The Many Sins of Cris De Feaux (Lords of Disgrace) Read online

  All is well. Tamsyn lay, eyes wide open. When she closed them she could see Franklin’s face, contorted by fear and rage, see the marble floor far below her dangling feet, see Cris’s face, white and still.

  The trial for the murder of poor Lieutenant Ritchie would go ahead with, she suspected, no mention of Franklin’s involvement. The aunts were safe and so was the estate and everyone on it. The worthy lawyer cousin and his family would move into Holt Hall, which could only be a good thing for that estate, and soon Franklin would be a fading memory, an unsatisfactory nobleman who had gone to the bad and suffered for it.

  And she would go home, back to Barbary Combe House, back to her life at the edge of the sea, to remember two men. One who had married her as he might have adopted a stray kitten and whom she had loved as a friend, the other who had shown her gallantry and the glories of physical love and whom she loved with what she feared was everything she had in her heart and her soul.

  *

  Tamsyn drifted off to sleep at last and woke, stiff and sore and confused in a strange bed with the light seeping through the curtains on the wrong side of the room. Then she recalled where she was and the events of the night before came back to her like a hammer blow. Next door to her chamber she could hear doors opening and closing carefully, a murmur of voices, footsteps on the landing and then silence. Perhaps that was where Cris was.

  She needed him, she needed to see him just one more time, touch him, reassure herself that he truly was not seriously injured, store a few more precious memories away. She got out of bed, clumsy and sore from the fall, and pulled on the wrapper Prescott had left for her. There were no slippers, but then, she was not supposed to be wandering around. The clock on the mantelshelf struck five with thin, silvery notes as she eased open the door and found the corridor outside deserted.

  The door to the next room opened with well-oiled silence, but even so, the man on the bed turned his head towards her as she slipped inside. ‘Tamsyn.’

  ‘Don’t move.’ His hand when she took it was warm and his grip reassuringly strong. Tamsyn sat down on the chair beside the bed without letting go.

  ‘I didn’t know whether they were telling me the truth when they said you were unhurt,’ Cris said. He was lying completely flat with no pillows and there was a hump in the bed where some sort of framework had been put over his injured leg. ‘Tell me the truth. Were you injured?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She managed to smile and adopt a rallying tone rather than throw herself on his battered body and just hug him as she wanted to. ‘How could I be injured when I had a large man between me and the floor? I could wish you were rather better padded with fat and not solid muscle, though. It was like hitting a horsehair sofa.’

  Cris snorted with amusement and winced. ‘Do not, I beg you, make me laugh. Tamsyn, tell me truthfully, how do you feel about yesterday?’

  She thought for a moment, then answered him honestly. ‘I am sorry for Franklin, that his own weakness and folly led him to such an end. Part of me is relieved, because he cannot threaten Aunt Izzy any longer, but I cannot be glad, not at the loss of a life, however wasted. Tess says the scandal can be contained, explained, but I hate bringing violence and death into her home, especially now.’

  ‘Now?’ Cris raised an interrogative eyebrow.

  ‘Now she is expecting a baby.’

  He grinned. ‘Alex is almost tying himself in knots trying not to fuss over her, the lucky devil.’

  ‘You want children.’ Of course he did, she knew that. He needed an heir, but beyond that, she could tell he wanted to be a father, with all that entailed.

  ‘Naturally.’ Cris shrugged, a thoughtless, nonchalant gesture that made him gasp. ‘Have you any idea how much everything itches the moment you can’t reach to scratch it?’

  She forced a smile for him. ‘When will the doctor let you get up?’

  ‘He’s calling again this afternoon to make certain my skull’s all right, then I can sit up, he says. The man’s seen too many head injuries during the war, it makes him over-cautious.’

  ‘I would rather he was. I thought…I thought for a moment that you…were dead, or had broken your back.’

  ‘Would you care very much?’ The austere, cool expression was back on his face and he was looking up at the underside of the bed canopy, not at her.

