Chapter Fourteen

T heir goal on the fifth day from Ealing was Exeter or perhaps a little beyond. When they stopped for their midday break, Jowan figured they were making good time, so they could linger for a while here, or get a bit closer to home later in the day.

Bran had something other than their progress on his mind. He and Jowan went for a walk to stretch their legs and were heading back to the inn where Tamsyn was resting and Evangeline was watching over her.

"She has been another man's mistress, Jowan. Hell, from what I heard while she was ill, she has been little better than whore to Coombe's pimp," he said.

He put up his hands and stepped back at Jowan's expression. "I wouldn't repeat it to anyone else, but I've always told you the truth, and I'm not about to change now."

Jowan had always believed that when he met Tamsyn again, the spark would be there, or it wouldn't. They would either pick up where they left off, or they would see nothing was left to pick up and go on with their lives. In fact, after seven years of silence, he was fully expecting to find that Tamsyn was not the girl he remembered.

He had been right. She was not, and part of the reason was the experiences she had been through. But the spark was still there, fanned to flames as he got to know her again over the week of her convalescence and the days of travel on their way to Cornwall. Bran didn't understand.

"Then tell me this," Jowan said. "In her situation, as a sixteen-year-old girl in the hands of a man with no conscience, would you have done better? Remember, she knew her mother had sold her, and that my father would simply return her to Coombe if she turned up on our doorstep. She had no money and no friends. Even I, as far as she knew, had abandoned her. What would you have done?"

Bran opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. After a moment, he said, "Fair point. But I don't see why you still want her, for all of that. I accept it wasn't her fault, but she is used goods, Jowan." He frowned. "It wouldn't be fair to take her as a mistress, at least not yet. She is too vulnerable. But you cannot be thinking of marriage."

Jowan was thinking about punching his brother. "First, never call Tamsyn ‘used goods'. Not ever again, or I'll punch you through to next week. Don't even think it. That's a horrible thing to think about a human being. Used goods, as if she is yesterday's tea leaves. She's not someone's property that they're tired of, any more than your mother was."

That was a low blow. Bran's mother had died when he was a baby, but those who raised him, apart from his beloved grandmother who died a week before Bran turned up on the doorstep at Inneford House, never tired of reminding him about her disgrace. He reddened at the comparison but said nothing.

"Second, I'm not thinking of marriage. Or, at least, not yet. I'm not thinking of anything. As you say, she is vulnerable. She needs to live a little, get used to how life is without the poppy or the brew. Find out what she wants from life. I mean to help her if I can and stay out of her way otherwise. Do I have hopes for the future? I won't lie to you, Bran. I can't help but wonder if we might mean more to one another in time than we do or can now. If that happens, I would hope my brother would be happy for me." In its way, that was a lie, for he glimpsed what their love could be. He yearned for a future with Tamsyn as his wife and would do whatever he could to make it happen. Whatever he could without spooking her.

Bran didn't respond as Jowan hoped. "Evangeline says, the chances are she will go back on the opium or at least start drinking heavily again. She was clearly a lush, and we know how hard it is for them to stay sober."

"We shall see," Jowan said. "I think she means what she says. I think she has the courage and the determination to keep sober. If she doesn't…" he shrugged. "We'll deal with that if it happens. Bran, don't tear her down. That's all I'm asking."

"My uncle drank," Bran told him. "My grandfather, too. Neither of them ever managed to give it up. I don't trust her, Jowan. But I won't tell her or anyone else. As for being happy for you, I guess we will have to deal with that when it happens, too."

Jowan understood Bran was concerned for him. There was no point in resenting the man for it. The truth was that Jowan, too, thought he might be riding for a fall. Not because he expected Tamsyn to turn back to the drugs and booze. He knew how determined she had been as a child, and believed she would surprise her detractors.

His problem was he couldn't believe that a sophisticated woman of her beauty and experience, who had thrilled audiences in all the great cities of Europe and beyond, would choose him and St Tetha. Who was he, after all, to win such a prize? Only Jowan Trethewey, a man of little fortune, not very much experience, and no particular talent, who had lived most of his life in a tiny village in Cornwall and was committed to staying there.

The inn was within sight, now. A cluster of people were gathered in the courtyard, and as Jowan's eyes focused on what was happening, he broke into a run, Bran speeding up to run with him. A stranger had Tamsyn by both wrists and was dragging her towards a carriage while several other men held off Evangeline and their driver and groom, and the inn's keeper and servants watched without interfering.

