The Many Sins of Cris De Feaux (Lords of Disgrace) (12 page)

He kicked off his breeches and to his relief she sat back on her heels and just looked. ‘If you touch me, I won’t answer for the consequences,’ he warned as she gave a low hum of approval.

‘Very well.’ She began to undress with a straightforwardness that matched his own, shrugging off a simple gown to reveal nothing beneath it but bare woman.

Cris almost swore, swallowed the oath and kept his eyes fixed on her fingers as she pulled the long braid of her hair over her shoulder and began to loosen it. ‘Your hair is beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’ She bent her head and shook it so the mass of dark brown shifted and fell, wavy from the plait. When she looked up it covered her breasts, shadowed the junction of her thighs as she knelt on the bed. ‘Cris...’ Her voice trailed away, then she seemed to gather her courage. ‘I have only slept with one man before. I will not have the skills of the lovers you are used to.’

‘You have the skill to bring me to my knees,’ he said, and went down on them beside her, pulling her beside him on to the mattress and dragging the blankets up over them. ‘I desire you intensely. Can you doubt that?’

‘No.’ She buried her face in the angle of his neck and shoulder, suddenly shy, it seemed. But her hands were not shy, or clumsy.

‘You are sure?’ He had never doubted his self-control before, now he knew that a few more moments of this and he was lost.

‘Sure.’ Tamsyn slid under him, like the sea creature he had imagined her as, and her damp, hot, softness met his desperate body and he drove into it and stopped, almost shuddering with the pleasure of it, his weight on his elbows, his forehead resting on hers.
‘Ah...’
she murmured, and her hands fastened on his shoulders and her legs curled around him until her heels were in the small of his back.

‘You are perfect,’ he said on a breath that was almost a gasp. ‘Perfect.’ Then he ceased to know where her body ended and his began as they moved together. It was as though they had done this a thousand times together and yet never before. There was a rightness, a harmony, balanced by a freshness and the wonder of discovery. Somehow he hung on until her eyes opened wide and then closed in ecstasy and she convulsed around him. Somehow he found the strength to withdraw and find his release, straining against the strong, soft, wonderful body in his arms.

For a while he lay dazed, conscious only of their heartbeats, their breathing, the sound of the sea crashing far below. Then he rolled to one side and Tamsyn came with the movement, curling around him, her head on his chest, her body relaxed and trusting. Her lips moved against his skin with silent words, or, perhaps a kiss, then she was still. He sensed her slipping into sleep and closed his own eyes.

But oblivion would not come. He was utterly relaxed, utterly satisfied, warm, content and completely awake, and his mind was apparently determined that he would enjoy none of it. A few months ago, before Katerina, he would simply have been grateful to have experienced such mutually satisfying lovemaking. The fact that he hardly knew Tamsyn, that she was from another world completely, would not have mattered. They were mutually attracted, he could make love with her without compromising her and it would have been a perfect idyll, one that would be ended naturally with a departure that she expected and accepted.

But now he could not help examining his motives, his desires. He was not in love with Tamsyn, but he no longer knew what that meant, not after the shock of self-realisation over Katerina. Was he just using her? But she was not an innocent and she had her own needs, too. The urge to toss and turn, pummel the pillow, had to be suppressed because of the woman draped, limp and trustful, over him.

He should return to London, find a suitable bride, court her, wed her, he told himself. And then stay faithful to her. Gabe the ultimate cynic, was prepared to believe that their friends, Alex and Grant, had fallen in love, but to hear him talk about this was as rare an event as finding a unicorn in the back garden. According to him the remaining two disgraceful lords had no excuse for tying themselves to some woman’s apron strings. If he explained his thinking to his friend, Gabriel would laugh at him, tell him that this attack of conscience, of sobriety, was the onset of old age.

Cris opened his eyes and stared up at the weathered old wood of the roof while Tamsyn’s curls tickled the underside of his chin. If twenty-nine was old, then he might as well open that door, go back down the cliff and walk back into the sea to finish the swim that had brought him here.

