The Many Sins of Cris De Feaux (Lords of Disgrace) (23 page)

‘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

T
amsyn 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 down 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.

‘Cris.’ He should not be here, it would all be unimaginably painful, but now, in this moment, all she could feel was joy.

‘How do I get up?’ He was smiling at her, her own happiness reflected in his face.

‘There are footholds, just there.’ She watched him climb easily, with none of her fumbling and scraped knees. Muscles taut, skin streaming water, hair slicked back to expose the austere planes of his face, he was like some sea god rising from the deep.

‘Tamsyn.’ She stumbled into his arms, heedless of sense or of anything but the moment. His body, under the chill of the water, was hot and so was his mouth on hers.
Oh, the taste of him. Cris.
Under her palms his back was smooth, broad, infinitely masculine, and she clung to him, taking and giving in a kiss that was trying to make up for over a month’s separation.

When the necessity to breathe finally broke the kiss, they stayed locked together, not speaking, reading each other through their eyes. Finally Tamsyn could pretend no longer. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Because I love you.’ Cris sat down, pulled her with him, knee to knee, his hand still on her arm.

‘I told you that this is not possible.’

‘You told me that you did not love me. And at first, I believed you.’ He held her gaze, not hiding the pain in his eyes, not shielding his feelings as he always had before. ‘Then you wrote to me.’

‘But I explained why I cannot marry you. And it makes no difference to my feelings.’ Now she was the one veiling her gaze, trying to keep him from seeing the futile hope.

‘I know.’ He lifted his other hand and cupped the fingers around her averted face, turning her back to face him. ‘I asked myself why you would have written and told me something so painful to you, when, if you did not love me, it could make no difference. And the only answer I could find was that you
did
love me and that this tragedy in your past was why you were refusing to marry me.’

‘But it is not in my past. It will be my future, too. It cannot be yours.’

‘Tamsyn. Do not lie to me, because here, now, I will know, believe me. Do you love me?’

‘Yes,’ she burst out. ‘Yes, I love you. And what difference does knowing it make, except to worsen the pain for both of us of what we cannot have?’

The tender expression in his eyes became something else, something hot and intense and possessive. ‘I knew it, I could sense it. I knew you were lying to me before. Tamsyn, my love.’

She pushed back against his naked chest, even though it was like pushing against the Flatiron itself. ‘It makes no difference.’

‘You cannot have a child whether or not you marry me. I do not want one unless it is yours. It will be a grief for both of us, one we will share,’ he said fiercely. ‘I do not want children with any other woman because I
want
no other woman. Only you, Tamsyn. Only you.’

‘But your heir—’

‘He is a perfectly pleasant, intelligent young cousin who would have inherited if the woman I married bore only daughters, or if I had a son who died, or if I married someone else and we had no children anyway. I love you, you love me. We can be happy for the rest of our lives. We can build a good marriage and you will make a wonderful marchioness.’ When she stared at him, wordless, he pulled her to him, breast to breast, mouth to mouth.

‘I love you,’ he said against her lips. ‘I was washed up on this beach because I thought I had lost love and all the time I was on the verge of finding it. Don’t deny us this happiness, my darling.’

Something broke inside her as if a dam had been breached, a stone wall that had been holding back her love for him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I won’t. I love you too much.’

A bare rock, covered in limpets and seaweed and water, in the middle of a rising sea, was not the most comfortable place to make love, Tamsyn thought hazily. Cris lifted her on to his thighs, entered her with a gasp that held relief and joy and intensity, and then she forgot to think, or to feel the sun on her back or the friction against her knees or the slap of wet seaweed tossed up by the wind. All that was real was the power of Cris’s body and the need to use hers to show him how much she loved him.

They broke together, clinging as they had done when they had first found each other in the sea, locked together now by love and the promise of a future.

Finally Cris moved and they untangled their limbs, laughing a little at themselves, touching again and again, as though unable to believe this was real. He flopped back, full length on the rock. ‘Lord, but I do love you. What the blazes?’ He sat up again, rubbing his head and twisted to glare at the lump of bladderwrack that Tamsyn had been exploring with her foot earlier.

‘Is it a crab?’ She shifted to sit beside him, legs dangling, as he poked at the mass.

‘No, it’s hard.’ He pushed the weed aside. ‘Look—it’s a ring bolt and a chain.’

‘Pull it up.’ A certainty that she knew what this was began to creep over her.