Bran fell away. Without asking, Jowan knew he would be loading the pocket pistol he carried. Jowan didn't wait, but hurled himself straight at the man holding Tamsyn and fetched him a mighty clout to the head that had him letting go of Tamsyn and falling to the side.

*

The men had burst into the private parlor where Tammie and Evangeline were talking over a cup of tea. "That's her," said one, whom Tammie recognized as Paul Willard, one of Guy's most fervent acolytes. The other men also had muddied auras in Coombe's signature colors. "Get the treacherous bitch," Willard said. Another two men grabbed Tammie by her arms and dragged her to the door, though she dug her heels in and fought to be freed.

As she tossed her head about, she could see a fourth man holding Evangeline at bay.

Those hauling Tammie ignored the protesting innkeeper, but Tammie could hear Willard telling the man that Tammie was his master's runaway wife, whom they had been sent to retrieve.

"Lies!" Tammie yelled as they forced her out into the inn yard. "He lies!"

Jowan's coachman and guard emerged from the public room, calling for Tammie to be released. Other guests in the inn made themselves scarce and the innkeeper and his servants stood and watched as Willard grabbed Tammie's hands and the other men formed a barrier between the pair of them and Tammie's would-be defenders.

Willard was dragging her towards the open door of a carriage when Jowan appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and knocked him flying.

Tammie fell back into the mud of the courtyard. Jowan offered her a hand up. "Get behind me, Tammie. Who are they? Coombe's men?"

"Yes. The one you hit is Paul Willard. I do not know the others."

Willard was groaning. The other three men were holding the line but casting anxious glances behind them.

Jowan said, "Tammie, go to our carriage without getting too close to those villains, and bring me the flat wooden case under the rear-facing seat."

His carriage pistols. Of course. Tammie edged sideways, keeping an eye on the men, and then made a dash for the carriage. A gunshot made her look back. One of the men was a few paces closer to her but had flinched backward, his eyes on Bran, who was standing in the shadow of Willard's carriage, a smoking pistol in one hand and another pistol in the other.

Tammie hastened to fetch Jowan's pistol case, her heart leaping into her mouth when the carriage rocked while she was in it. Then a voice spoke from above her. "I have them covered, Sir Jowan. Scurvy knaves."

The guard! He must have taken his chance and gone for his blunderbuss. Tammie scrambled from the carriage and carried the case to Jowan. While Willard lay in the mud and the other three stood glowering at Bran and the guard, Jowan loaded both pistols and the coachman returned to Jowan's carriage and produced his own pistol. Evangeline showed an unexpected talent, taking Bran's spent pistol and reloading it.

The innkeeper decided to take a hand. "That one on the ground said the lady was his master's wife," he said.

"That one on the ground lied," Jowan replied. "Is there a magistrate nearby, innkeeper?"

"No, sir. That is, Lord Brant is our magistrate, but he is away over in Kent visiting his daughter. The nearest magistrate is twenty miles away."

"Then call the constable and have these four locked up," Jowan ordered. "My party and I shall make sworn statements before we leave. We cannot wait for the magistrate, but these four can."

"The woman belongs to the Earl of Coombe," insisted one of the other men. "Mr. Willard recognized her. And she recognized him, too."

"That's right," said another. "She is Miss Lind, the singer, and the Earl of Coombe is her patron. She ran away from him, and he has a right to get her back."

The innkeeper looked to Jowan for his response. "See?" Jowan said, "Already, they contradict themselves. That man lied when he said my sister here was Coombe's wife, and now they claim that Coombe owns the famous singer, Miss Lind. Slavery is illegal in England in case you have not heard. If you keep the leader separately from his henchmen, your magistrate will have the chance to question them before they can conspire on an answer."

"Miss Lind?" said one of the inn's grooms. "I've heard of her. The Devon Songbird, they call her. I don't rightly like foreigners coming into our village trying to steal away the Devon Songbird."

"That's not her, you fool," said another groom. "You heard the gentleman. They tried to steal the wrong lady. This is the gentleman's sister."

They continued to argue the matter as they efficiently tied up the Londoners, including Willard, who had recovered consciousness only to start yelling threats. His father the viscount was going to eviscerate them all, apparently. Tammie, now they'd decided the attempted abduction was a case of mistaken identity, didn't want to upset the harmony by explaining that Willard's father had disowned him for being a drunken degenerate.

