what?’
‘For alarming your aunts...and for what happened in the summer house.’
‘They are made of sterner stuff than it might seem,’ she said. ‘And nothing happened in the summer house.’
‘That, perhaps, is what I should be apologising for.’
Now, perhaps, was the moment to be bold, to reach out and admit, frankly, that she would welcome him as her lover, that she wanted him, that he had nothing to fear from her, that she would not cling or make demands. But that shadow—the one that had killed the heat of desire in his eyes—that haunted her. She would not be a substitute for another woman, nor would she demand he forget.
‘There is nothing to apologise for in behaving like a gentleman.’ She shrugged and smiled, making it light, slightly flirtatious. Unimportant. ‘I was uncertain and you, very thoughtfully, did not press me. Now, if you will excuse me, I must finish these accounts or we really will be in a pickle if any more demands for payment come in.’
She thought he was going to offer his help with the books, but a smile, as meaningless and pleasant as her own, curved his mouth and he nodded. ‘Of course. I will leave you in peace.’
Tamsyn stared at the account books for a long while after he had gone. The path of virtue was the right one to take, and the least embarrassing, as well as the decision that would carry no risks at all, for either of them. Safe.
‘Safe is dull, safe kills you with rust and boredom,’ Jory’s voice seemed to whisper in her ear.
‘Take care,’ she had pleaded with him so often. ‘Do not take risks.’
‘Risk makes your blood beat, fear tells you that you are alive,’ he would respond with that charming flash of teeth, the smile that was as enchanting as Hamelin’s Piper must have been. The smile he had given her before he had turned and sprinted for the cliff edge and oblivion.
And risk made you dead, Jory, Tamsyn argued back now, in her thoughts.
Yes, his voice seemed to echo back. But I lived to the end.
* * *
A week later Cris was still installed in the back bedchamber, Collins had his feet firmly under the table in the kitchen and both of the older ladies protested strongly whenever Cris suggested that he really should be moving on. Not that he wanted to, not until he heard from Gabe and had a clearer idea of what Chelford might be up to, and not until his surprise for Aunt Rosie arrived.
The ladies insisted he call them Aunt Izzy and Aunt Rosie, exclaimed with pleasure over each small service he did for them, made a great fuss over him—even when he tangled Izzy’s knitting wool into a rat’s nest or beat Rosie at chess. He needed a holiday, they insisted, and his presence was as good as one for them, too. Again, as it did almost every day, the truth was on the tip of his tongue, and once again he closed his lips on it. Hiding his identity was becoming dangerously addictive, like losing himself in drink, and he justified it to himself again, as he did every time. He needed the rest, he was doing no harm to anyone.
The only blight on this amiable arrangement was Tamsyn. She protested that they should not detain him, that he must be bored or uncomfortable or, when he choked over one of her more blatant attempts to dislodge him one dinner time, in need of a London doctor.
None of this made him want her any less. He found himself in a state of arousal which long punishing walks along the cliffs, or up through the woods, did nothing to subdue. If he couldn’t stop reacting like a sixteen-year-old youth soon he was going to have to resort to several cold swims a day. That particular form of exercise he had been avoiding, wary of encountering Tamsyn, who apparently saw no reason to curtail her own daily swims just because there was a man in the house.
He wanted her, he admired her spirit and her directness, her love of her aunts, her work ethic, her courage and her humour. Taking her as his lover would be healing, he sensed, provided he could manage a short-lived affaire without harming her in any way. On the other hand, finding a bride, plighting his lifelong fidelity and affection, that was another matter altogether. That would be a betrayal of Katerina. As soon as he thought it he felt uncomfortable, as though he was dramatising himself and his feelings. But if he was in love with Katerina...
He came in through the front door that morning after an unsatisfactory, brooding, walk on the beach, trying to conjure up the memory of Katerina and finding it damnably difficult, and found Tamsyn in the hallway arranging flowers in the big urn at the foot of the stairs. ‘Can I be of any help? That looks heavy.’
‘It will be staying here, thank you for offering.’ A polite smile, a polite exchange, a not-very-polite urge to sweep the basket of foliage on to the floor and take her here and now, on the half-moon table amidst the flowers and the moss.
Cris pushed the fantasy back into the darker recesses of his imagination, from whence it should never have escaped in the first place, and took the stairs to his bedchamber two at a time. Increasingly he found it difficult to be in Tamsyn’s company and pretend there was nothing else he wanted beyond a polite social friendship.
Collins was sorting out laundry and managing to take up most of the space in the room in the process. ‘I’ll be out of your way in a moment, sir. I’ve just got to put these shirts away, the rest can wait.’
‘No, carry on.’ Cris took off his coat, tugged loose his neckcloth as he went to stand in the window embrasure and stare out over the roofs of the stable yard to the steep lane. Someone was coming, a rider, low-crowned beaver hat jammed on over windswept curling black hair, and behind him the roof of a carriage was just visible with, strapped on top, something that looked like a giant coffin with windows.
It was Gabriel. He had come himself without warning, riding into a situation he knew hardly anything about and quite apt to let all of Cris’s secrets out of the bag if he wasn’t stopped. Cris threw up the casement, climbed over the sill and dropped the ten feet to the rough grass path behind the house.
‘Sir!’ He looked up to see Collins leaning out. ‘May I assist, sir?’ He kept his voice to a discreet whisper. It was not the first time both he and Cris had left a building by way of the window and Cris suspected that the valet enjoyed missions where there was a strong element of cloak and dagger work as much as he did.
‘Lord Edenbridge is riding down the lane, I need to head him off.’ He was off, running, before Collins could reply, shouldered his way through the narrow gap in the shrubbery behind the house and sprinted up the lane past the entrance to the service yard.
Gabriel reined in, his hand on the hilt of his sword, the moment Cris emerged. The horse, battle-trained, went down on its haunches, ready to kick out, then Gabriel relaxed, clicked his tongue and the horse was still.
‘My good fellow,’ he drawled as Cris arrived at his stirrup. ‘I am looking for my friend Cris de Feaux. Elegant, well-dressed gentleman, a certain dignity and refinement in his manner. Anyone answering to that description around here?’
Cris shoved the hair back out of his eyes. ‘Buffoon.’
‘I am a buffoon? By the sainted Brummell, what have you done to yourself? Your hair hasn’t been cut, you’re as brown as a farm labourer—and your clothes!’ He surveyed Cris from head
