was necessary to take in a breath right down to her diaphragm. Somehow she was going to have to deal with this crisis and the aunts’ willingness to live without men suddenly became very understandable. Her life was far too full of them—Riding Officers trying to scare her, the mysterious Mr Stone arriving without warning and securing an invitation to stay without the slightest effort, large Irish chairmen who were carrying Aunt Rosie about as though they had been in her service for years and now Cris calmly announcing that he would deal with a government official.
‘And just how will you do that?’ she demanded. ‘Forgive me, Mr Defoe, but you are hardly the Duke of Devonshire, are you?’ He stood there, competent hands on admirably slim hips, the breeze from the sea stirring the thin white linen of his shirtsleeves, a glimpse of skin at his throat, a long green stain that looked remarkably like lichen up the length of one buckskin-clad thigh. ‘But of course, dukes do not go scrambling out of windows, do they?’
Behind him Mr Stone gave a snort of laughter. ‘Cris, a duke? He certainly acts like one on occasion, I will give you that.’ He appeared to find the idea inordinately amusing.
‘Mr Stone, perhaps you would excuse us for a moment? No doubt you would like to freshen up after your journey. If you cannot see either of my aunts when you go inside, then our housekeeper, Mrs Tape, will take care of you.’
‘Very crisp,’ Cris remarked as his friend, still chuckling, strolled off towards the front door.
‘I feel very crisp. In fact, I feel positively brittle. Just what, exactly, is going on, Mr Defoe? Why are you climbing out of windows and threatening Revenue officers and why does the idea that you are a duke convulse your exceedingly relaxed friend with amusement?’
‘You are allowing yourself to become agitated, Tamsyn.’ He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You are quite flushed. Come and sit in the summer house and compose yourself.’
Grinding one’s teeth was not ladylike, but then she did not feel so very ladylike, just at the moment. ‘By all means, let us go to the summer house.’ She waited until he had stepped into the shadowy interior behind her, then swung round and jabbed an angry finger into the middle of his chest. He caught her hand and held it, pressing the palm against the warm linen. Somehow she managed not to let her fingers curl, gathering the fabric up, pulling him closer.
‘Being married to Jory Perowne was not all joy, but at least he never patronised me, never treated me as though I was incapable of looking after myself and never, ever, told me I was becoming agitated when I was rightfully annoyed!’
‘But you aren’t married to me, Tamsyn.’ If she had not been flushed already, the suggestive growl in his voice would have turned her cheeks crimson. ‘Was I being patronising? I apologise if I was.’ He did not let her go and his fingers curled around hers as he took a step forward, trapping their joined hands between their bodies.
‘No, you were not. Not until you told me I was becoming agitated,’ she conceded. Stepping back would be admitting that his closeness, his touch, affected her. Confessing that she had found his presence at her side had given her strength was too much like accepting weakness. She lifted her chin instead and made herself meet the cool blue eyes. ‘Up to then you were merely...lordly.’
Cris shrugged. ‘London style, that is all. Take no notice of Gabriel, he finds the idea of his old friend being a duke amusing, the sarcastic devil. Do I seem like a duke to you? After all, I am the kind of man who almost drowns himself in foolish swimming incidents, climbs out of windows and is acquainted with Bath chairmen.’ His face was austere, but she recognised the slight crease at the corner of his eyes, the start of a smile he was not allowing out.
She was not going to let him get away with charming her into smiling back at him. ‘Explain the window.’
‘The chair and the men were a surprise for your aunts. I wanted to stop Gabriel and make sure they arrived with it all set up for her.’
And you could not have run downstairs and out through the door? No, not without alerting me, she answered herself. Cris had wanted to talk to Gabriel Stone first. The pair of them made her uneasy. They had an aura of power and confidence about them, something that went beyond mere competence. They were used to being obeyed and to making things happen. Their way.
Tamsyn moved forward, closer, until she could feel the beat of his heart against her fingers, could see his pupils dilate with surprise, or perhaps, pleasure. ‘Tell me,’ she murmured sweetly, and he bent his head, to listen, or to kiss. ‘Do I seem a helpless little female to you? Do I appear unable to take care of myself and my aunts? Do you think that I need a big, strong man to protect me?’ She did smile then, showing her teeth in a clear warning that she could, and would, bite if provoked.
She expected Cris to respond with an attempt at mastery, a hard kiss to show her what she was missing. Or perhaps a display of affronted male pride and a declaration that she did not know what she was talking about and had quite misunderstood him. Instead he did the last thing she expected. He laughed.
It was infectious, open, genuine, and she laughed, too, not knowing why, only that this was completely disarming.
And then he kissed her. There were perhaps three seconds to make up her mind on how to react and she was aware of each of them in the thud of her pulse. Three seconds to decide whether to be charmed, or to be resentful, to be mastered or to fight. Or, perhaps, to meet him on equal terms.
One, two, three... Cris lifted his head, eyes watchful. He would not force her, she knew that. Whatever else this man was hiding from her, it was not a willingness to ill treat a woman. Tamsyn wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his head to hers again and nipped at his lower lip, deliberately provoking. He laughed again against her lips, then probed with his tongue, risking her teeth, provoking in his turn.
This was the man from the sea, the man she had kissed in the surf without knowing why, only that it was right and she wanted him. Then they had been naked and that had been right, too, and they were wearing far too much now. Her hands ran down over the thin linen of his shirt, over the long, beautiful muscles of his back, down to the waistband of his breeches and she tugged, impatient, careless of rips.
He stepped back, breaking the kiss, to let her pull the shirt free and over his head, then his own hands were busy with buttons and pins and her gown was sliding from her shoulders, down to her feet and she was back in his arms, his skin hot and smooth under her palms, his mouth hot and urgent on the swell of her breasts above the neck of her chemise.
‘Yes,’ she said, closing her teeth on the tendon where his neck met his shoulder, biting gently, tasting his skin, tasting him. ‘Yes.’
‘Cris!’ The shout from outside froze them in place.
‘Hell’s teeth.’ Cris stepped back, looked round wildly for his shirt. ‘I must be out of my mind—the middle of the day in a confounded shed in the garden within a stone’s throw of the house and a dozen people. Are you all right?’ He dived into his shirt, dragged it on, stuffed it into his breeches while Tamsyn just stood and looked at him. ‘Get dressed! What are you doing?’
‘Looking at you.’ She wanted to smile at the sight of him, uncharacteristically harassed and urgent, dishevelled and flatteringly aroused. This was not the cool, calm and mysterious Mr Defoe, this was another man altogether and she was charmed as well as attracted. The sound of Mr Stone’s voice calling Cris came closer.
‘Dress, Tamsyn!’ He found the ends of his neckcloth, whipped it into some sort of knot, then moved to get between her and the door with its old glass panels fogged with salt spray. Through them, as she turned, she could see the blurred figure of the other man standing with his back to them. He seemed to be scanning the beach.
Suddenly seized with Cris’s urgency, she pulled up her gown, fumbled the fastenings closed, twitched the skirts, patted at her hair. ‘Am I decent?’
‘More or less. You’ll be the death of me, woman.’ He pushed in a few of her hairpins and smiled at her, suddenly tender, his hand cupping her cheek. ‘Do you want to be ruined?’