“Thank you. You don't need to wait, Josefa will help me back.” She smiled sweetly.

“I'm going on deck,” he said abruptly. “Stay off that leg.” He left her, going swiftly up to the quarterdeck, hoping the air would cool his brain and his overheated blood.

Tamsyn, when she emerged from the quarter gallery, realized she'd never fully understood what relief was before. Her heart sang with it as she asked Josefa to find the required items in her baggage. Never again… never, ever again would she tempt providence.

Wrapping the robe securely around her, she hobbled back to the Captain's cabin and ensconced herself under the windows again, looking out at the sweeping expanse of sea, stretching to a gray horizon. She allowed her body to relax, welcoming the fierce cramping, honeyed relief dancing in her veins.

Julian came into the cabin after half an hour to fetch his boat cloak. The wind was getting up, and they seemed to have left the warmth of Portugal far behind. “How are you?” It was a distant, politely neutral inquiry.

“Wonderful,” she said with a fervency that startled him. “I have my monthly terms,” she said. “I was late and I was afraid…”

“I've been waiting for you to say something,” he said flatly.

“Well it's all right,” Tamsyn responded with a rueful smile, pushing her hair away from her forehead. “And we won't take any risks in future.”

The colonel's mouth tightened, and his eyes were steel-bright, sword-sharp as he came over to her. “Understand this, Tamsyn. There will be no future. I'll fulfil this damn contract because I must, but that's as far as it goes. Is that clear?”

Tamsyn turned her head away from the piercing blue glare, gazing out of the window at the now gray and heaving sea. “If you say so, milord colonel.”

THE CARRIER JUST DELIVERED A LETTER, MY DEAR. IT looks like St. Simon's hand?” Sir Gareth Fortescue strolled into the breakfast parlor examining the letter in his hand with unusual interest. “Franked in London, by God! I thought your brother was in the Peninsula for the duration.”

He dropped the letter beside his wife's plate and stared with a jaundiced air at the dishes arrayed on the sideboard. “I don't know how many times I've told that damn cook I like my bacon crisp. Look at this.” He picked up a rasher on the serving fork. “It's as white and soggy as a pig's underbelly.”

Lucy Fortescue flushed and pushed back her chair with a little murmur of dismay. “I'm so sorry, Gareth, I didn't notice. Shall I ring for Webster and tell him to bring some more?”

“No, don't bother.” Her husband flung himself into his chair at the head of the table with an irritable grimace. “I'll make do with the sirloin.”

Lucy hesitated, anxious to read her brother's letter but equally anxious not to neglect her husband at this critical morning juncture. It was clear from his heavy eyes and less than, glowing complexion that Gareth was suffering this morning. She wasn't sure where he'd passed the previous evening, or even the night. It hadn't been in his own bed and certainly not in hers. She didn't enjoy what went on in the marriage bed, but it was essential to a marriage, and it couldn't be right that her husband was so often content to leave her to sleep alone.

She sighed and then flushed again, afraid that he would have heard the little sound. Gareth detested it when she moped. He read into her unhappiness unspoken criticism and dissatisfaction with her lot.

Both of which were true. But Lucy swiftly buried that rebellious acknowledgment; her mother had told her more times than she could remember that a wife's duty was to show her husband only unquestioning support and obedience and to accept cheerfully the life he chose to give her. And Julian, after her father's death the only man whose opinions she'd been aware of, obviously shared her mother's viewpoint. Besides, he'd been so much against the match in the first place, she couldn't possibly expect his sympathy because marriage to Sir Gareth Fortescue wasn't all that she'd dreamed it would be.

But it was very hard. Another little sigh escaped her.

It was very hard, at eighteen and after only ten months of marriage, to be left alone day and night after day and night while her husband pursued all his old activities and relationships as if he'd never stood at the altar with her.

“Well?”

She looked up guiltily at this sharp interrogatory.

Gareth was scowling, his hand circling a tankard of ale.

“I beg your pardon, Gareth?”

“Well, what does your brother have to say?” he demanded impatiently.

“Oh, I haven't read it yet.” She offered a timid little smile and slit the wafer sealing the missive.

“Oh,” she said again. The letter was as brief and succinct as all her brother's communications and it took but half a minute to make herself mistress of the contents.

“Well?”

“Julian says he's going to be in England for a few months. He has some work to do at Horseguards and at Westminster for the Duke of Wellington, and then he's going to Tregarthan for the summer.”

“Good God! Whatever for? Has he bought himself out of the army or something?”

“No, I don't think so,” Lucy said, frowning. “But he says he has someone with him… a… a Spanish lady.” She looked up in clear bewilderment. “He says he owed her father a favor, and when he was dying, he asked Julian to take his daughter under his protection and arrange for her introduction into English society. Apparently she has some Cornish connections that she hopes will acknowledge her.”

Her china-blue eyes widened as her bewilderment increased. “It doesn't sound at all like Julian, does it?”

Gareth gave a snort of laughter. “If it were anyone but St. Simon, I'd say he'd brought himself a light skirt back from the wars, but he's such a stickler for the proprieties, he'd never sully the precious turf of Tregarthan with an irregular liaison.”

Lucy blushed crimson and took a hasty gulp of her tea, choking as the liquid scalded her throat.

“Don't be such a ninny, Lucy,” Gareth said, not unkindly. “You know something of the facts of life, my dear. You're a married woman now, not a virginal chit. St. Simon's as red-blooded as the next man, he's just deuced strait-laced about where and when he indulges a man's natural urges.”

“Yes… yes, I suppose so.” Lucy pushed back her chair and stood up hastily. “If you'll excuse me, Gareth, I must talk with cook about the menus.”

She hastened from the room, leaving her husband to reflect that if St. Simon had been less strait-laced, Lucy might have been a more lively partner, both in bed and out of it. Her brother, ten years older than herself, had been her guardian for the seven years before her marriage, and his notions of propriety when it came to the behavior of a St. Simon were devilish strict.

It was a pity, really. Gareth refilled his ale tankard, noting with relief that his hangover was dissipating with each gulp. Lucy was a pretty little thing, and he found her soft, feminine roundness quite appealing, but she didn't know the first thing about pleasing a man. It was no wonder he continued to take his pleasures where he'd always taken them.

His scowl returned abruptly as some memory of the previous evening dimly surfaced through the brandy haze in which he'd spent the majority of the night. Marjorie had been nagging him again. She was always wanting something more. The diamond bracelet he'd given her hadn't been of the first water… the new dressmaker didn't know what she was doing, it was absolutely imperative she patronize Lutece instead. The money was nothing… nothing… not if he truly cared for her… and didn't she make him happy? Happier than a man deserved to be?

Gareth shifted in his chair, remembering with the familiar ache how very happy Marjorie could make a man. But her price was too damn high-and getting higher by the day.