The door closed behind Gareth, and Lucy stood up hastily. “I do find that I'm very tired. If you'll both excuse me, I think I'll go to bed.” Tears were heavy in her voice, and she dashed an arm across her eyes as she went to the door.
“Bastard!” Julian swore as she left. ''I'm damned if I'll permit him to go whoring in the village while my sister lies weeping upstairs.”
“Yes, very insensitive of him,” Tamsyn agreed. “But if you drag him back, he'll sulk. He's that type.”
Julian regarded her with a frown, noticing the wineglass she still held. “Why have you been dipping deep this evening? I thought it didn't agree with you.”
“Oh, it agrees with me, all right,” she said lazily, running a hand through her hair, her eyes narrowing seductively as she drew her knees beneath her in the big armchair. “But it tends to make me rather uninhibited, and it stimulates my imagination. Shall we go upstairs, since your guests have disappeared?”
The prospect of a more than usually uninhibited and imaginative Tamsyn was heady indeed. Her violet eyes were luring him, the slight body curled in the chair radiated sensual invitation. A wicked, exotic invitation. And there would never be another woman like her.
“Forgive me,” he said abruptly. “I've some work to do in my book room.”
The rejection was so unexpected that Tamsyn stared stunned as the door closed behind him. Tears burned behind her eyes and she blinked them away angrily. She'd been offering an overture all evening, and he'd seemed to accept the end of their quarrel. But now to turn from her so coldly…
But she wouldn't be defeated. Her mouth took a stubborn turn.
Chapter Nineteen
GARETH STROLLED BACK TO TREGARTHAN UNDER THE moon, dolefully contemplating the lack of entertainment to be found in a small Cornish fishing village. The taverns in Fowey offered a sad dearth of eager young wenches ready to dally with a well-heeled member of the Quality, although the landlady at the Ship had winked at him and allowed him a discreet fondle of her ripe bosom, leaning over his table as she served his tankard of gin and water. Unfortunately, her husband had appeared on the scene, genial enough on the surface but with a pair of massive forearms that rivalled the giant Gabriel's, with whom he'd been drinking in a dark corner of the taproom.
Extraordinary-looking man, the Scotsman. Some kind of bodyguard apparently, all very rum. In fact, Gareth decided with a discreet belch, it was a rum business whichever way you looked at it Julian, far from his beloved battlefields, playing guardian to an unknown Spanish chit. Of course, if the Duke of Wellington had commanded it, that would explain it. A great stickler for his duty, was Julian.
Deciding to take the cross-country route, Gareth swung himself over a stile, catching the toe of his boot in the top rung and almost plummeting headlong. Cursing under his breath, he regained his balance and continued across the field.
The Penhallan twins had been in the tavern, drinking by themselves in a corner. He'd exchanged a nod with them, but they didn't move in his circles in London, so he hadn't felt a need to do more than that. There was something deuced smoky about those two… always had been. There was bad blood in the Penhallans, everyone said.
Gareth lurched through a gap in a bramble hedge and paused. Behind and below him the lights of Fowey were all but extinguished, just a lantern swinging on the quay in case anyone decided to row across the river from Polruan at dead of night. Ahead, there seemed only an expanse of field and cliff top. He could hear the breakers on the shore way below at the base of the cliff. Damnation, surely he wasn't lost? He should have stuck to the lanes. He looked up at the star-filled sky, peered into the distance, caught a glimmer of light through a stand of trees ahead, and decided it must be the gatehouse of Tregarthan.
With renewed energy he strode on and was immensely relieved when he identified the stone gatehouse at the bottom of the drive. His fob watch told him it was barely eleven o'clock. In London the night would just be starting, and all he had to look forward to here was an early night listening to the sea and the owls.
As he approached the house, a massive shadow fell across his path. His heart jumped into his throat, and he whirled to see the giant Gabriel behind him, holding a lantern. Gabriel grinned amiably. “I hope you enjoyed your evening. Good company these Cornish folk, I find.”
Gareth was dumbfounded at being spoken to with such familiarity by a servant. “My good man-”
“Och, aye, laddie, I'm no' your man… good or otherwise,” Gabriel said with no diminution in his affability. ''I'm no' a servant, either. My job's to look after the bairn as I see fit… just that. So to avoid any unpleasantness, I suggest you bear that in mind. I'll be bidding you good night, now.” Gabriel turned toward the side of the house, then paused, glancing over his shoulder. “By the by, laddie. I'd not be paying too much attention to Jebediah's woman, either, if I were you.” And he walked off around the house, whistling to himself, leaving Gareth staring in mute and indignant astonishment.
Gabriel turned up his nose in the darkness. The colonel's brother-in-law was a blockhead. Put a pistol in his hand, and he'd probably shoot his foot. Couldn't hold his liquor, either. He turned into the stable yard and climbed the outside stairs at the side of the stable block to the whitewashed room he shared with Josefa. He preferred the privacy out here away from the house, and the room above the stables much more closely resembled the simple cottage rooms that he and Josefa were accustomed to.
She greeted him softly as he ducked beneath the low lintel and entered the cheerful, tidy room. His woman had a talent for creating domestic comfort wherever they happened to fetch up, even in the most unlikely places. In fact, Gabriel often said she could make a home under a cactus. He flung himself into a low chair, and Josefa bustled over to pull off his boots.
“I came across those cousins of the bairn's tonight,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt as Josefa poured him his nightly tankard of rum. The woman nodded, her eyes bright with understanding as she took his shirt and carefully folded it.
“Right nasty-looking pair,” he went on, kicking off his britches, standing on one leg to pull off his sock. “They'll bear watching.” He stood on the other leg to remove his other sock before pushing off his woolen drawers.
Josefa gathered up his garments as they fell to the floor, folding them with loving care and placing them in a cedar chest. She didn't say anything while he mused, imparting little snippets of information, more to clarify things in his own mind then to share his thoughts. But she heard and nodded, and he knew she was storing it all away, and if he ever needed advice or an opinion, she would give it sensibly, so long as it was solicited.
He drained his tankard and with a groan of contentment fell onto the bed, the bed ropes creaking mightily under his weight. Josefa clambered in beside him, and he reached for her warm, soft, accommodating roundness, burying his head in the pillowy bosom. She made a little clucking sound of pleasure and wrapped her short arms around him as far as they would go, opening herself readily as he burrowed into her.
“You're a pearl, woman,” Gabriel muttered, and she smiled and stroked his back. “But those twins will definitely bear watching.”
Gareth's indignation was only exacerbated when he entered the house and saw that his new Hessians were caked with mud and gave off a pungent farmyard aroma. The hall was dimly lit with a thick wax candle on a table at the foot of the stairs, two carrying candles beside it. A light showed beneath the library door. Presumably St. Simon was still up and would claim the second candle.
Presumably someone would also lock up. Or perhaps they didn't bother in this neck of the woods.