Chapter Twenty-Two

Six months later

T he day was sunny, though the wind was still bitterly cold. It was good traveling weather. Tamsyn looked up each time she heard a wheeled vehicle passing down the road outside her door, though probably Jowan, if he did come home today, would go straight to Inneford House.

He, Bran, and other witnesses had been in London since the middle of January for the hearing of a committee of the House of Lords, to decide whether the Earl of Coombe was dead—given the absence of any body.

It was just like Coombe to continue causing problems for months after he died.

Indeed, even now that the committee had accepted that Coombe and his murderer lay at the bottom of a mire and that their bodies would probably not ever be recovered, all would not be straightforward for his poor heir, a distant cousin. Coombe, according to Evangeline who had visited yesterday afternoon, had left the poor man a tarnished title, neglected estates, and more debts than assets.

Especially since the solicitor Jowan had engaged on her behalf had made a successful claim against the estate for her past two years' earnings, opening a floodgate of claims from other performers.

Evangeline had been in London with Bran, but they and others from St Tetha had been arriving back in the village for the past week. The head ostler from the inn, Lord and Lady Trentham, the mine manager, and more.

"No doubt we shall hear when Jowan arrives," Patricia commented, looking up from the schoolwork she was marking. All three women had taken up Jowan's suggestion that they involve themselves in the school, but Patricia was slowly taking over from the innkeeper's wife, and they were talking about adding an extra day of schooling for the children.

Tamsyn was teaching lessons in reading and numbers at the village school, but also music to paying pupils and talented children who could not afford the fee. She was also coaching the church choir.

When the vicar had suggested it several months ago, Tamsyn had been reluctant. "Who am I to coach a church choir?" she had asked Evangeline and Patricia. "With my background?"

"And why shouldn't you coach the choir?" Patricia had asked. "You are a brilliant singer and a good teacher. And you are a member of the parish. A faithful one, too, who never misses a Sunday."

Her past should have had her hounded from the church, but when Tamsyn said as much to the vicar, he reminded her that the entire Christian religion was founded on the principles of forgiveness and redemption. And so, Tamsyn coached the church choir.

"I daresay," Patricia added, "that we shall hear it from Jowan himself, for he shall be anxious to see you after his weeks away."

Would he? Her, especially? He was her friend. Tamsyn did not doubt that for a moment. But more than that? Months ago, she thought he was courting her. Even when autumn and then winter subjected their thrice-weekly walks to the uncertainties of the weather, he did not stop his visits, instead sitting in the cottage parlor for a couple of hours, talking about every topic under the sun.

He continued to bring her flowers and little gifts, too. But he did not speak words of love. He did not mention marriage. He did not engineer situations in which he could touch her—those possibly accidental touches with which a man initiates a seduction. He did not, not even once, attempt to kiss her, or even look as if he might be going to do so.

Oh certainly, from time to time, desire flared in his eyes. But Tamsyn did not count that. She knew she was desirable in a physical sense. She also knew, beyond a doubt, that she was not a desirable wife for a baronet. Or for anyone else, come to that. Not with her history.

It seemed Jowan had come to the same conclusion. Or, if he had not fully done so before he left St Tetha, he must have by now. Six weeks in London, revisiting the sordid details of her life with the Earl of Coombe must surely have ended any idea he might have had of taking Tamsyn, with all her unwanted baggage, to wife.

Patricia was wrong. Jowan would not be anxious to see her and would certainly not be rushing over here as soon as he arrived back home.

"I do not deserve him, Patricia, and by now he has realized that," she told her friend.

"Nonsense," said Patricia. "He would be a lucky man to have you as his wife, and from what I can see, it is just a matter of you crooking your finger. You are the one he looks for whenever he enters a room you already occupy. From what you tell me, he put his life on hold to rescue you. He has been courting you for months."

"I am not good for him. Not with the scandal of my past. His weeks in London must have convinced him of that. He will be kind, of course, for he is a kind man, but it is over, Patricia. He no longer wants me, and he has made the right decision."

"You are wrong, Tamsyn. Your friends and neighbors know who you are, and we all love and admire you. And you are wrong about Jowan, too. He is yours for the asking."

At that moment, a knock sounded on the door, and Tamsyn jumped. But of course, it could be anyone.

A moment later, the maid opened the door to the parlor. Her words were unnecessary, for the caller stood at her shoulder, but she announced him anyway.

"Sir Jowan Trethewey for Miss Roskilly."

*

As Tamsyn and Jowan walked up onto the moor, signs of early spring were everywhere along the lanes. Daffodils in their clumps. Primroses under the walls and hedges. Lesser celandines, red campion, and periwinkle all in flower.

They walked under the bare branches of trees, but all around them the ground was greening, with the fresh growth of ferns, cow parsley, and fat foxglove leaves.