She went inside with the rest of her party and wrote a statement saying she recognized none of the men except the Honorable Paul Willard whom she had met while in London. She said she was not, nor had she ever been, married to the Earl of Coombe, who was, as far as she knew, a bachelor. She was traveling home to St Tetha with Sir Jowan Trethewey, Mr. Branoc Hughes, his brother, and Mrs. Evangeline Parkerdale, a friend, and could be contacted through Sir Jowan.

She signed as Tamsyn Roskilly, though the name felt like a suit of clothes she no longer fitted. On the other hand, Tammie Lind did not fit, either. Who would she be now?

"I signed as Tamsyn Roskilly," she told Jowan. "Which I suppose will spoil your claim that I am your sister."

"Not really," Jowan said, with the cheeky grin she remembered from their joint childhood. "I told him Bran is my brother by a mistress, and you are the daughter of my father's long-time housekeeper. He can draw his own conclusions."

The innkeeper conducted them to their carriage, apologizing all the way for not defending Tammie from the invaders. "I did not know what to do," he kept saying. "I did not know who was in the right."

"I don't have much confidence that they will hold out for long against Willard's threats," Bran commented, as the carriage rolled out of the stable yard.

"All we can hope," said Jowan, "is they won't let those villains go before we have a chance to get home and marshal our defenses."

"We should have questioned Willard himself," Bran said, "to find out whether they knew where we were, or whether they found us by chance. There may be other parties out."

Jowan pressed his lips together and frowned, then shook his head. "A fair point, but I doubt we'll get much sense out of him, and I don't want to waste any time getting home. We could be there tonight if Tammie is well enough for a long run this afternoon."

Evangeline looked concerned, but Tammie nodded. "Better a long afternoon and evening's carriage ride with the three of you than as a prisoner of one of the Earl of Coombe's men," she said. "I doubt they would have been as considerate."

But what if his people are waiting for me in St Tetha? "Jowan, they might be in St Tetha ahead of us," she warned.

He nodded. "Bran and I have discussed that," he said. "We'll stop at Wheal Trethewey, at the mine manager's house. He'll be able to accommodate you ladies for the night while Bran and I drop by some of the cottages and ask about strangers in town."

"If they are there, they will be facing the whole village, Tammie. If need be, we'll call in the militia," said Bran.

"I do not want anyone to be in danger because of me," Tammie insisted.

"We have no intention of allowing Coombe to take you back and make a slave of you again," Jowan replied. "You cannot ask that of us, Tammie."

Tammie turned to the nurse, who had become a friend in recent weeks. "Evangeline, this is not your fight."

"It is my fight," Evangeline answered. "I have been fighting to save those in thrall to the poppy. How much more important is it to fight those who deliberately subject people to overuse of that and other things?" She was pink with indignation and distress. Bran put his hand on hers, and she turned her hand over to form a clasp.

Bran and Evangeline! That was an interesting development. Evangeline continued. "To enslave people, as Jowan rightly says. Indeed, I hope I will have the opportunity to give witness to the condition you were in, Tammie, thanks to that monster. The very idea!"

Tammie blinked back tears. How long had it been since she had had people who would take her part? She felt a surge of affection for them all. Had she been asked a few weeks ago, she would have said that opium and other substances opened her eyes and her mind to another world, a fantastic world of colors and sounds that did not exist in the mundane world.

That was what Guy had always claimed, and Tammie had believed him. In the past few days, however, she had discovered she had been seeing the real world through a wall. A crystal wall, perhaps, like a thick window of multi-colored glass that dulled and distorted what she saw, heard, and scented. And beyond that, what she felt.

She might not be able to see the indescribable colors from her poppy dreams, but the colors she could see were brighter and crisper. The same for all the other senses. As for emotions, she felt everything more intensely. Fear. Gratitude. The only thing dulled was her ability to perceive people's auras. Only careful concentration let her see them now, a shadowy remnant of the colors and shapes that used to be so obvious to her.

Her friends were smiling at her. "I am more grateful than I can say," she told them.

Jowan had clearly given orders for speed. The coachman kept the horses to a trot or even a canter whenever the road allowed, and they stopped twice as often as before to change teams, losing ten minutes in the change but gaining that time back doubled with the faster pace.

