Lords of Disgrace

Bachelors for life!

Friends since school, brothers in arms, bachelors for life!

At least that’s what The Four Disgraces—

Alex Tempest, Grant Rivers, Cris de Feaux and Gabriel Stone—believe. But when they meet four feisty women who are more than a match for their wild ways these Lords are tempted to renounce bachelordom for good.

Don’t miss this dazzling new quartet by

Louise Allen

His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish

Already available

His Christmas Countess

Already available

The Many Sins of Cris de Feaux

Available now!

And don’t miss

The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone

Coming next month!

Author Note

When I started to tell Cris and Tamsyn’s story I had a very clear image of how it would begin and also just where it would be set—on the wild and rugged coast where North Devon and North Cornwall meet. I have known and loved this coastline, with its towering cliffs, secret coves and tales of smugglers, since I was a child.

All of the towns mentioned are real—as is Hartland Quay, where Cris’s adventure begins—but the villages are imaginary, although based on the places where I spent many happy hours. I also borrowed Hawker’s Hut on the cliffs at Morwenstow—possibly the National Trust’s smallest and most charming property—for Tamsyn’s secret hideaway. If you search online for images, they will give you a vivid picture of this lovely setting.

I do hope you will enjoy the story of how Cris de Feaux, the least likely of the Lords of Disgrace to lose his head and his heart, meets his match in one very independent Devon lady with a scandalous past.

The Many Sins
of Cris de Feaux
Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LOUISE ALLEN loves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in search of inspiration. Visit her at louiseallenregency.co.uk, @LouiseRegency and janeaustenslondon.com

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Contents

Cover

Lords of Disgrace

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Cris de Feaux was drowning. And he was angry. The realisation of both came with the slap of a wave of icy salt water in the face and he shook it out of his eyes, cursing, while he came to terms with the fact that he had swum out from the little cove without thinking, without stopping to do anything but shed his clothes on the rocks and plunge into the breakers.

It had felt good to cut through the surf out into deep water, to push his body hard while his mind became mercifully blank of anything except the co-ordination of arms and legs, the stretch of muscles, the power of a kick. It had felt good, for once in his life, not to consider consequences, not to plan with care and forethought. And now that indulgence was going to kill him.

Was that what he had wanted? Eyes wide with shock, Cris went under, into a watery blue-green world, and kicked up to the surface, spitting and furious. He had fallen in love, unsuitably, impossibly, against all sense and honour. He knew it could never be, he had walked away before any more damage could be done and now his aimless wanderings across England had brought him here, to the edge of North Devon and the ocean.

Which was about to kill him, unless he was very lucky indeed. No, he did not want to die, however much he ached for what could never be, but he had swum too far, beyond the limits of his strength and what he could ask of his hard-exercised horseman’s body.

Use your head, he snarled at himself. You got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out of it. You will not give up. I am not killing myself for love.

He studied the shore between sore, salt-crusted lids. High cliffs, toothed at their base with jagged surf-lashed rocks, mocked him, dared him to try to land and be dashed to bloody death. But there were little coves between the headlands, he knew that. The current was carrying him south-west along the line of the shore so he would go with it, conserve his strength until he saw a point to aim at. Even in those few minutes as he hung in the water it had already carried him onwards, but he dared not risk just lying there, a passive piece of flotsam on the flow. It might be the first day of June, but the sea was strength-sappingly cold. He could hardly feel his legs, except for the white-hot pain of over-extended muscles and tendons. His shoulders and arms felt no better.

The wind shifted, slapping the water into his face from a different angle. There. Above the nearest towering headland, a drift of something against the blue of the perfect sky. Smoke. Which meant a house, a beach or perhaps a jetty. Swim. Ignore the pain. Dig down to every last ounce of strength and then find some more. Whatever it was that eventually killed the fifth Marquess of Avenmore, it was not going to be a hopeless love and a lack of guts.

Time passed, became simply a blur of pain and effort. He was conscious, somewhere in the back of what was left of his consciousness, that he could not stay afloat much longer. He lifted his head, a lead weight, and saw land, close. A beach, breakers. It seemed the scent of wood smoke and wild garlic cut through the salt for a second. Not a mirage.

But that is. In the moment of clarity he thought he saw a woman, waist-deep in the water, thick brown hair curling loose on her shoulders, calling to him, ‘Hold on!’

Mermaid... And then his body gave up, his legs sank, he went under and staggered as his feet hit sand. Somehow he found the strength to stand and the mermaid was coming towards him, her hands held out. The water dragged at him, forcing his legs to move with the frustrating slowness of dream running. The sand shifted beneath his feet as the undertow from the retreating wave sucked at him, but he struggled on. One step towards her, then another and, staggering, four more.

She reached for him as he took one more lurching step and stumbled into her, his hands grasping her shoulders for balance. Under his numb hands her skin was hot, burning, her eyes were brown, like her hair. There were freckles on her nose and her lips were parted.

This was not a mermaid. This was a real, naked, woman. This was life and he was alive. He bent his head and kissed her, her mouth hot, his hands shaking as he pulled her against him.

She kissed him back, unresisting. There was the taste of woman and life and hope through the cold and the taste of salt and the hammering of the blood where his hands rested against her throat.

The wave broke against his back, pushing them both over. She scrabbled free, got to her feet and reached for him, but he was on his feet now, some last reserve of strength coming with that kiss and with hope. He put his arm around her waist and lifted her against him.

‘I do not require holding up—you do,’ she protested as they gained the hard sand of the beach, but he held on, stumbling across the sand, over stones he could not feel against his numbed soles. Then, when they reached the grass, his legs finally gave way, and he went down again, hardly conscious that he was falling on to rough grass and into oblivion.

* * *

Tamsyn stared down at the man at her feet, Adam-naked, pale, tall, beautifully muscled, his hair slicked tight to his head, his face a mask of exhaustion and sheer determination even in unconsciousness. A sea god, thrown out of his element.

You could not live on this coast for long without knowing what to do when someone was near drowned. Tamsyn did not hesitate, for all that her head was spinning and an inner voice was demanding to know what she thought she had been doing just then in his arms. She threw all the towels she had over the still body, then her cloak, dragged her shift over her head and set off at a run up the lane that sloped up past the front lawn of her aunts’ house on the left and the steep flank of Stib’s Head on the right, shouting for help.

‘Mizz Tamsyn?’ Johnny, the gardener, came out from the woodshed, dropping the armful of logs when he saw her. ‘What’s amiss?’

She clung to the gatepost, gasping for breath. ‘Get Michael and a hurdle. There’s a man down at the shore, half-drowned and freezing cold. Bring him back here and keep the cloak over him. Hurry!’

Her aunts’ cook just stared as she burst into the kitchen. ‘Get Mrs Tape, tell her we need blankets and hot bricks for the couch in the bathing room.’

She made herself stop in her headlong dash and open the door into the bathing room more slowly so as not to alarm her aunts. They were there already; Aunt Rosie, tight-lipped with pain, had just reached her armchair after the slow walk from her bedchamber, supported between Aunt Izzy and Harris, her maid. Steam was rising from the big tub, where she took the two long soaks a day that were the only remedy that eased her crippled joints. All three women looked up.

‘Tamsyn, dear, your clothes...’ Izzy began.

‘They are bringing a man up from the beach, he needs to get warm.’ Tamsyn plunged her hands into the water, winced. ‘Too hot, it will be agony, I’ll let some out and run in cold.’ She moved as she talked, yanking out the plug, turning on the tap. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Rosie, but I think he will die if we don’t do something drastic. I’ve never felt anyone so frozen.’ Except for his mouth. ‘I’ve sent Cook for Mrs Tape and blankets, we’ll have to use the couch in here for him.’

‘Yes, of course. Izzy, Harris, never mind me—help Miss Tamsyn.’ Rosie was all practicality as usual. ‘Hot bricks, do you think? And lots of towels. Warm them by the range and then they can go on the bed to wrap him in, you must keep replacing them as they cool.’ The urgency animated Rosie’s face, even as she frowned in anxious thought. ‘Poor creature, a fisherman, I suppose.’

‘I’m heating that beef broth.’ Cook bustled in and held the door open. ‘Here they come. There’s a lot of him, that’s for sure.’

Johnny and Michael had clearly sent for help, for along with them Jason, the groom, had one corner of the hurdle while Molly, the maid of all work, and skinny little Peter, the odd-job boy, struggled with the other.

Over six foot of solid, unconscious man was indeed a lot, Tamsyn realised, as they lowered their burden to the floor. She checked the water—warm, but not hot—and pulled the cloak and towels from him. Aunt Izzy gave a squeak, Cook sucked in her breath and Molly murmured, ‘Oh, my...’

‘For goodness’ sake, stop having the vapours, all of you. Haven’t you seen a naked man before?’ As she spoke she realised that the aunts probably hadn’t, even if Cook and Molly had quite active social lives and she... Never mind that now. ‘Lift him up and lower him into the water.’

That brought him round. Cursing, the stranger flailed at the men’s hands as he was lowered into the big tub until only his head was above the surface. ‘What the hell?’ His eyes opened, red-rimmed from the salt. ‘Damn, that hurts.’ Tamsyn saw him focus on her, then his hands moved convulsively under the water to cover himself.

‘Not you, too,’ she scolded, dropping a large towel strategically into the tub. ‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest that you are stark naked. No one is looking and we need to get you warm.’

‘I apologise for my language.’ The words came out in a mumble through chapped lips that set into a tight line as he closed his eyes.

‘That is of no account either. I know this is painful, but we need to warm you.’ A sharp nod was his only answer, so Tamsyn reached into the water, took his right hand and began to chafe it. ‘Molly, you rub his other hand. And, Harris, could you help Miss Pritchard back to her room? You had best go, too, Aunt Izzy.’

‘Nonsense, we will stay right here.’ Aunt Rosie was as brisk in her manner as she was slow in her movements. ‘Johnny, ride for Dr Tregarth.’

‘Don’t need a...’ Cris began.

‘You be quiet, young man. Do as you are told and stop wasting your energy.’

Across the tub Tamsyn met Molly’s amused gaze. She doubted whether the man under their hands, who must be about thirty, had been addressed like a stubborn schoolboy for quite some time. He was exceedingly handsome in a severe way and very blond now that his hair was drying patchily. She shuffled along on her knees, dipped her hands into the water and felt for his feet, which recoiled at the touch, bringing his knees above the water and a small tidal wave slopping over the edge.