Tamsyn paused at the top of the lane where a few paving slabs formed a lookout over the village. "It is pretty, is it not?"

"Very," Jowan agreed, though beautiful was a better word. He had desired her when she was so frail, he'd feared bruising her if he touched her, but now that she glowed with health, she was stunning.

She had removed her bonnet as they walked up the lane, and her hair—escaping its hair pins as usual—formed a halo of dark curls around her head.

She pushed her hair back with her right hand, and the sunlight gleamed off her ring. He wondered if it was a good sign that Tamsyn continued to wear his ring, now on her ring finger. When he had commented on it one day, she had joked that, if she put on any more weight, the ring would have to move to the little finger.

Every time he made a comment like that, she turned it aside with a joke or a distraction, and he let it go. He had promised to give it time, and he would keep that promise if it killed him. Some days, he thought it would.

She glanced sideways to see him watching her. "The view, Jowan."

"I am looking," he told her, without moving his eyes. He knew which view he preferred.

In the months since Coombe's attack and death, she had fully recovered from what the doctor was calling "Miss Roskilly's poisoning". More than recovered. She seemed to have lost the anxiety and lack of self-esteem that he had been conscious of even when she was otherwise happy.

Indeed, rather than arguing or becoming flustered by his obvious compliment, she chuckled. "Oh, you. But truly, Jowan, is St Tetha not the prettiest village you have ever seen?"

"Not as pretty as you, especially because I can tell—you are happy here," he said.

In answer, Tamsyn turned in a circle, her bonnet swinging from one hand, her head back and her eyes shut. "I am home here," she replied. "I have you, Patricia, Bran, and Evangeline for friends, and work that makes me happy."

Jowan bit back his response to her remark about him being a friend. He had been patient. Dear God, he had been so patient! Did she not see him as more than a friend, even now?

"You deserve every good thing," he told her.

"It is good of you to say so, Jowan," she replied, avoiding his gaze. "But I know what I am."

He had been holding his tongue through weeks of hearings in which Coombe's misdeeds had been discussed in gruesome detail—and by extension, what Tamsyn had suffered. That remark was suddenly the last straw.

"Dammit, woman. What you are is a woman of talent, courage, determination, and strength," he told her. His anger had to be expressed in movement, and he set off to march back and forth across the little lookout. "I cannot bear to hear anyone disparage you. Even you yourself. Do you not comprehend how I feel about you? Can you not understand how it hurts me to see you putting yourself down?"

She glared at him. "How do you feel about me, Jowan? You are my friend. Am I right?"

His next curse was even less fit for a lady's ears, and he apologized immediately after. "I beg your pardon. I should not have said that." The last thing he needed was for her to think he did not regard her as a lady.

"I have heard worse," she pointed out, and before he could swear again at the mere thought of being compared to Coombe and his acolytes, she added, "Remember the stable master your father used to have? I never knew what was meant by half of the words we overheard."

The unexpected memory made him chuckle. "I learned my best curse words from him," he said.

Her smile faded. "Jowan, why are you upset? Do you not wish to be my friend?"

Exasperated all over again, he snapped back, "I wish to be your husband and your lover."

Tamsyn gaped at him. "You do? Still?"

He couldn't believe she said that. "What did you think I was about? I've been courting you for months!"

"But you have never even tried to kiss me," she replied.

It was the mystified tone that shredded the last of his self-control. If it was a kiss she wanted, then a kiss is what she would have. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to him, but all his indignation eased as his lips touched hers, and he gentled the kiss, his lips firm but tender.

She opened beneath him, her tongue darting out to taste him, and his hands left her shoulders and pulled her closer. Her arms went around his waist, and she plastered her body to his, and an endless moment passed as their tongues explored one another and so did their hands.

It wasn't until he felt her hands pulling his shirt from his trousers that he remembered they were standing on a lookout above the village, where anyone could see them. Reluctantly, his lips attempting to cling, he pulled back.

"The village," he panted.

"Oh! I forgot." Tamsyn cast a glance in that direction, and Jowan's ego celebrated the fact that his kiss had made her forget their surroundings.

"I was waiting to be invited," he told her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The kiss. You said I never even tried to kiss you, but I was waiting to be invited. Tamsyn, you couldn't control what has happened to you over the years, and you didn't need another male forcing their desires on you. If my decision to let you take the lead on anything physical gave you the impression I had stopped wanting you to be my wife, then I am sorry. But I am not sorry you were upset I didn't kiss you." Jowan was, in fact, decidedly smug about that last fact, and about how enthusiastically she had responded when he did kiss her.

"I never said I was upset," she pointed out. She had taken the hand he had offered her and was walking with him along the path into the downs. There was a spot just a few minutes' walk away that would be perfect to continue that kiss.

"You implied it," he told her.

