Cris had asked himself the same question often enough over the past few days. Now, as the mists of sexual release began to clear, he forced himself to focus. ‘Because I found I enjoyed being Mr No One in Particular. I can hardly recall what it was like not being the Marquess of Avenmore. This is the first time, as an adult, that I have ever experienced that freedom. I found I liked Barbary Combe House and its inhabitants. I found I valued the peace and the informality and the lack of fuss. If I had said who I was, what I was, you would all have treated me differently. I did you no harm by not telling you my title.’
‘I would never have slept with you if I had known.’
‘Why not? A naked marquess is no different from any other man in a bed.’
‘Don’t be disingenuous.’ Tamsyn sounded more weary than angry now. She was flushed and he could see a red mark where the collar of his riding coat must have chafed her neck. ‘You know perfectly well why not. You might like to take a holiday from who you are now and again, but the rest of us cannot. You had the arrogance to think that it did not matter, deceiving me. You enjoyed playing the knight in shining armour and setting out to protect me, and now your pride has almost landed you with a scandal that you have escaped by the skin of your teeth.’ She drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, rested her head on her knees so he could only see part of her face.
‘Tamsyn, you should take no notice of Gabriel. He is my friend and he is simply trying to protect me. Dukes have married actresses before now and the heavens have not fallen.’
‘But presumably they both wished to be married to each other.’
The sarcasm in her voice was like a slap on the face. Cris realised that he had believed, deep down, that Tamsyn would want to marry him, and her rejection, whilst it had to be a relief, was an assault on his pride. He was eligible beyond her wildest dreams, they were good in bed together, they seemed to get on well—yes, she was angry and upset about him implying that they were lovers in open court, but once she had got past that…
‘You wouldn’t want to be married to me?’ He should take her rejection thankfully, and leave it, leave her. He was free to marry the right wife for the Marquess of Avenmore. And yet some demon had control of his tongue. ‘Leaving aside my title for a moment—’ He ignored her muttered response to that, ignored his own common sense telling him not to pursue this argument. ‘What else makes you react like this?’
‘I cannot marry you.’ There was something desolate in her tone before her chin came up and her voice hardened. ‘One of the benefits of being an ordinary peasant, dust beneath your lordship’s boots, is that one can marry whom one loves, someone who loves you back. And ours would have been no love match, would it, my lord?’
‘I am not sure what being in love means.’ That was certainly true. He had almost died because he had got his head into such a mess over Katerina. ‘I like you, I desire you, I would have tried to make you happy.’
Leave it, drop the matter, you have done all that honour demands.
The memory came of his father’s voice as they had walked down the long gallery at Avenmore Park together. He had pointed out each ancestral portrait and enumerated the reasons why each wife had been chosen, her bloodlines, her connections, her dowry.
‘Each marriage strengthens our house, our line. There is nothing more important than the choice of your marchioness, the mother of your children.’
‘You cannot.’ Tamsyn gave a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘And I know it, even if you cannot accept that you would not be every woman’s dream husband.’
Well, that answers that. She is not in love with me, she doesn’t want to marry me. I am, quite definitely, free. Perversely it did not make him feel any happier, but presumably that was his wounded pride.
‘What do you want to do now?’ Cris asked. He knew what he wanted, which was to take her into his arms and let her weep, something he suspected she was fighting against with every ounce of her willpower. He wanted to tell her to look after herself, cosset herself against the stress of the day, but she would only fling that back in his face as patronising.
‘I will go back down to Barbary, tell the aunts that everything is all right, tell them…tell them what happened in court so they do not hear rumours and gossip and be taken unawares.’
‘Will you tell them who I am?’
‘No. Not until you have gone and perhaps not even then. They would not understand why you could not tell us.’ She stood up, hunched under the low roof. ‘And you are going, aren’t you, Cris? Soon.’
He followed her out along the narrow ledge, up on to the cliff, acutely conscious of the drop to his right, of the sea crashing on the rocks beneath as she stood looking out to sea, the wind whipping her uncovered hair back into a ragged banner behind her, her skirts tight around the long horsewoman’s legs.
‘You want me to leave?’
‘Yes. I want you gone.’ She said it without apparent anger, with a weariness that hurt more than harsh words would have done.
‘And I want you safe.’
‘I will pay the two chairmen to stay here as bodyguards, I will puzzle out what it is that Franklin wants so badly he will kill for it. I will employ more of the villagers to guard the farm and the flocks. I will do all those things I would have done before you ever came into my life, my lord.’
My lord. She uses the title like an insult. Yes, he would go and he would pursue Chelford with every resource he could muster and, if he could not find out what the man wanted with Barbary Combe House and its occupants, if he could find no proof that would stand up in law, then Franklin Holt was going to find himself in the hold of a ship bound for Australia.
He watched Tamsyn walk away from him, back straight, head up. This was the woman who had seen her husband leap to his death like a hunted stag, who had faced down a courtroom, who had dragged him from the sea. And she was walking out of his life, and he must be glad because that was what she wanted.
*
She could not face the aunts, not yet. Tamsyn closed the door of the summer house and struggled to find some composure. What was she becoming? What was this nightmare doing to her? One moment all she wanted was to be part of Cris in the most carnal way possible, the next she was seized with disgust at herself for throwing herself at a man who wanted her only for the moment.
This mystery had brought her Cris, and love, but she could not be glad, not even for the memories of those two perfect nights in his arms. He would be gone soon, back to London and the world that he belonged to and to the search for a wife who was a well-bred, well-dowered, well-connected virgin who would bear his children. All the things I am not and cannot be.
Eventually, when she had her hair and her clothing and her face under as much control as she could manage, she ran across the lawn and slipped in through the front door. There was no sound of anyone talking, the aunts must be in their room. She reached the foot of the stairs when a heavy tread made her turn. ‘You.’