Chapter Thirty
So, what are you going to do?
“I see a hard and barren winter to come,” bewailed Mrs Mildern from the kitchen table with an ominous tone.
Tamsyn glanced up distractedly. “Has the mirror shown a bad harvest?”
The old lady shook her head. “No, dearie. But we’ll have no jam as you’ve burned it.”
A sickly odour assailed their nostrils and cook scurried over to the range, clicking her tongue. Tamsyn had thought assisting in the kitchens would distract her from thoughts of Jack departing four hours past, but apparently not.
“Oh, Miss Penrose. Your mind must be…” Cook gawked at the clock, counted on her fingers. “…ten miles past Truro. Why don’t you read a book instead?” She scrunched her nose at the roiling pan. “And I’ll get Samuel to feed the pigs.”
Head bowed, Tamsyn took her leave and made for the library – surely Moths of Deepest Peru could absorb her contrary thoughts and cure her aching heart.
As she perused the shelves, Hades and Persephone caught her eye and she roundly scowled.
“Daughter? Are you well?”
She spun. “Yes, Papa,” she replied, not realising she’d stomped straight past him.
“Then why did you allow the fellow to leave? And what are you going to do about it?”
“Beg pardon?”
Father sat behind his desk, sipping a noon-day glass of cider and nibbling hevva cake, raisins dotting the green leather like tin mines on the landscape.
“Winterbourne. You let him leave with nary a squeak this morning.”
“One can do nothing but accept some events in life, Papa.” She re-arranged his collection of porcelain figurines on the book shelf.
“Is that so?” Her father made a fuss of throwing his head back in the chair. “Is that what you did in the cave all those years ago? Accept death? Is that what you did in old man Thomas’s rowing boat three days past? Accept your fate?”
Mouth opened. And closed.
“Or,” her father continued, “did you fight, rail and win? That is the daughter I brought up, not this timmersome miss.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Papa.”
“Tamsyn, I am not a fool. I saw how you two were together.” He gazed fondly then frowned. “I didn’t interfere because I felt you were both old enough to realise your own feelings. But Winterbourne left with a face like a wet Friday and you are now fiercely scowling at paintings.”
She sat on the edge of his desk and snaffled a chunk of hevva cake. “Oh, Papa, you and Mother had so much in common but Jack and I–”
Booming laughter interrupted the practised monologue that she’d repeated to herself every hour since the storm.
“Oh, Tam, you were so young.” He wiped his eyes. “Do you remember what your mother most enjoyed doing?”
She thought back. Mama had lived life with such enthusiasm, and she’d always…
“Dancing, I remember she’d dance through the hall, lifting me up and spinning me around.”
“And how is my dancing?”
Her lips twitched. “You dance like a bear with two left feet…and a limp.”
“Harsh, daughter of mine, but fair.” A tender smile curved his lips. “Your mother loved people and chatter, life and laughter, yet I am an unsophisticated chap who relishes nights in by the fire and cannot dance for a fig.” He gazed into the distance. “But I so adored the smile on her face as she twirled herself dizzy that I would have danced all night with her, anywhere she wished.”
“I remember you reading together in the library. Snug and content.”
He grabbed her hand, plaited their fingers, and brown eyes met hers.
“And so we did, because she gladly partook of my pleasures as well. At the end of each day, we were together and that was all that mattered.”
“I…” She scrutinised Persephone again, saw the adoration, despite their differences.
“I thought you understood that painting, Tam. You used to stare at it often enough. Your mother and I used to laugh that it was us. Two sides, two opposites and yet we fitted. We fitted so very perfectly.”
His voice broke and she fell into his lap, hugged him close. “Oh, Papa.”
“I’ll be with her again some day, but I have to ensure our children are contented first. So, I repeat my question, Daughter, why did you let him go?”
Yes, why?
Because she’d not wished to appear needy? Because her pride would’ve been hurt if she’d revealed the truth of her love and he’d still left?
She faffed with her father’s appallingly loose neckcloth.
How weak to not divulge one’s feelings. It wasn’t needy to let a man know he was loved. Indeed, it seemed weaker to hide that love, to not fight for it, to fear the rejection.
She glanced at the painting, recalled Jack sitting peacefully as she’d nattered on about moths, remembered her gladness as she’d watched him delight and charm people with his banter.
Father looked sly. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
The house felt so quiet as Tamsyn ambled through the hall and fiddled with another porcelain ballerina that had somehow twirled to the side table. She’d always enjoyed the tranquillity of Penrose Manor but she missed Jack’s teasing tones and jovial laughter, Ben’s ragging and Mr Miggens’s lurking.
She noticed the professor sitting in the library, quietly reading, whilst Mr Sewell, or rather Mr Mason, scribbled away at his side, lips a little less sullen. He’d been packed and about to leave this morning, apologised for the deception, when Father had asked if he was happy here. Mr Mason had admitted to feeling a sense of peace since coming to Cornwall, and said he’d quite like to stay in the area.
The professor had patted his back, said he’d never had such a good assistant. And so that was that.
“Tamsyn Penrose!” The ballerina almost pirouetted from her hands, never to dance again.
“Aunt Sarah?”
“Don’t Aunt Sarah me. Come into the drawing room and pour two sherries.”
