Chapter Fifteen
True colours.
“I’ve not forgiven you, Papa,” warned Tamsyn, as she straightened her straw poke bonnet with ash-grey trim in the hall mirror.
Her father merely grinned and pulled on his shabby tan gloves, ready for a visit to the china clay pit with his man of affairs whilst the ladies shopped in Helston.
Yesterday, they’d exchanged words concerning his outrageous fib as to Jack’s true reason for staying at Penrose Manor, but he’d hauled her into a tight hug, declared he loved her and ordered her to buy a new gown on the morrow.
As if she could be bribed in such a way.
“I want two new gowns and the same for Lowdy.”
“Anything you wish, my girl.”
“I could gladly escort the ladies, Sir Jago,” a low rumble offered. “As I am to visit the post-house this morning.”
Breath caught in her throat at the spectacle of Lord Winterbourne strolling down the ancient staircase, fingers brushing the oak bannister as if a woman’s spine.
He embodied a fashion plate come to life, and today’s waistcoat would put a courtesan to shame. Puce with lemon silk stripes.
It shouldn’t match; it did.
It should be revolting; it wasn’t.
A deepest black tailcoat balanced that colour and instead he exuded aristocratic poise and careless elegance, inordinately handsome and utterly perfect.
Tamsyn glared at her own gown – an “attractive mist grey” as the dressmaker had termed it. Tasteful, but she felt an utter dowd.
“Miss Penrose, you look most fetching. Like a fluffy rain cloud,” Jack assured, eyes twinkling. “Perhaps you can tempt the weather to change.”
“And you look most…stylish, my lord.”
“This old rag?” he teased, plucking at the silk-covered buttons. “One tries one’s best.”
“I trust, Lord Winterbourne,” interrupted Sir Jago, a fond smile upon his lips, “that no chill has befallen you after yesterday’s swim?”
“Rude health, I thank you.”
Tamsyn frowned as she noticed a glance and nod pass between the two gentlemen. During her years of silence, she’d become adept at dissecting people’s reactions, quietly watching as their eyes betrayed their lips.
Twisting to the mirror, she double-knotted the grey bonnet ribbons, despite the unseasonable weather.
Lowdy’s revelation last night had distracted her from pondering too deeply on Jack’s dip in the sea, but thoughts now clouded in.
She had guessed he’d not gone for a swim as claimed but presumed he’d lost his footing on a boulder. Yet mayhap it had been no accident. And if so, who lay behind it? Could Jack’s superior be right about La Chauve-Souris being alive?
Watching and waiting…as he’d always promised.
“Tam?” Father’s hands came to rest on her shoulders, strong and steady, and she covered them with her own, realising her breath had shallowed, colour leaching from her skin to match the misty gown.
Bending close, her father nudged the bonnet aside and bussed her cheek. “Winterbourne will protect you, Daughter, never fear.”
She contemplated the striking reflection of Jack in the mirror as he tilted his hat to a rakish angle and cast her a wink.
A London wolf to guard this Cornish lamb.
∞∞∞
Sitting alongside Tamsyn in the carriage to Helston had purported to be a splendid notion in principle.
No colliding knees or watching those rose-pink lips as she nattered with Miss Treherne, but Jack had forgotten the state of the rutted road and the reckless speed of the driver, forgotten the forceful sway which continually threw her against his side.
Heaven preserve him from temptation. Could the coachman not rein in the horses a little?
He shifted on the padded seat, felt her skirts ruck against his thigh, their arms brushing rhythmically. The heat of their bodies…
There’d been no option, of course, because as they’d made to depart, Mrs Pencally had caused an almighty squash by demanding she also sit facing the direction of travel, stuffing her green-faced maid opposite with Miss Treherne.
Maybe the sharp-eyed chaperone secretly enjoyed sitting next to rogues.
“I knew your father, Lord Winterbourne,” she muttered all of a sudden.
Maybe not then.
“A pleasure, I’m sure.”
“No. He was an utter blaggard who once pinched my posterior in Lady Lancaster’s gardens, obliging me to knee him in the twiddle-diddles.”
Chuckles erupted. “Well done, Mrs Pencally.”
“Thank you, my lord. Us girls had more mettle in those days.” She blew her nose with strident authority. “I also know your Great-Aunt Lucille very well. In fact, I held you as an infant, but then my Mr Pencally fell ill and we decamped to the warmer Continent. But I conversed by letter with your aunt for many years and she wrote of your…exploits in London.”
The airless carriage became ever more airless, despite the lowered window, and he was aware Tamsyn and Miss Treherne had ceased their conversation in order to earwig. Solely the maid remained disinterested, eyes fastened shut.
“It’s all true, I assure you.” Rule twenty: best to admit one’s failings – then one could only climb in a lady’s estimation.
The carriage lurched and he threw out both arms to prevent anyone tumbling to the floor. Mrs Pencally to his right remained unfazed, holding onto the strap with an experienced hand, but Tamsyn’s waist met his arm, a silk-gloved hand clutched his knee.
“She always insisted,” continued Mrs Pencally, oblivious to his torment, “that you were a good man.”
He wasn’t. She need only investigate his thoughts at this moment to realise the falseness of that statement.
And what on earth had his Great-Aunt Lucille meant by that? She knew his ways. Who he took after. A heartless Winterbourne through and through.
Breathing deep, he removed Tamsyn’s hand and noticed her cheeks, pink as a cat’s yawn.
“Said you took after your mother.”
“I beg your pardon?” he scoffed, twisting.
Devil’s balls, never had he heard such twaddle and feeling trapped in more ways than one, he stretched out his leg. A carriage ride with four women should be a rogue’s delight, but this was pure agony. Could it become any worse?
“What was your mother like?” asked Tamsyn.
It had. Could the bloody coachman not chivvy the horses a little?
How to reply? The weeping mother he had known held no similarity to the cheerful debutante her confidantes always described.
And a Winterbourne was responsible for that.
Fingernails bit into his palm, anger rippling.
“A good woman,” Mrs Pencally replied for him, “but a woman who thought she could change a man, not realising that sometimes their nature is too ingrained, too dark for that to happen. She wished for everyone to be joyous and when that didn’t transpire… Well, she became fragile.”
Temper snapped. “And you’d be fragile too when dealt the back of a cruel hand.”
Silence shrouded the carriage.
Even the coachman ceased swearing and the maid nary a mewl. Purely the rhythmic jangle of reins and trundle of wheels touched their ears.
Why had he spat that out? And to a lady… Unforgiveable.
This damn heat. This countryside. This infernal attraction to Tamsyn. He needed to acquire her information and get back to London soon – for the noise of the city, the ceaseless revelry, the anonymity of mere acquaintances.
No time to reflect. No time to dwell.
“‘God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist,’” Mrs Pencally remarked quietly. “Saint Augustine, I believe, and I stand corrected, my lord.”
“No, ’tis I who should beg your pardon for my abrupt manner,” he replied, as a calmness descended. “But perhaps we should talk of lighter matters. Tell me, what are you all hoping to purchase in Helston?”
Mrs Pencally smiled as Miss Treherne gabbled on about gowns with delight.
Only Tamsyn displayed no reaction, eyes gazing out the window, but it mattered not.
Because betwixt their bodies, after his ill-tempered outburst, her hand had wrapped itself around his own.
Silent comfort and tacit understanding. His ire had vanished in an instant.
Could the coachman not rein in the horses a little?