“My hair's getting long, Josefa, you must cut it for me.” She brushed her fingers through the smooth, fair cap. “It's straggling on my neck and the fringe is getting in my eyes.”

As satisfied as she was likely to be in such a costume, Tamsyn went downstairs to the breakfast parlor. The colonel had clearly been and gone, and only one place was laid at the round table in the bay window overlooking a side garden. The morning's activities had given her a good appetite, and she greeted with enthusiasm a footman's arrival with a dish of eggs, bacon, and mushrooms.

“Coffee or tea, miss?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Your manservant wishes a word with you, miss. Should I tell him to wait until you've breakfasted?”

“Ye'll no be telling me anything, laddie.” Gabriel spoke from the doorway. “And I'll thank ye to bring me another dish of the same. Good morning, little girl.”

Ignoring the footman's indignantly indrawn breath, he pulled out a chair and sat down. The footman was puffing up like a rooster, and Tamsyn said swiftly, “Gabriel isn't my manservant. He's more of a bodyguard. I'm sure Lord St. Simon will explain the situation to you.”

“Yes, miss.” The man sniffed and shot Gabriel a fulminating glance.

Gabriel's benign expression didn't change, but he pushed back his chair a fraction, his massive hands resting on the edge of the table. “And I'll have a tankard of ale with my breakfast, if you please.”

The footman paused, then beat a hasty retreat with as much dignity as he could muster. Gabriel's booming chuckle filled the small room as he reached for a crusty roll and slathered it with rich golden butter.

“I'll be needing to set a few things straight,” he observed. “Don't seem to know what to make of me in this house. I'd best have a word with the colonel.”

“Yes,” Tamsyn agreed absently. “I saw Cedric Penhallan yesterday.”

Gabriel's eyes sharpened. “Where?”

“In the inn at Bodmin. I couldn't say anything to you on the ride back because of the colonel.”

“Aye,” Gabriel agreed, falling silent as the footman returned with a tankard of ale that he placed beside him with an emphatic thump before turning to take a laden platter from the kitchen boy who'd followed him in.

“My thanks, laddie,” Gabriel said blandly, burying his nose in the tankard. The footman looked as if he would burst, and the boy stifled a grin, scuttling from the room before Tom took his fury out on him with a clout around the ear.

“You didn't speak with him?” Gabriel speared a mushroom and dipped it in his egg yolk.

“No, but the colonel did. They seem to know each other.”

“Most folks do in these parts.”

“I daresay, but they don't like each other, Gabriel. In fact I suspect that's an understatement.” She gave him her impressions, relating the snatch of conversation she'd heard.

“I'd best look into it, then,” Gabriel said comfortably. “Ask around in the taverns. They'll be cousins of yours, then, these nephews?”

“So it would seem. The children of Cecile's younger brother, I suppose. I can't remember his name-she did tell me once, but I've forgotten. She didn't consider him to be important in the family setup.”

“Seems like only Cedric's important in that setup,” Gabriel observed, burying his nose in his tankard.

“Up to now, Gabriel,” Tamsyn said with a small smile. “Up to now.”

“Well, well, I'll be damned. Did we really see St. Simon sporting in the waves with a doxy?” Charles Penhallan sighted, aimed, and his gun cracked. A crow plunged to the cliff top.

David grinned at his brother as he took aim himself Scaring crows was dull work but better than taking pot-shots at rabbits, and it was all the legitimate sport available at this time of year.

“I'd recognize that red head anywhere,” he said.

“And he doesn't get any smaller does he?”

“No, but clearly less of a prude these days.” Charles rested his shotgun on his saddle bow. “Either that or he's a hypocrite. Didn't think much of the whore, though. Scrawny little thing.”

“Looked more like a lad to me,” David observed, bringing his own gun down. “Perhaps the army's given him different tastes.”

They both laughed. Two men with lean, pointed faces, mouths a mere slash, small, deep-set brown eyes, hard as pebbles. They were thin, sharp-shouldered, narrrow-chested, but what they lacked in physique they made up for in the general air of malevolence that surrounded them like an aura. Men tended to cross the street when the Penhallan twins approached. They rarely appeared singly, and conversed together in oblique sentences, presenting an intimidating front to the world, with which not even their few intimates were comfortable.

“I wonder if the governor knows St. Simon's at Tregarthan?” David said, frowning now. “He's probably back from Bodmin by now.”

“If he doesn't know now, he'll know soon enough. We'd best get off St. Simon land,” Charles said reluctantly. “We don't want anyone seeing us here and carrying tales.”

“Can't think why St. Simon made such a fuss,” David declared with a curl of his lip. “The girl was nothing, just some whore's daughter.”

“She was his tenant and it was on his land.” Charles spurred his horse, turning him to the boundary of Tregarthan land, and his brother followed, his expression sullen.

“He's a prude and a hypocrite,” he declared. “One of these days I'll see that damnable St. Simon pride in the dust.”

“Oh, yes,” Charles promised softly. “One of these days we both shall.”

“SO WHAT IS IT YOU WANT TO SAY ABOUT MY POSTURE?” Tamsyn strode into the library. Hitching her skirts up, she sat astride the arm of a leather sofa and regarded the colonel with an air of intelligent inquiry.

Julian looked up from the Gazette and stared at her.

“Don't sit like that! Quite apart from the fact that it's disgracefully inelegant, you'll split the seams of your gown.”

Tamsyn swung both legs to the same side of the arm and perched there, her head to one side, her eyes bright, reminding him yet again of a cheeky robin. “Is this better?”

“Only marginally.” He tossed the newspaper onto a side table. “Ladies sit on chairs, with their legs together, their hands in their laps. Go and sit on that chair by the window, the straight-backed one.”

Tamsyn marched over to the window and sat down in the required chair, looking at him expectantly.

“Sit up straight. You're always slouching.”

“But why should that be important?” She was genuinely puzzled, never having given a moment's thought to something as irrelevant as how she held herself

“Because it is.” Julian stood up and came over to her, going behind the chair. Taking her shoulders, he pulled them back sharply. “Feel the difference?”

“But it's ridiculous,” Tamsyn said. “I can't sit like this, I feel like a stuffed dummy.”

“You must sit like this, stand like this, walk like this, and ride like this,” he declared firmly, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “You ride like a sack of potatoes. It's all the fault of that Spanish saddle. It's more like an armchair than a proper saddle. It encourages you to hunch over.”

Tamsyn did not consider wholesale criticism of her riding to be part of the contract. What could it possibly have to do with learning to be ladylike? “You can't ride a hundred miles over rough terrain sitting up like a stuffed dummy,” she retorted. “And I can ride without tiring all day and all night, as you well know.”

“You won't be required to ride all day and all night as an English society lady,” he informed her. “The hardest riding you're likely to be doing is to hounds, and that won't start until October. You must learn to ride elegantly before then. But an English saddle should put that right.”