The Many Sins of Cris De Feaux (Lords of Disgrace) (8 page)

‘A penny for your thoughts?’ Cris had stopped beside her at the foot of the stairs and was regarding her with a quizzical smile. Tamsyn realised she must have been standing there, staring blankly at the front door.

‘I was speculating on road building,’ she admitted. ‘An expensive investment.’

‘You, Mrs Perowne, are a constant source of surprise to me,’ he murmured. ‘You will allow me to stay for a few more days, despite my pretence of feebleness being exposed?’

‘I suppose so.’ Her dark mood lifted as rapidly as it had descended. ‘I can hardly cut short your seaside holiday, now can I?’

‘Holiday?’ Cris’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. ‘It was hardly that.’ He turned to climb the stairs.

‘What was it, then?’ She reached out and touched his hand as it gripped the carved ball on top of the newel post.

For a moment she thought he would not answer. Then he twisted his hand to catch hers within it and lifted them, joined, to his lips. ‘A journey from reality, from the loss of a dream, from the acceptance of what is inevitable,’ he murmured against her fingers. ‘Perhaps that is the definition of a holiday.’ His breath was warm, the touch of his lips no more than the brush of a feather. His fingertips were against the pulse of her wrist and he must have felt the thunder of the blood, the surging response, the desire.

It was madness, a dangerous madness if it could be so powerful when ignited by such a light touch, such a gentle caress.
I want him and he would not say
no
if I came to his bed.
But how did one carry on an
affaire
, however brief, under the same small roof as two doting and observant aunts? And how could she risk it—her reputation...
my heart...
for a few moments of pleasure with a man who would be gone within days?

Behind her, from the window embrasure out of sight of where they stood in the hallway, she could hear her aunts discussing their latest order to be sent to the circulating library in Barnstaple. Innocent, safe pleasures. This was not innocent and not safe and suddenly she had no desire for either. Tamsyn reached up and slid her fingers into Cris’s hair, just above his nape, pulled down his head and lifted her face to his. One kiss, surely she could risk that?

Chapter Eight

H
is kiss was not tentative, nor respectful. Certainly it took no account of where they were. Cris turned from the stair, took her in his arms and swept her back against the front door, the length of his body pressed against hers, the thrust of his arousal blatant, thrilling. Tamsyn twisted and got her hands free so she could lock them around his head, the shape of his skull imprinted on her palms, the heavy silk of his hair caressing across her fingers.

Her mouth was open to him, his tongue forceful, demanding that she open more, let him taste her, explore her. She pulled back so she could nip at his lower lip, making him growl, low and thrilling, the sound reverberating from his chest to her breast, before she drove her own tongue into his mouth, refusing to allow him mastery. If this was to be nothing else, there would be equal desire, equal responsibility.

They broke apart, panting. Tamsyn wondered if she looked as stunned and wild as he did, with his hair tousled, his eyes dark. She reached behind her, turned the doorknob and staggered back on to the porch, pulling him with her. ‘Summer house.’

Without waiting to see if he was following her she ran across the lawn, round the corner of the dense shrubbery that sheltered one side of the garden, and into the little summer house that looked out over the beach. Cris followed her, the door banging closed behind him. Tamsyn collapsed on the bench, her knees failing her.

Cris stood with his back against the door as though glad of its support. ‘What in Hades was that?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been on the edge of an avalanche in the Alps and it was rather less violent. It was certainly less frightening.’ She realised that he was smiling. It transformed the austerity of his face, changed him from beautiful to real.

‘I thought a kiss would be...’
Nice? Do not be ridiculous.
‘I wanted to kiss you again.’

‘You will get no argument from me on that score.’ He still had not moved from the door.

‘I noticed.’ She could feel her lips twitching into an answering smile. It had not occurred to her that there might be anything amusing in giving in to this attack of desire. ‘That is all it can be, you realise that? Just a kiss. This is quite inappropriate.’

Cris’s smile deepened at the prudish word. ‘With so many other people around, perhaps. But lovers have always found ways and means to be together.’

‘We are not lovers.’ Tamsyn found she had lost the desire to smile.

‘Not yet.’ Cris pushed away from the door and went to sit at the other end of the bench, out of touching distance unless they both stretched out a hand. ‘There was something, there had to be, right from the start, in that moment of madness on the beach. I am not married, Tamsyn, and you are not an innocent. What is to stop us?’

Reputation, risk, prudence?
‘And you are not committed to anyone?’ she asked, wondering suddenly why such an attractive, eligible man should be unattached.

He did not answer her immediately and when she looked at his profile she found he had closed his eyes as though to veil his thoughts.

‘Cris?’ she prompted.

