Violet

Chapter Twenty-five

“WHERE DID SHE SAY SHE WAS GOING?” GABRIEL STARED AT Josefa, slow anger beginning to burn in his eyes. The woman stood her ground, although her lip quivered a little.

“She didn't say. Just that she was going riding and she'd be back by five o'clock.”

Gabriel glanced up at the clock on the stable wall. It was past six. “How did she seem to you? What kind of mood was she in?”

Josefa frowned, considering this while Gabriel tapped his foot with growing impatience on the cobbles. “You know how she is before an engagement,” Josefa said finally. “Her eyes were bright, she wasn't thinking of anything but what she was doing. You know how she is,” she repeated.

“Oh, yes, I know,” Gabriel said grimly. “I'm a fool! I knew she wouldn't have given up on the Penhallan.” He spun on his heel and bellowed in a voice to shake mountains, “Saddle my horse again.”

“But where is she?” Josefa quavered.

“Causing trouble,” Gabriel said softly, his eyes sharply focused. “Alone. And those filthy swine are there… Hurry up, lad!” he snapped at the groom struggling with the girths of his horse. Impatiently, he pushed him aside. “I'll do it.” His large hands were surprisingly deft on the straps, and then he leaped into the saddle and galloped out of the stable yard.

The horse pounded the lanes between the high hedges, sensing his rider's urgency. Gabriel rode low in the saddle, his fury at Tamsyn for deceiving him mingling with dread. She wasn't back when she'd said she would be; therefore, something had happened to her. She was clever and a good fighter and she didn't in general make mistakes, but this issue was an emotional one. To make matters worse, she was worried that the colonel would discover her secrets, so she was acting in haste, and Gabriel didn't trust her to keep a clear head. One slip, one piece of carelessness, was all it would take to destroy one woman up against the three Penhallans.

His horse swung around a corner and then shied into the hedge as it came almost eyeball to eyeball with a massive black that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

Gabriel hauled back on the reins. “Madre de Dios, Colonel, where did you spring from?”

Julian didn't answer. The expression on Gabriel's face sent a shiver of apprehension down his spine. “Where the hell are you going in such a hurry, Gabriel? And where's Tamsyn?”

Gabriel had no time to consider whether it would be in Tamsyn's interests to reveal her secrets to this man. He could do with another pair of hands, and the colonel’s were the hands he would have chosen if he'd had the choice. “Lanjerrick, in answer to both questions, Colonel, and you'd best come along. I don't know what we're going to find.”

“God's grace, but I thought as much!” Julian's skin was clammy, and a cold premonition curled in his belly. “She found out the Penhallans were her family.”

“She's always known it,” Gabriel said shortly, setting his horse to the gallop again.

The cold, hard ball of premonition grew as he turned Soult in the narrow lane and caught up with Gabriel.

“What do you mean?” Julian rode neck and neck with Gabriel. “Since when has she known it?”

“She's always known she's kin to the Penhallan.” Julian absorbed this in silence, the rhythmic pounding of Soult's hooves on the rutted lane sounding in his blood. Why wasn't he surprised? “She knew before we left Spain?” He seemed to need clarification, although the picture was forming with hideous clarity.

“Aye. She's set on revenge for what they did to her mother.”

“What kind of revenge?” he asked dully as the pieces fell into place and the true extent of her deceit and manipulation took clear shape. And the true extent of his own gullibility. So desperate to believe in her essential honesty, in an innocent purpose behind her need for his protection and the shelter of his roof. But there was no essential honesty, only a cold and calculating seduction with a black core of lies. Lies she'd been telling from the moment she'd laid eyes on him.

“She was going to ruin Cedric for what he did to her mother… expose him in public. But then she decided she couldn't expose him without your finding out, Colonel, so I'm guessing she's just gone for the Penhallan diamonds. A much simpler revenge… and the bairn would have it that they were her mother's by rights and therefore now hers.” Gabriel shook his head. “She's diamonds aplenty, of course, but she has a powerful sense of justice… always has had.”

