless, he bent his head and kissed her lips.
“Will you take off your sword?” she said, stepping back before he could put his hands on her. “It’s such an ugly, great thing and so unrestful.”
Unrestful. This woman was the most unrestful he’d ever encountered! But her hands were unbuckling his sword belt, lifting it away from him with a grimace of effort. And it did look absurdly large and menacing beside her delicate fragility. But she was neither delicate nor fragile! He watched in bemusement as she placed the sword carefully in the corner of the room and turned back to him.
“May I help you with your boots?”
In the same trance he sat down in the chair she’d just vacated. With a little frown of concentration, she straddled his lap with her back to him and hauled on his left boot. The curve of her backside, opalescent beneath the spider’s-web covering of the gown, was impossible to resist. He placed his palms on the damask globes, and the heat of her skin seared his hands.
“I’m trying to concentrate,” Tamsyn said as the boot came off. “I have to do it like this so I don’t get mud on my gown.”
“I’m not objecting,” he murmured, finally finding his voice as he smoothed the gossamer material tightly over her bottom. “I’m sure you’re supposed to wear something underneath this.”
“That rather depends on where one’s wearing it,” she said with a grunt of effort, falling back onto his lap, sitting on his hands as the second boot came off. “There.” She tossed it to the floor to join its fellow. “Now, shall I take off your coat, and then I’ll bring you a glass of wine and a smoked oyster.”
“In a minute,” he said.
“Of course,” Tamsyn said meekly. “Whatever you wish to do is what I wish to do.”
“Now I’ve heard everything,” Julian observed, but he was smiling. Whatever game this was, it was one he was more than happy to play. He moved one hand to encircle her waist, holding her firmly in place, while his other hand slithered beneath her, the tips of his fingers inching into the cleft of her bottom until she wriggled with a little gasp. Finally he let her go. “I don’t want to tear this gorgeous virginal garment … at least,” he added, “not just yet. So you’d better get up.”
Tamsyn slid off his knee, shaking down the gown. “Whatever you wish, my lord.” She went to the table and poured wine into a glass. She brought it over together with a platter of smoked oysters and, with a shy smile,
sat on his lap again. She held the wine to his lips, then began to feed him the oysters. “Do you like them?”
“Mmmm,” he murmured with his mouth full, distracted by her slight weight on his thighs, the scent of her skin, the impossibly shy smile, the deceptive purity of the blonde lace. “I think I’m going to enjoy this game.”
Her eyes widened in hurt innocence. “A game? This is no game, my lord. I wish only to please you. I wish to do whatever you wish me to do.”
She held the wine up to his lips again, then took a sip herself, before placing the glass on the table beside the platter of oysters. She swiveled on his knee until she was nestled against his chest, her body curled against him.
She was like a small bird, her heart beating against his shirt front. Vulnerable, frail. And it didn’t matter that he knew she was neither of those things. It didn’t matter that he knew her to be a fierce and uncompromising, tempestuous bandit. For the moment she was all sweet innocence, and she was driving him wild.
She kissed the pulse in his throat, and her body shifted on his lap, an infinitesimal movement that nevertheless brought the blood surging into his loins. Her voice was musical as she murmured soft words of passion to him, weaving threads of enchantment around him, and it took him a minute to hear exactly what this innocent, fragile little creature was saying. There was nothing in the least sweet and virginal about the words; they were the hungry, earthy words of passion and need that riveted him with their brazen sensuality, shocked him to his core as they dropped from the soft lips of this shyly smiling girl.
“You siren,” he whispered on a low throb of desire.
She nibbled his lip, delicate little bites of the most exquisite sensuality, and her eyes were closed. Again she moved on his lap, but this time with more purpose so that she captured his erection between her thighs.
“Lift your skirt,” he demanded, his voice now a rasp of need.
Obediently, she raised herself just enough to pull the lace up over her hips. Her fingers moved on his waistband and his aching flesh sprang free. He caught her waist and swiveled her on his lap so that her back was to him. He slid his hands beneath her bottom and lifted her just sufficiently to drive into the pulsing warmth of her belly.
Tamsyn drew breath at the power of his thrusting flesh, rocking her on her perch, pressing against her womb, impaling her with his pleasure. He held her buttocks with bruising fingers as the whirling conflagration caught her, swept her up, exploded in her belly so she thought she was flying apart, and she heard his cry against her back as he yielded himself to the fire.
Flame crackled in the hearth, a candle spurted. Julian slowly came back to the room. Tamsyn had fallen back against his chest, lying as weak and weightless as a wounded bird.
“Sorceress,” he accused with a feeble chuckle when he could speak at all.
Tamsyn smiled weakly. “I can play many parts, milord colonel.”
“Don’t I know it.” He kissed the top of her shining head. “And now I’d like you to feed me some more oysters.”
“I am here only to serve you, my lord,” she said demurely, sliding off his knee. “Your word is my command.”
Julian stretched luxuriously, and a slow, lazy smile played over his mouth. “I can think of many commands, buttercup. I foresee a long night.”
It was a very long night, and Tamsyn had been asleep for barely half an hour when her internal clock woke her just before daybreak. Julian was deeply asleep, sprawled on his stomach beside her, his red-gold hair thick on the pillow.
She slid out of bed, barely disturbing the covers, and crept out of the bed hangings into the dark room. She was used to moving around at night, and her eyes accustomed themselves quickly to the darkness. The remnants of their picnic still sat on the table, and the heavy furniture was disarrayed. She smiled reminiscently as she dressed hastily in her riding britches. The colonel’s commands had involved a fair degree of gymnastics on occasion.
