Chapter One

1820, seven years later, Inneford House, Cornwall

J owan's brother Bran was already at the table when he came down for breakfast. A newspaper sat at Jowan's place. It had been folded open to one of the center pages, and an article had been circled with a heavy pencil line.

Jowan met Bran's eyes. "Something you wanted me to see?"

"Something I thought you would want to see," Bran replied. He was using his English voice this morning, Jowan noted. Branoc Hughes was a chameleon, able to mingle with country-folk and quality alike.

The day before, when they had been out with the shearers wrangling sheep, his speech had been laced with Cornish words and spoken in the West-country lilt he'd learned from his mother's people, who were fisher-folk.

Their father had insisted that, if the bastard son who suddenly appeared on his doorstep was going to stay, he would at least learn to talk like a civilized being. Bran had never told him his mother had arranged for him to be tutored by a vicar who was the son of a duke and could speak even more like the loftiest of the upper classes than Sir Carlyon himself. Bran was always careful to speak broadly when their father was about, and Jowan was certainly not going to let the man in on the joke.

Jowan poured himself a cup of strong black tea and added milk and sugar before taking his place at the table and picking up the newspaper. He lifted his cup to his mouth as he began to read and a moment later his cup dropped from suddenly nerveless hands. The oath with which he colored the air had as much to do with what he read as with the hot liquid soaking through his trousers.

Without comment, Bran handed Jowan a napkin, and he blotted absently at the mess while rereading the article.

"Tamsyn is back in England," he said, more to himself than to his brother, testing the words out loud as if hearing them would make them truer. She was still separated from him, as much by her chosen lifestyle as by three hundred and fifty miles and seven years. But she was, at least, in the same country.

"You should go to London," Bran said. "Find out why she stopped writing. Find out why she didn't come home."

She'd stopped loving him. The thought cut the way it always did, lacerating his heart yet again. But what else could it be? She'd had a ticket she could have used at any time. The Earl of Coombe might have stopped franking her letters, but he did keep his promise to make her famous. She had just been on her second tour through Europe for crying out loud. She must have money to burn, plenty to buy her own tickets, frank her own letters.

Her silence was her message to Jowan, and the more fool him for the hope that lingered, somewhere in the remote corners of his mind and heart.

"I must assume she changed her mind," he said and if his jaw was set and his foot tapped with the tension in his frame, his voice was commendably even.

"Or she thinks you did," argued Bran. "Look, Jowan, the girl you told me about isn't one who would cut you without a word."

Why was Bran pressing this? Couldn't he see how much it hurt? "She changed," Jowan pointed out. "Or I was wrong."

Bran shook his head. "You are not wrong about people. You recognized me right off. In any case, you haven't let her go. If you're right, this is your chance to dig out the last of your hope and start to heal. If I'm right, the lady might need to be rescued."

Jowan was still thinking about the pain of losing all his hope, and Bran's last few words took a moment to make sense. "Rescued?"

"If she wants to come home and can't? For whatever reason? Yes. Rescued."

Jowan shook his head. "How can I leave? We haven't finished the shearing and then it will be planting time. I've the plans to sign off for the new mine." He shrugged. "You know the list as well as I."

"And how to make it all happen," Bran pointed out.

Jowan put his knife and fork down while he thought about that. Bran was right. He could stay here with Jowan's authority and do everything Jowan would do himself. "I could go to London," he said, testing the words on his tongue.

He'd been there before but with Bran at his side. Their father had agreed for him to go to Oxford, and Bran had gone—theoretically as his servant, but they had looked after one another and Bran had been his shadow, attending lectures and tutorials even though only Jowan was enrolled.

Jowan always introduced Bran as his brother, and people became used to the arrangement and behaved towards Bran as they did to Jowan. They had friends with homes in London and had stayed with them during long weekends and holidays.

The tutors soon realized that Bran was learning more than Jowan, and he had just been offered a scholarship when word came that Sir Carlyon had died. Jowan was now the baronet. Bran had insisted on coming home to Cornwall, leaving the scholarship behind, and while Jowan felt guilty that Bran had given up a potential academic career for him, he was also grateful, for Sir Carlyon had made as much of a mess of the family's finances as he had of his personal relationships with his wife, his mistresses, and his sons.

Bran had worked as hard as Jowan on the recovery and knew as much as Jowan about what needed to be done. "I could go to London," Jowan repeated.