Not even the Prince Regent could disobey such a tone and so she obliged, Great-Aunt Sarah settling herself on Father’s treasured giltwood chaise with leonine feet.
“One wouldn’t normally interfere,” Great-Aunt said as she sipped, “but good grief, child.”
“Are you referring to the burned jam, Aunt?”
The glare was quelling and Tamsyn sat, suitably chastened, letting the sherry warm her insides.
“But, Aunt, he’s a rogue. Can a leopard really change its spots?”
“Your second cousin Lucy keeps a leopard in her bedchamber, gifted by one of her…gentlemen friends. It sports a diamond collar and sleeps on a silk pillow. She walks it in Hyde Park and it’s never once eaten anyone, so a name is merely that.”
Which seemed a good enough answer. But…
Tamsyn took an unladylike gulp of sherry. “His reputation cannot be for naught.”
“Pah! He’s a rich, handsome marquess with a trim physique and pert bottom, what do you expect? But being a rogue, Tamsyn, is not for life, it’s a mere step on the staircase. At times all of us hold ourselves back through fear or some other emotion, never to take the next step. But Lord Winterbourne, an unrepentant debaucher like his father? Tosh. You know the truth, don’t you, my dear?”
Yes, she did. He was honourable and perceptive and magnificent and why had she let him go? Simply let him walk out the door with nothing but a silly drawing to remember her by?
She was a dimwit.
“So…” Aunt flicked the rim of her empty sherry glass and nodded at the decanters. “…what are you going to do about it?”
Weaving along the corridor, Tamsyn considered her options.
Catch up with him by horse? A tad frantic, grimy and after all that sherry, rather perilous.
A letter? Eloquent but slow.
“Benjamin?” she asked as he stood trimming the candle wicks. “Did Lord Winterbourne appear…unhappy at leaving?”
“Something awful, Miss. Gloomy and miserable.”
“Oh.” Unusually succinct for Benjamin. “Thank you.”
He nodded and wandered off.
That reassured. Although Jack could have been despondent at embarking on such a long journey back to London with nothing but the moth book for company.
Her bedchamber door appeared to have two handles – that’s what occurred when your aunt fed you sherry with no breakfast but raspberries. She made a grab for one of them and pottered inside.
Lowdy was sitting on the bed, guzzling from a goblet and writing a letter – quite a feat, although the coverlet had not come away unscathed from either endeavour.
Sheets of Father’s finest and most expensive paper littered the bed, and Dr Johnson’s dictionary lay open on the pillow.
“Are you well?”
A blotchy face peered up. No then.
“I was horrible to Oliver, so I’ve spent all morning writing a letter, explaining everything,” she slurred, blobs of ink splattering her fingers. “I was sooo afraid but now ’tis worse, a-and it hurts so without him.” She flung her arms wide, red liquid splashing Tamsyn’s coverlet. “I told him I couldn’t marry a lowly valet but s’not true, only said it to make him despise me. I don’t care if he’s a valet. I don’t care about society or nice dresses or that I’ll be a hopeless wife who can’t cook. I’ll become a scullery maid… I’d be good at scullering,” she muttered darkly.
Tamsyn plonked down next to her and snatched up the topmost sheet of her letter.
My darling Oli,
Sooo SORRY.
I love you.
Lowds.
PS I’m not a virgin.
Goodness.
A full glass of red wine was shoved into Tamsyn’s hand.
“We are nitterwits,” bemoaned Lowdy.
“I’m not sure that’s a word, but I wouldn’t disagree. How much wine have you had?”
Fingers dangled, flapping. Six of them.
“Four.” Lowdy hiccupped.
Bottles or glasses? Tamsyn mused. “What are we to do, Lowdy? I love the marquess but he only ever said he cared for me.”
“What a coincidence!” Her companion collapsed back on the bed, arms and legs spread like a flailing mermaid. “Oli told me he loved me, but I said I only cared for him, which was a bundle of walloping fibble-fable, so therefore we must all love each other hugely.”
There was sense in there somewhere.
“So what are we to do?”
Joining Lowdy in sprawling over the bed and sheets of paper, her mind churned but only one answer came forth.
“London,” they answered simultaneously. “We’ll go to London.”
They turned to each other, eyes wide. “Those flashy London types won’t know what’s struck them,” puffed Lowdy, mouth agape.
Nothing but pungent wine fumes struck Tamsyn but hopefully they would dissipate by London.
Tamsyn’s heart quaked. What if he didn’t wish to see her? What if he laughed? What if he had another lady on his arm?
Yet she vowed not to be weak because maybe Jack needed for her to be strong, needed someone to say the words first, to show him love.
Father had been right: she’d let him go with nary a whimper, acted nonchalant as though she’d felt nothing. Hiding once more.
Nitterwit.
“You must wear lemon, Lowdy.”
Frantic nodding. “And you must wear blue?”
“In that case, we should go shopping.”
“Can we go tomorrow. I’m feeling ever so slightly wimbly-wambly.” And a groan emerged.
But plans and ideas formulated in Tamsyn’s mind, causing her head to spin, pulse to pound.
Could she be so bold? Could she bare her heart?
Yes, of course, she could.
She knew exactly what she was going to do about the Marquess of Winterbourne.