“And a powerful sense of justice is reason for theft?” “Och, she's not out to steal them, man. She'll persuade the Penhallan to give them to her. She holds some powerful secrets against him.”

“Oh, I see. Blackmail,” St. Simon said in the same flat tone.

“In a manner of speaking. But she believes she's only doing what the baron would have done himself if he'd lived long enough.”

“Such a wonderful parental example,” Julian said with bitter sarcasm. “So you're telling me she's gone to Lanjerrick to blackmail Cedric Penhallan into giving her the family diamonds? Does she think Cedric's simply going to hand them over for the asking?” He laughed in scorn.

Gabriel's mouth tightened. “The man's capable of murder, and she knows it. She'll be prepared. But she should never have gone alone!” He drew a harsh, ragged breath. “If those gutter sweepings are there, she'll be one against three of them. They've put their hands on her once-good God, man, you've known them for what they are! You know what they're capable of doing to her?”

So she'd heard that story too. Was there anything she hadn't discovered? Was there ever a moment since they'd first met when she hadn't been plotting and planning, using him? In London, when she'd been lying beneath him, entrancing him with her love play and her soft, lascivious movements, and the luminous glow in her eyes, and the power of her passion… at every moment she'd been pursuing her own lawless, deceitful course. And he'd believed in the truth of her emotions. God help him, he was beginning to find it hard to ignore his own.

Was she intending to leave him once she'd completed her little blackmail? But no, of course not. She needed him to get her back to Spain. She needed him, the blind dupe, to arrange passage for them all. She needed his escort so she could travel with all the safety and trappings of a guest of the British army. And when she was safely home again… why, then she would leave him. She would no longer need him. Had she intended to steal out into the night like the lying thief that she was? Leaving him without a word of explanation?

Abruptly a flash of fear pushed through his corrosive anger. He thought of the twins, of what they would do to her if she could be rendered helpless. And Gabriel said they had put their hands on her once already.

“What do you mean, they've put their hands on her already?”

Gabriel told him the story. “But they're mine, Colonel. Don't you forget that.”

“I have my own scores to settle,” Julian said harshly.

“First with the Penhallans… and then with Tamsyn.”

Gabriel glanced sideways at him in the pale light of the crescent moon. The colonel's face was tight and angry, but there was sorrow behind the anger… the sorrow of a man finally giving up a fight, finally facing unpalatable facts. And it filled Gabriel with deep foreboding. But he could think of nothing to say to repair the damage. Tamsyn said she loved the man, but she'd created this situation, and only she could put it right. Once she was out of whatever danger she'd walked into.

“I'll be going first with the Penhallan,” Gabriel declared, dropping low over his horse's neck, spurring the animal to increase his speed as they approached the out- skirts of Lanjerrick land. “But I'll happily share the pleasure with you, Colonel.”

“We'll go across the cliff top.” Julian turned his horse aside, through a break in the hedge. “I've no mind to approach through the front door on this errand.”

Gabriel followed, and they galloped across the flat turf of the cliff toward the gray house, looming unkempt and unlit out of the darkness.

“Just a minute!” Julian hauled back on the reins.

“There's a light down in the cove. Who would be taking a boat out at this time of night? It's too dark for crabbing. “

They drew rein at the head of the cliff and looked downward. A lantern flickered and wavered on the beach below; the surf crashed and boiled against a rocky outcrop at one side of the cove, before tumbling in a line of foam along the shore.

“We struck gold, Colonel,” Gabriel murmured, swinging off his horse. “I think that's the scum down there.”

“I believe you're right.” Julian too dismounted, and they tethered their mounts to a scraggly thorn bush, bent out of shape by exposure to the blasts of the sea wind. He was filled now with a calm, cold determination. He wanted Tamsyn in his hands, and he would unleash the full force of his bitter hurt… his deep contempt for her lying, cheating, blackmailing soul. But perhaps she wasn't down there on the beach. It was always possible she had carried off her coup and was on her way back to Tregarthan with the Penhallan diamonds tucked in her shirt.