His eyes opened and when he turned his head to look at her the smile was on his lips alone. ‘No, I am not committed to anyone.’ He got up, a sudden release of energy like an uncoiling spring. She jumped. ‘You are correct. This is quite inappropriate. You might have been married, but that does not give me the right to treat you like one of the sophisticated London society widows. They know the game and how to play it and they move in circles where these things are understood.’ Cris opened the door and stepped out on to the daisy-spangled lawn. ‘Forgive me.’

By the time she had realised what he was doing and had reached the door, he was striding away towards the house. The front door closed firmly behind him. A succession of Jory’s riper curses ran through her mind.

Damn him! That was not about me, or at least, not entirely about me. There
is
someone and I made him think of her. Now you have got exactly what you told yourself you wanted, Tamsyn Perowne. You got your kiss and that was all. You are safe, respectable. And frustrated.

The tables had turned so fast she had been taken completely unaware. One moment she had been hesitant and he eager, the next she had pushed aside her qualms and he was backing away. She tried to make some sense of those past few hectic minutes. Cris had been a gentleman—once he had stopped kissing her like a ravening Viking pillager. She had said it would be inappropriate and he had agreed. And, just as she was telling herself that she should seize this opportunity and argue against herself, her question about other women had stopped him in his tracks. He had said there was no one else now, but she must have made him face a memory that hurt.

Tamsyn went down the slope of the lawn and took the steps to the foreshore. The sea had always helped her think, but now, as she watched the Atlantic waves come rolling in to end a thousand miles’ journey in a frill of harmless lace on the sand, she knew there was nothing to think about. She wanted Cris Defoe, beyond prudence and reason and despite knowing quite well that he would leave this place very soon, whatever she felt or wanted. That meant that she had a decision to make. Was she capable of seducing a man—and would it be right to do so?

* * *

‘Muscles paining you, sir? Would you like a massage?’ Collins got up from the window seat looking out to the track up towards Stibworthy and put down what looked like a book of German grammar.

‘No. Thank you.’ Cris bit back the oath. His fault, his temper, and no need to take it out on Collins. He would think about what had just happened later when he had his breathing under control and some blood had returned to his brain from where it was currently making itself felt. ‘I need paper and ink. Wax. And a seal.’

‘Not your own, of course, sir.’ Collins removed a key from his watch chain and opened the large writing box that sat on the dresser. ‘The plain seal?’ He laid a seal on the table in front of the window and set out paper and an ink stand with steel-nibbed pens, then struck a flint to light a candle. ‘Which colour wax, sir?’

‘Blue.’ Cris picked up the seal and rolled it between his fingers. His own seal ring, securely locked away, showed the de Feaux crest, a phoenix rising from flames, a sword in one clawed foot.
From Ash I Rise, In Fire I Conquer.
The crest was an ancient pun on the similarity in pronunciation between
feu—
fire—and
Feaux.
This version showed only the flames, but it was known to his friends.

‘Cipher, sir?’

He thought about it, then shook his head. ‘No. Can you see anyone in this household opening a guest’s correspondence?’

Gabriel Stone was in London, up to no good as usual, and perfectly placed to send Cris information about Franklin Holt, Viscount Chelford. Gabe might be Earl of Edenbridge, but he was also a gambler, a highly successful, ice-cold, card player, and he would know just what Chelford was about, whether he was in debt and any other scandal there was to be had.

Send whatever intelligence you can find—and especially anything about Chelford’s relationship with his aunt, Miss Holt, of this address, and his inheritance of her estate after her death.

He put down the pen and stared out of the window as he ran through the things he wanted Gabe to find out.

He wished he could ask him to send down a couple of burly Bow Street Runners, or better still, a couple of doormen from one of the tougher gambling hells, but they would stick out like daffodils in a coal cellar down here. Then his eyes focused on the stony track and he smiled. Of course, that would kill two birds with one stone. He dipped the pen again.

You recall that little incident in Bath and our two Irish friends? If you can locate them and send them here with their equipment, I have use of both their old trade and their willingness to use their fists.

All correspondence should be directed to Mr C. Defoe.

He folded and sealed the letter, addressed it to
The Earl of Edenbridge
, then folded it within a second sheet and addressed that to his solicitor in the City, sealing it for the second time. However scrupulous his hostesses might be about other people’s correspondence, there was no need to raise questions over letters to the aristocracy.

‘Thank you, Collins. If you take that down I am told someone will take it to the receiving office in the village. That will be all for the moment.’

