Jane Feather - Violet

“Do it right,” Cedric said wearily. “That's all I ask.”

“WHERE DID SHE SAY SHE WAS GOING?” GABRIEL STARED AT Josefa, slow anger beginning to burn in his eyes. The woman stood her ground, although her lip quivered a little.

“She didn't say. Just that she was going riding and she'd be back by five o'clock.”

Gabriel glanced up at the clock on the stable wall. It was past six. “How did she seem to you? What kind of mood was she in?”

Josefa frowned, considering this while Gabriel tapped his foot with growing impatience on the cobbles. “You know how she is before an engagement,” Josefa said finally. “Her eyes were bright, she wasn't thinking of anything but what she was doing. You know how she is,” she repeated.

“Oh, yes, I know,” Gabriel said grimly. “I'm a fool! I knew she wouldn't have given up on the Penhallan.” He spun on his heel and bellowed in a voice to shake mountains, “Saddle my horse again.”

“But where is she?” Josefa quavered.

“Causing trouble,” Gabriel said softly, his eyes sharply focused. “Alone. And those filthy swine are there… Hurry up, lad!” he snapped at the groom struggling with the girths of his horse. Impatiently, he pushed him aside. “I'll do it.” His large hands were surprisingly deft on the straps, and then he leaped into the saddle and galloped out of the stable yard.

The horse pounded the lanes between the high hedges, sensing his rider's urgency. Gabriel rode low in the saddle, his fury at Tamsyn for deceiving him mingling with dread. She wasn't back when she'd said she would be; therefore, something had happened to her. She was clever and a good fighter and she didn't in general make mistakes, but this issue was an emotional one. To make matters worse, she was worried that the colonel would discover her secrets, so she was acting in haste, and Gabriel didn't trust her to keep a clear head. One slip, one piece of carelessness, was all it would take to destroy one woman up against the three Penhallans.

His horse swung around a corner and then shied into the hedge as it came almost eyeball to eyeball with a massive black that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

Gabriel hauled back on the reins. “Madre de Dios, Colonel, where did you spring from?”

Julian didn't answer. The expression on Gabriel's face sent a shiver of apprehension down his spine. “Where the hell are you going in such a hurry, Gabriel? And where's Tamsyn?”

Gabriel had no time to consider whether it would be in Tamsyn's interests to reveal her secrets to this man. He could do with another pair of hands, and the colonel’s were the hands he would have chosen if he'd had the choice. “Lanjerrick, in answer to both questions, Colonel, and you'd best come along. I don't know what we're going to find.”

“God's grace, but I thought as much!” Julian's skin was clammy, and a cold premonition curled in his belly. “She found out the Penhallans were her family.”

“She's always known it,” Gabriel said shortly, setting his horse to the gallop again.

The cold, hard ball of premonition grew as he turned Soult in the narrow lane and caught up with Gabriel.

“What do you mean?” Julian rode neck and neck with Gabriel. “Since when has she known it?”

“She's always known she's kin to the Penhallan.” Julian absorbed this in silence, the rhythmic pounding of Soult's hooves on the rutted lane sounding in his blood. Why wasn't he surprised? “She knew before we left Spain?” He seemed to need clarification, although the picture was forming with hideous clarity.

“Aye. She's set on revenge for what they did to her mother.”

“What kind of revenge?” he asked dully as the pieces fell into place and the true extent of her deceit and manipulation took clear shape. And the true extent of his own gullibility. So desperate to believe in her essential honesty, in an innocent purpose behind her need for his protection and the shelter of his roof. But there was no essential honesty, only a cold and calculating seduction with a black core of lies. Lies she'd been telling from the moment she'd laid eyes on him.

“She was going to ruin Cedric for what he did to her mother… expose him in public. But then she decided she couldn't expose him without your finding out, Colonel, so I'm guessing she's just gone for the Penhallan diamonds. A much simpler revenge… and the bairn would have it that they were her mother's by rights and therefore now hers.” Gabriel shook his head. “She's diamonds aplenty, of course, but she has a powerful sense of justice… always has had.”

“And a powerful sense of justice is reason for theft?” “Och, she's not out to steal them, man. She'll persuade the Penhallan to give them to her. She holds some powerful secrets against him.”

“Oh, I see. Blackmail,” St. Simon said in the same flat tone.

“In a manner of speaking. But she believes she's only doing what the baron would have done himself if he'd lived long enough.”

“Such a wonderful parental example,” Julian said with bitter sarcasm. “So you're telling me she's gone to Lanjerrick to blackmail Cedric Penhallan into giving her the family diamonds? Does she think Cedric's simply going to hand them over for the asking?” He laughed in scorn.

Gabriel's mouth tightened. “The man's capable of murder, and she knows it. She'll be prepared. But she should never have gone alone!” He drew a harsh, ragged breath. “If those gutter sweepings are there, she'll be one against three of them. They've put their hands on her once-good God, man, you've known them for what they are! You know what they're capable of doing to her?”

So she'd heard that story too. Was there anything she hadn't discovered? Was there ever a moment since they'd first met when she hadn't been plotting and planning, using him? In London, when she'd been lying beneath him, entrancing him with her love play and her soft, lascivious movements, and the luminous glow in her eyes, and the power of her passion… at every moment she'd been pursuing her own lawless, deceitful course. And he'd believed in the truth of her emotions. God help him, he was beginning to find it hard to ignore his own.

Was she intending to leave him once she'd completed her little blackmail? But no, of course not. She needed him to get her back to Spain. She needed him, the blind dupe, to arrange passage for them all. She needed his escort so she could travel with all the safety and trappings of a guest of the British army. And when she was safely home again… why, then she would leave him. She would no longer need him. Had she intended to steal out into the night like the lying thief that she was? Leaving him without a word of explanation?

Abruptly a flash of fear pushed through his corrosive anger. He thought of the twins, of what they would do to her if she could be rendered helpless. And Gabriel said they had put their hands on her once already.

“What do you mean, they've put their hands on her already?”

Gabriel told him the story. “But they're mine, Colonel. Don't you forget that.”

“I have my own scores to settle,” Julian said harshly.

“First with the Penhallans… and then with Tamsyn.”

Gabriel glanced sideways at him in the pale light of the crescent moon. The colonel's face was tight and angry, but there was sorrow behind the anger… the sorrow of a man finally giving up a fight, finally facing unpalatable facts. And it filled Gabriel with deep foreboding. But he could think of nothing to say to repair the damage. Tamsyn said she loved the man, but she'd created this situation, and only she could put it right. Once she was out of whatever danger she'd walked into.

“I'll be going first with the Penhallan,” Gabriel declared, dropping low over his horse's neck, spurring the animal to increase his speed as they approached the out- skirts of Lanjerrick land. “But I'll happily share the pleasure with you, Colonel.”