Chapter Twelve

‘W
hat is wrong?’ Tamsyn swam up out of the sleepy, satisfied haze and found Cris beside her, his arm heavy across her waist. She could feel the tension in him, despite the sprawl of his long body. ‘I can hear you thinking.’

He laughed, an almost convincing sound, but she had come to know him very quickly over the past week and he was not amused.

‘Are you regretting what we have done?’ she demanded, wriggling round so she could sit up and look at him properly.

‘No.’ This time the smile was quite genuine, a small, sensual twist of his lips. ‘I was brooding, that’s all. Gabriel would say I am getting old.’

‘Truly?’ Feeling wicked, she slid one hand under the blanket and explored. ‘I don’t think so.’

Cris caught her hand, but did not move it from where it lay, her fingers lightly curled around the hardening length of him. ‘Mentally old.’

‘A sudden attack of responsibility? That is very ageing.’ She tried to make a joke of it, but he only frowned.

‘No. I’ve always been responsible, I think.’ He shrugged. ‘I was brought up to be, to accept who I was, what I needed to do to fulfil that role.’ There was an edge of bitterness there that puzzled her. What kind of burdens had his upbringing laid on him? ‘Whatever hell I might have been raising, I always did what needed to be done, looked after the people who relied on me.’

‘As you are doing here,’ Tamsyn pointed out.

‘I don’t like men who try to get what they want by intimidating those who can’t fight back.’ He winced as she closed her fingers rather too tightly. ‘I know you can stand up for yourself, but you shouldn’t have to. I told you I wouldn’t stay long. I must go home, settle down, stop doing things like this.’

She found her fingers had curled into claws. Cris closed his eyes as she let them rake gently over his hot flesh instead of digging them in. ‘What exactly is
this
?’

‘Making love without commitment.’ His hand tightened over hers, moved.

‘There is someone you should be settling down with? Someone to whom you should be committed?’ She kept her voice light, surprised by the sharp lance of envy.

‘No, there is no one.’ His face was slightly averted, she wished she could read it. ‘There should be. Duty. Responsibility again, I suppose.’ His hips rose as she stroked down and up. ‘
Ah.
That is so good.’

‘If there is no one, then you are not being unfaithful.’ She thought his face tightened, but that might simply have been the effect of what she was doing to him. ‘I believe you are simply experiencing the melancholy and introspection that sometimes comes after lovemaking.’

‘
La tristesse
, the French call it. Well, I’m not suffering from melancholy now.’ He kicked away the blanket, reached for her and held her so he could torment her right nipple with teeth and lips. Then he suddenly let go and she collapsed on to the bed with him in a tangle of limbs and kisses, and forgot jealousy, and worry, in bliss.

* * *

‘Tamsyn, dear, have you been sleeping properly?’ Aunt Izzy peered anxiously at her over the fruit bowl in the middle of the breakfast table. ‘You look a trifle heavy-eyed.’

‘I am sure Tamsyn is perfectly relaxed, dearest,’ Rosie said before Tamsyn had a chance to collect herself from her improper recollections. Her aunt’s smile was bland.
She knows.

As for the expression on Mr Stone’s face, the man was looking so innocent that it was bound to be false. Presumably he was quite well aware what had passed last night between his friend and herself.

‘Too much time spent with the account books, that is all I am suffering from,’ she said. ‘I am looking forward to our picnic lunch. That will wake me up.’

They went their separate ways after breakfast. The two men strolled down to the waterside, deep in conversation, presumably to do with whatever business had brought Gabriel Stone there in the first place. Aunt Rosie went for her hot soak to get herself, as she said, ‘In prime condition for my jaunt.’ Aunt Izzy shut herself in the kitchen with Cook to create the perfect picnic luncheon and that left Tamsyn staring at the farm’s feed bills and trying to focus.

She had to get the accounts straight in case they were sent any more invoices following the mischief with the bank and the damage to their reputation for creditworthiness. It was important and urgent and every time she smoothed her hand over a page in the book all she could feel was Cris’s skin under her palm. When she nibbled the end of her pen, all she could think of was his mouth on hers, and once she let her mind wander along those paths, then the heaviness settled low in her belly and the little pulse started its wicked beat between her thighs, and her breasts ached.