Alone, he got up and prowled around the room as he finally allowed himself to think about Tamsyn and that kiss. It was like unravelling tangled string, sorting out what he felt, what he ought to feel, what she wanted—what was right. She was not an innocent, but neither was she experienced with men other than her husband, he could tell that. Whatever she had been doing since Jory Perowne’s death, Tamsyn had not been sharing the beds of any local gentlemen. This was a tiny, unsophisticated community where everyone knew everyone else’s business and where a reputation lost would be common currency within hours. If this...attraction...flirtation...madness...whatever it was, went any further, then he would have to be very careful indeed.

And what was he thinking of anyway? Part of his anatomy was sending him very clear signals indeed, but it had been months since he had lain with a woman, not since he had set eyes on Katerina. He could simply be suffering from an attack of lust, which was something very different from what he had felt for Katerina. To have even thought of another woman while he was seeing her every day had been impossible. But she was far away and unobtainable and always would be, and he, as he kept reminding himself, was not cut out for celibacy.

Cris sat on the window seat and stared at a clump of gorse. It was sentimental tosh to feel that kissing another woman was disloyal to Katerina. She had never been his, he had never been hers, they had never spoken the words he read in her gaze, that he felt in his heart.

But the desire he felt for Tamsyn was shaking his certainty about his feelings for Katerina. Was it love? He felt uncomfortable with the doubt. It had certainly been more than pure lust. But was desiring Tamsyn just a selfish need to lose himself in a passionate encounter that he would walk away from in a few days?

Perhaps he should tell her who he was. Cris examined the idea and realised he was enjoying the freedom too much. For the first time as an adult he had none of the burdens of his title on his shoulders, none of the demands or the expectations. He was just Cris, a man who was attracted to a woman and who saw the need to protect her from the danger that threatened them. It would do them no good to know who he was, only make them feel awkward.

The whole thing was academic, anyway. He had kissed Tamsyn as though he was about to rip off her clothing, there and then in the hallway. He had almost had her standing up against the door, like some drab in a back alley, and he had topped off a thoroughly unpolished performance by informing her that she was not from the sophisticated world he inhabited. If Tamsyn would give him the time of day next time they met, then it was more than he deserved.

Something moved on the road. Cris focused and saw it was Jason, a satchel slung on his shoulder, riding up the track. The mail was on its way. Now he just had to remind himself who he was, what he was, and somehow recapture the man he had been before that wild impulse had sent him off the road at Newark, driving across country into oblivion.

* * *

There was absolutely nothing like a pile of account books for setting a woman’s feet firmly on the ground. Or, in the case of the farm’s accounts, in the mire. Nothing was adding up this afternoon, not the price of oats, not the farrier’s bill, not even the egg money. Tamsyn gritted her teeth, turned over a sheet of paper covered in crossings-out and started again. All that was wrong with her, as she was very well aware, was that her brain was off with the fairies, her body was pulsing with desire and more than half her attention was focused on listening for footsteps on the stairs.

‘Letters, Mizz Tamsyn.’

She jumped, sending her pen in one direction, the account book in another and a large ink blot on to her page of calculations. ‘Jason, you startled me.’

‘Sorry, Mizz Tamsyn.’ He came into the room and emptied the contents of the satchel on to the table. ‘You were daydreaming, it looked like.’

‘Er...yes.’

Dreams of night, not of day. Of beds and rumpled sheets and mindless pleasure.
And impossible dreams. There had been a moment as she daydreamed that she had heard wedding bells. And that would never be. Her stomach cramped with remembered pain and she bit her lip before she could turn back to the waiting groom.

‘Thank you, Jason.’ She dabbed at the spreading blot, made it worse, screwed up the whole sheet in sudden exasperation and began to sift through the pile of post. Several newspapers, two days out of date, a notification from the circulating library that three novels she had asked for were now available. Several bills, including another from the farrier, an invitation to dine at the vicarage in a week’s time when the moon was full and the roads consequently less hazardous, and a letter with their solicitor’s seal.

Something about leases, or perhaps an answer to her query about buying that small warehouse in Barnstaple she’d had her eye on. The heavy paper, expensive, like Mr Pentire’s excellent services, crackled as she broke the seal and started to read.

‘What?’
The shriek hurt her throat, but that did not stop the next words being wrenched out. ‘The
swine.
The utter, unmitigated
swine
.’

There was a thunder of boot heels down the stairs, Aunt Izzy’s cry of, ‘Tamsyn? What is wrong?’, then the door flew open to reveal Cris with, of all things, a pistol in his hand.

‘What is it?’ He cast one searching look around the room, then strode in, jerked her out of the chair and into the curve of his arm. ‘Who was it? Where did they go?’

Aunt Izzy hurtled into the room, gave a cry at the sight of her niece in the clutches of a man holding a gun, and collapsed into the nearest chair. ‘What happened? Why do you have a gun?’