But somehow he knew that wasn't the case. Gesturing to Gabriel, he inched over the cliff top and found the narrow ribbon of path snaking down to the beach through the scree and scrub. It was hidden from the beach by a cliff overhang at the very bottom, and when they reached the overhang, they dropped soundlessly onto the sand, ducking behind a rock to observe the scene.

The twins were sitting on the sand, and a fragrant curl of blue smoke rose from a cigar David was smoking. Between them was a bottle of cognac. Pulled up at the shoreline was a rowboat. They were talking and laughing in low voices, and Julian felt the skin on the back of his neck contract. He'd heard that sound before. He'd seen them like this. Relaxed, satiated. Taking a break before they returned to the cringing, battered little girl who had lain on the grass in front of them.

He stared in cold dread, expecting to see the glint of silver hair against the sand, the diminutive figure, pale and naked, her torn clothes scattered over the ground where they'd been stripped from her body.

But he could see nothing in the wavering light of the lantern on the sand, or the weaker light of the moon.

Gabriel had drawn a knife from his belt, and his gray eyes flickered sideways in a silent message. Julian nodded, his hand closing over his pistol.

They slipped, two powerful wraiths, from the concealment of the rocks and approached the two men.

Tamsyn lay in the bottom of the boat, her nose pressed to the gunwales as she fought wave after wave of nausea. The drug Cedric had given her was wearing off, but her head was still muzzy and the nausea was almost impossible to control. She fought it grimly, dreading the thought of lying in her own vomit, trussed as she was like a Christmas goose. Her hands were tied behind her back and then roped to her ankles. She'd still been unconscious when they'd done that, but not later… when they'd pawed her, opened her shirt, lifted her skirt…

She closed her eyes tightly and hung on through another wave of sickness. So far that was all they'd done. She'd given no sign that she was conscious, and they were going to wait until she came to before they really settled down to enjoy themselves. Charles's drunken slur played in her head, his lewd chuckle as he said that there was no pleasure in necrophilia. David had muttered something about the governor, and then he too had laughed and put his hand roughly inside her shirt. Then they'd left her and she'd heard them on the beach, talking and laughing. They'd come over several times to look at her, and she'd stayed inert, her face pressed against the rough wood of the gunwales as her mind slowly cleared and she tried to think how she was to get out of this particular pickle.

It seemed as insoluble as the situation with Cornichet. Whether rape was a softer alternative to flaying was something she cared not to debate. Her death was the ultimate intention both then and now. If only she didn't feel so sick… but, then, perhaps if she vomited all over the loathsome twins, they'd find her too disgusting even for rape.

It was a possibility. They'd have to lift her out and put her on the sand, since presumably the narrow and awkward shape of the rowboat didn't lend itself to leisurely violation. And presumably they'd have to loosen her bonds. And then, if she was violently sick, it would take them off guard, and if she had some room to maneuver, maybe she could do something.

It was a forlorn plan but all she had. She lay still, listening, waiting for a change in the tempo of their voices, a footfall in the sand that would indicate an approach.

What she heard was a soft, sighing sound, a thump, a shuffling of sand. Then footsteps. Tamsyn struggled onto her back. Moonlight shone on her white face, where beads of sweat dewed her forehead and the hard lines of the timbers were imprinted on her cheek.

Julian was looking down at her. How had he come to be there? His body was very still, and his blue eyes were hard and bright and questioning, and she could feel his anger and his resentment in every aching bone of her body. Tears of weakness sprang to her eyes as she lay still, gazing up at him. Now he knew everything. His knowledge burned in his eyes and scorched her with his contempt.

Then Gabriel came up beside him, and his warm, loving anxiety poured over her. “Och, little girl, how could you do this to me?” he said, bending to lift her.

But abruptly, Julian pushed him aside. “Leave her to me.” It was a harsh command issued on a ragged breath, but Gabriel took a step back.