‘I’m sorry if you are ticklish. Can you bear it if we add more hot water?’

‘Yes. And not ticklish,’ he muttered. ‘Taken by surprise.’

And aren’t you cross about that, my merman? He was not used to being at a disadvantage, Tamsyn suspected. Certainly he was unused to his body not being under his complete control. She stood up to reach for the hot tap, hoping the supply of hot water would last. As she leaned across him he opened his eyes and looked directly at her.

Tamsyn realised she was wearing nothing but a linen shift that clung to her wet body in a manner that was barely decent and was probably thoroughly unflattering into the bargain. And not only was the stranger looking at her, but the room was full of male staff and a lad who certainly shouldn’t be exposed to the sight of the youngest lady of the house in such a state. She topped up the hot water and picked up the cloak from the floor with an assumption of ease. ‘I’ll just go and put on something...warmer. Keep chafing his hands and feet. Oh, there you are, Mrs Tape—can you make up the couch as a bed and get it warm, please? I’ll be back in a minute.’ She fled.

It was a perfectly calm and collected exit, on the outside. But it was flight nevertheless. Her hands were shaking as she stripped off the shift, sponged the salt from her skin as rapidly as she could, heedless of drips and splashes. Her hair, curly and wayward at the best of times, was resistant to having the salty tangles combed out, but the pain as the comb snagged and pulled was a welcome distraction.

The stranger surely wouldn’t recall that they had kissed in that hot, open-mouthed exchange of life and...well, desire on her part, she might as well face it. She couldn’t pretend it had been shock and that she had been merely passive. She had kissed him back, she knew she had. Goodness only knew what had made him kiss her. Delirium, maybe?

He probably wouldn’t recall being dumped stark naked into a large vat of warm water with an interested audience of most of their household, male and female, either. He would be lucky to survive this without catching an inflammation of the lungs, and that was what she ought to be worrying about, not wondering what had come over her to feel a visceral, dizzying stab of lust for a total stranger.

He had a beautiful body and she had seen it, all of it, and she was not made of stone. She was, after all, the notorious Tamsyn Perowne of Barbary Combe House and she might as well live up to it, once in a while.

But that was quite enough scandal for one day. The gown she pulled from the clothes press was an ordinary workaday one with sleeves to the elbow and a neckline that touched her collarbone. She twisted up her plait, stabbed a few hairpins into it and topped it with a cap. There, perfect. She gave her reflection a brisk nod in the mirror. No one in history ever had inappropriate thoughts while wearing a cap, surely?

* * *

When she re-entered the bathing chamber the couch was heaped with pillows, towels and blankets. Mrs Tape was wrapping bricks in flannel and the aunts had retreated behind the screen. Molly was up to her elbows in the tub, rubbing the stranger’s feet with what Tamsyn decided was unnecessary enthusiasm.

‘That will do, Molly. I think we had best transfer the gentleman to the couch.’

‘We?’ It came out as a croak. He opened his eyes, narrow slits of winter-sea blue. Perhaps she had over-estimated the likelihood of him forgetting anything.

‘Jason and Michael, help the gentleman out and to the couch. Come, Molly, behind the screen with you.’ She shooed the maid along in front of her and grimaced at her aunts. Aunt Izzy was looking interested, although anything from the mating habits of snails to the making of damson jam interested her. Aunt Rosie wore an expression of mixed amusement and concern.

‘Did he say anything while I was changing?’ Tamsyn whispered while splashing, grunting and muffled curses marked the unseen progress from tub to couch.

‘Nothing,’ Aunt Izzy whispered back. ‘Except, when we added more hot water, some words in a foreign tongue we do not know. They sounded...forceful.’

‘Perhaps he is a foreigner.’

‘I do not think so.’ Aunt Rosie pushed her spectacles further up her nose. ‘He looks English to me and definitely a gentleman, not a fisherman, so goodness knows what he was doing in our bay. He reminds me of a very cross archangel. So very blond and severe.’

‘Are you acquainted with many archangels, dear?’ Aunt Izzy teased. ‘And are they all English?’

‘He is how I have always imagined them, although I have to confess, he does require a pair of wings, shimmering raiment and a fiery sword to complete the picture and I do not think he is looking quite at his best, just at the moment.’

‘Excuse me, ladies, but the gentleman is in bed now.’ Michael, their footman, stepped round the screen, his hands full of damp towels. ‘I brought one of my own nightshirts down for him. It’s not what he’s used to, I’ll be bound, but it’s a clean one.’

‘Excellent. Thank you, Michael. Now, if you could just drain the tub and refill it for Miss Pritchard I’ll set the screen around the bed and everyone can be private.’

‘All the hot water’s gone, Miss Tamsyn. Jason’s gone to stoke up the boiler.’

‘In that case, if you’ll help me through to the front parlour, Michael, I’ll rest in there.’ Aunt Rosie put one twisted hand on the footman’s arm. ‘I have no doubt our visitor would appreciate some peace and quiet.’

Tamsyn left Aunt Izzy and Molly to accompany Rosie on her painful way to the front of the house, straightened her cap, and, hopefully, her emotions, and went to see how her patient was.

He opened his eyes as she approached the bed. ‘Thank you.’ They had propped him up against the pillows, the covers pulled right up under his armpits, but his arms were free. His words were polite, but the blue eyes were furious.

‘Do not try to speak, it is obviously painful. Have they given you anything to drink yet? Just nod.’

He inclined his head and she saw the beaker on the edge of the tub and fetched it over, sniffed the contents and identified watered brandy. ‘Cook will bring you some broth when you feel a little stronger. Sip this. Can you hold it?’ He did not look like a man who was taking kindly to being treated like an invalid, whether he was one or not. His long fingers closed around the beaker, brushing hers. The touch was cold still, but not with the deadly chill his skin had held before.

Tamsyn went to fuss with the screen, pulling it around the bed so he wouldn’t feel she was staring at him if he fumbled with the drink. She would find some warm water in a moment so he could bathe his sore eyes.

The beaker was empty when she turned back and she took it from his hand, disconcerted to find those reddened eyes watching her with a curious intentness. Surely he does not remember that kiss? She willed away both the blush and the urge to press her lips to his again. ‘What is your name, sir? I am Tamsyn Perowne and the two other ladies are Miss Pritchard and Miss Isobel Holt.’

‘Cri... De...’

She leaned closer to catch the horse whisper. ‘Christopher Defoe? Are you a connection of the writer? I love Robinson Crusoe.’ He shook his head, a sharp, definitive denial. ‘No? Never mind. Whoever you are, you are very welcome here at Barbary Combe House. Rest a little and when the doctor has been in I will fetch the broth. In fact, that sounds like him now.’ The sound of raised voices in the entrance hall penetrated even the heavy door. ‘And someone else. What on earth is going on?’ She had barely reached the other side of the screen when the door opened and Dr Tregarth strode in, speaking angrily over his shoulder to the man who pushed through after him.

‘Don’t be a fool, Penwith. Of course this isn’t Jory Perowne. The man went over Barbary Head on to the rocks two years ago, right in front of six dragoons and the Revenue’s Riding Officer. He was dead before you could get a noose around his neck and he certainly hasn’t walked out of the sea now!’

‘That’s as may be, but he was a tricky bastard, was Perowne, and I wouldn’t put it past him to play some disappearing game. And I’m the magistrate for these parts and I’ll not take any chances.’

Squire Penwith. Will he never give up? Tamsyn stopped dead in front of the man, hands on hips, chin up so he could not see how much his words distressed her. Stupid, vindictive, blustering old goat. She managed not to actually say so. ‘Mr Penwith, if you can tell me how a man can go over a two-hundred-foot cliff on to rocks and survive the experience I would be most interested to hear.’ That glimpse of the shattered, limp body in the second before the waves took it... She hardened her voice against the shake that threatened it. ‘My husband was certainly a tricky bastard, but I have yet to hear he could fly.’

Chapter Two

So, his mermaid in a dowdy cap was a widow, was she? Cris winced as the cracked corner of his mouth kicked up in an involuntary smile at the sharp defiance in her voice, then the amusement faded as the other man, the magistrate, began to bluster at her.

‘He wasn’t the only tricky one in this household. I wouldn’t put it past the pair of you to have rigged up some conjuror’s illusion—and don’t open those big brown eyes at me, all innocent-like. I know the smuggling’s still going on, so who is running it if your husband’s dead. Eh? Tell me that.’

‘Smuggling’s been a way of life on this coast since man could paddle a raft, you foolish man.’ Cris liked the combination of logic and acid in the clear voice. ‘Long before Jory Perowne was born, and for long after, I’ll be bound.’ Mrs Perowne spoke as though to a somewhat stupid scholar.

‘Don’t you call me a fool, you—’

‘Penwith, you must not speak to Mrs Perowne in that intemperate manner.’ That was the doctor, he assumed.

The magistrate swore and Cris threw back the covers, swung his legs off the couch and realised he was clad only in a nightshirt that came to mid-thigh. With a grimace he draped the top sheet around himself, flung one end over his shoulder like a toga and stalked around the screen, which, mercifully, was sturdy enough not to fall over when he grabbed its frame for support after two strides.

His mermaid—Tamsyn—swung round. ‘Mr Defoe, kindly get back to your bed.’ She sounded completely exasperated, presumably with the entire male sex, him included. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

‘In a moment, ma’am.’ The two men stared at him. One, young, lanky, with a leather bag in his hand, lifted dark eyebrows at the sight of him. That must be the doctor. The other had the face of an irritable middle-aged schoolmaster complete with jowls and topped with an old-fashioned brown wig. ‘You, sir, used foul language in the presence of this lady. You will apologise and leave. I imagine even you do not require the doctor to explain the difference between me and a man two years dead?’ His voice might be hoarse and cracked, his eyes might be swollen, but he could still look down his nose with the hauteur of a marquess confronted with a muck heap when he wanted to.

Predictably the magistrate went red and made gobbling sounds. ‘You cannot speak to me like that, sir. I’ll see you—’

‘At dawn in some convenient field, your worship?’ He raised his left eyebrow in a manner that he knew was infuriatingly superior. His friends told him so often enough. The anger with his own stupidity still burned in his veins and dealing with this bully was as good a way to vent it as any.

