ipped back into the bedchamber. Her ferocious lady’s maid, White, carried on easing her into a borrowed nightgown, positioning herself firmly so that Tamsyn could not get out of bed.
‘Battered, but there is nothing seriously wrong, I promise,’ Tess said before she even had the door closed. As Tamsyn sagged back against the pillows she added, ‘Twisted ankle and knee on the right, several broken ribs, a lump the size of a plum on the back of his head and apparently bruises in just about every place possible.’
‘I feel dreadful,’ Tamsyn confessed. ‘What the marble floor didn’t do, I must have, landing on him like a sack of potatoes.’ She tried to smile and hide the fact that she wanted to burst into tears of sheer relief after twenty minutes of imagining Cris with a broken spine or a fractured skull.
‘You aren’t that heavy,’ Tess said, laughing.
‘I’m not some dainty little debutante either.’ White moved away and she promptly threw back the covers. ‘I want to see him.’
‘You stay right there, ma’am.’ White tucked in the covers like a straitjacket. ‘The doctor said you were to rest and the marquess is not to be disturbed until at least tomorrow.’
‘Franklin.’ The memory of why all this had happened came back with an unpleasant lurch in her stomach. ‘They said he was dead or did I imagine it?’
‘He is. Perhaps it is for the best,’ Tess said, although she sounded dubious.
‘The scandal…and your lovely party ruined.’
‘We’re putting it around that he suffered a brainstorm and was experiencing delusions.’ Tess perched on the edge of the bed, ignoring White’s’s disapproving expression at such bad deportment. ‘It is early yet, but so far, from what I can hear, people are accepting that. Apparently he has been acting oddly recently—Alex said he was in the grip of a really frightening money lender and most of the gentlemen are quite prepared to believe that was enough to drive anyone insane.’
‘I must write to my aunts before they hear this in the newspapers.’
‘Just a note then. In fact, I will do it for you now and send it to catch the next post. I’ll reassure them everyone else is safe and make sure they know about the brainstorm story.’ She slid off the bed and took Tamsyn’s hand. ‘You rest and I’ll just go and tell Cris he can stop worrying about you. Try to sleep,’ she added as White blew out all the candles, leaving only the little oil lamp by the bed. ‘All is well.’
All is well. Tamsyn lay, eyes wide open. When she closed them she could see Franklin’s face, contorted by fear and rage, see the marble floor far below her dangling feet, see Cris’s face, white and still.
The trial for the murder of poor Lieutenant Ritchie would go ahead with, she suspected, no mention of Franklin’s involvement. The aunts were safe and so was the estate and everyone on it. The worthy lawyer cousin and his family would move into Holt Hall, which could only be a good thing for that estate, and soon Franklin would be a fading memory, an unsatisfactory nobleman who had gone to the bad and suffered for it.
And she would go home, back to Barbary Combe House, back to her life at the edge of the sea, to remember two men. One who had married her as he might have adopted a stray kitten and whom she had loved as a friend, the other who had shown her gallantry and the glories of physical love and whom she loved with what she feared was everything she had in her heart and her soul.
*
Tamsyn drifted off to sleep at last and woke, stiff and sore and confused in a strange bed with the light seeping through the curtains on the wrong side of the room. Then she recalled where she was and the events of the night before came back to her like a hammer blow. Next door to her chamber she could hear doors opening and closing carefully, a murmur of voices, footsteps on the landing and then silence. Perhaps that was where Cris was.
She needed him, she needed to see him just one more time, touch him, reassure herself that he truly was not seriously injured, store a few more precious memories away. She got out of bed, clumsy and sore from the fall, and pulled on the wrapper Prescott had left for her. There were no slippers, but then, she was not supposed to be wandering around. The clock on the mantelshelf struck five with thin, silvery notes as she eased open the door and found the corridor outside deserted.
The door to the next room opened with well-oiled silence, but even so, the man on the bed turned his head towards her as she slipped inside. ‘Tamsyn.’
‘Don’t move.’ His hand when she took it was warm and his grip reassuringly strong. Tamsyn sat down on the chair beside the bed without letting go.
‘I didn’t know whether they were telling me the truth when they said you were unhurt,’ Cris said. He was lying completely flat with no pillows and there was a hump in the bed where some sort of framework had been put over his injured leg. ‘Tell me the truth. Were you injured?’
‘No, of course not.’ She managed to smile and adopt a rallying tone rather than throw herself on his battered body and just hug him as she wanted to. ‘How could I be injured when I had a large man between me and the floor? I could wish you were rather better padded with fat and not solid muscle, though. It was like hitting a horsehair sofa.’
Cris snorted with amusement and winced. ‘Do not, I beg you, make me laugh. Tamsyn, tell me truthfully, how do you feel about yesterday?’
She thought for a moment, then answered him honestly. ‘I am sorry for Franklin, that his own weakness and folly led him to such an end. Part of me is relieved, because he cannot threaten Aunt Izzy any longer, but I cannot be glad, not at the loss of a life, however wasted. Tess says the scandal can be contained, explained, but I hate bringing violence and death into her home, especially now.’
‘Now?’ Cris raised an interrogative eyebrow.
‘Now she is expecting a baby.’
He grinned. ‘Alex is almost tying himself in knots trying not to fuss over her, the lucky devil.’
‘You want children.’ Of course he did, she knew that. He needed an heir, but beyond that, she could tell he wanted to be a father, with all that entailed.
‘Naturally.’ Cris shrugged, a thoughtless, nonchalant gesture that made him gasp. ‘Have you any idea how much everything itches the moment you can’t reach to scratch it?’
She forced a smile for him. ‘When will the doctor let you get up?’