Julian bent over her, slipped his hands beneath. her, and lifted her up. The motion, the change in position was too much. With a groan Tamsyn turned her head away from his body and vomited miserably onto the sand, splashing his boots.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I knew it would happen the minute I moved.”

“It doesn't matter,” he said, and the gentleness of his voice surprised them both. He set her down on the sand, and she rolled onto her side, retching feebly while he cut the ropes that bound her. When she finished, he wiped her mouth with his handkerchief and took the twins' bottle of cognac from Gabriel, hovering anxiously beside him. “Have a swallow of this.”

She took a gulp, and the fire burned down her gullet and into her heaving stomach. And miraculously, the queasiness began to abate. She wiped her damp forehead with the back of her arm and looked helplessly up at him. His features were granite, but his eyes were confused.

She turned to look at Charles and David, lying still on the sand. “Are they dead?”

“No, just resting after a knock on the head. Have they touched you?” The question was almost dispassionate, but now his eyes were livid.

She shook her head carefully. “Not much. They were waiting for me to come to. Cedric put something in the champagne… I don't know what it was. I don't know how long I've been unconscious. But it wasn't dark when I was in the library.”

“It's close to eight o'clock now.” He turned away from her, as if satisfied that she was sufficiency recovered to dispense with his attention. “What do you think, Gabriel?” He nudged the still figure of Charles with his toe. “They won't be out for long.”

“How about we strip' em naked, put' em in the boat, and send them out to sea?” Gabriel said promptly. “They'll probably get picked up sometime tomorrow, more's the pity, but what a sight they'll be!”

“You'd have to row the boat,” Tamsyn pointed out.

“And then how would you get back to shore?”

“Swim,” Gabriel said with a grin. “I'll row them out beyond the headland. The tide's going out, it'll take them a goodly way out to sea by morning.”

“You'll be swimming against the current, and it's strong around here,” Julian pointed out.

“So am I,” Gabriel said, still grinning. “You going to help me strip them, Colonel?”

“With pleasure.”

Tamsyn watched as the twins were rendered white and naked on the sand. They both stirred and groaned as Gabriel tugged off their boots.

“Funny thing!” Gabriel frowned. “Seem to have hurt their feet in exactly the same spot.”

“Yes,” Tamsyn said. “I owed them a favor.” Julian's eyes darted toward her as she sat on the sand.

He fought the persistent and exasperating amnesia that had swept over him first when he'd seen her lying in the bottom of the boat, and she'd gazed up at him in silent, anxious plea, and his heart had turned over with joy that she was alive, and he'd forgotten his hurt and anger in his joyous relief and the need to hold her in his arms.

Coldly, he turned away from her to help Gabriel heft the inert figures into the rowboat.

Tamsyn shivered, but the night was warm and the chill was within her. She'd seen his eyes, and she could read his thoughts as if they were an open book.

Gabriel stripped to his long woolen drawers and helped the colonel push the boat into the lapping surf, then sprang over the side and fitted the oars into the rowlocks. David stirred, groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. “Go back to sleep, laddie.” Gabriel tapped him gently on the jaw with his heel. It had looked to Julian like the lightest of touches, but David fell back again, inert.

The power of this unpredictable giant was not to be minimized. “You're not intending to kill them, are you?”

Gabriel shook his head, saying cheerfully, “A day in the broiling sun on the open sea will do nicely, Colonel. I'll even leave them an oar, if you like.”

Julian looked at the naked bodies and thought of them bobbing on the open sea under the midmorning sun, waiting to be found by a fishing boat. It was a pleasing prospect. “Leave them one,” he said.

Gabriel nodded. “And you'll take the little girl back home.”

“I'll not deny her the shelter of my roof for another night,” Julian stated flatly. “After that, since your business is done here, I imagine you'll have no further need of my hospitality.”

Gabriel frowned in the moonlight; then he said neutrally, “Leave my horse where he is. I'll collect him and my clothes when I get back.”