She was ready in five minutes, then sat down at the secretaire to write him a note. Somehow she had to produce a convincing reason for sliding off in the night without telling him. Maybe he wouldn’t have insisted on coming back to Cornwall with them … but he might have, and she didn’t want him anywhere in the vicinity when she tidied up her loose ends with Cedric Penhallan.
Milord colonel:
We have to return to Cornwall to collect Josefa and the treasure, and Gabriel has something to do for himself. We’ll return here two weeks from today. I know you have work to do in London, so I didn’t want you to feel that you should have offered to come with us. Two weeks today, I shall be yours to command again. Besos.
She read it through quickly. It would have to do. If he was vexed that she’d disappeared as abruptly as she’d arrived, then she would make it up to him when she returned. At least he would have something to remember in the meantime.
She rolled the paper and with a little smile tied it with the ivory velvet ribbon she’d had in her hair. Then she tiptoed back to the bed and placed it carefully on the pillow beside his head.
Julian mumbled in his sleep and turned onto his back, his arms flung wide. Tamsyn resisted the urge to push aside the unruly lock of hair and press her lips to his broad brow. He slept like a soldier, she knew, and the slightest touch would waken him.
She crept out of the room, hurried down the stairs in the silent house, into the book room at the rear. She flung up the low window, scrambled over the sill, and dropped to the soft, damp earth beneath.
Gabriel was waiting in the mews, holding Cesar’s reins. He greeted her with a nod. “All well, bairn?”
“All’s well.” She sprang into the saddle. Five days should see them back at Tregarthan. Her confrontation with Cedric would take no more than an hour or two. The horses would need a day to rest. And then they would return, and she would concentrate all her forces on the bastion that was Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon.
And if she failed to breach the walls, then she’d settle for what he could give her for as long as he was prepared to give it.
It was broad daylight when Julian awoke. He read the note in disbelief and growing anger. For hours she’d played the most elaborate game of seduction, showing him a side of herself he wouldn’t have believed possible. But she was still a goddamned brigand! Why couldn’t she be simple and straightforward? Why in the world would she slide out in the middle of the night to do something as simple as fetching her luggage and Josefa?
Uneasiness prickled his spine. Why would she? Not even Tamsyn thrived on unorthodox maneuvers to the extent that she’d choose to leave like that without some good reason.
And he could think of only one reason: she didn’t want him with her on the journey. She’d given him a night to remember, while deliberately planning to slip from his bed and be on her way while he was asleep. It made no sense at all that she would do something that devious when she was simply going back to Tregarthan to collect Josefa and her treasure.
Despite her denial, was she going back to try one last time to discover something about her mother’s family? Had she perhaps found a clue that she wanted to follow up before finally leaving England?
From what he knew of Tamsyn, it made more sense that she would try to finish what she’d come there to do than that she would meekly give it up because he’d asked her to. Oh, he believed she intended to return to Spain with him. But she was going to do something first.
Damn the woman for an obstinate, devious hellion!
And he couldn’t go after her until he’d completed the formal arrangements for their passage from Portsmouth. If he was really persistent, prepared to hang around in corridors waiting for an audience, prepared to push ruthlessly through the obstructive layers of the bureaucracy, he could probably have the documents in his hand by the end of the day. But he couldn’t then start his pursuit at night, so he would lose twenty-four hours.
Why was he so uneasy? He frowned, staring around the disheveled room in anxious vexation. Even if she had so
me idea about the Penhallans, the worst that could happen was that she would face Cedric and he’d humiliate her with his scorn. What could possibly happen in twenty-four hours at Tregarthan? And she had Gabriel with her.
Chapter Twenty-four
“I WISH YOU WEREN’T GOING BACK TO SPAIN,” LUCY SAID disconsolately, sitting on the windowsill in Tamsyn’s tower room. “I was really looking forward to sponsoring you for the Season.”
“It was a rather sudden decision,” Tamsyn said, buttoning her shirt, trying not to show her impatience.
“But what about your mother’s family? Don’t you want to find them anymore?”
“Your brother persuaded me that it wasn’t really a good idea. They probably wouldn’t know what to do with me if I did find them, and I probably wouldn’t have anything in common with them, anyway.” Tamsyn tucked her shirt into the waist of her riding skirt and hooked it up, wishing that Lucy would cease this catechism and find something else to do. Gabriel had gone to Fowey for the afternoon. He’d offered no reason and she hadn’t asked. If he’d gone after the twins, it was his business, just as her uncle was hers. His absence gave her the opportunity to ride to Lanjerrick and see her uncle, but Lucy was wasting precious time.
“Are you going back with Julian because you’re his mistress?” Lucy spoke in a sudden rush, her cheeks flushed, her china-blue eyes unnaturally bright as she gazed intently at Tamsyn.
“Oh.” Tamsyn sat down on the dressing stool with a rueful grimace. “How did you discover that?” She picked up a riding boot and thrust her right foot into it.
“We heard you one evening,” Lucy said, her flush deepening. “And we … well, we saw you in the corridor. Julian was chasing you.”
Tamsyn grinned, remembering the occasion. “Why didn’t you say something before?”
“I … we … we thought it would be indiscreet. Julian obviously didn’t want anyone to know, because he’s usually so cool with you, and … oh, dear, this is so embarrassing.” Lucy half laughed as she pressed her hands to her flaming cheeks.