Cris hauled, his muscles bunching as he took the weight of whatever was at the end of the chain. He stood, braced his feet apart and hauled and suddenly a small, square, metal box broke the surface. He dumped it on the rock and stared at it. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think we’d found a pirate’s treasure.’

‘No. A smuggler’s. This rock was Jory’s place, ours when we were young.’ Tamsyn ran her hands over the rusting iron bands that bound the box. ‘There is no padlock, only a staple through the hasp.’

‘You open it, you are his heir,’ Cris said. In the end it took both of them to force it open, lift the lid, creaking, to reveal a canvas bag no bigger than a lady’s reticule. ‘Hardly pieces of eight and golden doubloons.’

‘If it was full of money I suppose we’d have to give it to the Revenue,’ Tamsyn said, trying to cover her disappointment with a show of reasonableness.

Cris put the bag in her hands and helped her open it. Inside was a gold chain and a handful of crystals. ‘Cris, these aren’t—?’

‘Diamonds? Yes, I think they are. I think your first husband has left you jewels where no one else but you would ever find them.’ They sparkled in his palm like the foam on the sand in the moment the sunlight caught it. ‘You can have these made into a necklace you’ll always remember him by.’

‘You wouldn’t mind?’ she asked as he tipped them back into the bag, knotted it securely and hung it around his neck.

‘That he made you happy? That he kept you safe? Of course I don’t mind.’ He stood up and reached down to help her to her feet. ‘Come, we had best get ashore and decent before your aunts discover us disporting.’

‘That’s a good word,
disporting
.’ But he had already dived into the sea and was treading water, waiting for her. She dived in, too, and swam slowly back to the point where their feet could touch bottom. ‘We disported here before,’ she said and slipped her arms around his neck and curled her legs around his waist. ‘Shall we try it again?’

* * *

Later that evening, as they sat, hand in hand on the sofa, trying to make conversation with a deliriously happy Isobel and Rosie and not simply sit staring into each other’s eyes, Molly came in.

‘Letter for Mizz Tamsyn, just been delivered by the doctor’s man.’

‘Will you excuse me, I had better read it now. I can’t imagine what it might be.’

The others talked while she took the letter to the table where the oil lamp stood and cracked open the seal.

Dear Mrs Perowne,

I have been meaning to read my predecessor’s diaries, which I found stored in a trunk in the attic of the house when I took over the practice, but have never found the time. After our discussion on the clifftop I looked at the one relating to the date of your husband’s death and the following weeks.

I find that the late Dr Philpott was a believer in the old theories of health and medicine, now thankfully becoming a thing of the past. He wrote that your bodily humours were unbalanced by shock and grief and that your womb had no doubt ‘wandered’ as a result.

You may be familiar with the idiotic but widely held theory that a ‘wandering’ womb is the cause of feminine hysteria. No doubt at the time you were understandably distraught at the tragic loss of your husband and might be thought, by an old-fashioned doctor, to be hysterical.

He wrote that it was very regrettable, but he expected you to be rendered infertile as a result. I can assure you that nothing in his notes leads me to the same conclusion.

I would recommend you to attend a specialist in these matters, possibly a London doctor—I can suggest some names. Or you may simply wish to let nature take its course.

I am, dear Mrs Perowne, your obedient servant,

Michael Tregarth, MD

‘Is anything wrong?’ Izzy asked.

‘No. Nothing is wrong at all. Dr Tregarth was simply recommending a certain course of action to deal with a problem I had discussed with him.’

Cris stood up and held out his hand to her. ‘Shall we take a stroll in the moonlight before bedtime?’

She let him lead her out on to the lawn and, out of sight of the windows, curled into his embrace.

‘Should I be concerned?’ Cris asked her, holding her a little away so he could look down into her face as she smiled up at him.

‘No, not at all.’ She told him what the letter had said. ‘I don’t want to be prodded about by London doctors. I shall follow his advice and let nature take its course.’

Five minutes later, emerging breathless from his embrace, she murmured, ‘My bedchamber is still the same one as before, my love.’

‘Excellent,’ Cris growled. ‘Because after that kiss, my darling Tamsyn, I, too, fully intend to let nature take its course.’

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this story,
don’t miss these other great reads in
Louise Allen’s
LORDS OF DISGRACE
quartet,

HIS HOUSEKEEPER’S CHRISTMAS WISH

HIS CHRISTMAS COUNTESS
.

And watch out for

THE UNEXPECTED MARRIAGE OF GABRIEL STONE

coming soon!

Keep reading for an excerpt from
THE HIGHLAND LAIRD’S BRIDE
by Nicole Locke.

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