Julian stepped back to the sand, watching, hands on his hips, as Gabriel pulled strongly toward the opening of the cove. Then he turned around. Tamsyn was sitting on a rock, her hands clasped lightly in her lap, her head bent as if she were looking for something in the sand.

She raised her head, and her eyes were large and strained in her pale face. “So you know everything now.”

Julian raised an eyebrow. “I can't believe that,” he drawled. “There are no more secrets, no more illicit little plots percolating in your devious mind? You'll have to forgive me if I find that hard to credit, Violette.”

“Oh, there's one secret,” she said dully. “But only one, and you might as well know it. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. And I'll never love anyone else in the same way.”

Her hands fell to her sides. “There, now,” she said. “That's all of it. I've tricked you, and I've used you. I've lied to you, and I've rearranged your life to suit my own purposes. I forced you to leave Spain, and I'm the illegitimate daughter of a Penhallan and a robber baron. But I love you with my heart and soul, and I'd give my last drop of blood if you ever needed it.”

She stood up. “But of course you won't ever need it, so I'll go now. And you need never fear that our paths will cross again.” Turning from him, she began to walk back across the sand.

“You omitted to mention puking all over my boots in that catalog of wrongs,” Julian said.

Tamsyn stopped. She turned slowly. “I suppose you're entitled to that,” she said. “Entitled to mock. Why should you believe in my love? Anyway, it's a poor thing. I know it can't excuse or make up for what I've done to you.”

“Dear God,” he said. “I'm assuming this extraordinary show of humility was brought on by that drug Penhallan gave you. I trust its effect isn't permanent.”

It was too much! All Tamsyn's sorrow and weakness went up in a puff of smoke. She was not going to walk out of his life a broken reed. Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon was going to have something else to remember her by. “Oh, you despicable bastard! You are an unmitigated cur!” She swooped down, grabbed a handful of sand, and threw it at him. Darting sideways, she picked up the empty cognac bottle. It flew through the air and caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder, before rolling onto the sand.

“Diablillo! Virago! Termagant!” Julian taunted, grinning as he ducked one of Gabriel's boots.

“Espadachin! Brute! Bully! Unchivalrous pig!” she hurled back, searching for another missile. “You can't even accept an apology gracefully!”

Julian dived for her, bringing her down onto the sand. He felt extraordinary, struck by a blinding epiphany. He'd been reborn in some fashion, his hurt and anger vanished in the mists of incomprehension. It no longer mattered how or why this had all started. What mattered was the now. She loved him. He did believe her, every word of her declaration. He believed it because he knew it was how he felt himself He'd fought the knowledge… he'd been fighting it for weeks… and now he'd lost the battle. She was a lawless, unethical, manipulative, illegitimate half-breed, no possible wife for a St. Simon, and he didn't give a damn.

Scissoring her legs with his own, he pinned her arms above her head, subduing her with his weight. “When did you decide you loved me?”

“Weeks ago,” she said, lying quiet now beneath him, reading the light in his eye, a trickle of incredulous hope beginning to seep into her veins. “But I knew you didn't think you could love me in the same way, although I knew that you did… and I was hoping that when we were together in Spain, maybe you could learn to look into your heart. But I still had to deal with Cedric… it was something I felt I had to do… for Cecile, and for my father. But I gave up my big plan to ruin him publicly, because then you'd have known the whole story, and I thought you'd be unhappy to discover how I'd been deceiving you.”

“Unhappy, eh? You're a mistress of euphemism,” he declared with a wry quirk of his lips. “But maybe you can find a euphemistic explanation for blackmail? Just to enable me to live with it, you understand.”

“It wasn't blackmail, it was restitution.”

“A little better. Keep trying.”

“The diamonds were my mother's,” she said quietly, and finally told him the full story. “It was only justice,” she finished.

“Only justice,” Julian mused, his body still pinning her to the sand. “I suppose I can live with that. A woman with a fine sense of justice, not a blackmailer at all.” He nodded judiciously. “Yes, I think I can live with that.”

“You're very heavy,” Tamsyn said. “I don't want to puke all over you again.”

