Her smile was both complicit and appealing, and it stunned him. There was a quality to it he didn't remember seeing before. Something beyond the sensuous, inviting mischief her smiles usually implied. She took another sip of her sherry, draining her glass, as she waited for a response to what she hoped he would accept as an overture.

“There's nothing wrong with your horsemanship, Tamsyn,” he stated, keeping his voice light, hiding his response to that smile. He turned aside to pour himself sherry. “Not when it comes to mountain passes. It's just a trifle unorthodox for the English countryside.”

“May I have some more?” She extended her empty glass.

He refilled her glass and offered Gareth the decanter.

“I imagine Lucy's still fussing with her dressing.”

“Women,” Gareth said largely. “You know what they're like.”

It seemed a frequent refrain of his brother-in-law's, Julian reflected acidly. He glanced again at Tamsyn; she was trying to hide her laughter, and his own sprang unbidden into his eyes.

“Not all women, Sir Gareth,” she said sweetly.

“Convent-reared Spanish girls are taught to eschew all the vanities. Hence my short hair. It makes one's toilette very simple.”

“Ah… ah, yes, of course,” Gareth agreed, somewhat nonplussed. He examined her again over the lip of his glass. A most unusual-looking girl, he concluded. But there was something devilishly appealing about her… devilishly inviting… despite the short hair and the slight figure in the unadorned gown.

“Am I late?” Lucy came tripping into the room, a vision in her dark-blue silk gown over a half slip of cream lace, a diamond comb in her soft hair, that had been coaxed into ringlets drifting over her bare shoulders.

“It was worth waiting for, my dear,” Gareth said gallantly, taking her hand and raising it to his lips.

Lucy blushed, unaccustomed to compliments from her husband. Suddenly she became aware of a curiously charged atmosphere in the drawing room, a pulsating tension as if something forbidden and dangerous lurked below the surface. She looked at the other three and could detect nothing in their expressions to explain such an odd sensation.

“Shall we go in to dinner?” Julian put down his glass, offering his sister his arm.

Gareth, with alacrity, offered Tamsyn his, and they went into the dining room. Julian drew out the chair at the foot of the table for Lucy, and she looked startled, then laughed. “I've never sat here before. But I suppose I must… just until you get a wife, Julian.” She gave him a shy smile as she took her place. His eyes were unreadable and he made no response, merely taking his own place at the head of the table.

Lucy was flustered, wondering if she'd said something indiscreet, but she couldn't imagine how such a self-evident truth could be construed as tactless or inappropriate. She glanced at Tamsyn, who was helping herself to a dish of devilled chicken legs with hungry enthusiasm. Gareth, busily approving the Claret in his glass, also didn't appear to notice anything untoward in her statement, so she decided it was just her brother's manner. He'd never welcomed personal comments.

Tamsyn, however, had heard both the remark and the conspicuous silence it generated. Perhaps Julian found the subject uncomfortable in her presence. Maybe he thought it would be indelicate to refer to the possibility of marriage in front of his mistress. It was probably just one of those gentlemanly conventions Cecile had told her about. Thrusting the melancholy conclusion to the back of her mind, she picked up a succulent chicken leg and took a delicate bite.

Julian noticed Gareth's eyes fixed on Tamsyn across the table as she deftly stripped the meat from the bone with her teeth. His brother-in-law was fascinated by her, and Julian could understand why. There was something astonishingly sexy about Tamsyn gnawing on a bone.

“Tamsyn, in polite English society we don't eat with our fingers,” he corrected, before Gareth's fixed stare became too obvious. “I know I've mentioned it before.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” she said hastily, putting the bone down and licking her fingers. “It seems silly to use a knife and fork, though, when fingers and teeth are so much more efficient.”

Gareth's laugh resounded around the room, bouncing off the paneled walls. “Very silly,” he agreed. “There's far too much nonsense about such things. Why shouldn't one eat with one's fingers if one wishes?”

“I imagine Spanish customs are very different from English,” Lucy said with a rather rigid smile. “It must be hard for you to remember everything.”

“It is,” Tamsyn said frankly. ''I'm hoping you won't mind helping me, Lucy. I'm sure your brother would be glad to be relieved of some of the burden. I know he finds it onerous.”

Her smile deepened as she looked at Julian, and two dimples appeared beside her mouth. He wondered why he hadn't noticed them before. Her cheeks were a trifle flushed, her eyes very bright. The footman refilled her wineglass, and Julian found himself counting. It was her third glass of wine, after two glasses of sherry.

She continued in this unusual fashion throughout dinner. The only effect it seemed to have was to make her sparkle. Julian knew from experience that Tamsyn rarely did anything without purpose. Clearly she wanted to make up their quarrel.

Gareth was obviously fascinated with Tamsyn, his eyes following her every move, his rumbling laugh greeting her every sally, and Lucy became increasingly silent. Tamsyn was not encouraging him in the least, but then that wasn't necessary to get Gareth Fortescue's attention.

When the ladies withdrew to the drawing room, Gareth sniffed his port appreciatively. “Lively little thing, isn't she? I'd always thought Spaniards were devilish strait-laced with their women… convents and duennas and so forth. But that chit's as lively a piece as I've come across.”

“You always did have a delicate turn of phrase, Fortescue,” Julian said with a touch of ice. His brother in-law had imbibed heavily and was looking very flushed, his eyes a trifle unfocused.

“Oh, beg your pardon, St. Simon.” Gareth smiled expansively. “No offense meant, of course. Dear little innocent, of course. Father was some Spanish grandee, didn't you say?”

“And a close acquaintance of Wellington's,” Julian stated.

“Wealthy, I should imagine? These grandees tend to be, I gather.” Gareth hiccupped and selected a grape from the bowl in front of him.

“So I understand.”

The subject was not proving promising, and even Gareth finally got the message and lapsed into a doleful silence. The prospect of the long summer months in the company of his unforthcoming and strait-laced brother in-law, with no Marjorie to spice the mixture, began to seem less attractive than it had.

In the drawing room Lucy was struggling to recover her equanimity as she took the hostess's place behind the teacups. “Do you drink tea after dinner in Spain?”

“Not in general.” Tamsyn regarded Lucy thoughtfully. It seemed to her that Julian's sister was in need of a little sisterly guidance. The question was: how to dispense it without giving too much away?

Lucy poured tea. “We always put the milk in afterward,” she offered a shade stiffly.

“Why is that?”

“So that one can adjust the strength,” Lucy said.

“You can't tell if you put the milk in first.”

“No, I suppose not,” Tamsyn agreed, taking a seat on the sofa beside Lucy. “I must remember that. Tell me about your husband.”

“Why would you want to know about him?” Two spots of color burned on Lucy's cheeks as she handed Tamsyn a cup.

Tamsyn took a sip and decided that now was not the moment for tea. “Because I think you need some help,” she said candidly, discarding her teacup. “After only ten months of marriage a man should still be sleeping in his wife's bed. And if you're not careful, that husband of yours is going to start some serious wandering.”