Regency Surrender: Sinful Conquests: The Many Sins of Cris de Feaux / The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone
well.’ She set the writing slope on the chair beside the couch, handed him the bowl and dragged the screen around the bed. ‘My aunt, who suffers from severe arthritic pain, will be taking one of her regular hot soaks shortly. We will try not to disturb you.’
‘Mrs Perowne?’
She looked around the edge of the screen. ‘Mr Defoe?’
‘I am in your aunt’s bathing chamber, occupying her couch. I must remove myself to another room.’
‘If you do, you will agitate her. She is worried enough about you as it is.’ She smiled suddenly, a wide, unguarded smile, so unlike the carefully controlled expressions of the diplomatic ladies he had spent so much time with recently. ‘Rest here for the moment, control your misplaced chivalrous impulses and we will find you another chamber at some point.’
Misguided chivalrous impulses. Little cat. She was obviously unused to men who actually acted like gentlemen. Cris twisted the water out of the cloth in the basin and sponged his eyes until the worst of the stinging subsided, then put the bowl aside and reached for the writing slope. Beyond the screen people were moving about, water was pouring into the tub, steam rose. This might be the edge of the country and manners might be earthy, but they certainly possessed plumbing that surpassed that in any of his houses.
He focused on the letter to shut out the sounds of either Miss Prichard or Miss Holt being helped into the bath. Collins was rather more than a valet, more of a confidential assistant, and he could be relied upon to use his discretion.
...pay the reckoning and bring everything to...
‘Mrs Perowne, if I might trouble you for a moment?’
‘Sir?’ She was decidedly flushed from the steam now. Her pink cheeks and the damp tendrils of hair on her brow suited her.
He recalled her leaning over him to turn on the tap as he lay in the bath and forced his croak of a voice into indifferent politeness. ‘Could you tell me how I should direct my man to find this house?’
‘Barbary Combe House, Stibworthy. If he asks in the village, anyone will direct him.’
‘Thank you.’
Barbary Combe House, Stibworthy. Do not enquire in the village for Mr Defoe as I am not known there, having come by sea. Ensure you bring an appropriate vehicle.
C. Defoe
Collins would not fail to pick up on that. The interior of Cris’s travelling coach with its ingenious additions and luxurious upholstery might go unnoticed, but not if the crests on the door panels were left uncovered. It had caused enough of a stir at Hartland Quay to have a marquess descend on a waterside inn, but with any luck the gossip would be fairly localised.
He folded the letter, wrote the address and found a wafer in the box to seal it with, then forced himself to relax. The doctor’s advice had been sound, but despite it, when Collins arrived tomorrow he would be out of here and away from the curiously distracting Mrs Perowne. Back to London, to the normality he had fled from.
Eyes closed, he willed himself to sleep. The room was quiet now, with only the sounds of someone moving about as they tidied up. He was exhausted and yet his eyes would not stay closed. Cris stared at the ceiling. He could always sleep when he needed to, it was simply a matter of self-discipline.
He seemed to be somewhat short of any kind of control just at the moment. He hadn’t had enough focus to notice when he was in danger of drowning himself and he couldn’t even manage to fall flat on his face on a beach without kissing the local widow before he did so. And he was the man the government relied on to settle diplomatic contretemps discreetly, and, if necessary, unconventionally. Just now he wouldn’t trust himself to defuse an argument between two drovers in the local public house, let alone one between a brace of ambassadors over a vital treaty clause.
It had all begun when he had first set eyes on Katerina, Countess von Stadenburg, the wife of a Prussian diplomat at the Danish court. Tiny, blonde, blue-eyed, exquisite and intelligent. His perfect match. And she wanted him, too, he could see it in her eyes, in the almost imperceptible, perfectly controlled gestures she made when he was close, the brush of fingertips on his cuff, the touch of a shoe against his under the dinner table, the flutter of a fan. That one kiss.
But she was married and he was the representative of the British Crown. To have indulged in an affaire, even if Katerina had been willing, was not only to dishonour her, but to risk a diplomatic incident. And he did not want an affaire, he had wanted to marry her. Which was impossible. Honour, duty, respect gave him only one logical course of action. He concluded his business as fast as possible and then he left, taking his leave of her under the jealous eye of her husband as casually as though she was just another, barely noticed, diplomatic wife, a pretty adjunct to her husband’s social life.
Her control had been complete, her polite, formulaic responses perfect in their indifference. Only her eyes, dark with hurt and resignation, had told him the truth. He wished, for the thousandth time, he had not looked, had not seen, and that he could carry away with him only the memory of her cool, accented, voice. ‘You are leaving the court, Lord Avenmore? Do have a safe journey, my lord. Heinrich, come, we will be late for the start of the concert.’
Finally he felt his lids drift closed, sensed the soft sounds of the house blur and fade. Strangely the eyes that he imagined watching him, just as it all slipped away, were brown, not blue.
* * *
‘Michael, take this and give it to Jason, please. Tell him to ride to Hartland Quay at once and find Mr Defoe’s man.’
‘Is he sleeping, dear?’ Aunt Izzy looked up from the vase of flowers she was arranging.
‘Yes. So soundly I thought for an awful moment that he had stopped breathing.’ Tamsyn closed the drawing-room door behind her and went to straighten the bookstand that kept Aunt Rosie’s novel propped at just the right angle for her. ‘He must be exhausted. I am certain it was only sheer cussedness that kept him going. It would be exhausting enough to swim that distance when the sea is warm, but it is still so cold, and with that current it is a miracle he survived.’ She picked up the cut flower stems for Aunt Izzy, then twitched a leaf spray.
‘He must be very fit, which is not surprising with that physique. You are fidgeting, Tamsyn.’ Aunt Rosie looked up from her book. ‘Did wretched Squire Penwith upset you, talking about dear Jory like that?’
‘The man is a fool. Dear Jory was a tricky—er...devil, but even he could not fly.’ She flung herself down on the window seat with more energy than elegance. ‘Yes, the squire upset me, with his blustering and his utter lack of imagination. And, yes, I still hate to think about that afternoon.’ She stared out over the sloping lawn at the sea, placid and blue in the sunlight, hiding its wicked currents and sharp fangs under a mask of serenity. Jory had lived with its dangers and its beauty and he had chosen it to end his life, which meant she could never look at it the same way again.
She lifted her feet up and hugged her knees. ‘And it worries me that Mr Penwith is of no use to us whatsoever with the troubles we’ve been having. I cannot decide whether he thinks we should suffer as payment for my husband’s sins, regardless of what crimes are committed against us, or whether he simply hates me.’
‘Or whether he is a lazy fool,’ Aunt Rosie said tartly. ‘A hayrick on fire—must be small boys up to mischief. Our stock escaping through the hedge—must be the fault of the hedger. Every single lobster pot being empty for a week—must be the incompetence of our fishermen. Really, does he think we are idiots?’
‘He thinks we are women, Rosie dear,’ Aunt Izzy said, hacking at a blameless fern frond with her shears. ‘And not only that, women who choose to live without male protection, which proves we are either reckless or soft in the head.’
‘Perhaps he is being bribed to look the other way,’ Tamsyn said. She had not mentioned it before because she did not want to upset Aunt Izzy. Even now she did not mention a name.
‘Bribed?