Julian with a muttered exclamation promptly rolled off her.

“I have to go back to Lanjerrick.” Tamsyn sat up.

“My sense of justice hasn't been appeased… and Cesar is still there.”

Julian got to his feet and pulled her up. “Then let's pay your uncle a visit.”

“You don't have to come with me.”

“Oh, but I do,” he said. “I too have a very fine sense of justice.”

“You don't mind too much that I have Penhallan blood?” she asked hesitantly as they climbed the path to the cliff top.

“Oh, I hardly think so,” he responded with a dry smile. “Your kinship with a murderous viscount is probably the most respectable thing about you.”

Cedric was in the library, cradling a brandy goblet, morosely awaiting the return of his nephews, when there came a violent hammering on the front door. He sat up abruptly, listening to the servant's footsteps on the marble tiles, the sound of the bolts being drawn back on the front door.

Then the library door was flung open, and Julian St. Simon stepped into the room, Celia's daughter behind him.

“The cretins bungled it,” Viscount Penhallan said wearily. “I might have known they would.” He gestured to the decanters on the sideboard. “Help yourself to a drink.”

“I wouldn't risk it in this house,” Tamsyn said tartly. “Oh, there's no fear with the cognac, or the port,” her uncle said, leaning back in his chair, regarding her through narrowed eyes. “Did you kill them?”

“No.” Julian poured himself a glass of cognac. Tamsyn helped herself to an apple from a fruit bowl. “Not all Penhallans are murderers, uncle.” She scrunched into the apple. “Where's my horse?”

“That magnificent beast is in my stables,” he said. “I congratulate you, he's a superb animal.”

“A present from my father,” she said through a mouthful of apple. “I told you Cecile made a good marriage.”

“So you did.” He turned his head against the cushions and let his gaze rest lazily on St. Simon. “So how can I help you, St. Simon?”

“All in good time,” Julian said calmly, leaning back against the sideboard, long legs stretched in front of him, casually crossed at the ankle. He took a critical sip of his cognac.

“I've decided you can keep the diamonds,” Tamsyn said. ''I'm going to do what my father would have wanted and tell the world every last detail of your infamy… including what you tried to do to me. I couldn't do it before because the colonel didn't know the whole story, but now he does…” She paused, catching Julian's raised eyebrows. “You do agree that I must do this, don't you?”

“Who am I to question the baron's wisdom and wishes?”

“If you really don't wish me to… if it will involve you in scandal, then I won't,” she said slowly. “I'll just settle for the diamonds instead. But that would be blackmail, and I know you don't approve of that.”

“Blackmail?” he queried, his eyebrows disappearing into his scalp.

“Restitution. I forgot that was what we're calling it,” she said lamely.

“And a fine sense of justice, if you recall.” “Yes, that too.”

“So you're going to do what your mother threatened to do twenty years ago?” Cedric held out his empty glass toward Julian, who pushed himself away from the sideboard and brought the decanter over to him. Cedric nodded his thanks. “Is that so?”

“Yes.”

Cedric inclined his head and took a deep draft of brandy. “Then if we've concluded our business, perhaps you'd get out of my house.”

“Certainly.” Julian put down his glass and walked to the door. “But just one more thing… a mere formality, but one should observe the proprieties, as I'm sure you'll agree.” His smile was sardonic as he offered his host a small bow. “Since it appears that you're Tamsyn's nearest male relative, however much she might regret that fact, I suppose I must ask your permission to pay my addresses to your niece.”

“So long.as you don't expect me to walk her down the aisle,” Cedric said equably. “You may both go to the devil for all I care.”

“Thank you, sir.” Julian bowed again. “Come, buttercup.” He swept her out of the room ahead of him.

“Do you really wish to marry me?” Tamsyn demanded in a fierce whisper as they crossed the hall.

“Apparently,” he said affably. “Unless it's simply my social conscience that insists I make an honest woman of you… but, then,” he added thoughtfully, “I probably shouldn't set my sights too high.”

“Cur!”

“Brigand!”