"You could," Bran agreed. "You should. You could go and see the man with whom Sir Carlyon apparently invested. He hasn't answered any of our letters, but you might get some answers if you are there in person. We need to check up, too, on the agent who is handling the investors in our mine, who keeps promising but failing to deliver. You could do all that and work out where you are with your Tamsyn."

Jowan thumped the papers. "Tammie Lind, the Devon songbird." He growled his displeasure. "Even the name is a lie. Is Tamsyn still there, inside?"

"You won't know unless you go to find out," Bran said.

*

Every so often, Tammie Lind was struck by a sudden moment of clarity—a step into reality, as it were. Moments when she saw the company she was with, and her own behavior, through the eyes of Tamsyn Roskilly. It was a sort of haunting, for Tamsyn had been killed long ago, strangled by Guy's manipulations and Tammie's own weaknesses.

Today, Tamsyn gazed with scorn at the fellow denizens of the laughing gas party. Ether was the drug of choice today. Tammie herself was as high as a kite, floating well above such mundane concerns as tomorrow's rehearsal and the foolish fellow pawing at her. He was a peer of some sort. A boy with pretensions to being a songwriter. Guy would own him within a few weeks, and Tammie was part of his bait.

The boy was far too drunk on ether to do more than squeeze and prod. Tamsyn was indignant on her behalf. Silly Tamsyn. Tammie had not owned her own body in more years than she could, at the moment, count. She tried it anyway, numbering the years on her fingers, but she became lost in the mystery of whether a thumb counted as a finger and forgot the question.

She was vaguely aware that Guy was free from Tamsyn's scorn. Tamsyn avoided looking at him. Wise Tamsyn. As usual, Guy sat a little apart, the untouchable Earl of Coombe, amused at the havoc he had caused. He seldom indulged in more than a taste of the various substances he supplied to his sycophants and the people he owned, as he owned Tammie.

Tamsyn despised them all, and she hated Guy. Reality was overrated. Tammie no longer bothered with such emotions. She lined up for another turn at the gas, to nail Tamsyn's soul back in the coffin of her imagination, but Guy stopped her with a word to the attendant.

"No more for Miss Lind. She has a rehearsal tomorrow. Tammie, time for bed."

Tammie wanted to whine and howl. Instead, she turned obediently towards the stairs, but the sudden movement set her off balance, and as she steadied herself, she saw Guy nod towards the boy, who followed her to her room.

Tamsyn had made a mistake years ago, when she was still a girl, and followed it up with several more. Ever since then, Tammie had paid and paid and paid. The boy was making a mistake now. Tammie felt a distant pity for him, but in the end, she would do as Guy ordered.

She took his hand. At least tonight was only the seeming of the thing. He would sleep off the ether and by the time he awoke, she would be at rehearsal. Everyone would believe he had been favored by the Devon Songbird. Perhaps he would believe it himself.

Sooner or later, it would be true. Guy had used her that way before and she knew how it went. Blackmail material or bribery or simply yet another way to soften the boy's resistance and break his spirit until he was putty in Guy's hands.

Tammie was desperately trying to claw her way back to the floating sensation, but the harder she tried, the further it receded. She needed a shot of the gin she had hidden in her room. Guy had taken the last of her secret laudanum.

The boy threw himself at her as soon as she closed her bedchamber door. He clawed at her gown, increasingly frantic as the buttons refused to open for him. "Patience, my lord," she soothed. "Lie down on the bed, and I shall prepare myself for you."

He blinked at her, swaying on his feet, his surge of energy draining away.

"Lie down on the bed, my lord," she repeated. She would sleep in the dressing room tonight. It would not be the first time.

She found the gin where she had hidden it, in a bag concealed within the folds of the new gown Guy had chosen for her to wear for a command performance at one of Society's balls. Thank whatever deity looked after harlots and drunkards for this season's fuller gowns.

She rinsed out the mug that held her toothbrush and poured the gin. Just a couple of fingers. She would be watched more closely now that he had her booked for so many performances. This would have to last until she could bribe or blackmail someone into supplying her with another bottle.

Without it, she would be dependent on Guy for each dose. He knew she needed a small drink of laudanum before a performance—on stage or in a drawing room. Just enough to quiet the jitters. Then, afterward, if he was pleased with her performance, there would be something more powerful as a reward.