‘Mr Penwith, my husband was five feet and ten inches tall, he had black hair and brown eyes and his right earlobe was missing. Now, as you can quite clearly see, Mr Defoe is taller, of completely different colouring and is in possession of both his ears in their entirety. Now, perhaps you would like to leave before you make even more of an ass of yourself?’ Tamsyn Perowne, pink in the face with the steam from the bath, her brown curls coming down beneath that ludicrous cap, was an unlikely Boudicca, but she was magnificent, none the less.

Cris locked his knees and hung on grimly until the magistrate banged out of the room, then let the doctor take his arm and help him back to the couch. Somehow his muscles had been replaced by wet flannel, his joints were being prodded with red-hot needles and he wanted nothing more than a bottle of brandy and a month’s sleep.

‘You stay that side of the screen, Mrs Perowne,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll just check your shipwrecked sailor for broken bones.’ He began to manipulate Cris’s legs, blandly unconcerned by the muttered curses he provoked.

‘Nothing is broken. I swam out too far, got caught by the current and almost drowned. That is all that is wrong with me. Idiocy, not shipwreck.’

‘Where did you go in?’ Tregarth pushed up one of Cris’s eyelids, then the other.

‘Hartland Quay.’

‘You swam from there and then got yourself out of the current and into this bay? By Neptune, sir, you’re a strong swimmer, I’ll say that for you.’ He produced a conical wooden instrument from his bag, pressed the wide end to Cris’s chest and applied his ear to the other. ‘Your lungs are clear. You’ll feel like a bag of unravelled knitting for a day or so, I’ve no doubt, and those muscles will give you hell from overwork, but there’s no harm done.’ He pulled up the bedding. ‘You may come round now, Mrs Perowne. Keep him in bed tomorrow, if you can. Feed him up, keep him warm, let him sleep and send for me if he throws a fever. Good day to you, Mr Defoe.’

‘I’m not—’ Not Mr Defoe. I’m Anthony Maxim Charles St Crispin de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore. With no calling card, no money—and no breeches, come to that, which left him precious little aristocratic dignity. Tamsyn, Mrs Perowne, had misheard his mumbled words. The family always used the French pronunciation of their name, but apparently that did not survive gargling with half the Atlantic.

The doctor had gone and Tamsyn was standing at the foot of the bed, hands crossed neatly at her waist, cap perched on her curls, looking for all the world as though butter would not melt in her mouth and not at all like a woman who would call a magistrate an ass or kiss a naked stranger in the surf. He could tell her that kiss might have saved his life, but he suspected that would not be welcome.

‘The broth is coming, Mr Defoe.’

Yes, he’d stay a commoner for a while, it was simpler and he had no intention of broadcasting his recklessness to the world. He nodded his thanks.

‘Where should we send to inform someone of your safety? I imagine your acquaintance will be very anxious.’ She took a tray from the cook and laid it across his thighs. ‘Try to swallow the broth slowly, it will soothe your throat as well as strengthen you.’

In his experience women tended to fuss at sickbeds and he had been braced against attempts to spoon-feed him. Mrs Perowne appeared to trust him to manage, despite the evidence of his shaking hand. His arm muscles felt as though he had been racked. ‘Traveller,’ he managed between mouthfuls. ‘My valet is at Hartland Quay with my carriage.’

‘And he can bring you some clothes.’ She caught his eye and smiled, a sudden, wicked little quirk of the lips that sent messages straight to his groin. One muscle still in full working order. ‘Magnificent as you look in a toga, sir, it is not a costume best suited to the Devon winds.’

Had he really kissed her in the sea, or was that a hallucination? No, it was real. He could conjure up the heat of her body pressed to his, the feminine softness and curves as their naked flesh met. He could remember, too, the heat of her mouth, open under his, the sweet glide of her tongue. Hell, that made him feel doubly guilty, firstly for forcing himself on a complete stranger and secondly for even thinking about anyone but Katerina. Who can never be mine. He focused on the guilt, a novel enough emotion, to prevent him thinking about that body, now covered in layers of sensible cotton.

‘You will stay in bed and rest, as the doctor said?’

Cris nodded. He had no desire to make a fool of himself, fetching his length on the floor in front of her when his legs gave out on him. Tomorrow he would be better. Tomorrow he might even be able to think rationally.

‘Good.’ She lifted the tray and he saw the strength in the slim arms, the curve of sleek feminine muscle where her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. She swam well enough to take to the sea by herself and he’d wager that she rode, too. ‘We know you are stubborn from the way you tried to get up the lane by yourself instead of waiting where I left you. I’ve just spoken to them and the lads said you were crawling.’

‘I was getting there. If I hadn’t been weakened by that...encounter in the sea, I could have walked.’ Even as he said it, he could have bitten his tongue. So much for apologising, something that Lord Avenmore rarely had to do. Apparently Mr Defoe was more apt to blunder than the marquess was. He certainly had an unexpectedly bawdy sense of humour.

‘An encounter, you call it?’ There was a definite spark in the brown eyes and the colour was up over her cheekbones. Indignation seemed to make those brown curls fight free of the cap, too. His one functioning muscle stirred again, complaining that it was in need of exercise. ‘That, you poor man, was the resuscitation of the half-drowned. We do it a lot in these parts. I’ll fetch you pen and paper.’

And that apparently dealt with the apology. Mrs Perowne was not in the common run of gentry ladies, it seemed. Nor did her late husband seem to have been the kind of man he would have expected to be the owner of this elegant old house, not if the local magistrate was after him with a noose and his widow referred to him as a tricky bastard. That clod of a squire had spoken with unfeeling bluntness about her husband’s death and yet she had stood up to him, covering her emotions with defiance and pride.

The puzzling Mrs Perowne returned with a writing slope under one arm and a small bowl in the other. ‘I’ll just bathe your eyes, they look exceedingly sore.’

Cris thought he probably looked an exceeding mess, all over. His hair had dried anyhow, his skin felt as though he’d been sandpapered and doubtless his eyes were both red and squinty. And he needed a shave. What his friends would say if they saw him now, he shuddered to think. Collins, when he arrived, would express himself even more strongly. He regarded the Marquess of Avenmore as a walking testimonial to his own skills as a valet and did not take kindly to seeing his master looking less than perfect.

‘If you would give me the bowl I will bathe them myself.’ He had his pride and being tended to while he looked like this did nothing for his filthy mood.

‘Very well.’ She set the writing slope on the chair beside the couch, handed him the bowl and dragged the screen around the bed. ‘My aunt, who suffers from severe arthritic pain, will be taking one of her regular hot soaks shortly. We will try not to disturb you.’

‘Mrs Perowne?’

She looked around the edge of the screen. ‘Mr Defoe?’

‘I am in your aunt’s bathing chamber, occupying her couch. I must remove myself to another room.’

‘If you do, you will agitate her. She is worried enough about you as it is.’ She smiled suddenly, a wide, unguarded smile, so unlike the carefully controlled expressions of the diplomatic ladies he had spent so much time with recently. ‘Rest here for the moment, control your misplaced chivalrous impulses and we will find you another chamber at some point.’

Misguided chivalrous impulses. Little cat. She was obviously unused to men who actually acted like gentlemen. Cris twisted the water out of the cloth in the basin and sponged his eyes until the worst of the stinging subsided, then put the bowl aside and reached for the writing slope. Beyond the screen people were moving about, water was pouring into the tub, steam rose. This might be the edge of the country and manners might be earthy, but they certainly possessed plumbing that surpassed that in any of his houses.

He focused on the letter to shut out the sounds of either Miss Prichard or Miss Holt being helped into the bath. Collins was rather more than a valet, more of a confidential assistant, and he could be relied upon to use his discretion.

...pay the reckoning and bring everything to...

‘Mrs Perowne, if I might trouble you for a moment?’

‘Sir?’ She was decidedly flushed from the steam now. Her pink cheeks and the damp tendrils of hair on her brow suited her.

He recalled her leaning over him to turn on the tap as he lay in the bath and forced his croak of a voice into indifferent politeness. ‘Could you tell me how I should direct my man to find this house?’

‘Barbary Combe House, Stibworthy. If he asks in the village, anyone will direct him.’

‘Thank you.’

Barbary Combe House, Stibworthy. Do not enquire in the village for Mr Defoe as I am not known there, having come by sea. Ensure you bring an appropriate vehicle.

C. Defoe

Collins would not fail to pick up on that. The interior of Cris’s travelling coach with its ingenious additions and luxurious upholstery might go unnoticed, but not if the crests on the door panels were left uncovered. It had caused enough of a stir at Hartland Quay to have a marquess descend on a waterside inn, but with any luck the gossip would be fairly localised.

He folded the letter, wrote the address and found a wafer in the box to seal it with, then forced himself to relax. The doctor’s advice had been sound, but despite it, when Collins arrived tomorrow he would be out of here and away from the curiously distracting Mrs Perowne. Back to London, to the normality he had fled from.

Eyes closed, he willed himself to sleep. The room was quiet now, with only the sounds of someone moving about as they tidied up. He was exhausted and yet his eyes would not stay closed. Cris stared at the ceiling. He could always sleep when he needed to, it was simply a matter of self-discipline.

He seemed to be somewhat short of any kind of control just at the moment. He hadn’t had enough focus to notice when he was in danger of drowning himself and he couldn’t even manage to fall flat on his face on a beach without kissing the local widow before he did so. And he was the man the government relied on to settle diplomatic contretemps discreetly, and, if necessary, unconventionally. Just now he wouldn’t trust himself to defuse an argument between two drovers in the local public house, let alone one between a brace of ambassadors over a vital treaty clause.

It had all begun when he had first set eyes on Katerina, Countess von Stadenburg, the wife of a Prussian diplomat at the Danish court. Tiny, blonde, blue-eyed, exquisite and intelligent. His perfect match. And she wanted him, too, he could see it in her eyes, in the almost imperceptible, perfectly controlled gestures she made when he was close, the brush of fingertips on his cuff, the touch of a shoe against his under the dinner table, the flutter of a fan. That one kiss.

