Louise Allen - Regency Surrender - Sinful Conquests - The Many Sins of Cris de Feaux / The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone

‘I know. And there are responsibilities and duties to keep one going, are there not? I was angry with myself for my lack of focus, Tamsyn. I have no desire to find myself in a lethal predicament again because I have lost concentration.’

Cris realised he had called her by her first name as her eyebrows lifted, giving her tanned, pleasant face a sudden look of haughty elegance. She was not a conventional beauty, but he was reminded again what a very feminine creature she was, for all her practicality. ‘I apologise for the familiarity, but your concern disarmed me. May we not be friends? I do feel we have been very thoroughly introduced.’

Tamsyn laughed, a sudden rich chuckle that held surprise and wickedness and warmth even though she blushed, just a little. ‘Indeed we have... That moment in the sea. I do not normally...’

‘Kiss strange men?’ Now she was pink from the collarbone upwards. ‘If it is any consolation, I do not normally kiss mermaids.’ That made her laugh. ‘It felt like touching life when I thought I was dying.’

‘It was an extraordinary moment, like something from a myth. You thought I was a mermaid, I thought you were a merman, Christopher.’

‘Cris,’ he corrected. ‘St Crispin, if we are to be exact.’

‘“And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember’d,”’ she quoted, visibly recovering her composure. ‘Your parents were Shakespearian enthusiasts? Or is your birthday October the twenty-fifth?’

‘Both. My father was much given to quoting Henry V. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” He would mutter it before anything he did not want to do, such as attending social gatherings.’

‘How infuriating for your mother.’

‘She died many years ago, in childbirth. My father was shot in the shoulder in a hunting accident and developed blood poisoning.’ He stopped to calculate. ‘It was nineteen years ago, the day before my tenth birthday.’ He would not normally speak so openly about their deaths, but he wanted Tamsyn to talk of her husband’s fatal plunge from the cliff and his frankness might encourage hers.

‘I am so sorry. You poor little boy, you must have been so alone. I was ten when I lost my mother to that epidemic, but at least I had the aunts.’

‘There were many people to look after me.’ Four trustees, one hundred servants, indoor and outdoor. There had been three tutors, a riding master, a fencing master, an art master, a dancing master—all dedicated to turning out the young Marquess of Avenmore in as perfect a form as possible.

‘I am glad of that,’ Tamsyn murmured. ‘Now, some more coffee before we take our walk?’ She passed him the pot, a fine old silver one. ‘I cannot delay much longer or Willie Tremayne will think I have forgotten him. I will meet you at the garden gate.’

Cris sat with his coffee cooling in the cup for several minutes after she had gone from the room. This household, and its inhabitants, were unlike any he had encountered before. He supposed it was because, used as he was to palaces, government offices, great houses or bachelor lodgings, he had never before experienced the world of the gentry. Were they all so warm, so unaffected? He gave himself a shake and swallowed the cold coffee as a penance for daydreaming. He had to get his reluctant limbs moving and find a coat or he would be keeping Tamsyn Perowne waiting.

Chapter Five

The garden gate was as good a perch as it had been when she had first come to Barbary, but now it did not seem like a mountain to climb. Tamsyn hooked the toes of her riding boots over a rail and kept her weight at the hinge end, as a proper countrywoman knew to do. The breeze from the sea blew up the lane, stirring the curls that kept escaping from under the old-fashioned tricorn she had jammed over her hair and flipping the ends of her stock until she caught them and stuffed them into the neck of her jacket. She felt almost frivolous, and if that was the result of looking forward to a very slow walk up the lane with an ailing gentleman, then it was obvious that she was not getting out enough.

Mr Defoe—Cris—emerged from the door just as Jason led out Foxy, her big chestnut gelding, and she bit her lip rather than smile at her own whimsy. He might think she was laughing at his cane.

‘Leg up, Mrs Tamsyn?’

‘I’m walking for a little while, thank you, Jason.’ She jumped down from the gate and pulled the reins over the gelding’s head to lead him and he butted her with his nose, confused about why she was not mounting.

‘That’s a big beast.’ Cris was walking slowly, using the cane, but without limping or leaning on it. She did her best not to stare. He would experience enough of that if he walked as far as Stibworthy and the locals had a good look at his pale tan buckskins and beautiful boots. He might as well have dressed for a ball, as donned that dark brown riding coat and the low-crowned beaver. He clicked his tongue at Foxy and the horse turned his head to look at him. ‘Powerful hocks and a good neck on him. Is he a puller?’

‘No, he’s a pussy cat with lovely manners and a soft mouth, aren’t you, my handsome red fox?’ She was rewarded with a slobbery nuzzle at her shoulder. ‘But I wish you were a tidier kisser.’

That provoked a snort of amusement from the man holding the gate open for her. Possibly references to kissing were not such a good idea. She could still feel the heat of his mouth on hers, in shocking contrast to the cold of his skin. And despite any amount of effort with the tooth powder, she imagined she could still taste him, salty and male.

Two years without kisses had been a long time, and this was a man who seemed to have been created to tempt women. He probably has several in keeping and has to beat off the rest with his fine leather gloves. Intimacy with a man to whom she was not married had never occurred to her before now. Was it simply that the passage of time had left her yearning for the lovemaking that she had learned to enjoy? Or was it this man?

She had never seriously considered remarrying, although sometimes she wondered if, given any encouragement, Dr Tregarth might have declared an interest. But it would be unfair to any man when she... With my past, she substituted before she let herself follow that train of thought.

Thoughts of illicit intimacy were certainly occurring to her now and the fact that Cris Defoe was walking with a cane and complaining of a bad back and weak chest did absolutely nothing to suppress some very naughty thoughts. They turned up the lane and she wandered along, letting Cris set the pace. The sound of their feet and the horse’s hooves were muffled by the sand that filled the ruts in the pebbly turf, and the music of the sea behind them and the song of the skylark high above filled the silence between them.

‘Salt from the sea, vanilla from the gorse and wild garlic,’ he said after a few minutes. ‘The air around here is almost painfully clear after the smoke of towns or the heat of inland countryside, don’t you think?’

Cris was not breathing heavily, despite the increasing slope of the lane as it rose up the combe. He was certainly very fit. She remembered the muscles strapping his chest and his flat stomach, the hard strength as she had gripped his bare shoulders in the sea. Unless he developed the chest infection his valet seemed to fear, his recovery should be rapid. ‘I do not know about towns—I hardly recall Portsmouth and our local ones, Barnstaple, Bideford and Bude, are small and they are not the kind I think you have in mind. How is your back?’

‘My... Oh, yes. Amazingly the exercise has already straightened the knots out of it. You have never been to London, then?’

‘No, never.’