Tamsyn had tried to give up the substances that Guy insisted Tammie needed. More times than Tammie could count. Twice, she refused until he forced it down her throat. Once, she managed to evade her minders and hide until the craving turned to cramps and nausea, then vomiting as pain seized her whole body, then bad dreams so bizarre they exceeded anything that she'd experienced while under the influence.

In one of those, the monsters that invaded the refuge she'd found proved to have been sent by Guy. Or perhaps the monsters were unreal, and Guy's men retrieved her while she was unconscious.

Whichever it was, Tammie woke up in the house Guy was renting at the time, in the half-floating, half-dreaming state that said he had already given her something.

Tammie never allowed Tamsyn to run away again. Giving up opium and alcohol was hard enough, but worse was being brought back when she'd thought she was free.

It hurt too much to think about it. Tammie poured another two fingers. "You have had more than enough today," Tamsyn scolded. "You will pass out if you drink that, too."

"Fair point," Tammie conceded.

She slid open the door. The boy was sound asleep on the bed, flat on his back, snoring. Tammie moved him so he lay on his side, with a pillow behind his back to keep him from rolling. There. If he vomited, it would go on the sheets instead of drowning him. She patted his cheek. "Run as fast as you can, my lord," she whispered. "The Earl of Coombe is not your friend. He is not anyone's friend."

Even if he had heard, he would not listen. She returned to the dressing room, tossed down the gin, stretched out on the maid's pallet, and waited for oblivion.

*

The rehearsal went terribly. Tammie blamed Guy, for the dose of laudanum he gave her, while the usual size, must have been adulterated, for it was not enough to stop the jitters. Guy, though, blamed Tammie. The screaming fight that ensued was a mistake Tammie would not have made had she been in what passed for her normal mind, for it ended in the usual way.

As had happened so often in the past, Guy found her anger exhilarating. He locked her dressing room door, subdued her, and took her, laughing at her attempts to resist him. Afterward, he handed her to one of his followers. "Take her home and lock her in her bedchamber," he commanded. "You can have her if you like. But don't give in to her demands for opium or alcohol or anything else. She doesn't deserve it after that rehearsal and that tantrum."

It was Fergie, which was some sort of good fortune. Some of the others enjoyed a display of strength to the point of violence even more than Guy—yes, and over the edge, too. But Fergie was a straightforward sort of a lover. A quick tup and he would leave her alone.

Sure enough, he took her straight home, marched her up to her bed chamber, stripped her, and enjoyed her, though he wasn't best pleased with Tammie's refusals to respond.

"Give me opium and I'll give you the best time you've ever had," she told him, but Fergie was a loyal acolyte to Guy and would not agree. He finished, left her naked in her bed, and shut the door behind him.

Tammie lay there for a while, feeling sicker and sicker. She needed a dose of something. There must be something she could do. After a while, it occurred to her she had not heard the rattle of the key in the lock. A cautious test, and she found that Fergie had forgotten to lock the door.

Almost, she slipped out then and there, but a stray breeze reminded her she had no clothes on. She dressed, some instinct prompting her to wear the drabbest clothes she could find. Out of habit, she slipped the ring Jowan had once given her into the tiny pocket that she sewed into the side seams of all her gowns.

Money. She would need money to buy alcohol or—if she could find it—opium.

With opium and oblivion as her goal, she found the strength to sneak quietly into Guy's chambers. He would not be home for hours, but there was always a risk his valet might be within. Marco frightened her even more than Guy. He had an affinity for pain—giving, not receiving, and on the two occasions Guy had given Tammie into his hands, she had been frightened into silent obedience for months.

Her good fortune held. Not only was Guy's room empty, but he had left a small fortune in coins scattered across his dressing table. She stuffed as much as she could into her reticule. "It isn't theft," she muttered. "He never gives me my share of what I earn." He said it all went into a savings account for her, and into investments. But Tammie doubted he intended her to ever see a penny of it.

Looked at from a certain light, all the money on the dressing table and more was hers.

She met no one as she crept down the stairs. The butler was in the front hall. She had to wait for him to be called elsewhere before she could hurry across the tiles and out the door. The risk of being stopped lessened once she was down the steps and walking along the footpath, just another lady, anonymous in her bonnet.

She wouldn't find what she craved here in Mayfair. She needed the docks. She needed one of the places she had heard Guy's acolytes speak of. If she understood correctly, she had quite a walk ahead of her. A hack would be faster, but it would also be a risk—someone to question who might bring Guy upon her.

She did not know the going rate for opium, but perhaps she had enough. She could only hope. And walk.