She punched him, chuckling, and he mimed injury, pleased to clown to defuse the sensitive emotional fireworks he'd suddenly stumbled into. Tamsyn, though, tugged him directly back into the line of fire.

"Surely, Jowan, you do not still want me as your wife. Not after the hearing. The things you must have learned! I can bring only scandal to the Trethewey name."

They were there. He tugged her hand and led her onto a poorly marked and little trod path, around a small grove of trees, and into a hollow where the ruin of a cottage stood, with no roof and only two walls.

There, hidden from the path and sheltered from the wind, he took her back into his arms. "What do I care for what they say in London? Here in St Tetha, you are the villagers' darling—their Cornish Lark. There's not a man or a woman with a word to say against you. As for the gentlefolk, Lady Trentwood accepts you, and she sets the example for everyone within a range of thirty miles."

He kissed her nose. "Your scandal, as you call it, though I say it was Coombe's scandal… Be that as it may, the scandal has nothing to do with us. I love you, Tamsyn, and if you will not have me for your husband, I shall wait until you change your mind. And yes, I know that is putting pressure on you, but what am I to do? Your claim of scandal as a bar to our match is unfair."

"But I am thinking of you!" Tamsyn objected.

He kissed her again, a quick peck on the lips. "You are thinking for me, which is quite a different thing. I am perfectly capable of thinking for myself, my love. Have you any other objections to the match?"

She frowned. "You do not mind about the scandal?" she asked.

"Haven't I just said so?"

"I might be barren," Tamsyn blurted. "I quickened only once in five years, and I did not carry that baby past the early stages."

Objection number two. That one was no harder than the first. "I am sorry for your loss, Tamsyn, but I will not allow that to come between us. I want you for my lover, my partner, my friend, my wife. If God sends us children, I will welcome them, but I am not looking for a broodmare."

"You are a baronet," she pointed out. "You need an heir."

"I am a baronet," Jowan agreed and bent to kiss her neck, just under her ear. "I undoubtedly have an heir. In fact, I do. A distant cousin over Truro way. And if he or one of his children inherit, it won't matter to me. I will have made provision for you as I have already made provision for Bran and his family. That's the only thing I care about."

She leaned back out of his reach just as he was going to see whether the other side of her neck was as delectable.

"Do you not want a son to carry on your name?"

The quick answer would not do. "That would be nice. But then, we might only have daughters. Or none, as you suggested. Either way, I will have you. And what I need, Tamsyn, is you." This time, she allowed him to kiss her neck, even tipping it to make it more accessible.

"I still crave drugs and alcohol," she said, her voice so hushed that he would not have heard it if his ear had been farther away.

"You continue to resist the craving," he pointed out. "You know what it will cost you if you surrender, and I trust in your courage and determination. But if you do have a slip, I will still love you." And that was his answer to Objection number three.

"Will you do more than kiss me?" Tamsyn asked. Demanded, it sounded like.

Aha. Objection number four. Jowan hedged. "Precisely how much more?"

She met his eyes with a glare that was also a challenge. "Everything," she insisted. "Right here, right now."

Jowan understood. She was afraid her experience would upset him, or distract him, or—perhaps—disgust him. He was sure it would not. After all, he had been dreaming of this for a long time. Close to a decade, since he first noticed his best friend was developing curves.

However, he had reservations as he looked around the rock-strewn floor. "Everything, yes. Here and now, no. It is cold and rocky. I want you in a bed, Tamsyn. How deeply does Patricia sleep?"

All her doubts showed on her face. That, in itself, spoke of how much she trusted him, for she wore the armor of calm competence for nearly everyone else. "You will come to me?" she said. "Tonight?"

She frowned and added, "Or tomorrow night. You have been traveling for a week, and have barely had time to change before coming out with me again."

"Tonight," Jowan said firmly. "I have been waiting a long time for the invitation, my dearest love. If we put it off until tomorrow night, I will not sleep a wink tonight for imagining it."

Tamsyn blushed.

"But since we are here," Jowan suggested, "I suggest we try for a little foretaste. Without taking our clothes off or impaling ourselves on the rocks." He pulled her closer for another kiss.

*

Tamsyn had no intention of sneaking behind Patricia's back. She was, after all, an independent woman, the owner of the house, and Patricia's employer. Even so, her heart was in her mouth when she closed the door to the parlor, shortly before Jowan was due to arrive to join them for dinner.

"Patricia, may I have a private word with you?"

Patricia's face lit up. "Sir Jowan proposed!"

"No. Or, at least, yes. But that is not it." Tamsyn paused for a moment, because that was, in fact, precisely it. "At least, that is sort of it."

Patricia raised her eyebrows as she clasped her hands in front of her in what Tamsyn recognized as her "I will wait until you are ready to explain yourself" pose.