They went through Exeter in the mid-afternoon and kept going. By nightfall, they were in Bridestow, where they stopped to change their team once more and set out extra carriage lamps.

"The moon is full, Sir Jowan," Tammie heard the coachman report. "It will rise in about thirty minutes or so, I think. I suggest we take the time to get something to eat and otherwise look to the comfort of the ladies."

It was a good suggestion. After nearly a fortnight of Evangeline's coddling, Tammie's appetite was improving to the extent that she had moved Jowan's ring from the ribbon to her middle finger. Mention of dinner had her longing for it.

"Will it be safe to continue by moonlight?" she asked. Jowan was escorting her and Evangeline into the inn to order their meal while Bran helped the coachman inspect the available horses to decide which would be best to carry them further on their way.

"Yes, with tonight's clear skies it should be easy," Jowan replied. "We will have to go more slowly, though. Nothing above a trot or a fast walk. I should think we'll be home by midnight."

They set off again at moonrise. Jowan and Bran had so far traveled with their backs to the horses, but this time they suggested Jowan sit beside Tammie and Bran beside Evangeline. "Being larger," Jowan explained, "we're better anchored. If you ladies wish to sleep, you can use our shoulders as pillows."

Tammie yawned, which made the others laugh.

They took the seating Jowan suggested, but for the next stage of the journey they talked, and it wasn't until they pulled out of Okehampton that Tammie finally succumbed to her weariness. She must have slept through the change at Lifton and the moment when they crossed the Tamar into Cornwall, for she woke to Bran speaking through the hatch to the coachman. "Take the next right and look for a house on the left around 500 yards down that road."

She was sprawled on a man's chest. She didn't have to look to know it was Jowan's. Even after the day on the road, he still smelled of whatever lotion he used after he shaved and of something that was undefinably Essence-of-Jowan. He had propped himself in the corner, so he was sitting semi-sideways on the bench seat, and he had an arm around her to anchor her in place.

He gave way immediately when she pressed back against that arm.

"You're awake," he commented. "We're nearly there, Tammie. No sign of any trouble."

The mine manager said the same when they woke him, apologizing for the imposition. It was Thomas Penrose, whom she remembered from the years she had lived at Inneford House, though he was several years older than her and Jowan. Back then, he had been assistant to his father, the previous manager of this mine.

He recognized her, too. "Tamsyn Roskilly," he commented. "You've brought her home, Sir Jowan."

"I have, Thomas. But I had to extract her from the hands of an evil man who was trying to keep her against her will. We encountered his men on the way here and had to foil a kidnap attempt. That's why we haven't gone straight to Inneford—in case they are here ahead of us."

"No strangers in the village that I have heard about," Penrose said, "but why don't you stay here for the night, and we'll check out the area in the morning? You'll be safe here, Miss Roskilly. There isn't a man, woman, or child who isn't proud of our own Cornish Lark, even if you did call yourself some outlandish thing while you were away."

"Not my doing," Tammie assured him. "The Earl of Coombe decided that Cornwall was as good as a foreign country to most of England and would not listen to what I wanted."

"I remember him," Penrose commented. "Obnoxious Englishman. Looked down his nose at all of us. Laughed at Sir Carlyon behind his back, and the rest of us to our faces. Is it him you're running from?"

"It is," she confirmed.

"Let him come, I say," said Penrose. "Come on inside. Sir Jowan, you know the way to the drawing room. Fix your party something to drink against the cold, and I'll sort out beds for you all, and stabling for the horses."

"Perhaps the ladies would prefer a cup of something hot," said a woman's voice. A young woman of about Tammie's age was on the stairs, dressed, but in a way that hinted the gown had been thrown on over her night rail, with the back left unlaced and a shawl worn to cover the gaps.

"My dear," said Penrose. "We have guests for the night. Sir Jowan Trethewey you know, and Mr. Bran Hughes. Miss Roskilly and Mrs. Parkerdale, my wife. Virginia, Miss Roskilly is the Cornish Lark. You will have heard the folks around here speak of her. Mrs. Parkerdale is her companion. If you can manage a bedroom for the ladies, I'll see to the carriage and then organize somewhere for the gentlemen to sleep."

"I'll see about your tea first," Mrs. Penrose said. It wasn't long, though, before all was sorted, and Tammie and Evangeline were tucking themselves into a large, low bed in what was clearly a child's bedroom. Tammie fell asleep wondering who they had displaced.