there and then in the hallway. He had almost had her standing up against the door, like some drab in a back alley, and he had topped off a thoroughly unpolished performance by informing her that she was not from the sophisticated world he inhabited. If Tamsyn would give him the time of day next time they met, then it was more than he deserved.
Something moved on the road. Cris focused and saw it was Jason, a satchel slung on his shoulder, riding up the track. The mail was on its way. Now he just had to remind himself who he was, what he was, and somehow recapture the man he had been before that wild impulse had sent him off the road at Newark, driving across country into oblivion.
* * *
There was absolutely nothing like a pile of account books for setting a woman’s feet firmly on the ground. Or, in the case of the farm’s accounts, in the mire. Nothing was adding up this afternoon, not the price of oats, not the farrier’s bill, not even the egg money. Tamsyn gritted her teeth, turned over a sheet of paper covered in crossings-out and started again. All that was wrong with her, as she was very well aware, was that her brain was off with the fairies, her body was pulsing with desire and more than half her attention was focused on listening for footsteps on the stairs.
‘Letters, Mizz Tamsyn.’
She jumped, sending her pen in one direction, the account book in another and a large ink blot on to her page of calculations. ‘Jason, you startled me.’
‘Sorry, Mizz Tamsyn.’ He came into the room and emptied the contents of the satchel on to the table. ‘You were daydreaming, it looked like.’
‘Er...yes.’
Dreams of night, not of day. Of beds and rumpled sheets and mindless pleasure. And impossible dreams. There had been a moment as she daydreamed that she had heard wedding bells. And that would never be. Her stomach cramped with remembered pain and she bit her lip before she could turn back to the waiting groom.
‘Thank you, Jason.’ She dabbed at the spreading blot, made it worse, screwed up the whole sheet in sudden exasperation and began to sift through the pile of post. Several newspapers, two days out of date, a notification from the circulating library that three novels she had asked for were now available. Several bills, including another from the farrier, an invitation to dine at the vicarage in a week’s time when the moon was full and the roads consequently less hazardous, and a letter with their solicitor’s seal.
Something about leases, or perhaps an answer to her query about buying that small warehouse in Barnstaple she’d had her eye on. The heavy paper, expensive, like Mr Pentire’s excellent services, crackled as she broke the seal and started to read.
‘What?’ The shriek hurt her throat, but that did not stop the next words being wrenched out. ‘The swine. The utter, unmitigated swine.’
There was a thunder of boot heels down the stairs, Aunt Izzy’s cry of, ‘Tamsyn? What is wrong?’, then the door flew open to reveal Cris with, of all things, a pistol in his hand.
‘What is it?’ He cast one searching look around the room, then strode in, jerked her out of the chair and into the curve of his arm. ‘Who was it? Where did they go?’
Aunt Izzy hurtled into the room, gave a cry at the sight of her niece in the clutches of a man holding a gun, and collapsed into the nearest chair. ‘What happened? Why do you have a gun?’
‘What gun?’ The question came from the doorway where Aunt Rosie, grim-faced and clutching the poker in one arthritic hand, clung to the doorpost.
‘There is nobody, Aunt Izzy, please be calm. Cris, put that thing down and let me go. Aunt Rosie, let me help you.’
He beat her to the doorway, taking her aunt gently by the arm and thrusting the gun into the waistband of his breeches. ‘It isn’t loaded, which is more than I can say for this poker. Do let me take it, Miss Pritchard. Mrs Perowne, what provoked that scream?’
‘Pure temper.’ She picked up the letter and flapped it at them. ‘This is from Mr Pentire, our man of business. Our bankers wrote to him because they had received information that we were about to withdraw all our funds to meet sudden and unexpected debts. In effect, that our credit was no longer good. And half today’s post is bills—word must be spreading. Pentire has reassured the bank, but now we may expect a flood of demands for payment of all our accounts and it may take months for confidence in our credit to be restored.’
All energy gone, Tamsyn sank down in the chair and dropped the letter.
‘Can you afford to meet all your creditors in full?’ Cris asked.
‘Yes, I never let accounts run on and we always settle up completely. Luckily we are almost at quarter-day when the rents will come in. But it is the principle of the thing and it will put doubts into the minds of people who do not know us well. This must be the work of Franklin, I cannot believe anyone else has a grudge against us and would do a thing like this.’
‘But Franklin can have no grudge,’ Aunt Izzy protested. ‘I know you do not like him, dear, and I have to admit he is a sore disappointment as a nephew, but—’
‘But nothing,’ said Aunt Rosie. ‘Tamsyn’s right. The man wants us out of here. I just wish I could work out why.’
‘We are not moving and that is that,’ Aunt Izzy said, with remarkable firmness.
‘Forgive me, but does your right of possession here rely upon your residence?’ Cris hitched one hip on the table edge and looked round at the three of them. ‘If you move away, what becomes of Barbary Combe House and the estate?’
‘I retain ownership and the revenues,’ Izzy said promptly.
‘And your nephew knows this?’
‘Certainly.’
‘So he would not gain control of it until, forgive me again for being so blunt, your death?’
Izzy gasped, Rosie went pale. Tamsyn got a firm hold on her panicking imagination. ‘But Franklin offered you a house on his estate, Aunt Izzy. I agree he wants us out of here, but I do not think he is too worried about the estate as such. The farms brings in enough for our needs, but hardly the sort of income that will rescue him from some financial crisis, and land prices are very poor, so selling it would hardly help either.’
She looked at Cris and found his gaze fixed on her face. Of course, there was Jory’s mythical treasure. If Franklin got them out of the house he could helpfully supervise getting it prepared for tenants—all to help his dear aunt Isobel—and search to his heart’s content. ‘There is no need for alarm about your personal safety, Aunt Izzy.’ She directed a narrow-eyed look at Cris, daring him to say any more. ‘I have organised some watchers for the livestock and we are quite secure down here. Any stranger would be spotted a mile away, we are so remote.’
‘Of course. I am being over-cautious, and over-imaginative, too.’ Cris stood up. ‘I am sorry, Miss Holt, ladies, for alarming you.’
‘No need for that.’ Aunt Rosie was brisk. ‘You talk a lot of sense, we should take more care. Help me back to the drawing room, Isobel. No, you stay here.’ She waved a twisted hand at Cris as he came forward to help her. ‘Soothe Tamsyn’s ruffled feathers before she calls Franklin out for his idiocy.’ She gave a wicked little cackle of laughter. ‘I would lay several guineas on her being the better shot.’
Cris