I want him again. Now.

It frightened her, a little, the intensity of the need. She had been celibate for all the long months since Jory had died, that must be it. She was a young woman, used to lovemaking. Of course she missed it, even though she had submerged the need as deep as her grief for Jory. That was why last night had been so
magical
. She took the word, turned it in her mind, shivered. There was something charmed about the way Cris had come to her out of the sea, almost out of the jaws of death, something other-worldly about his blond beauty, those haunting blue eyes. If she was not an adult, modern woman she might start imagining things, supposing he had come from some mysterious world of Celtic legend to help her. She had read Scottish tales of Selkies, seal people who came out of the sea to seduce human beings. They would always return to the water, leaving their earthbound lovers desolate.

That was a depressing turn of thought, but of course Cris would leave, she accepted that. Whoever he was, whatever his life at home and in London, he was a man who moved in circles far removed from her rustic, unsophisticated world. Even if he had wanted her in any other way than for this brief, amorous, encounter, then he would not when he knew the truth about her. All men wanted heirs. She realised her hand was resting over her stomach and snatched it away, angry with herself for still yearning, still grieving for what she had lost and could never have.

She had never had illusions about men. Jory had loved her in the only way he knew, as a familiar part of himself. They had married out of desire and because she had loved him in so many ways, although none of them was the romantic love she had always dreamed of. He had wanted to keep her safe because he was fond of her and she was one of his possession. And she had wanted to
feel
safe, a ridiculous illusion with Jory, who did not know the meaning of the word when it applied to himself.

She propped her chin on her cupped palm and stared out of the window overlooking the garden, trying to shake the mood, and saw the men were pacing back and forth along the long seawall at the end of the lawn. Then they broke apart, faced each other. Gabriel Stone drew the sword from the scabbard that seemed to be permanently at his side and she was half out of her seat before she realised that he was demonstrating something. He parried, Cris moved fluidly to one side, then in a blur of movement was behind him, reaching for his sword arm. Stone disengaged, moved out of trouble. They faced each other again, armed against unarmed. Then Cris shifted again, she saw Gabriel’s head turn, he recovered, just too late and the sword went spinning out of his grasp and speared point-down, quivering in the grass.

He flourished an elaborate bow, retrieved the weapon, wiped the point carefully and sheathed it. Cris draped one arm around his shoulder and they began to walk up and down again.

Tamsyn sat down with a thump, closed her mouth, which was inelegantly open, and frowned at the two men. That had been disgracefully arousing and it had also been a demonstration of speed and skill and of complete trust. There would have been no fencing button on the point of that sword. One slip and Cris could have been badly hurt. Or if he had been less accurate, his friend might have been wounded in the disarm. They obviously knew each other very, very well.

She wondered why Gabriel Stone was armed with a sword. Gentlemen carried pistols with them in saddle holsters, or in their carriages when they travelled, but usually these days only military officers wore a sword at their hip. It suited him, she decided, went with the slightly sinister presence, the dark, mocking eyes. If Cris trusted him, then she must, but he unnerved her.

Whereas Cris confused and delighted and confounded her. She indulged herself by watching the tall figure sauntering along, silhouetted against the sea, then made herself look down and wrestle with the columns of figures once more.

* * *

The picnic expedition set off at eleven o’clock. Aunt Rosie was helped carefully into the chair, the men stepped between the carrying handles, ducked their heads under the leather straps, took a firm grip and lifted. Tamsyn mounted Foxy, Aunt Izzy was helped on to her placid hack, Bumble, and Jason loaded the pack pony with the rugs and hampers.

As Gabriel Stone mounted his own horse, Tamsyn looked down at Cris. ‘You are going to have a long walk, I’m afraid.’

‘Collins is saddling my horse. Didn’t you realise he’s been in your stables eating his head off ever since Collins brought the carriage over?’

‘No one mentioned it and I’ve been too busy to visit the stable yard.’ Which just went to show how distracted she had been by Cris’s presence. Normally nothing stopped her from doing the complete rounds of the house and outbuildings daily.