  ‘Of course I care! You saved my life, Cris. That was an incredibly brave thing to do, to risk. And I couldn’t have jumped for anyone else, there is no one else I would have trusted. How did you think of telling me to do what Jory did? It confused Franklin, stopped him guessing for a few vital seconds.’

  ‘I thought that would penetrate the noise, and the confusion, and reach you in a way that just shouting Jump! would not. If I thought at all. But I do not want your gratitude, Tamsyn.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked softly. He seemed somehow angry and all she got for a reply was a shake of the head. ‘You are in pain and I am making you irritable. I’ll go, I just wanted to see for myself that you are alive and are going to get better.’ She released his hand and got to her feet.

  ‘I am not irritable,’ Cris snapped.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I am working out how to propose to you from this ludicrous position.’ He sounded completely exasperated.

  ‘Propose? But, Cris, why?’ Of all the unromantic offers of marriage she could imagine, being snapped at by a man flat on his back and in a foul temper must be top of the list. ‘We have discussed this.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Just because—’ Her brain caught up with her ears. ‘No, you do not.’ How much more did this have to hurt?

  ‘I think I may know better than you how I feel.’ His eyes, blue and dark and unfathomable, watched her as he lay, unmoving.

  ‘You are being gallant again. The scandal does not matter, I am leaving today.’

  ‘Today?’ Cris came up off the bed, cursing with pain, and twisted to take her by the shoulders with both hands.

  ‘Lie down, please.’ She tried to push him back, but he yanked her against him, kissed her until she stopped struggling and began to kiss him back. It was the last time, she justified to herself with what was left of her powers of reasoning. When they finally broke apart she reached for the pillows and piled them behind him in the hope he would at least lie back.

  She moved the chair safely out of range. ‘That is not love—that is desire. We know we feel it. What about the woman you were in love with before? Is this just the rebound from her?’

  ‘How did you know about Katerina?’ Cris was controlling his breathing with a visible effort.

  ‘I did not, you have just told me her name. I guessed there was someone. Your friends thought so, too.’

  ‘I believed I was in love with her. She was married and it was impossible. We exchanged one kiss—that was all. I think the very impossibility of it made me believe it was love. That first time I kissed you, in the sea, there was something that made me doubt my feelings for her and the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was not love I had felt.’

  She should not ask him any more, because even if this was the truth, he was not for her. She was not for him. But I am only human. ‘What makes you think what you feel for me is love?’ she asked, her voice steady, her body shaking with the effort of will that took.

  ‘The ache when I came to London and you were not here. The sense that something was missing, as if I had lost a limb, or a sense. And then last night, when I saw you fighting to be free from Franklin, when I saw you blazing with courage and determination and a refusal to give in and I thought I was going to lose you. Then I knew.’

  ‘I am not the wife for you, for a marquess. You know that.’

  He loves me. I love him and I cannot, must not, marry him.

  ‘All my life I have thought I knew not whom I must marry, but what kind of woman. It was a certainty, like knowing that the land was entailed, or that I had a seat in the House of Lords. But I lay here last nigh
t, unable to sleep, and made myself listen to reason, to reality, to what I felt. I realised I could marry a yeoman’s daughter tomorrow and a few eyebrows might be raised. And they would be lowered again if she proved to be elegant and cultured and knew how to behave in society. And before you mention last night’s uproar, the scandal is Chelford’s. Only a small inner circle know how you are involved.’

  ‘Jory—’

  ‘Was a youthful love. A romance that happened a long way away from any of those raised eyebrows. Tamsyn, I do not have to marry for money, I do not have to marry for political alliances. I have only myself to please if I fall in love with a lady who can only enhance the family name, be a life’s partner to me, a wonderful mother to my children.’

  Her control did break then, as though he had hit ice, sending cracks and fissures spreading out, taking pain with them. Of course he did not know what had happened on that clifftop that day, not all of it.