But she was married and he was the representative of the British Crown. To have indulged in an affaire, even if Katerina had been willing, was not only to dishonour her, but to risk a diplomatic incident. And he did not want an affaire, he had wanted to marry her. Which was impossible. Honour, duty, respect gave him only one logical course of action. He concluded his business as fast as possible and then he left, taking his leave of her under the jealous eye of her husband as casually as though she was just another, barely noticed, diplomatic wife, a pretty adjunct to her husband’s social life.

Her control had been complete, her polite, formulaic responses perfect in their indifference. Only her eyes, dark with hurt and resignation, had told him the truth. He wished, for the thousandth time, he had not looked, had not seen, and that he could carry away with him only the memory of her cool, accented, voice. ‘You are leaving the court, Lord Avenmore? Do have a safe journey, my lord. Heinrich, come, we will be late for the start of the concert.’

Finally he felt his lids drift closed, sensed the soft sounds of the house blur and fade. Strangely the eyes that he imagined watching him, just as it all slipped away, were brown, not blue.

* * *

‘Michael, take this and give it to Jason, please. Tell him to ride to Hartland Quay at once and find Mr Defoe’s man.’

‘Is he sleeping, dear?’ Aunt Izzy looked up from the vase of flowers she was arranging.

‘Yes. So soundly I thought for an awful moment that he had stopped breathing.’ Tamsyn closed the drawing-room door behind her and went to straighten the bookstand that kept Aunt Rosie’s novel propped at just the right angle for her. ‘He must be exhausted. I am certain it was only sheer cussedness that kept him going. It would be exhausting enough to swim that distance when the sea is warm, but it is still so cold, and with that current it is a miracle he survived.’ She picked up the cut flower stems for Aunt Izzy, then twitched a leaf spray.

‘He must be very fit, which is not surprising with that physique. You are fidgeting, Tamsyn.’ Aunt Rosie looked up from her book. ‘Did wretched Squire Penwith upset you, talking about dear Jory like that?’

‘The man is a fool. Dear Jory was a tricky—er...devil, but even he could not fly.’ She flung herself down on the window seat with more energy than elegance. ‘Yes, the squire upset me, with his blustering and his utter lack of imagination. And, yes, I still hate to think about that afternoon.’ She stared out over the sloping lawn at the sea, placid and blue in the sunlight, hiding its wicked currents and sharp fangs under a mask of serenity. Jory had lived with its dangers and its beauty and he had chosen it to end his life, which meant she could never look at it the same way again.

She lifted her feet up and hugged her knees. ‘And it worries me that Mr Penwith is of no use to us whatsoever with the troubles we’ve been having. I cannot decide whether he thinks we should suffer as payment for my husband’s sins, regardless of what crimes are committed against us, or whether he simply hates me.’

‘Or whether he is a lazy fool,’ Aunt Rosie said tartly. ‘A hayrick on fire—must be small boys up to mischief. Our stock escaping through the hedge—must be the fault of the hedger. Every single lobster pot being empty for a week—must be the incompetence of our fishermen. Really, does he think we are idiots?’

‘He thinks we are women, Rosie dear,’ Aunt Izzy said, hacking at a blameless fern frond with her shears. ‘And not only that, women who choose to live without male protection, which proves we are either reckless or soft in the head.’

‘Perhaps he is being bribed to look the other way,’ Tamsyn said. She had not mentioned it before because she did not want to upset Aunt Izzy. Even now she did not mention a name.

‘Bribed? By my nephew Franklin, I presume.’ Izzy might be vague, but there was nothing amiss with her wits.

‘He does want us out of here.’

‘Out of here and into that poky dower house on his estate where we will be safe and where he can look after us as though we were a trio of children or lunatics. The boy’s a vulture, Isobel,’ Rosie snapped, her fierceness alarming in one so frail. ‘He wants to get his hands on this house, this estate. He wants Barbary.’

‘Well, he can’t have it. Papa left it to me for my lifetime and I’ve a good thirty years left in me, so he will have to learn patience.’ Izzy picked up the vase and placed it on the sideboard. ‘His foolish little games won’t scare me out.’

So long as they stay foolish little games, Tamsyn thought, even as she smiled approval of her aunt’s defiance. She rested her chin on her knees and let her gaze rest, unfocused, on the sea. But why would Lord Chelford trouble himself over this one small estate, other than through pique at not being left the entirety of his great-uncle’s holdings when he inherited the title? Franklin was spoilt and greedy and he would soon get tired of this game and go back to his life of leisure and pleasure in London.

It was strange, though, that he should have made that offer to rehouse his aunt and her companion now. After all, Aunt Izzy had inherited the life interest in the Barbary Combe estate, the house and the contents when her father, the previous Lord Chelford, died five years ago and she had lived there for ten years before that.

It must be a sudden whim. Or perhaps she was misjudging Franklin, perhaps his intentions were good and the series of mishaps just after Izzy had refused his offer were nothing but coincidence and bad luck. Or perhaps the moon’s made of green cheese.

Chapter Three

There was something in the quality of the soft sounds around his bed that was very familiar. Cris kept his eyes closed and inhaled a discreet hint of bay-rum cologne and leather polish. ‘Collins?’

‘Yes, sir?’ Typically there was no hesitation over the correct way to address him.

Cris opened his eyes and turned over on to his back. Collins did not so much as raise an eyebrow at the sudden violence of the swear word.

‘Muscle strain, sir?’

‘The pain you get when you over-exercise.’ Cris levered himself up against the pillow. ‘The kind that makes you think your muscles are full of ground glass.’

‘Massage,’ Collins pronounced, blandly ignoring the reaction that threat of torture provoked. ‘I have unpacked your possessions in an upstairs room and the bed is made up, sir. I thought you would wish to transfer there before nightfall. It is five o’clock and the ladies are all in the front room just at the moment.’

Collins was considerably more than a valet. He numbered code breaking, five languages and lethally accurate knife-throwing amongst his less public skills, although he was also more than capable of turning out the Marquess of Avenmore in a state of perfection for any social occasion.

Now he shook out Cris’s heavy silk banyan and waited patiently while, swearing under his breath, Cris got out of bed. Collins did, however, wince at the sight of the borrowed nightshirt.

‘I’ve already been carried through the house and dumped in the bath stark naked in front of every female in the place.’ Cris eased his arms into the sleeves of the robe and allowed Collins to tie the sash. ‘I thought it courteous to cover myself.’ The more he thought about it, the more embarrassing it became. He had no reticence about his own body, but being dropped nude and dripping like a half-stunned fish, in front of a gaggle of single ladies was...not good form.

The other man muttered something about stable doors and bolted horses and dropped a pair of backless leather slippers on the floor for him to shuffle his feet into.

‘I feel as though I’m a hundred and four,’ Cris grumbled as he made his way across to the door.

‘If you came ashore here, I would suggest that you had not been swimming like a centenarian.’ Collins opened the door and tactfully did not offer his arm. ‘Top of the stairs, first on the right, sir.’

‘I was swimming like a damn fool, I know that.’ Cris walked straight up the stairs without stopping. Swearing in Russian certainly helped. ‘You must have assumed I had drowned.’

‘I saw no signs of a struggle on the beach when I found your clothes, sir.’ Collins followed him into the bedchamber and shut the door. ‘I therefore concluded you had entered the sea of your own volition. I confess to a degree of anxiety, especially as you had gone out so early and I had not thought to look for you for some time. I questioned the local fishermen, but they had seen nothing. They did, however, inform me of the direction of the currents and I was about to ride along the clifftops in the hope of sighting you when the message arrived.’

‘I was distracted.’ Cris ignored the tactful murmur of Quite, sir. However discreet he had been, and, in fact, there was nothing to be discreet about, it was close to impossible to keep secrets from Collins. Ominously, the bed was covered with towels and the man was pouring oil into his palm. With grim resignation Cris stripped off and lay face down. ‘If you could stop short of actually making me scream I would be obliged. There are ladies around.’

Collins took hold of his right calf and started doing hideous things to the muscles with his thumbs. ‘Yes, sir. An interesting household.’

‘Mrs Perowne is the widow of a man who leapt off a cliff rather than be arrested and hanged for smuggling and associated crimes.’

‘Indeed, sir? Very novel. If you could just bend your knee... Miss Holt, the owner, seems a kindly lady.’

‘Is she the owner? I assumed Mrs Perowne was.’ Brown eyes, hot, sweet mouth, the promise of oblivion for a while. He stirred, uncomfortably aware of how arousing that thought was. ‘Ow! Damn it, man—are you attempting to plait those muscles?’

‘No, to unplait them, sir.’ Collins moved to the other leg. ‘Miss Holt welcomed me to her home. That was how she worded it.’

A ruthless massage was certainly an effective antidote to inappropriate erotic thoughts that made him feel unfaithful to Katerina. Which was a pointless emotion. An indulgence he was not going to wallow in, making himself feel like some tragic victim. They had not been lovers, they had not even spoken of that feeling between them, let alone exchanged protestations of love. There had just been those silent exchanges amidst crowds of others and that one, snatched, burning kiss when they had found themselves alone, passing in a corridor at the Danish royal palace. No words, no hesitation, only her body trembling between his hands, only her mouth sealed to his, her hands on his shoulders, and then her little sob as they tore themselves apart and, without a word, turned and walked away.

It was a relationship that could never be, not without the sacrifice of her reputation, his honour. Cris set his jaw, as much against the pain in his heart as the agony in his overstretched joints. He was a man, he was not going to become a monk because of how he felt for an unattainable woman. Next season he must find himself a bride, get married, assume the responsibilities of his title. He would be faithful to his wife, but not to a phantom—that way lay madness.

Tamsyn Perowne had kissed him back. He smiled into the pillow. It had probably been shock. Doubtless she would box his ears if he took any further liberties. Any fantasies about a willing widow to make him forget his ghosts were just that, fantasies. She was a respectable lady in a small community, not some society sophisticate. He’d be gone tomorrow, out of her life.

There was a tap of knuckles on wood, the creak of hinges and a sudden flap of linen as Collins swirled the sheet over his prone body.

* * *

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, I had assumed Mr Defoe would be in bed by now, not...’ Tamsyn put down the tray on the small table in the window embrasure and tried to forget the brief glimpse of elegant, sharp-boned bare feet as the sheet had settled over the man on the bed. She had seen all of him today, in the sea, in the bath, so what was there to discomfort her so in one pair of bare feet?

