Jane Feather - Violet

But at last she was able to tell them what had happened. “I have to go after him,” she.said simply, sitting on the end of their bed, her hands twisting in her lap. I love him… it's like Cecile and the baron, it's something I can't do anything about. It hurts.” She looked between them. Josefa's eyes were bright and sharp and Gabriel pulled at his chin.

Slowly, he nodded. “Then we'd best be on our way. Josefa will stay here. She'll no' relish charging around the countryside riding pillion behind me.” He glanced at the woman, who nodded phlegmatically. It wouldn't be the first time she'd waited behind while they'd gone off on some campaign or another.

“I'll tell Lucy that we have some vital business in Penzance and we'll be back in a week or two.”

“You're coming back for the Penhallan, then?” Tamsyn looked at him in helpless uncertainty. “Yes, I must. I promised the baron… and Cecile… In my mind, I did. But I don't know anymore, Gabriel. I don't know what will happen.”

“Och, aye, dinna fash yourself, bairn. What will be will be,” he said comfortably. “I should go and ask Miss Lucy for the direction to the colonel's house in London. Best we know where to find him.”

Tamsyn flung her arms around his neck. “What would I do without you… without you both?” Tearfully, she hugged Josefa, who had been calmly dressing herself all the while.

“We should pack some clothes,” the woman said, patting her back. “It's not seemly to make such a journey without clean drawers.”

“No, Josefa,” Tamsyn said meekly, allowing herself to be hustled out of the left room and into the dark morning, hearing Gabriel's low, reassuring chuckle behind her.

THE HOUSE ON AUOLEY SQUARE HAD A SMALL GARDEN AT the back, reached through a gate from the mews. Lucy had said that her brother's book room opened onto the garden.

Tamsyn sat in the railed garden in the center of Audley Square as dusk fell, waiting for Gabriel to return from his reconnaissance. She was pleasantly weary after five days of riding close to fifty miles a day. Their horses were now stabled in a coaching inn near Charing Cross, where Gabriel would also stay that night, while Tamsyn sprang her surprise on the colonel.

She hoped a pleasant surprise.

She could, of course, walk up to the front door and bang the knocker, but she had a taste for something a little more dramatic, something in keeping with the shocking abruptness of Julian's departure.

The click of the gate made her jump, and she realized how very nervous she was-as apprehensive as if the man she was intending to surprise was a stranger one whose reactions she couldn't predict-instead of a man whose life and bed she had been sharing for the last four months.

Gabriel's boots scrunched on the gravel path winding through privet hedges to the middle of the garden where Tamsyn sat on a stone bench.

“Well, it seems simple enough,” he said without preamble, sitting beside her. “The gate from the mews is locked, but I can put you over it without difficulty. The colonel's book room has two windows, both low, easy for you to hitch yourself up without my help.”

“Not open, I suppose.”

“They might be. If they're not, you'll have to break one of the panes. You can do it easy enough with a stone wrapped in cloth. It shouldn't make too much racket.”

“Unless the colonel's in the room,” she mused. “If he is, then I can simply knock on the window.”

“You wouldn't consider the door, I suppose,” Gabriel remarked mildly. “Seems so much simpler.”

Tamsyn smiled. “Simpler but a lot less amusing.”

“Aye, I daresay. And I suppose it'll be less amusing in broad daylight, too.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “So let's get some supper and come back when it's full dark… about ten o'clock.”

They ate in a dingy chop house in Piccadilly, and Tamsyn drank several glasses of porter, trying to quiet the little devils of anxious excitement dancing in her belly. She couldn't understand why she should be so nervous. She knew the man; she knew his body almost as well as she knew her own; she knew his moods and the way the light changed in his eyes; she knew what it meant when he held his body in a certain fashion, when his mouth quirked, when those mobile red-gold eyebrows twitched and his eyelids drooped lazily, half concealing the bright-blue eyes.

And she knew his anger. But why would he be angry? She was simply here to tell him she'd changed her mind, and she was ready to go back to Spain with him… ready to accept the limited liaison that was all he thought he could offer.

Gabriel said little, concentrating on his mutton chops and wine, but his mild gray eyes were sharply assessing. He wasn't at all sure about the wisdom of this enterprise, and if.the truth were told, he wished Colonel, Lord St. Simon to the devil. Tamsyn may have decided she'd found the love of her life, but he could wish she'd settled on someone easier to handle and more conveniently situated than this uncompromising English lord.

If the English lord hadn't turned up, Tamsyn would have found some man like the baron, and they'd all be living contentedly in the mountains, doing what they were good at.

And pigs might fly, Gabriel thought with a dour smile. “Let's get on with it, lassie.” He pushed back his chair. “You're fretting yourself into a frazzle.”

“No, I'm not,” Tamsyn denied, but she couldn't hide her relief that the waiting was over. “You'll wait in the mews until I'm in the house?”

“I'll wait until you let me know I can seek my bed,” he asserted.

They walked briskly and in silence back to Audley Square. St. Simon's house was lit up, and a lantern hung over the front door. “Perhaps he has visitors,” Tamsyn said, the possibility occurring for the first time.

“Once you're in the house, you can wait until they leave,” Gabriel said calmly. “If there's only a skeleton staff, you should be able to dodge them, and you've a decent plan of the house.”

“Yes.” Tamsyn slipped her hand into the pocket of her britches. Lucy had said that Julian kept a very small caretaking staff in the London house because it was used so rarely. It had been very easy to engage her in a casual discussion of the house, and with very little prompting she'd sketched a floor plan to illustrate her description. The paper now crackled reassuringly against Tamsyn's fingers. If Julian was not alone, or wasn't in the house, then she could make her way upstairs and into his bedchamber.

The mews was quiet, only the soft shufflings and whickers from the horses bedded down for the night. The night was overcast, but a lamp glowing in a round window above the stable block where the head groom lived threw a puddle of golden light on the clean swept cobbles. Tamsyn and Gabriel slipped soundlessly through the shadows, Tamsyn's bright head covered by the hood of her dark cloak pulled tight around her.

The gate into the garden was locked as Gabriel had expected. “Up you go.” He lifted Tamsyn easily, setting her atop the gate.

She dropped from sight immediately, then whispered from the other side, “There are lamps lit in the book room.”

“Buena suerte,” Gabriel whispered back, and stepped into the shadows.

Tamsyn crept around the edge of the walled garden, once catching her cloak on a thorn from an espaliered climbing rose. She stopped and painstakingly pulled out the thorn, flattening herself against the wall beside the rose. Light poured from the windows of the book room, illuminating neat flower beds and a square of lawn, and she prayed the shadow of the wall was sufficient concealment if anyone was looking from an upstairs window.

Free again, she flitted forward until she was pressed against the wall beside the lighted window. It was closed but the curtains were open. She sidled sideways until she could peer into the room. Her heart was thudding and her palms were slippery, but she couldn't decide whether it was nerves or excitement.