  ‘But I do not love you,’ she lied as she stood up, sending the chair to the floor behind her. He was white to the lips as he stared at her, his hands already clenching on the bedclothes as though he would throw them off, try to follow her as she backed across the room to the door.

  ‘I’ll always remember you, but I cannot…’

  Cannot lie to you any more.

  ‘Goodbye, Cris.’

  My love.

  She was halfway across the room and he was half out of bed, the frame over his injured leg knocked away, one foot on the floor. Behind her the door banged open and Alex strode in.

  ‘What the devil is going on in here? There was an almighty crash, I thought you’d fallen out of bed.’

  ‘Tamsyn is trying to leave. Stop her.’

  ‘I must go home, Lord Weybourn. Please could you ask someone to secure me a post chaise to leave at ten? I must call at the dealer’s shop and retrieve the paintings and I can hardly take them on the stage.’

  ‘I’ll send you in one of my carriages,’ Alex said over his shoulder as he advanced on Cris. ‘Get back into bed, man, for heaven’s sake, or Tess will have my guts for harp strings.’

  Tamsyn closed the door on them and ran. Tess and Gabriel would help her get away before she did something unforgivable and agreed to marry the man she loved.

  *

  It was good to be home. There was a peace to be found in the endlessly changing weather, the finality of land meeting ocean, the timeless rhythms of the farms and the fisheries.

  A week after she’d returned home Tamsyn made herself walk to the clifftop where Jory had gone to his death. It was the first time since that afternoon and she knew now it was finally time to lay that ghost to rest. She sat down on a rock that pushed out of the rabbit-nibbled turf, its base fringed with purple thrift, and gazed out to sea. One day people would walk on these cliffs and look out at this view and they would know nothing of her, or her love or of tragedies long ago. That was strangely comforting.

  The grass muffled footsteps and the man was almost on her before she heard him and turned. The tall figure was silhouetted against the bright sky and for a second her pulse stuttered and a wild hope ran through her, only to be crushed a moment later when Dr Tregarth stopped at her side.

  ‘Tamsyn. They told me you were home again.’ He sat down on the rock, took off his hat and let the wind ruffle through his hair. ‘It is good to see you again.’

  ‘And you. Is everything well in the village? The aunts knew of no problems to recount to me.’ He was such a comfortable presence at her side that she was almost tempted to lean against his shoulder.

  ‘Little Willie Stephens broke his arm falling out of Mr Pendleton’s apple tree, the Penwiths’ pigs got out and rooted up old Mrs Fallon’s vegetable patch, and Lucy Williams was brought to bed of a fine pair of boy twins, which would be a cause for rejoicing if only she could work out who the father is.’

  ‘The field of candidates being somewhat large, I expect.’

  ‘Somewhat,’ he agreed drily. ‘Are you back to stay?’

  ‘I am.’ If anywhere could heal her, this place could. Or, rather, she could learn to live with the loss of Cris de Feaux here better than anywhere else.

  ‘So…’ He heaved a sigh as though exasperated with his own hesitation. ‘Defoe. I thought you might marry him.’

  ‘Mr Defoe is, in fact, Crispin de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore.’

  ‘Is he indeed! And so he did not ask you?’

  ‘Yes. He did and I refused him.’

  ‘Why on earth would you do that?’

  Probably Michael Tregarth was the only man she could talk to about this. She was so healthy that she had never had to consult him, but if she needed a doctor, then he was the one she would go to.

  ‘I cannot have children. I was pregnant when Jory died. I was there and the shock brought on a miscarriage and the doctor told me that I could never…’ She swallowed the lump in her throat and pressed on, determinedly matter of fact and sensible. ‘So there is no way that I could, in all conscience, marry a nobleman who needs heirs. Besides all the other things, like the disparity in our ranks and his friends disapproving.’ Although it occurred to her that Tess and Alex did not seem to be against her and Gabriel had definitely softened.

  ‘Who told you that you could not carry another child?’ Tregarth demanded.