‘I have brought some more broth.’ Long toes, high arches, the line of the tendon at his heel... She was prattling now, looking anywhere but at the bed. But it was a small room and a big bed and there wasn’t anywhere else to look, except at the ceiling or the fireplace or the soberly dressed man who stood beside the bed in his shirtsleeves, hands glistening with oil. ‘It isn’t much, and dinner will not be long, but the doctor said to keep his strength up and it will help Mr Defoe’s throat.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ the valet said. ‘I will see that Mr Defoe drinks the soup while it is hot.’

‘Mr Defoe is present, and conscious, and capable of speech, Collins.’ The husky voice from the bed brought her head round with a jerk. His eyes were closed, his head resting on his crossed arms, his expression as austere as that of an effigy on a tomb.

‘Are you warm enough? Perhaps I should light the fire.’ She moved without thinking, touched her fingers to the exposed six inches of shoulder above the sheet, just as she would if it had been one of the aunts in the bed. But this was not one of the aunts and his eyes opened, heavy-lidded, watchful, and she did not seem able to move her fingers from the smooth, chill, skin. When they had kissed, those beautiful, unreadable blue eyes had been open, too. Now she tried not to show any recollection of that moment.

‘Yes, I will light the fire.’ The words came out in a coherent sentence, which was a surprise. Her hand was still refusing to obey her. ‘You seem a trifle cool.’

‘Cool? You think so?’ The question had a mocking edge that seemed directed more at himself than at her.

‘I will deal with the fire, ma’am.’ The manservant’s words jerked her back into some sort of reality, mercifully before her hand could trail down below the edge of the sheet.

‘Thank you.’ Tamsyn twitched the cover up over Mr Defoe’s shoulders. ‘I’ll just...’ The blue eyes were still open, still watching her. ‘You should drink that soup while it is hot.’

She retreated with what dignity she could muster and did her best to close the door firmly, but quietly, behind her and not bang it shut and run. What was the matter with her? He was an attractive man. A very attractive man, and she had seen the whole of him, so was in an excellent position to judge, and she had been foolish enough to kiss him and she had saved his life. No, probably not. He was determined enough, and strong enough, to have kept going up the lane if he’d had to. He would have walked in through the kitchen door, in all his naked glory—and that would have made for a nasty accident if Cook had her hands full of something hot at the time. The thought made her smile.

* * *

‘How is Mr Defoe, dear?’ asked Aunt Izzy. ‘You look very cheerful.’

‘Alive, a little warmer and, I suspect, in considerable pain, but his manservant seems highly competent and I am sure he is not going to succumb to a fever.’

‘That is good news. I suppose we may rely on his man to contact his wife, let her know he is safe.’

‘His what?’

‘Wife.’ Aunt Izzy stopped with her hand on the door into the drawing room.

‘Whose wife?’

‘Mr Defoe’s. He is more likely to be married than not, don’t you think? He is very personable, I am sure he is most respectable when he has some clothes on and, if he can afford such a superior manservant, he is obviously in funds.’ She cocked her head on one side, thinking. ‘And he is probably thirty, wouldn’t you say?’

‘About that, yes. Not more.’ His body was that of a fit young man, but there was something about him that spoke of maturity and responsibility. Doubtless marriage would give him that. It had not made Jory any more dependable, let alone respectable, but the man had been wild from a boy and his sense of duty and accountability was not one that most decent men would recognise.

She had no desire to smile now, which was only right and proper. A woman might look at an attractive man and allow her imagination to wander a little...a lot. But a respectable woman did not look at a married man and think anything at all, nor see him as anything other than a fellow human being in need of succour.

‘Mizz Tamsyn, is it convenient for you to review the list of linen for the order I was going to send off tomorrow?’ She looked up to find Mrs Tape at the door, inventory in hand. ‘Only you said you wanted to look it over it with me, but if you’re busy I can leave it.’

‘Certainly. I will come now, Mrs Tape.’ She turned and followed the housekeeper. Linen cupboards full of darned sheets were exactly what she should be concentrating on. And then the accounts and a decision about which of the sheep to send to market would keep her busy until dinner time.

All the humdrum duties of everyday life for an almost respectable country widow who should be very grateful for a calm, uneventful life.

* * *

‘Do you think Mr Defoe will find our dinner time unfashionably early?’ Aunt Izzy sipped her evening glass of sherry and fixed her gaze on Tamsyn.

‘I am sure I do not know. I suppose seven o’clock is neither an old-fashioned country hour nor a fashionably late town one. But as he is either asleep, or will be having his meal on a tray at his bedside, I do not think we need concern ourselves too much with whether his modish sensibilities are likely to be offended.’

‘Mr Defoe strikes me as an adaptable man,’ Aunt Rosie remarked. ‘Although how I can tell that from the brief glimpses I have had of him—’

‘Excuse me, Miss Holt.’ It was Jason, hat in hand, at the drawing-room door. ‘Only there’s a message from Willie Tremayne—a dozen of the sheep have gone over the cliff at Striding’s Cove.’

‘A dozen?’ Tamsyn realised she was on her feet, halfway across the room. ‘How can that be? The pastures are all fenced, Willie was with them, wasn’t he? Is he all right?’

‘Aye, Willie’s safe enough, though by all accounts he’s proper upset. A rogue dog got in with them and the hurdle was broken down in the far corner, though the lad Willie sent says he’s no idea how that happened, because it was all right and tight yesterday.’

‘Whose dog?’ Tamsyn yanked at the bell pull. ‘There aren’t any around these parts that aren’t chained or are working dogs, good with stock.’

‘Don’t rightly know, Mizz Tamsyn. The lad says Willie shot it and it doesn’t seem to have been mad, by all accounts. Not frothing at the mouth nor anything like that. Just vicious.’

‘Oh, Michael, there you are. Find Molly, tell her to put out my riding habit and boots. Jason, saddle my mare.’

‘I don’t think there’s rightly anything you can do, Mizz Tamsyn, not at this time in the evening. Some of the men from the village helped Willie barricade the fence and one of the boats has gone down to the foot of the cliffs to see if there’s anything to salvage.’ Jason shrugged. ‘By the time you get there it’ll all be done.’ He looked past her to the fireside and lowered his voice. ‘I think the ladies are a mite upset, perhaps you’d be best biding here. I’ll send the lad back with the message that you’ll be along in the morning, shall I?’

She wanted to go, to stand on the clifftop and rage, but it would achieve nothing. She had to think. ‘Yes, do that if you please, Jason.’

When she turned back into the room she was glad she had listened to him. Aunt Izzy was pale, a lace handkerchief pressed to her lips. Rosie was white-faced also, but hers was the pallor of anger. ‘That was no accident. That was Chelford up to his nasty tricks again. Izzy, that boy is becoming a serious nuisance.’

‘He is no boy,’ Tamsyn snapped. ‘He is thirty years old with an over-developed sense of what is owed to his consequence and no scruples about the methods he uses to get what he wants. If this is down to him, then he is becoming more than a nuisance. I think he is becoming dangerous.’

‘Who is becoming dangerous, if I might ask?’

Mr Defoe stood in the doorway, dressed, shaved and very much awake. His eyes were fully open, the flexible voice had lost almost all of the painful huskiness, and the long, lean body was clad in what she could only assume was fashionable evening wear for a dinner on the wilder coasts of Devon—slim-fitting pantaloons, a swallowtail coat, immaculate white linen and a neckcloth of intricate folds fixed with a simple sapphire pin that matched the subtle embroidery of his waistcoat.

‘What are you doing out of bed. Mr Defoe? The doctor said you should rest and not get up until tomorrow.’ Tamsyn knew she was staring, which did not help her find any sort of poise. And, faced with this man, she discovered that she wanted poise above everything.

‘I am warm, rested and I need to keep my muscles moving,’ he said mildly as he moved past her into the room. ‘Good evening, Miss Holt, Miss Pritchard. Thank you for the invitation to dine with you.’

Invitation? What invitation? One glance at them had Tamsyn seething inwardly. They had invited him without telling her, for some nefarious reason of their own. They should have left the poor man to sleep. She eyed the poor man as he made his way slowly, but steadily, to the fireside and made his elegant bow to the aunts.

Predictably Aunt Izzy beamed at him and Aunt Rosie sent him a shrewd, slanting smile. ‘Do sit down, Mr Defoe. I can well appreciate your desire to leave your room. Tamsyn, dear, perhaps Mr Defoe would care for a glass of sherry or Madeira?’

‘Thank you, sherry would be very welcome.’

Tamsyn poured the rich brown wine into one of Aunt Izzy’s best glasses. At least their tableware would not disgrace them. The house was full of small treasures that Izzy treated with casual enjoyment. She was as likely to put wildflowers into the exquisite glasses as fine wine and, if one of the others protested, she would shrug and say, Oh, Papa let me take all sorts of things down here. I’m sure none of them are very valuable and I like to use nice objects.

Mr Defoe stood beside the wing chair, waiting until Tamsyn had completed her task. ‘Thank you.’ He took the glass, then when she perched on the sofa next to Izzy he sat down with grace, and, to an observant eye, some caution. She suspected his overstretched muscles were giving him hell and he was more exhausted than he would allow himself to show. His features were naturally fine cut, she guessed, but even allowing for that, she detected strain hidden by force of will.

‘Again, I have to ask you—who is dangerous? I apologise for my inadvertent eavesdropping, but having heard, I do not know how to ignore the fact that you seem to be in need of protection.’

In the silence that fell the three women eyed each other, then Tamsyn said, ‘A rogue dog chased some of our flock of Devon Longwools over the cliff.’

‘And moved a hurdle, I gather.’ He rotated the glass between his fingertips, his attention apparently on the wine. ‘A talented hound.’

He had sharp ears, or he had lingered on the stairs, listening. Probably both. ‘That must be coincidence and it is simply a sorry chapter of accidents,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Tell me, Mr Defoe, do you come from an agricultural area?’

‘I own some land,’ he conceded. The amusement in his eyes was, she supposed, for her heavy-handed attempt at steering the subject away from the sheep. ‘But I do not have sheep. Arable, cattle and horses in the south. This must be challenging country for agriculture, so close to the sea and the wild weather.’

‘Everyone mixes farming and fishing,’ Aunt Rosie said. ‘And we have land that is much more sheltered than the sheep pastures on top of the cliffs, so we keep some dairy cattle and grow our own wheat and hay.’ Aunt Izzy opened her mouth as though to bewail the burnt hayricks again, then closed her lips tight at the look from Rosie. ‘We own some of the fishing boats that operate out of Stib’s Landing, which is the next, much larger cove, just around Barbary Head to the south.’

