Regency Surrender: Sinful Conquests. Louise Allen

Cris picked up the seal and rolled it between his fingers. His own seal ring, securely locked away, showed the de Feaux crest, a phoenix rising from flames, a sword in one clawed foot. From Ash I Rise, In Fire I Conquer. The crest was an ancient pun on the similarity in pronunciation between feu—fire—and Feaux. This version showed only the flames, but it was known to his friends.

      ‘Cipher, sir?’

      He thought about it, then shook his head. ‘No. Can you see anyone in this household opening a guest’s correspondence?’

      Gabriel Stone was in London, up to no good as usual, and perfectly placed to send Cris information about Franklin Holt, Viscount Chelford. Gabe might be Earl of Edenbridge, but he was also a gambler, a highly successful, ice-cold, card player, and he would know just what Chelford was about, whether he was in debt and any other scandal there was to be had.

      Send whatever intelligence you can find—and especially anything about Chelford’s relationship with his aunt, Miss Holt, of this address, and his inheritance of her estate after her death.

      He put down the pen and stared out of the window as he ran through the things he wanted Gabe to find out.

      He wished he could ask him to send down a couple of burly Bow Street Runners, or better still, a couple of doormen from one of the tougher gambling hells, but they would stick out like daffodils in a coal cellar down here. Then his eyes focused on the stony track and he smiled. Of course, that would kill two birds with one stone. He dipped the pen again.

      You recall that little incident in Bath and our two Irish friends? If you can locate them and send them here with their equipment, I have use of both their old trade and their willingness to use their fists.

      All correspondence should be directed to Mr C. Defoe.

      He folded and sealed the letter, addressed it to The Earl of Edenbridge, then folded it within a second sheet and addressed that to his solicitor in the City, sealing it for the second time. However scrupulous his hostesses might be about other people’s correspondence, there was no need to raise questions over letters to the aristocracy.

      ‘Thank you, Collins. If you take that down I am told someone will take it to the receiving office in the village. That will be all for the moment.’

      Alone, he got up and prowled around the room as he finally allowed himself to think about Tamsyn and that kiss. It was like unravelling tangled string, sorting out what he felt, what he ought to feel, what she wanted—what was right. She was not an innocent, but neither was she experienced with men other than her husband, he could tell that. Whatever she had been doing since Jory Perowne’s death, Tamsyn had not been sharing the beds of any local gentlemen. This was a tiny, unsophisticated community where everyone knew everyone else’s business and where a reputation lost would be common currency within hours. If this...attraction...flirtation...madness...whatever it was, went any further, then he would have to be very careful indeed.

      And what was he thinking of anyway? Part of his anatomy was sending him very clear signals indeed, but it had been months since he had lain with a woman, not since he had set eyes on Katerina. He could simply be suffering from an attack of lust, which was something very different from what he had felt for Katerina. To have even thought of another woman while he was seeing her every day had been impossible. But she was far away and unobtainable and always would be, and he, as he kept reminding himself, was not cut out for celibacy.

      Cris sat on the window seat and stared at a clump of gorse. It was sentimental tosh to feel that kissing another woman was disloyal to Katerina. She had never been his, he had never been hers, they had never spoken the words he read in her gaze, that he felt in his heart.

      But the desire he felt for Tamsyn was shaking his certainty about his feelings for Katerina. Was it love? He felt uncomfortable with the doubt. It had certainly been more than pure lust. But was desiring Tamsyn just a selfish need to lose himself in a passionate encounter that he would walk away from in a few days?

      Perhaps he should tell her who he was. Cris examined the idea and realised he was enjoying the freedom too much. For the first time as an adult he had none of the burdens of his title on his shoulders, none of the demands or the expectations. He was just Cris, a man who was attracted to a woman and who saw the need to protect her from the danger that threatened them. It would do them no good to know who he was, only make them feel awkward.

      The whole thing was academic, anyway. He had kissed Tamsyn as though he was about to rip off her clothing, there and then in the hallway. He had almost had her standing up against the door, like some drab in a back alley, and he had topped off a thoroughly unpolished performance by informing her that she was not from the sophisticated world he inhabited. If Tamsyn would give him the time of day next time they met, then it was more than he deserved.

      Something moved on the road. Cris focused and saw it was Jason, a satchel slung on his shoulder, riding up the track. The mail was on its way. Now he just had to remind himself who he was, what he was, and somehow recapture the man he had been before that wild impulse had sent him off the road at Newark, driving across country into oblivion.

      * * *

      There was absolutely nothing like a pile of account books for setting a woman’s feet firmly on the ground. Or, in the case of the farm’s accounts, in the mire. Nothing was adding up this afternoon, not the price of oats, not the farrier’s bill, not even the egg money. Tamsyn gritted her teeth, turned over a sheet of paper covered in crossings-out and started again. All that was wrong with her, as she was very well aware, was that her brain was off with the fairies, her body was pulsing with desire and more than half her attention was focused on listening for footsteps on the stairs.

      ‘Letters, Mizz Tamsyn.’

      She jumped, sending her pen in one direction, the account book in another and a large ink blot on to her page of calculations. ‘Jason, you startled me.’

      ‘Sorry, Mizz Tamsyn.’ He came into the room and emptied the contents of the satchel on to the table. ‘You were daydreaming, it looked like.’

      ‘Er...yes.’

      Dreams of night, not of day. Of beds and rumpled sheets and mindless pleasure. And impossible dreams. There had been a moment as she daydreamed that she had heard wedding bells. And that would never be. Her stomach cramped with remembered pain and she bit her lip before she could turn back to the waiting groom.

      ‘Thank you, Jason.’ She dabbed at the spreading blot, made it worse, screwed up the whole sheet in sudden exasperation and began to sift through the pile of post. Several newspapers, two days out of date, a notification from the circulating library that three novels she had asked for were now available. Several bills, including another from the farrier, an invitation to dine at the vicarage in a week’s time when the moon was full and the roads consequently less hazardous, and a letter with their solicitor’s seal.

      Something about leases, or perhaps an answer to her query about buying that small warehouse in Barnstaple she’d had her eye on. The heavy paper, expensive, like Mr Pentire’s excellent services, crackled as she broke the seal and started to read.

      ‘What?’ The shriek hurt her throat, but that did not stop the next words being wrenched out. ‘The swine. The utter, unmitigated swine.’

      There was a thunder of boot heels down the stairs, Aunt Izzy’s cry of, ‘Tamsyn? What is wrong?’, then the door flew open to reveal Cris with, of all things, a pistol in his hand.

      ‘What is it?’ He cast one searching look around the room, then strode in, jerked her out of the chair and into the curve of his arm. ‘Who was it? Where did they go?’

      Aunt Izzy hurtled into the room, gave a cry at the sight of her niece in the clutches of a man holding a gun, and collapsed into the nearest chair. ‘What happened? Why do you have a gun?’

      ‘What gun?’ The question came from the doorway where Aunt Rosie, grim-faced and clutching the poker in one arthritic hand, clung to the doorpost.

      ‘There is nobody, Aunt Izzy, please