Somehow she extricated them from her pocket, and in desperation, as she felt her senses swimming, she stabbed upward into the soft skin beneath her assailant's chin.
Charles bellowed and pulled his mouth from hers.
He hit her with his open palm. “Vicious little whore. By God, you'll pay for that.” Disbelieving, he touched his chin where a ruby bead blossomed; then he caught her wrist, bending it back until she cried out and the packet of needles fell to the ground. He put a hand on her breast, rubbing his palm against the nipple; then he pinched the soft mound, watching the tears spring into her eyes, squeezing until she could no longer keep back the cry of pain.
“Let's get her to sing first,” David said, seeing the intent in his brother's eye. “Let's get what we want out of her first; then you can have your revenge.”
“All right, whore!” Charles's fingers closed viciously over her nipple. “What's your name? Where did St. Simon find you?”
“Bastardo!” She spat in his eye. They forced her to her knees, yanking her hands so high up her back that she knew one more jerk would break her arm. Even through her tears she cursed them in Spanish, struggling to control the pain and the surging nausea as she knelt oh the hard ground, her head drooping to her chest.
And then the tableau was shattered by a roar, so wild with savage fury that even Tamsyn shuddered. Her arms were abruptly released, and the masked men were suddenly gone. Dully she raised her head and saw them, through the tears coursing down her cheeks, running as if pursued by hell's furies.
Gabriel charged past her, still bellowing his War cry, and then suddenly he stopped. With a vile oath he abandoned the pursuit and ran to the huddled figure now lying on the grass. He dropped to his knees beside her. “Och, little girl… I'll get them later.”
He lifted her up and held her, cradling her against his massive chest, rocking her as if she were a baby. Her face was white, her eyes violet stones, and for a few minutes she lay shivering in his arms. Then she pushed away from him with an inarticulate mumble. The taste of the man was in her mouth, and she retched into the ditch.
“Oh, I'll kill them inch by inch,” Gabriel swore softly, rubbing her back as she crouched on the ground. “I'll hunt them down like the curs they are, and when I have them, I'll flay them with an oyster shell.” It was no idle threat, as Tamsyn knew.
“They wanted to know who I was, Gabriel.” She found to her surprise that her voice was perfectly steady as she straightened. “Who I was and where I came from. I'm sure they were my cousins.” She stood up, thoughtfully massaging her bruised and aching wrists.
“Do you think your uncle set them up to it?”
She shook her head. “From what Cecile said, I doubt Cedric would be so indiscreet. He's a subtle man, and he wouldn't want such a filthy assault to be laid anywhere near his door. But I've obviously aroused his curiosity. “
Calmly now, she smoothed back her hair, flicked grass and dried mud from her skirt. “What brought you so fast, Gabriel?”
He shrugged. “Just a feeling. I was uneasy after I left you with that Miss Lucy, I don't know why. I thought I'd stroll to the village and escort you home.”
“Thank God you did.” She took his large hand in both hers. “We'll get even with them, Gabriel, but please wait. It'll spoil everything if you end up on the scaffold in Bodmin jail for murder.” She tried to smile, but her face ached from the slap and the violent pinching. “When we go after Cedric, we'll get them too.”
“Just you remember they're mine,” he said with low voiced savagery.
“They'll be yours,” the daughter of El Baron promised, well aware of what she was promising and feeling not a twinge of compassion for her cousins.
“And until then, little girl, you go nowhere alone.
Maybe your uncle didn't set those scum on you, but if he's on the scent, there's no knowing what he might decide to do.”
“No,” Tamsyn agreed flatly. “A man who could dispose of his sister so ingeniously could probably manage to arrange for a stranger's disappearance without too much difficulty.”
Chapter Twenty
“SHE DOESN'T SPEAK A WORD OF ENGLISH, GOVERNOR.”
“Who doesn't?” The viscount looked up irritably at this interruption. He glowered at David, who stood somewhat hesitantly in the doorway of the library, unwilling to come farther without an invitation.
“St. Simon's doxy, sir,” Charles put in from behind his brother. “We thought you'd like to know.”
Cedric carefully folded his newspaper and put it on the sofa beside him. “You thought what?” His black eyes had narrowed. “I trust you haven't been meddling in my affairs, sir.”
David shuffled his feet but responded with his habitual note of sulkiness. “You said the other evening at dinner that you'd like to know who she was. We thought you'd like us to find out for you.”
“And just what could have given you that idea, you bungling clod!” Cedric exploded with a soft ferocity that was all the more alarming for its quietness. The two young men took an involuntary step backward. “Since when have I ever asked you to involve yourself in my business? Just what have you been doing?”
“We asked the girl a few questions,” David said lamely. “But she doesn't speak English… rattled on in some foreign language.”
“Not Froggie, though,” his brother put in helpfully.
“We'd have known if it was that.”
Cedric stared at them in disbelief, wondering how it was that they could still surprise him with their idiocy. “She's Spanish,” he said deliberately. “As I've known for the last two days.”
“Oh.” Charles scratched his head. “Only trying to help, Governor.”
“Oh, spare me,” Cedric said in disgust. “Where was the girl when you had this illuminating discussion?” His eyes sharpened. “Not on St. Simon land?”
“Oh, no, sir,” they said hastily. “She was in Fowey, so we followed her and… and just asked her her name.”
Cedric leaned back against the sofa and regarded them steadily and with a powerful revulsion. “Did you hurt her?” he asked gently. “Did you hurt a woman under St. Simon's protection? A woman living as a guest in his house? Of course you didn't. Of course you wouldn't do anything so asinine… Would you?” he shouted suddenly.
“No, sir… no, of course we didn't,” they said almost in unison. “We just asked her a few questions.”
Cedric closed his eyes with a sigh of weary disgust.
He knew them too well to believe them. It seemed they could derive sexual pleasure only from causing a woman pain. Their father had had the same quirk, and his wife, a pathetic little mouse, had cowered and hidden her bruises until she'd died from a fall down the stairs when she was six months pregnant. No one who knew Thomas Penhallan had believed Mary had fallen down the stairs. But the twins had inherited his twisted appetites. At least in general they devoted their malign attentions to women of the streets and left their own class alone. It was to be hoped no woman was ever fool enough to marry one of them.
Presumably in this instance they'd concluded that the girl was St. Simon's whore and therefore fair game.
“Besides, she wouldn't know who we were,” Charles said on a note of pride. “We wore loo masks-”
“You wore what?”
“She won't be able to identify us… not like the other girl,” David explained. “Not that we did hurt her,” he added hurriedly. “It wasn't like that other time at all.” They looked at their uncle hopefully, still expecting some congratulation on their foresight, at least. There was clearly to be no gratitude for their impulse to assist him.
Congratulations were not forthcoming. “Get out off here!”
They fled, and Cedric stared into the empty fireplace, wondering how much damage they'd done. He'd set his own inquiries in motion and had discovered easily that the woman at Tregarthan was Spanish, that she'd come from Spain ostensibly under the protection of Colonel, Lord St. Simon at Wellington's behest. That was common knowledge in the neighbourhood now. Thanks to his nephews' spying, he knew rather more about the relationship than the neighbourhood did. He wasn't particularly interested in whether St. Simon was sleeping with the girl or not, but he was intrigued as to what had brought them together, and why in the world St. Simon would trouble to bring his mistress from Spain and house her at Tregarthan.