‘A complex business, but no doubt you have a competent farm manager. I am often away, so I rely heavily on mine.’

‘Oh, no, dear Tamsyn does it all,’ Izzy said cheerfully. Tamsyn wondered why Rosie rolled her eyes at her—it was, after all, only the truth.

‘I have to earn my keep,’ she said with a smile. ‘And I like to keep busy. Are you travelling for pleasure, Mr Defoe? We are beginning to quite rival the south-coast resorts in this part of the world. Ilfracombe, for example, is positively fashionable.’

‘Perfect for sea bathing,’ Izzy said vaguely, then blushed. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean...’

‘I am sure I would have done much better with a genteel bathing machine—I might have remembered to swim back when my time was up and not go ploughing off into the ocean while I thought of other things.’ He smiled, but there was a bitter twist to it.

‘Is that what you were doing? I did wonder, for the beach—if you can call it that—at Hartland Quay is hardly the kind of place you find people taking the saltwater cure.’ Not, that Mr Defoe needed curing of anything, Tamsyn considered. He looked as though he would be indecently healthy, once rested.

‘I was seized with an attack of acute boredom with the Great North Road, down which I was travelling, so, when I got to Newark, I turned south-west and just kept going, looking for somewhere completely wild and unspoilt.’

‘And then attempted to swim to America?’ What on earth prompted a man to strip off all his clothes, plunge into a cold sea and swim out so far that the current took him?

‘I needed the exercise and I wanted to clear my mind. I certainly achieved the first, if not the second.’ He stopped turning the glass between his fingers and took a long sip. ‘This is very fine wine, I commend you on your supplier.’

‘Probably smuggled,’ Rosie said, accepting the abrupt change of subject. ‘Things turn up on the doorstep. I suppose the correct thing to do is to knock a hole in the cask and drain it away, but that seems a wanton waste and one can hardly turn up at the excise office to pay duty without very awkward questions being asked.’

‘There is much smuggling hereabouts?’ Mr Defoe took another appreciative sip.

‘It is the other main source of income,’ Izzy, incorrigibly chatty and enthusiastic, confided. ‘And of course dear Jory led the gang around here.’

‘Jory?’

‘My late husband,’ Tamsyn said it reluctantly.

‘Such a dear boy. I took him in when he was just a lad, he came from over the border in Cornwall, but his father found him...difficult and he ran away from home.’

‘Dear Isobel is a great collector of lost lambs,’ Rosie said drily.

‘Such as me.’ Even as she said it Tamsyn knew it sounded bitter and that had never been how she felt. She managed to lighten her voice as she added, ‘My mother was Aunt Isobel’s cousin and when she died when I was ten I came to live with her. Jory arrived the next year.’

‘How romantic. Childhood sweethearts.’ The word romantic emerged like a word barely understood in a foreign language.

‘I married my best friend,’ Tamsyn said stiffly. She was not going to elaborate on that one jot and have yet another person wonder why on earth she had married that scapegrace Jory Perowne when she could have had the eligible Franklin Holt, Viscount Chelford.

‘And speaking of marriage,’ Aunt Izzy said with her usual blithe disregard for atmosphere, ‘has your manservant notified your family of your whereabouts? Because, if not, the carrier’s wagon will be leaving the village at nine tomorrow morning and will take letters into the Barnstaple receiving office.’

‘Thank you, ma’am, but there is no one expecting my return. Now I have set Collins’s mind at rest, my conscience can be clear on that front.’

‘Excellent,’ Tamsyn said briskly. It was nothing of the kind. Either he had a wife he could leave in ignorance with impunity, or he did not have one, and she would very much like to know which it was. Not that she was going to explore why she was so curious. ‘Now, tell me, Mr Defoe, are you able to eat rabbit? I do hope you do not despise it, for we have a glut of the little menaces and I feel certain it will feature in tonight’s dinner.’

Chapter Four

‘What have you gleaned from your flirtation with Cook?’ Cris asked as Collins took his discarded coat. The bed was looking devilishly tempting so he sat down on a hard upright chair instead and bent to take off his shoes. The doctor had been quite right, damn him. He should have stayed in bed for the whole of the day and not tried to get up until tomorrow, but everything in him rebelled against succumbing to weakness.

‘Flirtation, sir? The lady is amiable enough, but her charms are rather on the mature side for my taste.’ Cris lifted his head to glare at him and he relented. ‘Cook, and Molly the maid, are both all of a flutter over a personable gentleman landing on Mrs Perowne’s doorstep, as it were. That lady is the main force in the household, that’s for certain, although Miss Holt owns the property. Very active and well liked in the local community is Mrs Perowne, even though she married the local, how shall I put it—?’

‘Bad boy?’ Cris enquired drily as he stood up and began to unbutton his waistcoat, resisting the temptation to pitch face down on the bed and go to sleep. It had been a long, long day.

‘Precisely, sir. A charismatic young man, by all account, and a complete scoundrel, reading between the lines. But a sort of protégé of the two older ladies, who seem to have regarded him as a lovable rogue.’

‘A substitute son, perhaps?’

‘I wondered if that was the case.’ Collins began to turn down the bed. ‘And Molly did say something about it being a good thing he married Miss Tamsyn because otherwise that little toad Franklin Holt would have pestered her to distraction. Which I thought interesting, but Cook soon silenced Molly on that topic.’

‘Franklin Holt? He is Viscount Chelford, I believe. I think I have seen him around. About my age, black hair, dark eyes, thinks a lot of himself.’ Cris put his sapphire stickpin on the dresser and unwound his neckcloth. ‘A gamester. I have no knowledge about his amphibious qualities.’

‘That is the man, sir.’ Collins’s knowledge of the peerage was encyclopedic and almost as good as his comprehension of the underworld. ‘He has a reputation as someone who plunges deep in all matters of sport and play and he is Miss Holt’s nephew. He inherited her father’s lands and titles.’

‘And he was annoying Miss Tamsyn, was he?’ And was more than annoying her now, by the sound of it. But why the ladies should imagine he was responsible for sending their sheep over a cliff, he could not imagine.

Cris pulled off his shirt, shed his trousers and sank gratefully into the enfolding goose-feather bed. ‘You know, Collins, I think I may have overdone things this evening. I feel extraordinarily weak suddenly.’

‘That is very worrying, sir.’ The other man’s face was perfectly expressionless. ‘I fear you may have to presume on Miss Holt’s hospitality for several days in that case. I would diagnose a severely pulled muscle in your back and a possible threat to your weak chest.’

Cris, who could not recall ever having had a wheeze, let alone a bad chest, tried out a pathetic cough. ‘I do fear that travelling would be unwise, but I am reluctant to impose further upon the ladies.’

‘I understand your scruples, sir. I will find a cane so you may hobble more comfortably. However, it will be agony for you to travel over these roads with such an injury and I confess myself most anxious that you might insist on doing so. I will probably be so concerned that I will let my tongue run away with me and say so in front of the servants.’

Cris closed his eyes. ‘Thank you, Collins. You know, you almost convince me of how weak I am. I am certain that if you confide your fears to Cook the intelligence will reach Miss Holt before the morning.’

‘Good night, sir.’ The door closed softly behind the valet and when Cris opened his eyes the room was dark. He smiled, thinking, not for the first time, that it was a good thing that Collins chose to employ his dubious talents on the side of the government and law and order.

Correct behaviour would be to take himself off the next morning, relieving his kind hostesses of the presence of a strange man in their house. But something was wrong her. Tamsyn Perowne was tense, the vague and cheerful Miss Holt was hiding anxiety and the much sharper Miss Pritchard was on the point of direct accusations. But why would they think that Chelford was behind the agricultural slaughter? The man would have to be deranged and, although Cris had seen nothing in their brief encounters to like about the viscount, neither had he any reason to think him insane.

It was a mystery and Cris liked mysteries. What was more, there were three ladies in distress, who had, between them, possibly saved his life. He owed them his assistance. If he was searching for something to take his mind off love lost in the past, and a marriage of duty in the future, then surely this was it? There was, after all, nothing else he felt like doing.

* * *

Come the morning Cris was not certain that he needed any acting skills to convince his hostesses that he was unable to travel. His exhausted muscles, eased the day before by the hot bath and Collins’s manipulation, had stiffened overnight into red-hot agony. After another painful massage session he swore his way out of bed and through the process of dressing. He negotiated the stairs with the assistance of the cane Collins had produced from somewhere and had no trouble sounding irritable when he and the other man took up their carefully calculated positions in the hall in order to have a sotto voce argument. He pitched both his voice and his tone to tempt even the best-behaved person to approach the other side of the door to listen to what was going on.

‘Of course we are going to leave after breakfast. How many more times do I have to tell you, Collins? I cannot presume upon the hospitality of three single ladies in this way.’

‘But, sir, with the risk of your bronchitis returning, I cannot like it,’ Collins protested. ‘And the pain to your back with the jolting over these roads—why, you might be incapacitated for weeks afterwards.’

‘That does not matter. I am sure I can find a halfway acceptable inn soon enough.’

‘In this area? And we do not have our own sheets with us, sir!’ Collins’s dismay was so well-acted that Cris was hard put to it not to laugh. ‘Please, I beg you to reconsider.’

‘No, my mind is made up. I am going—’

‘Nowhere, Mr Defoe.’ The door to the drawing room opened to reveal Mrs Perowne, her ridiculous cap slightly askew as it slid from the pins skewering it to her brown hair. Her hands were on her hips, those lush lips firmly compressed.

The thought intruded that he would like to see them firmly compressed around— No.

His thoughts could not have been visible on his face, given that she did not slap it. ‘The doctor said you were to stay in bed yesterday and you ignored him, so no wonder you are not feeling quite the thing this morning. If you have a tendency to bronchitis it is completely foolish to risk aggravating it and what is this about a painful back?’

Cris discovered that he did not like to be thought of as weak, or an invalid, or, for that matter, prone to bronchitis, which should be of no importance whatsoever beside the necessity of convincing Mrs Perowne that he should stay put in this house. His pride was, he realised, thoroughly affronted. That was absurd—was he so insecure that he needed to show off his strength in front of some country widow? ‘The merest twinge, and Collins exaggerates. It is only that I had a severe cold last winter.’