It worked on the children at the school, and Tamsyn could feel it working on her. "Jowan wishes to marry me. I wish to go to bed with him first. I fear that, when it comes to it, he will remember all he knows about me and be disgusted. Or perhaps that, when he knows he can have me without marriage, he will not feel the need to…"

She trailed off at the stern look Patricia was giving her as if she had been caught under a broken window with a ball in her hand.

"You do Jowan a disservice, my dearest Tamsyn. I understand why, but if I were a gambling woman, I would be proposing a wager that you will be betrothed by tomorrow morning. That is what you are trying to say, is it not? That Jowan is joining you in bed tonight?"

Tamsyn lifted her chin, saying defiantly, "I am sorry if you disapprove, but I need to do this."

"Dear Tamsyn, what right have I to approve or disapprove? I am your friend, not your keeper. Do what you must. I am confident, in any case, that you will be wed, soon. And you know it in your heart, I think, even if you are not prepared to admit it, yet. Even I know Jowan is one of those men who can be trusted, and you have known him for far longer than I."

After dinner, Tamsyn said she would not need her maid tonight, and that they and the cook could also have an early night once they had cleaned up after dinner. She would pour Sir Jowan a port and let him out when he had finished his drink.

She poured one for Patricia, too, and a glass of freshly made lemonade for herself. They had formed the habit of sharing a drink of an evening when Jowan came to visit. They continued a conversation begun over dinner about people and places that Jowan had seen in London. Patricia was very impressed that he was on speaking terms with a duke and duchess.

"I shall make an early night of it myself," Patricia announced when she had finished her port. "You need not worry, Jowan, that I mean to play gooseberry. But you had better stay here for another fifteen minutes to be certain the maids are in their attics."

Jowan looked startled, his eyes turning towards Tamsyn. Patricia giggled as she left the room.

"Does she know?" Jowan asked.

"That you are staying the night? Yes. I told her. She is my chaperone, after all."

"And she did not offer to unman me?" Jowan shook his head.

Tamsyn found his discomfiture endearing, but she thought she should keep that sentiment to herself. "Shall I pour you another drink?"

"A port is not what I am thirsty for," Jowan told her.

"Perhaps you would like one later," she suggested. "After." She was nervous, which was ridiculous. It was not as if she were a shy virgin. That was the problem, though. She was terrified that her obvious experience would put him off.

She was not going to pretend to be less knowledgeable than she was, though. Patricia was right about her motives, though she had not fully understood them herself until her friend outlined them. "Do you want to come up to bed?" she asked.

He shot to his feet as if released from a rubber band, and met her partway across the room, putting his arms around her.

Another compelling kiss removed all the starch in her knees, and she wilted against him. But only for a moment. The sooner they were up the stairs, the sooner he could keep the promise of those kisses.

An hour later, she lay in his arms, one hand idly stroking his chest, her mind slowly putting itself back together again after what the French called "the little death". She had always considered the phrase a Gallic exaggeration. Apparently not.

The first time had been rushed, both of them impatiently rushing through the preliminaries. It had been lovely, though. The second time had been outside of—and way beyond and above—anything she had ever experienced. She and Jowan had been so united she could not have told who was feeling what as they soared to a peak well beyond the merely physical.

"I have a license," Jowan murmured.

Tamsyn shifted so that she could see his face. "A marriage license?"

He nodded, his expression reminding her of the juvenile Jowan when he had been up to mischief, knew he had been caught, and was ready with an argument to convince the adults that he was in the right of it. A mixture of gleeful, apologetic, and determined.

She should object to his presumption, but she was too happy to bother. She settled herself back on his shoulder. "You were confident I would agree."

"Not confident, no. You told me to hold fast. The license was part of it—my gesture of hope. I got it in Plymouth on that first trip. A wedding ring, too. The one I promised you when we were sixteen. I've had to renew the license twice because they only last for ninety days. This one is good for another four sennights. I sometimes wondered if either ring or license would ever be used." He kissed the top of her head, and she moved again to stretch up and meet his lips.

His kisses were so sweet she could lose herself in them, but Jowan had not lost sight of his point. "Will you marry me, Tamsyn Roskilly?"

"I will." Tamsyn still had her doubts, but none of them were about Jowan. She certainly did not doubt his love for her. Hadn't he proved it, time after time? Hadn't she seen it in action and felt it, too, in this last hour?

He, though, seemed surprised. "You will?" The arms he had wrapped around her squeezed her in a bear hug, and his voice rose in a joyful shout. "She will!"

"That's right," Tamsyn grumbled. "Let the whole village know." She was laughing though. Not because Jowan's delight was humorous, but because happiness was bubbling up from deep within and she had to let it out.

It had been a long hard road, full of steep patches, rocks, and pitfalls. But at last, she and Jowan could fulfill the promises they made to one another when they were sixteen. Jowan had held fast, and Tamsyn had come home.