Gareth lit his candle and stomped up the stairs. Two candles in wall sconces lit the long corridor, and the house was very quiet. He found his way to the bedchamber at the end of the corridor and opened the door softly. The curtains were drawn around the bed, moonlight filtering through the thin summer curtains at the window.
“Is that you, Gareth?” Lucy's voice spoke nervously from the tented bed.
“And who else would it be?” He realized he sounded ungracious, but the reek from his boots was almost overpowering. He yanked them off against the andirons, picked them up, and deposited them gingerly outside the door for the boot boy.
He undressed, put on his nightshirt, and took a step toward his dressing room. Then he paused. He was damned if he was going to be deprived of a decent bed when he didn't have anything to feel guilty about… nothing to send him to the narrow daybed next door. He blew out his candle and pulled back the bed curtains. Lucy was curled on the far edge of the bed, a lace cap on her brown hair. He slid in beside her. Her sweet-smelling warmth filled the dark cavern of the bed. He reached out to touch her and felt her immediate recoil.
Sighing, he rolled onto his side, facing away from her. He was no brute, and he hated it when she wept and shivered beneath him and he knew he was hurting her. Every now and again he forced both of them to go through the motions, because there must be a child of the union. Once he had an heir or two, then they could both let the whole miserable business slide.
He closed his eyes and conjured up the image of Marjorie, her knowing hands, her lascivious little wriggles.
Lucy lay wide-eyed in the darkness, trying not to weep, thinking of the shocking things Tamsyn had said. How dared she talk in that fashion? And how in the world did she know about such things… an unmarried girl?
Julian heard Gareth's return and waited until his footsteps had receded on the stairs; then he snuffed the candles and left the library. He locked and barred the front door, lit his own candle, extinguished the wax taper, and made his way up to bed, leaving the candles alight in the sconces in case anyone wandered abroad at night.
His own apartments, consisting of bedchamber, dressing room, and private parlor, occupied the center of the house with a sweep of mullioned windows facing the lawns and the sea. On either side were the tower rooms. Opposite were a string of guest apartments, the largest being occupied by his sister and her husband.
He let himself into his bedchamber, feeling restless and yet jaded. His sister's marital problems depressed him, but that was not at the root of his dissatisfaction. Part of it was the acute discomfort of his own need aroused by the liquid light of inviting arousal in Tamsyn's eyes, the catlike sensuality of her body in the chair. That was part of it, but it was also caused by distaste at his own roughness. He'd hurt her without a word of explanation and certainly without justification. She had done everything she could that evening to repair the breach between them, and then she had offered herself in her customary open, trusting fashion with no expectation of rejection. He'd seen the flash of shock, the glitter of tears in her eyes, before he'd turned from her, and he couldn't rid himself of the image.
He closed the door of his bedchamber and then turned back to the room, holding his carrying candle high. For a crazy moment he thought he was seeing simply the figment of his imagination, and then he knew that of course he should have expected it. Tamsyn was not one to accept rejection, however hurt and vulnerable she might have looked.
She sat naked on the window seat in the moonlight, chin cupped in her palm as she looked out over the silver-washed lawns to the horizon where black velvet sky met the midnight-blue line of the sea.
And his pulse raced… his blood sang.
“There you are,” she said cheerfully, as if they'd never had a cross word. “I was beginning to think you'd stay up over your work-if that's what it was-all night.”
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he demanded in a fierce whisper, fighting himself, fighting yet again the knowledge that there would never be another woman in his life like this one. He set his candle on the table. “I told you that for as long as my sister's in the house, you may not come in here.”
“You weren't that specific,” Tamsyn said, uncurling herself from the window seat. “Besides, your sister's tucked up in bed.” She slipped from the seat and came toward him. “Everyone's asleep, milord colonel. Who could possibly know what goes on behind these doors?”
“That is not the point,” he declared, shrugging out of his coat. “My sister is an innocent young girl. We know that doesn't mean anything to you, but-” “Oh, please don't start that again,” Tamsyn pleaded, so close to him now he could sense the warmth of her bare skin even through his shirt and the fine knit of his pantaloons. “Must we quarrel about it again?”
Julian looked down at her helplessly. The liquescent eyes, the slight quiver of her soft mouth, the imploring voice, were totally unexpected. He thought he knew how to handle the fiery brigand, but he didn't have the faintest idea how to deal with this manifestation.
“Look, Tamsyn,” he tried. “I realize it's hard for you to understand. Lucy must seem like some precious flower to you. A rare orchid in a hothouse, she's such a tender-”
“Oh, estupido!” Tamsyn exclaimed, forgetting all her resolutions to be conciliatory and feminine and loving under this disgustingly sugary misrepresentation of the facts. “For your information, your precious, tender little sister has been so violently shocked by the marriage bed and that insensitive lout of a husband you allowed her to marry that she's unlikely ever to recover if someone doesn't do her a kindness and open her eyes to the realities. “
Julian tore off his cravat with a rush of relief. He glared at her, his eyes points of blue fire. This Tamsyn he could deal with. “When it comes to my sister, I'm not in the least interested in the opinion of an unschooled, misbegotten hellion who's never learned to obey convention.”
“Oh, pah!” Tamsyn declared in disgust. “Convention!” she mocked. “Convention as applied to women. It doesn't apply to Gareth, does it? He can go spreading his favors around to all and sundry, and that's considered perfectly acceptable.”
“No, it's not!” Julian snapped, pulling his shirt out of his britches and tossing it to the floor. In the passion of the moment it didn't occur to him that stripping of his clothes in front of the naked Tamsyn might be offering a mixed message. “As it happens, I hold no brief whatsoever for Gareth's indiscretions… any more than I do for yours.”
“And what of yours?” she retorted. “These indiscretions, as you so delicately phrase them, take two. I haven't noticed you being a particularly unwilling partner hitherto, milord colonel.”
Her eyes flashed, and her small body was rigid with angry conviction. “If there's one thing I cannot abide, it's a hypocrite.”
“I am not in the least hypocritical where my sister is concerned,” he snapped, kicking off his boots. “I will not have her innocence sullied by your experience!”
“Sullied!” Tamsyn exclaimed. “You dare to accuse me of sullying your sister as if I were some loathsome piece of scum! The only person who's sullied Lucy is her damned husband. And so I tell you.”
Bending in one fluid movement, she grabbed up his discarded shirt. “If you'd done the decent thing by your sister, if you'd really cared for her, you would have given her a few of the facts of life and she wouldn't be in this position now. I bid you good night, Colonel, I've no time for blind hypocrites.” And she pushed past him to the door, shoving her arms into the sleeves of his shirt as she did so.
“Don't you walk off like that! Come back here.”
Forgetting that the one thing he'd wanted was Tamsyn's absence from his room, Julian grabbed her arm. “Explain yourself!”