‘The persecution of Mrs Perowne.’ He grinned. ‘Which sounds like the title of some Minerva Press novel.’
‘Knowing Chelford that is probably where he got the idea.’ The feeling of relief that Gabe would be there, at his back, for one more day, was worrying. He had always operated alone, been confident and self-sufficient. Now there were niggling thoughts about the danger to Tamsyn, about his own ability to keep her safe when he had no idea where the next threat was coming from. ‘I was telling myself that Chelford did not have the brains to set up something like this merely as a distraction for another attack, and Patrick and Seamus are a regiment in themselves, but even so, I’m glad of someone here in case things do awry at the inquest.’
‘I’ve got your back,’ Gabe said. He gave Cris’s shoulder a buffet, then left his hand there for a moment. It was as close a demonstration of emotion as Cris had ever experienced from him. Gabe stood up, pulled out a chair and sat square to the table, producing the inevitable pack of cards from somewhere about his person. He dealt two hands, flipped them both over and began to play against himself.
‘Something else strange happened today,’ Cris told him about the missing silver hand.
‘And what does that mean?’ Gabriel threw down the cards he was holding and frowned. ‘I don’t like the way that it was taken without any apparent damage to the lock.’
It had been at the back of Cris’s mind, too. ‘Chelford used to run tame here when he was younger. He would have been the kind of sneaky brat who would steal copies of keys so he could pry.’
‘That and the fact that I don’t think any of the servants here are disloyal makes it almost certain it is him, or some agent of his. Provided you don’t need me here after the inquest, I’ll go back to London, see what I can do to trace his recent movements.’
‘Thank you.’ There was no need to say anything more effusive than that.
Gabriel gathered the scattered pack with one sweep of his long-fingered hand and stood up. ‘I like her, Cris.’ He paused at the door and looked back. ‘But don’t get in too deep. You are who you are and she is…’
‘Intelligent, interesting, strangely beautiful?’ Cris enquired coldly, wondering why he did not get up and land Gabe a facer. Wondering at his own depth of anger, the way the need to hit the other man had just surged up from nowhere.
‘A smuggler’s widow and exceedingly ineligible for—’
He did get to his feet then. ‘I know. Don’t say it.’
‘—someone in your position,’ Gabe said and left with the ease of a man who had a great deal of practice in extricating himself from dangerous gaming hells.
To hell with him. Gabriel liked to tease and he particularly enjoyed poking at Cris, simply because he knew his friend valued self-possession and self-control. ‘I like to see ice cracking,’ he had admitted once with his wicked smile. ‘It is more exciting to skate on.’
Cris glanced up at the mirror over the fireplace, kept his face completely emotionless as the cold blue eyes stared back at him. Could Gabe see something he could not? Was the ice cracking?
*
The wind was getting up, fretting at the old house, worrying at a loose slate here, a shutter there, sending the rags of cloud scudding across the full moon so that the clear white light that reflected on the polished boards of the passageway kept vanishing, plunging Tamsyn into darkness for seconds at a time.
But she knew every inch of the house and the creaks and groans were not frightening, merely a useful cover for any noise she might make. It seemed strange to be creeping around Barbary like this, as though she had left behind the impulsive, passionate girl years ago and had grown sensible and staid. Not that she and Jory had ever misbehaved here. Before he had shaken her by offering marriage they had been friends and she would have no more flirted with him than she would a brother.
After they were married there had been many places for lovemaking, places that Jory found stimulating in direct proportion to how outrageous and dangerous they were. She wondered now, as she had begun to increasingly in the months before his death, whether it was that edge of danger that aroused him and not her at all.
On that thought she arrived at Cris’s bedchamber door. What did he see in her? She halted before the threshold and stood, fingers closed around the handle, and felt her confidence draining away to her chilly, bare feet. Convenience, perhaps. Or novelty. She was presumably unlike the ladies with whom he normally mixed. Or he felt pity for the poor widow, who must be pining for the attentions of a man.
The door opened and, as she was clutching the handle in a death grip, she was towed into the room and fetched up sharply against the solid wall of silk-covered muscle that, she realised after a moment’s ineffectual flailing, was Cris in a heavy brocade robe.
‘Wait a moment.’ He reached around her, closed the door quietly and then put something down on the dresser by the door. The light of the one chamber stick that stood there sparked fire off the chased silver mounts of a small, sinister pistol.
Tamsyn suppressed an exclamation and managed a coherent question. ‘What are you doing with that?’
‘When someone stands outside my bedchamber door at almost midnight, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other so that the boards creak, in my experience they are either there to cut my throat or to join me in bed.’
His arms were around her now, holding her against him so her senses were full of the feel of silk and skin and the scent of man and the thrill of his hands stroking lazily down her spine to cup her behind and pull her up against his erection.
‘Does it happen very often?’ she asked, the words muffled as she explored the tantalising vee of bare skin exposed by the neck of his robe.
‘Which? The assassins or the offers?’
‘Either.’ The crispness of hair tickled her lips. She used the point of her tongue to probe into the dip at the base of his throat and his breath caught. ‘Both.’ The offers seemed more likely than assassination attempts, but she was beginning to realise that most of the truth about Cris Defoe was hidden from her. She wondered why. Either he was a very private man, or he had a sinister secret or he was deliberately keeping his distance from her.
‘One more frequently than the other,’ he murmured, as his lips moved down from her temple.’ You have such a beautiful curve to your cheek.’ His tongue swept over it. ‘And you taste like salt on peaches.’
Somehow she found enough space to wriggle her hands between their bodies and catch hold of the knot that secured the sash of his robe. She wanted to see him naked again, not, as he had been last night, obscured by the half-darkness, tumbled in the coarse blankets. In response he pulled her in tighter, moved so that her hands slipped, found the thrust