Julian shook his head in defeat. He was obliged to admit that she was right, but he couldn't bring himself to say so. He went over to the sideboard and poured himself another glass of wine, regarding her in fulminating silence for a minute.
“I'll tell you something else,” Tamsyn said with sudden trenchancy. “If you ever call me nina again, St. Simon, I'll cut your tongue out!”
“My dear girl, for the role you insist on playing, it's the most suitable form of address,” Julian said airily. “A mute little girl, struggling to accustom herself to the customs of a strange land, trying to adapt to the terrors of the wide world after all those years sequestered in a mountaintop convent, fighting the sin of vanity.”
“I thought it was a piece of very fast thinking,” Tamsyn said defensively.
“Oh, you are nothing if not inventive, nina,” he said.
Laughter trembled on his lips as, infuriated, she bared her little white teeth at him.
He caught her round the waist as she leaped toward him, and lifted her off her feet. “An inventive, fast thinking brigand who's now going to have to trot decorously along the lanes on a fat pony because she says that the Senor St. Simon says she doesn't ride very well.”
“Oh, no!” Tamsyn wailed, kicking her legs.
“Oh, yes,” he said with a grin. “Inventive little lies come home to roost, muchacha. You can't possibly show yourself atop Cesar.”
“Then I'll ride only at night,” she declared disgustedly. “Put me down.”
He let her slide slowly through his hands, his mocking smile fading as his fingers brushed the swell of her breast. The indignation died out of the violet eyes at the touch. Her feet reached the carpet, and he moved his hands to run his knuckles over her breasts beneath the delicate sprig muslin. The nipples rose instantly, supremely sensitive as always, and her lips parted on an eager, expectant breath.
“Here?” she whispered, a catch of excitement in her voice. “Now?”
It was the middle of the morning, in the middle of his house. Domestic sounds reached them through the closed door. Julian glanced through the window to where a gardener was weeding the parterres in direct line of sight.
He looked down into Tamsyn's upturned face, glowing with desire and reckless invitation. She moved against him, a lascivious wriggle of her hips sending a jolt through his loins that took his breath away.
“Against the door,” he directed, his voice clipped and stern in its urgency. “Quickly.” He pushed her backward until she was pressed up against the door, his body hard against hers. Roughly he pulled her skirt up to her waist.
“Is this what you want, Violette?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And this?” His hand slipped between her thighs, pressing the dampening material of her drawers into the moist furrow, his touch burning into the soft petaled flesh beneath.
“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes luminous, her skin translucent as she stood still for him, for once making no moves of her own.
It was lunacy. He was swept up on the crazy tide of this foolhardy passion. Her drawers fell to her ankles, her legs parted under the pressure of his impatient palms. His fingers moved within her, on her, until she was lost in a swirling crimson fog, her head thrown back against the paneled door, her hips thrust forward for his probing, questing hand.
His mouth brushed against the soft curve where her neck met her shoulder, and his teeth nipped where his mouth had been. She cried out, a soft female sound in the back of her throat, and then his flesh was within hers and she braced herself against the door, gripping his hips as he drove deep within her and her blood roared in her ears and he stopped her mouth with his own, suffocating the wild cry of delight before it could leave her lips.
And then it was over, and she stood trembling, her knees week, her gown clinging to her sweat-slick skin. Julian smiled a long, slow smile of sensual satisfaction. Lightly he ran his fingers over her mouth so she could taste the scents of her own arousal.
“What would they say in that convent of yours?” he murmured. “That strict order in the mountains?”
Tamsyn merely shook her head. For once Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon had defeated her, rendered her speechless.
Chapter Seventeen
“ST. SIMON'S BACK AT TREGARTHAN,” CEDRIC PENhallan announced, sniffing the claret in his glass. He took a considered sip, then nodded to the butler, who proceeded to fill up the glasses of the Penhallan twins sitting opposite each other at the oval table. The last rays of the setting sun caught the sapphire signet ring as the viscount raised his glass.
“We saw him this morning, sir.” David helped himself to a dish of squab.
“Stark naked, playing in the sea with a doxy,” Charles expanded with a throaty chuckle.
“You were on Tregarthan land?” Cedric's black eyes were agate, a white shade appearing around his fleshy mouth.
Charles turned scarlet. “Just on the cliff top above the cove. We were shooting crows and accidentally strayed-”
“You did not accidentally stray, sir,” his uncle pronounced with deadly calm.
“We didn't know St. Simon was at home, Governor,” David put in, a sulky note in his voice. “He's been out of the country for two years… except for his sister's wedding.”
“And two years ago you were warned off St. Simon land,” Cedric stated with the same venomous calm. “And why were you so warned?” He looked between the two, his black eyes seething with contempt.
There was no response. The two young men bent their heads to their plates. The butler moved discreetly into the shadows.
“Well?” Cedric demanded softly. “One of you must remember, surely.”
The twins squirmed; then David said with the same sulkiness, “She was a whore. We played with her, that's all.”
“Oh, is that all?” His uncle's eyebrows lifted. He regarded a platter of brook trout swimming in butter, selected the largest, and slid it onto his plate. He ate for· a few minutes in a charged silence where no one but himself moved, and the squab on David's plate congealed in its gravy.
“Is that all?” he said again in a musing tone. “You waylaid a child… how old was she? Fourteen, I believe?” He looked between the two again, politely waiting for a response.
“She was ripe for it,” Charles said. “Her mother was a whore. Everyone knew it.”
“Oh, I thought her mother had died the year before,” Cedric said questioningly. “I was under the impression that the child lived alone with her father… a man much respected by St. Simon people. One of St. Simon's favored tenants. But perhaps I'm mistaken.” He gestured to the butler to refill his glass.
“Am I mistaken, sir?” His black glare arrowed into David, who stared down at the table, concealing the naked hatred in his eyes.
“No,” he muttered finally. “But we weren't to know that.”
“No, of course you weren't.” Cedric sounded almost soothing. “When you raped and beat her and left her naked on the beach, barely alive, you weren't to know that you had interfered with one of St. Simon's tenants on Tregarthan land.”
The viscount took another deep draft of his wine and with seeming placidity allowed the silence to build around them. He cut into the pigeon pie, and if he was aware that only he had any appetite for dinner, he gave no sign of it.
“Of course you weren't to know that,” he reiterated in the same tone. “Just as of course it wouldn't occur to you that the girl might tell someone… might even know who it was who had assaulted her throughout one long summer afternoon. It wouldn't occur to you, of course, that everyone knows you in these parts. You've only lived here since you were infants.” His voice was suddenly sharp, spitting his angry derision.
“I don't give a tinker's damn what you do, you pair of bumbling idiots. You can rape a regiment of women if you wish. But not even dogs soil their own turf!”