‘Oh, sir.’ The reproach in Collins’s voice would have not been out of place in a Drury Lane melodrama. ‘After what the doctor said last year. Madam, I could tell you tales—’

‘But not if you wish to remain in my employ,’ Cris snapped and they both turned reproachful, anxious looks on him.

‘Mr Defoe, please, I implore you to stay. My aunts would worry so if you left before you were quite recovered, and besides, we are most grateful for your company.’ There was something in the warm brown eyes that was certainly not pity for an invalid, a flicker of recognition of him as a man that touched his wounded pride and soothed it, even as he told himself not to be such a coxcomb as to set any store by what a virtual stranger thought of him. Before now he had played whatever role his duties as a not-quite-official diplomat required and it had never given him the slightest qualm to appear over-cautious, or indiscreet, or naïve, in some foreign court. He knew he was none of those things, so that was all that mattered.

But this woman, who should mean nothing to him, had him wanting to parade his courage and his endurance and his fitness like some preening peacock flaunting his tail in front of his mate. He swallowed what was left of his pride. ‘If it would not be an imposition, Mrs Perowne, I confess I would be grateful for a few days’ respite.’

‘Excellent. My aunts will be very relieved to hear it.’

‘They are not within earshot, then?’ he enquired, perversely wanting to provoke her.

He was rewarded with the tinge of colour that stained her cheekbones. ‘You reprove me for eavesdropping, Mr Defoe? I plead guilty to it, but I was concerned for you and suspected you would attempt to leave today, however you felt.’

Now he felt guilty on top of everything else and it was an unfamiliar emotion. He did not do things that offended his own sense of honour, therefore there was never anything to feel guilty about. ‘I apologise, Mrs Perowne. That was ungracious of me when you show such concern for an uninvited guest.’

‘You are forgiven, and to show to what extent, let me lead you through to the breakfast room and you may tell me what you think of our own sausages and bacon.’

Cris, ignoring Collins’s faint smile, which, in a lesser man, would have been a smirk, followed her into a sunny room with yellow chintz curtains and a view down the sloping lawn to the sea. ‘Should we not wait for your aunts?’

‘They always breakfast in their room.’ Mrs Perowne gestured to a seat and sat opposite. The centre of the table had platters of bread and ham, a bowl of butter and a covered dish. ‘Let me serve you, you will not want to be stretching to lift dishes.’ As she spoke she raised the dome and a tantalising aroma of bacon and sausage wafted out.

‘Thank you.’ He meekly accepted a laden plate and tried to work out the enigma that was Mrs Tamsyn Perowne. She was well spoken, confident, competent and a lady, even if she was decidedly out of the ordinary. She was distantly related to a viscount, but she had married a local man who had died one leap ahead of the noose.

‘That is a charming portrait on the wall behind you,’ he remarked. ‘Your aunts do not resemble each other greatly. Are they your mother’s relations or your father’s, if I might ask?’

‘Aunt Isobel is my mother’s cousin. Aunt Rosie is not a relation.’ Mrs Perowne shot him a very direct glance as though measuring his reaction. ‘They left home to set up house together when they were in their late twenties. It was—is—a passionate friendship, as close as a marriage.’

‘Like the famous Ladies of Llangollen?’

‘Yes, just like that. It was their inspiration, I believe. Are you shocked?’

‘No, not at all. Why should they not be happy together?’ Lucky women, able to turn their backs on the demands of society and its expectations. But daughters did not bear the same weight of expectation that sons did, especially elder sons, with the requirements of duty to make a good match, bring wealth and connections into the family, provide an heir to title and estates.

‘And you?’ he asked when she gave him an approving nod and turned her attention to a dish of eggs in cream. ‘What led you to make your life here?’

‘My father was a naval man and I cannot even recall his face. He was killed at sea when I was scarcely toddling. Mama found things very difficult without him. I think she was not a strong character.’

‘So you had to be strong for both of you?’ he suggested.

‘Yes. How did you know?’ The quick look of pleasure at his understanding made Cris smile back. She really was a charming woman with her expressive face and healthy colour. And young still, not much above twenty-five, he would estimate.

‘You have natural authority, yet you wear it lightly. I doubt you learned it recently. What happened to your mother?’

‘She succumbed to one of the cholera epidemics. We lived in Portsmouth and like all ports many kinds of infection are rife.’

‘And then you came here?’ He tried to imagine the feelings of the orphaned girl, leaving the place that she knew, mourning for her mother. He had lost his own mother when he was four, bearing the sibling he never knew. His father, a remote, chilly figure, had died when he was barely ten, leaving Cris a very young, very frightened marquess. Rigorously hiding his feelings behind a mask of frigid reserve had got him through that ordeal. It still served him well.

‘Do your duty,’ was his father’s dying command and the only advice he ever gave his son on holding one of the premier titles in the land. But he had found it covered every difficulty he encountered. Do your duty usually meant do what you least want to do because it was hard, or painful, or meant he must use his head, not his heart, to solve a problem, but he had persevered. It even stood me in good stead to prevent me sacrificing honour for love, he thought bitterly.

‘Aunt Izzy is a maternal creature,’ Tamsyn said. ‘She adopted Jory, she took me in.’ She slanted a teasing smile at Cris. ‘I think she sees you as her next good cause.’

‘Do I appear to need mothering?’

‘From my point of view?’ She studied him, head on one side, a wicked glint in her eyes, apparently not at all chilled by his frigid tone. ‘No, I feel absolutely no inclination to mother you, Mr Defoe. But you could have died, you are still recovering, and that is quite enough for Aunt Izzy.’ Having silenced him, she added, ‘Will you be resting today?’

‘I will walk. My muscles will seize up if I rest. I thought I would go along the lane for a while.’

‘It is uphill all the way for a mile until the combe joins Stib Valley, but there are several places to rest—fallen trees, rocks.’ Mrs Perowne was showing not the slightest desire to fuss over him, which was soothing to his male pride and a setback for his scheme to draw her out.

‘Will you not come with me? Show me the way?’

‘There is absolutely no opportunity for you to get lost, Mr Defoe. If you manage to reach the lane to Stibworthy, then by turning right you will descend to Stib’s Landing. Left will take you to the village and the tracks to either side will lead you to the clifftops.’

‘I was hoping for your company, not your guidance.’ Cris tried to look wistful, which, he knew, was not an expression that sat well on his austere features.

Tamsyn took the top off a boiled egg with a sharp swipe of her knife. ‘Lonely, Mr Defoe?’ she enquired sweetly.

Cris did not rise to the mockery. ‘It is a while since I had the opportunity to walk in such unspoiled countryside and have a conversation with a young lady at the same time.’

She pursed her mouth, although whether to suppress a smile or a wry expression of resignation he could not tell. ‘I have to go and see our shepherd about the...incident yesterday. I am intending to ride, but I will walk with you up the combe until you tire, then ride on from there. There is no particular hurry, the damage has been done.’

Cris wondered whether she was as cool and crisp with everyone or whether she did not like him. Possibly it was a cover for embarrassment. After all, he had come lurching out of the sea, stark naked, seized hold of her and then kissed her, neither of which were the actions of a gentleman. But Tamsyn Perowne did not strike him as a woman who was easily embarrassed. She had an earthy quality about her, which was not at all coarse but rather made him think of pagan goddesses—Primavera, perhaps, bringing growing things and springtime in her wake.

It was refreshing after the artificiality of London society or the Danish court. There, ladies wore expressions of careful neutrality and regarded showing their feelings as a sign of weakness, or ill breeding. Even Katerina had hidden behind a façade of indifferent politeness. And thank heavens, for that, Cris thought. Self-control and the ability to disguise their feelings had been all that stood between them and a major scandal. Mrs Perowne could keep secrets, he was sure of that, but she would find it hard to suppress her emotions. He thought of her spirited response to the magistrate, the anger so openly expressed. Would her lovemaking be so passionate, so frank?

It was an inappropriate thought and, from her suddenly arrested expression, this time something of it had shown on his face. ‘Mr Defoe?’ There was a touch of ice behind the question.

‘I was thinking of how magnificently you routed that boor of a magistrate yesterday,’ he said.

‘I dislike incompetence, laziness and foolishness,’ she said. ‘Mr Penwith possesses all three in abundance.’

‘Doubtless you consider me foolish, almost getting myself drowned yesterday.’ If she thought him an idiot she was not going to confide in him, and unless she did, it was going to be more difficult to discover what was threatening the ladies Combe. Not impossible, just more time consuming and, for all he knew, there wasn’t the luxury of time.

‘Reckless, certainly.’ She was cutting into her toast with the same attack that she had applied to beheading the egg. ‘I suspect you had something on your mind.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That must be my excuse.’

‘Mr Defoe.’ She laid down her knife and looked directly at him across the breakfast table. ‘It is easy to become...distracted when we are hurting. It would be a mistake to allow that distraction to become fatal. There is always hope. Everything passes.’

She thinks I was trying to kill myself. The realisation hit him as he saw there was no smile, no teasing, in those brown eyes. Then he saw the ghost of something besides concern. Pain. She is speaking of herself. When her husband died did she want to die, too?

‘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.’

And I’ll wager you have never had bronchitis in your life and your back hurts you no more than the rest of you does. So what is this nonsense about being unable to endure a coach ride over rough roads?

The track turned as they came out from the trees on to the pastureland. ‘There’s a fallen tree.’ Cris stopped, made a show of flexing his shoulders. ‘Shall we sit a while? The view looks good from here.’

And you need a rest? He was a good actor, she would give him that. But she suspected that this man would no more willingly admit weakness than he would ride a donkey, so he must have a good reason other than exhaustion or sore muscles for wanting to stop. ‘Certainly,’ she agreed, and tossed Foxy’s reins over a handy branch. ‘Don’t mind me, you sit down,’ she added over her shoulder. As she turned back to the tree trunk she was treated to a fine display of bravely controlled wincing and the sight of Cris’s long legs being folded painfully down to the low seat.

She could go along with it and let him fish for whatever it was he wanted, or she could stop this nonsense now. Jory had been a man who was constitutionally incapable of giving a straight answer, a husband who could keep virtually his entire life, and certainly his thoughts, secret from his wife, and she was weary of mysteries.