A raking hunter emerged from the gate further up the lane. There was no one at its head, but when Cris whistled and walked out on to the track it trotted down and butted him in the chest with its big head. ‘This is Jackdaw.’

‘Because he is black?’

‘And wicked and thieving,’ Cris said, as he swung up into the saddle. ‘Stop that.’ The black tossed its head as though in denial that it had even thought about taking a chunk out of Gabriel Stone’s bay. ‘You are old enough to know better.’

‘But not very old.’ Tamsyn edged Foxy closer and Jackdaw snorted and rolled his eye.

‘He’s just four.’

‘And not English, I think.’ There was something about the powerful rump and the set of the animal’s head that seemed different.

‘Danish,’ Cris said shortly and moved off after the sedan chair.

‘Denmark?’ Tamsyn said out loud. She had never encountered anything Danish before.

‘He shipped him back.’ Gabriel Stone brought his bay alongside Foxy. ‘It’s a nice beast and worth the effort and the cost.’

‘You mean Cris...Mr Defoe, has been to Denmark?’

‘Oh, yes, last mission he was on.’ Gabriel said it vaguely, as though he was not creating even more mysteries. She had a very strong suspicion he knew exactly what he was doing.
Stirring the pot, Mr Stone?
Cris reined in and joined them again, presumably wary of what his friend was saying about him.

‘Mission?’ she asked, obediently playing Gabriel’s game.

‘Diplomatic.’ Cris’s expression did not change, but Jackdaw sidled across the lane uneasily. ‘I occasionally help out.’ He managed to make it sound as though he handed the drinks round at embassy parties.

‘Help who out? The government, you mean?’ She dropped her hands without meaning to and Foxy broke into a trot, jolting her inelegantly for half-a-dozen strides until she got control.

‘The Foreign Office. When they want someone who isn’t, shall we say, a fixture in the diplomatic circles I drop in on...situations. Help out.’

Do you indeed?
She was beginning to wonder just who this man was. The government used him as a part-time diplomat, and, she suspected, in tricky circumstances. He was tough, fit and capable of disarming the dangerous-looking Mr Stone, he could afford to import horses from the Continent and he had time to spend on a little local difficulty in a remote Devon hamlet.

Tamsyn tried to think of a question that did not sound like the bare-faced curiosity that it was. The trouble was, she found the mystery only added to the attraction, which was a dangerous state to be in.

Infatuated
, she told herself severely.
That’s what you are. You should settle for a nice, ordinary man, like Dr Tregarth. He is pleasant-looking, intelligent, hard-working, respectable, stands up for himself...

He might even be willing to accept her the way she was. At least he would understand it was not her fault.

She lectured herself all the way up to Stibworthy and had just reached the conclusion that she did not fall for men like the doctor because they obviously did not find her attractive enough to show any interest, when the little procession met him striding down the street.

‘Why are you blushing like a rose?’ Cris enquired, his voice carrying to Gabriel Stone, who twisted in the saddle, grinned at her and only made things worse.

‘
Shh!
Good day, Dr Tregarth.’ She waved, but he was by the sedan chair, smiling and nodding approval to Aunt Rosie while the chairmen set down their burden and stretched.

‘Good chap, but too staid for you.’ Cris moderated his voice, just a little, but he was still speaking loudly enough for Mr Stone to hear, judging by his expression. ‘If he doesn’t notice that you blush when you catch sight of him, well, one despairs of the fellow.’

‘I am not blushing over Doc...over anyone. I am just a little windblown, that is all. I should have worn a veil.’

‘Do you own one?’ Cris enquired, all innocence.

Tamsyn brought Foxy tight up against Jackdaw and muttered, ‘Do stop teasing me, you provoking man.’

‘But I like it when you blush. It makes me wonder what I must do to provoke that pretty colour when we are alone.’ His voice had dropped to an intimate murmur. ‘Ah, so that’s the trick of it,’ he said, his eyes laughing at her as the heat flooded her cheeks.

She was saved from having to reply by the chairmen lifting their burden again and the party setting off once more.

‘Where are we going?’ Gabriel Stone reined back to ask.

‘Up through the village and then we turn north on to the headland above Barbary Combe House. There’s a wonderful view from up there.’