The young woman stopped, looked back with something close to despair in her eyes.
‘Don’t be a fool. You don’t have to marry him and you don’t have to…damn it, I’ve burned the thing.’
‘A promise is a promise,’ the blonde said, chin up. Tamsyn recognised someone holding back tears by sheer pride and willpower. ‘But if you do not want me—’ She shrugged, turned and walked away.
What on earth was that all about? Tamsyn eyed Gabriel’s furious expression and began to back warily away.
‘What in Hades are you doing here?’ he demanded as the brown gaze focused into recognition. ‘Does Cris know?’
‘Certainly not. I do not need Lord Avenmore’s permission to visit a relative.’
‘Come with me.’ He took her arm and swept her back into the main reception room and up to a handsome couple who were in the middle of what looked like a heated, but amiable, discussion.
‘Alex, Tess, stop bickering.’
‘But Alex says I must not cut my hair.’ The woman Gabriel had addressed as Tess turned deep-blue eyes on him. ‘And I want to be in the mode.’ She smiled at Tamsyn. ‘I want a crop like yours, with the curls at the front and long at the back. Who did it for you?’
Tamsyn made a dab at her slipping hair ribbon as the man called Alex smiled at her apologetically. ‘Darling, we haven’t been introduced. You cannot interrogate people about their hairdressers without an introduction.’
‘Don’t be stuffy—’
‘Alex, Teresa, allow me to present Mrs Perowne,’ Gabriel cut in, earning a rap over the knuckles with Teresa’s fan. ‘Mrs Perowne, the Viscount Weybourn, Lady Weybourn. This,’ he said, turning to his friends and ignoring Tamsyn attempting to curtsy, ‘is the person I told you about. Cris’s problem.’
‘Gabriel,’ Lady Weybourn gasped.
‘I am no one’s problem,’ Tamsyn said hotly at the same time.
‘In here, I think.’ The viscount, smiling amiably, took Tamsyn’s arm with his right hand and a firm grip on Gabriel’s elbow with his left and walked with apparent casualness towards one of the small retiring rooms. Lady Weybourn came, too, muttering under her breath about overbearing men.
The room was, thankfully, empty. Lord Weybourn, showing rather more decision than Tamsyn had assumed from his amiable appearance, promptly locked the door. ‘Now, what’s going on?’
His wife took Tamsyn’s hand and urged her to sit next to her on the sofa. ‘Yes, what is going on? That was rude, even by your standards, Gabriel.’
‘Mrs Perowne is the widow of a smuggler who cheated the gallows only by a lethal leap from a cliff. She is embroiled in a feud with Lord Chelford and she has seduced Cris into a declaration of marriage in front of a courtroom full of yokels.’
‘They were not yokels and I have not seduced anyone,’ Tamsyn said, furious.
Lord Weybourn studied her face, which she could feel was pink with anger. ‘No? I must say, I had not thought anyone was capable of seducing de Feaux against his will. I was about to congratulate you, ma’am.’
‘Cris is to marry you?’ Lady Weybourn caught Tamsyn totally off guard by planting a kiss on her cheek. ‘Kate and I told you he was in love,’ she added triumphantly to the two men.
Who on earth is Kate? ‘No, he is not! At least, not with me. It was a ploy, because otherwise I was going to be accused of murder and he was establishing an alibi for me.’
‘Murder?’ Lord Weybourn sat down. ‘You told us that Cris had formed an unsuitable attachment—and I must say, coming from you, Gabe, that is rather rich—but you said nothing about the lady in question being a murderous seductress.’ His smile to Tamsyn was teasing and she realised he thought her neither of those things.
‘Cris might show the world a façade of ice, he might be a marquess and none of us have ever seen him put a foot wrong, but that does not mean he isn’t vulnerable and that when he is, that we don’t guard his back, just as he guards ours.’ For once Lord Edenbridge’s air of care-for-nothing cynicism had slipped and Ta
msyn found herself liking him for his fierce loyalty, if nothing else.
She stood up. ‘If you are Cris’s friends, then ask him to tell you all about his time in Devon, but believe me, I want nothing to do with him, ever again. Will you kindly unlock that door, my lord?’ Stepping out into the crowded reception was like plunging into roaring surf. Tamsyn took a deep breath, fixed a smile on her face and went in search of the retiring room once again.
Chapter Nineteen
Cris regarded the stolid figure of the Bow Street Runner seated across the desk from him as he finished his description of the lying witness.
‘Thin, forgettable face and brown hair? Shabby, respectable and with an Essex accent? Aye, I know that one. What’s he calling himself, my lord?’
‘Paul Goode, solicitor’s clerk.’