‘Mr Defoe.’ His head came up at her tone and his eyes narrowed for an instant before he was all amiable attention. No, he was doing a good job of it, but she was not at all convinced by this harmless exterior.

‘Why so formal all of a sudden, Tamsyn?’

Now he was trying to unsettle her because he knew she was not entirely comfortable with first names. Tamsyn sat down. ‘Because I have a bone to pick with you, sir. You are no more in need of a rest than I am. I can believe that you are sore and your muscles are giving you hell, but if you are so sickly that you are about to succumb to a chest infection and you are incapable of riding in a coach over rough ground, then I am the Queen of the May.’

‘You are flattening to a man’s self-esteem, Mrs Perowne.’

‘Why flattening? I imagine you hate being thought less than invincible. Most men do.’

‘Ouch. Now that hurts. I mean that I dislike being so transparent.’

‘You are not. But I saw you stripped to the core yesterday—and I do not mean stripped of clothes,’ she added as that infuriating eyebrow rose. She did so wish she could do that... ‘You would have kept on going until you dropped dead rather than lie there passively on the beach and be fetched. You hated being weak and in need of help. If your man with your coach had been anywhere in the neighbourhood, you would have crawled a mile to him on your hands and knees rather than admit to needing three women to help you. So why so unwilling to travel now and leave here?’

Cris leaned back against a sapling, folded his hands over the head of his cane and looked at her. It was a long, considering stare with no humour and no flirtation in it. If she was a parlour maid being interviewed, she suspected she would not get the position. If she was a horse for sale, he was obviously doubtful about her bloodlines. When he spoke she almost jumped.

‘You may well have saved my life. I am in your debt. There is something very wrong here and if it is in my power, I will remedy it.’ From another man there would have been a note of boasting, of masculine superiority over the poor, helpless females. But this sounded like a simple declaration of fact. Something was wrong. Crispin Defoe would fix it.

It had been so long since there had been anyone from outside the household to confide in, or to lean on, just a little. Even Jory could be relied on only to do what suited his interests. They had been fortunate that he had adored Aunt Izzy and had been fond of Tamsyn. But this man would be leaving, very soon. He did not belong here, he had drifted to Barbary Combe House, borne on the current of a whim that had brought him across England. Soon he would return and to rely on him for anything—other than to disturb her dreams—was dangerous.

‘Nonsense. You do not owe us anything, we would have done the same for anyone who needed help. And there is absolutely nothing wrong except for a rogue dog and some valuable sheep lost.’

‘You see?’ The austere face was disapproving. ‘That is precisely why I felt it necessary to have an excuse for lingering here. You are going to be stubborn.’

‘I am not stubborn—if anyone is, it is you. You find three women living alone and assume they are incapable of dealing with life and its problems.’ She walked away across the grass, spun round and marched back, temper fraying over her moment of weakness. ‘We are managing very well by ourselves, Mr Defoe, and I am rather tired of gentlemen telling me that we are not.’

‘Who else has the nerve to do that?’

‘It takes no particular nerve, merely impertinence.’ She took Foxy’s reins, led him to the far end of the tree trunk and used it as a mounting block. ‘I am sure you can manage the path back.’ Cris stood up and took the reins just above the bit. ‘Let go at once!’

‘Tamsyn, I am not an idiot and neither are you. Something is wrong, your aunts are distressed and who is the other interfering gentleman?’

‘Aunt Izzy’s nephew considers we would do better living in a house on his estate. He seems over-protective all of a sudden.’

‘Lord Chelford.’

‘You have been eavesdropping.’ Foxy’s ears twitched back as her voice rose. ‘Hardly the action of a gentleman.’

‘Neither is ignoring ladies in distress.’ He stood there looking up at her, his hand firm on Foxy’s bridle. ‘I wish you would get down off your high horse, Tamsyn. Literally. You are giving me a crick in my neck. I happened to overhear something completely accidentally. Collins heard more because he likes to gossip. Now, of course, you may simply be a trio of hysterical females, leaping to conclusions and making a crisis out of a series of accidents—’

‘How dare you?’ Tamsyn twisted in the saddle to face him, lost her balance and grabbed for the reins. Cris reached up, took her by the waist and lifted her, sliding and protesting, down to the ground. Trapped between Foxy’s bulk and Cris’s body, she clenched her fist and thumped him square in the centre of the chest. ‘You are no gentleman!’

‘Yes, I am. The problem is that you do not appear to have any others in your life with whom to compare me. Now, stop jumping up and down on my toes, which is doing nothing for the state of my boots, and come and sit on the tree trunk and tell me all about it.’ She opened her mouth to speak. ‘And I am the soul of discretion, you need have no fear this will go any further.’

‘If you would allow me to get a word in edgeways, Mr Defoe, I would point out to you that I am unable to get off your toes, or move in any direction, because you still have your hands on my person.’ In fact they seemed to be encircling her waist, which was impossible, she was not that slim.

‘I have?’ He did not move, although she could have sworn that the pressure on her waist increased. ‘It must be a reflex. I was anxious that you were going to fall off.’ He still managed to maintain that austere, almost haughty, expression, except for a wicked glint in those blue eyes that should have looked innocent and instead held a wealth of knowledge and deep wells of experience. Thank goodness. He is going to kiss me.

And then he...didn’t. Cris stepped back, released her and gestured to the tree trunk. ‘Shall we sit down and try this again? I will tie up your horse again, he is becoming confused.’

‘He is not the only one,’ Tamsyn muttered. Of course he was not going to kiss her. Whoever got kissed wearing a dreadful old hat like hers? Certainly no one being held by an elegant gentleman whose boots would probably have cost more than her entire wardrobe for the past five years.

Cris came back to the tree and she noticed his cane was lying forgotten on the grass. ‘What else has happened besides the accident to the sheep yesterday?’ he asked as he sat beside her.

‘You will doubtless say we are simply imagining things.’

‘Try me. I can be remarkably imaginative myself when I want to be.’

‘A hayrick caught fire two weeks ago. Our little dairy herd got through a fence last week and strayed all over the parish before we caught them. All our lobster pots keep coming up empty. And now the sheep.’

‘All this in the span of two weeks?’ When she nodded he scrubbed his hand across his chin and frowned at the now-scuffed toes of his boots. ‘Even my imagination is baulking at that as a series of coincidences.’ His frown deepened and Tamsyn fought the urge to apologise for the state of his boots. ‘May I ask how your aunts are supported financially?’

She saw no harm in telling him, none of it was a secret, after all. ‘Aunt Izzy has the use of Barbary Combe House and its estate for her lifetime, along with all the income to spend as she wishes. She also has the use of everything in the house for her lifetime. Anything she buys with the income is hers to dispose of as she wishes, as are the stock and movable assets of the estate. Aunt Rosie has a very respectable competence inherited from her father and other relatives. She has high expenses, of course, because of her health—she paid for the bathing room, which uses a lot of fuel, and she also consults a number of medical men. Both of them live well within their incomes.’

‘And you?’ Cris said it quite without inflection, as though he were her banker or her lawyer gathering the facts before advising on an investment. And there was no reason why she should not tell him. After all, establishing her non-existent pride was simply another fact for his calculations.

‘I have a small inheritance from my parents. Aunt Izzy makes me an allowance and in return I act as her land steward.’

‘And your husband?’

The cool, impersonal voice left her no room for manoeuvre. Tamsyn shrugged. ‘Jory left me nothing. Or, rather, he had a fishing smack, a small house, nets, gear, firearms... All used in the commission of criminal offences, all seized by the Excise after his death. To have laid claim to anything would have been to admit I was a partner in his activities.’

‘And were you?’

‘I knew what he was doing, of course I did, even though he kept all the actual details secret. Everyone on this coast knew and I was married to the man, after all. He led a gang of smugglers.’

If she had thought for a moment that she would fob off Cris Defoe with that as an explanation, then she was mistaken, it seemed. ‘Smuggling covers everything from bringing in the odd cask of brandy under a load of herring, to a cover for spying, by way of full-scale organised crime accompanied by murder, extortion and blackmail. Where on that spectrum was Jory Perowne?’

‘You know a lot about it. Perhaps you are a magistrate yourself and I would be well advised not to compound my indiscretion.’ She smiled, lowered her lashes, wondered if she could remember how to flirt. If I ever knew.

‘No, I am not a magistrate.’ That was a surprise. He had said he was a landowner and most landowners of any standing were justices. ‘I have been crossing the Channel, back and forth, for ten years and one cannot do that without hearing about smugglers.’

There was a little nugget of information to tuck away and muse upon in that comment. Mr Defoe had been crossing the Channel at a time when England was at war with France, even if it was now five years since Waterloo had brought peace again. Had he been in the army? But the way that he spoke made it sound as though he was still crossing over to the Continent on a regular basis. He could hardly be a merchant, not with his clothes and the indefinable air of tonnishness that even a country mouse like her could recognise. And tonnish gentlemen did not engage in trade.

Perhaps he is a spy himself and he ended up in the sea after being thrown overboard by an arch enemy in a life-and-death struggle—

‘Mrs Perowne? Am I boring you?’

‘Not at all, Mr Defoe. I was merely contemplating the perils of the sea for a moment.’

And wondering why your voice sends little shivers up and down my back when you drawl like that when really I ought to give you a sharp set-down for sarcasm.

Just to prove she had been paying attention she added coolly, ‘Jory was in about the middle of your spectrum. He ran a highly organised smuggling ring with high-value goods and he was not averse to violence when his business was threatened by rivals or the Excise. But he protected the aunts fiercely, the people hereabouts worshipped him and he looked after them. You probably think me shocking for not condemning him, but he was loyal and courageous and looked after his men, and smuggling is a way of life around these coasts.’

‘The Excise must have given you a very difficult time after his death when they were looking for the profits of his activities.’

‘They could not have been looking as hard as I was.’ The villagers had needed the money when their main local industry collapsed overnight with Jory’s death. ‘They bullied me and threatened me and finally allowed that I was just a poor feeble woman led astray by a wicked rogue.’

‘Could Chelford be searching for hidden treasure on the assumption that Jory Perowne hid his ill-gotten gains somewhere on the estate?’ She must have been staring at him with her mouth agape because he enquired, dry as a bone, ‘Is that such a ridiculous idea?’

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