  ‘Dr Philpott, who was here before you came. You never met him, of course, he had a stroke and there was several months before you arrived. I was quite ill after Jory died, with the shock and the miscarriage. I was in a fever for almost a week. When I was recovering he said I would be…’

  ‘Sterile. Hmm. How did Defoe—sorry, the marquess—take that?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He is a very stubborn man and he is used to getting what he wants. He would have brushed it aside and then, later, regretted it bitterly.’

  ‘So what reason did you give him for refusing?’

  ‘I told him I do not love him.’ A kittiwake soared up from the cliff face, stiff-winged, white and free, its gentle dark eye warily watching the human intruders in its world.

  ‘You lied. Hmm.’

  ‘I wish you would stop going hmm! What do you mean?’

  ‘That perhaps you should have told him. It might have made it easier for him to accept your rejection if he knew there was a reason behind it, not simply that you could not return his affection.’ He shifted and she knew he was studying her profile. Tamsyn kept her gaze fixed out to sea. ‘Which, of course, you do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you did. Think on it.’ Tregarth got to his feet and clapped his hat back on his wind-tangled hair. ‘I’ll bid you good day. I’m off to see how young Stephens is getting on, the little devil.’

  Tamsyn watched him go, striding easily over the clifftop towards the precipitous path down to the bay. A good man, and a good doctor, so his advice was worth pondering on, however difficult it might be to take.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  …and so, you see, even were things different, it would not be right for me to accept your proposal.

  I hope your injuries are improving rapidly and that you are out of pain. Please give my warmest regards to Lord and Lady Weybourn and to Mr Stone—I cannot think of him as Lord Edenbridge, I fear.

  Yours for ever

  Tamsyn scrubbed at the words with her nib.

  Your friend,

  Tamsyn Perowne

  There, it was done, and as near the truth as she could get without admitting to Cris that she loved him. Tamsyn sealed and addressed the letter and put it on the hall table to be taken up with the rest of the post.

  She stood for a moment, her fingertips resting on the letter, then with a shake of her head, turned back to the drawing room. A line had been drawn, as it had when Jory had died and she had lost the baby. She would start again and she would get through this, just as she had before.

  *

  The tide was just on the turn, the sun was beating do
wn and a more beautiful mid-August day for a swim would be hard to imagine, Tamsyn thought as she carried her rug and her armful of towels down the lane to the beach. The aunts had gone off on a picnic with Izzy riding and Rosie in the sedan chair, that was now carried by two of the village lads who had proved apt pupils for the brawny Irishmen who had returned to Bath two weeks before, much to the regret of several of the village girls.

  There was no one at the house. Mrs Tape had gone to Barnstaple, shopping with Molly and Michael, and Jason was with Izzy and Rosie. Which meant she could yield to temptation and swim naked.

  It would strike cold, even this far into the summer. Tamsyn ran, the breeze cool on her sun-warmed skin. There was no one but the gulls to hear her shriek as the water hit her stomach and no one to watch as she struck out for the Flatiron Rock that was above water now and would be until the tide was halfway in.

  When Jory was twelve he had cut rough steps in the side of the rock after a summer of hard labour with a hammer and chisel and as children they used to clamber out and sun themselves on the smooth, wave-polished top. But it was years since Tamsyn had done so and certainly not since Jory died. She clambered up at the cost of a scraped knee on the barnacles that covered the sides and sat down, legs stretched out, and wriggled her toes in a big clump of bladderwrack seaweed clinging to the far edge.

  Her toe caught painfully on a rough surface. ‘Ouch!’ She jerked back her foot. Behind her something splashed, but when she turned there was only a swirl of water close to the beach, lost immediately as a wave came in, its crest creaming as it built up to break. Then a head broke the surface, an arm came out, powered forward in a long, cutting stroke, and she came up on her knees, heedless of the scrape of barnacles and sand, as the swimmer reached the Flatiron. He trod water, looking up at her, and she could not help the shock of pleasure, of excitement.