Tamsyn went to fuss with the screen, pulling it around the bed so he wouldn’t feel she was staring at him if he fumbled with the drink. She would find some warm water in a moment so he could bathe his sore eyes.
The beaker was empty when she turned back and she took it from his hand, disconcerted to find those reddened eyes watching her with a curious intentness. Surely he does not remember that kiss? She willed away both the blush and the urge to press her lips to his again. ‘What is your name, sir? I am Tamsyn Perowne and the two other ladies are Miss Pritchard and Miss Isobel Holt.’
‘Cri… De…’
She leaned closer to catch the horse whisper. ‘Christopher Defoe? Are you a connection of the writer? I love Robinson Crusoe.’ He shook his head, a sharp, definitive denial. ‘No? Never mind. Whoever you are, you are very welcome here at Barbary Combe House. Rest a little and when the doctor has been in I will fetch the broth. In fact, that sounds like him now.’ The sound of raised voices in the entrance hall penetrated even the heavy door. ‘And someone else. What on earth is going on?’ She had barely reached the other side of the screen when the door opened and Dr Tregarth strode in, speaking angrily over his shoulder to the man who pushed through after him.
‘Don’t be a fool, Penwith. Of course this isn’t Jory Perowne. The man went over Barbary Head on to the rocks two years ago, right in front of six dragoons and the Revenue’s Riding Officer. He was dead before you could get a noose around his neck and he certainly hasn’t walked out of the sea now!’
‘That’s as may be, but he was a tricky bastard, was Perowne, and I wouldn’t put it past him to play some disappearing game. And I’m the magistrate for these parts and I’ll not take any chances.’
Squire Penwith. Will he never give up? Tamsyn stopped dead in front of the man, hands on hips, chin up so he could not see how much his words distressed her. Stupid, vindictive, blustering old goat. She managed not to actually say so. ‘Mr Penwith, if you can tell me how a man can go over a two-hundred-foot cliff on to rocks and survive the experience I would be most interested to hear.’ That glimpse of the shattered, limp body in the second before the waves took it… She hardened her voice against the shake that threatened it. ‘My husband was certainly a tricky bastard, but I have yet to hear he could fly.’
Chapter Two
So, his mermaid in a dowdy cap was a widow, was she? Cris winced as the cracked corner of his mouth kicked up in an involuntary smile at the sharp defiance in her voice, then the amusement faded as the other man, the magistrate, began to bluster at her.
‘He wasn’t the only tricky one in this household. I wouldn’t put it past the pair of you to have rigged up some conjuror’s illusion—and don’t open those big brown eyes at me, all innocent-like. I know the smuggling’s still going on, so who is running it if your husband’s dead. Eh? Tell me that.’
‘Smuggling’s been a way of life on this coast since man could paddle a raft, you foolish man.’ Cris liked the combination of logic and acid in the clear voice. ‘Long before Jory Perowne was born, and for long after, I’ll be bound.’ Mrs Perowne spoke as though to a somewhat stupid scholar.
‘Don’t you call me a fool, you—’
‘Penwith, you must not speak to Mrs Perowne in that intemperate manner.’ That was the doctor, he assumed.
The magistrate swore and Cris threw back the covers, swung his legs off the couch and realised he was clad only in a nightshirt that came to mid-thigh. With a grimace he draped the top sheet around himself, flung one end over his shoulder like a toga and stalked around the screen, which, mercifully, was sturdy enough not to fall over when he grabbed its frame for support after two strides.
His mermaid—Tamsyn—swung round. ‘Mr Defoe, kindly get back to your bed.’ She sounded completely exasperated, presumably with the entire male sex, him included. He couldn’t say he blamed her.
‘In a moment, ma’am.’ The two men stared at him. One, young, lanky, with a leather bag in his hand, lifted dark eyebrows at the sight of him. That must be the doctor. The other had the face of an irritable middle-aged schoolmaster complete with jowls and topped with an old-fashioned brown wig. ‘You, sir, used foul language in the presence of this lady. You will apologise and leave. I imagine even you do not require the doctor to explain the difference between me and a man two years dead?’ His voice might be hoarse and cracked, his eyes might be swollen, but he could still look down his nose with the hauteur
of a marquess confronted with a muck heap when he wanted to.
Predictably the magistrate went red and made gobbling sounds. ‘You cannot speak to me like that, sir. I’ll see you—’
‘At dawn in some convenient field, your worship?’ He raised his left eyebrow in a manner that he knew was infuriatingly superior. His friends told him so often enough. The anger with his own stupidity still burned in his veins and dealing with this bully was as good a way to vent it as any.
‘Mr Penwith, my husband was five feet and ten inches tall, he had black hair and brown eyes and his right earlobe was missing. Now, as you can quite clearly see, Mr Defoe is taller, of completely different colouring and is in possession of both his ears in their entirety. Now, perhaps you would like to leave before you make even more of an ass of yourself?’ Tamsyn Perowne, pink in the face with the steam from the bath, her brown curls coming down beneath that ludicrous cap, was an unlikely Boudicca, but she was magnificent, none the less.
Cris locked his knees and hung on grimly until the magistrate banged out of the room, then let the doctor take his arm and help him back to the couch. Somehow his muscles had been replaced by wet flannel, his joints were being prodded with red-hot needles and he wanted nothing more than a bottle of brandy and a month’s sleep.
‘You stay that side of the screen, Mrs Perowne,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll just check your shipwrecked sailor for broken bones.’ He began to manipulate Cris’s legs, blandly unconcerned by the muttered curses he provoked.
‘Nothing is broken. I swam out too far, got caught by the current and almost drowned. That is all that is wrong with me. Idiocy, not shipwreck.’
‘Where did you go in?’ Tregarth pushed up one of Cris’s eyelids, then the other.
‘Hartland Quay.’
‘You swam from there and then got yourself out of the current and into this bay? By Neptune, sir, you’re a strong swimmer, I’ll say that for you.’ He produced a conical wooden instrument from his bag, pressed the wide end to Cris’s chest and applied his ear to the other. ‘Your lungs are clear. You’ll feel like a bag of unravelled knitting for a day or so, I’ve no doubt, and those muscles will give you hell from overwork, but there’s no harm done.’ He pulled up the bedding. ‘You may come round now, Mrs Perowne. Keep him in bed tomorrow, if you can. Feed him up, keep him warm, let him sleep and send for me if he throws a fever. Good day to you, Mr Defoe.’
‘I’m not—’ Not Mr Defoe. I’m Anthony Maxim Charles St Crispin de Feaux, Marquess of Avenmore. With no calling card, no money—and no breeches, come to that, which left him precious little aristocratic dignity. Tamsyn, Mrs Perowne, had misheard his mumbled words. The family always used the French pronunciation of their name, but apparently that did not survive gargling with half the Atlantic.
The doctor had gone and Tamsyn was standing at the foot of the bed, hands crossed neatly at her waist, cap perched on her curls, looking for all the world as though butter would not melt in her mouth and not at all like a woman who would call a magistrate an ass or kiss a naked stranger in the surf. He could tell her that kiss might have saved his life, but he suspected that would not be welcome.
‘The broth is coming, Mr Defoe.’
Yes, he’d stay a commoner for a while, it was simpler and he had no intention of broadcasting his recklessness to the world. He nodded his thanks.