With renewed energy he strode on and was immensely relieved when he identified the stone gatehouse at the bottom of the drive. His fob watch told him it was barely eleven o'clock. In London the night would just be starting, and all he had to look forward to here was an early night listening to the sea and the owls.

As he approached the house, a massive shadow fell across his path. His heart jumped into his throat, and he whirled to see the giant Gabriel behind him, holding a lantern. Gabriel grinned amiably. “I hope you enjoyed your evening. Good company these Cornish folk, I find.”

Gareth was dumbfounded at being spoken to with such familiarity by a servant. “My good man-”

“Och, aye, laddie, I'm no' your man… good or otherwise,” Gabriel said with no diminution in his affability. ''I'm no' a servant, either. My job's to look after the bairn as I see fit… just that. So to avoid any unpleasantness, I suggest you bear that in mind. I'll be bidding you good night, now.” Gabriel turned toward the side of the house, then paused, glancing over his shoulder. “By the by, laddie. I'd not be paying too much attention to Jebediah's woman, either, if I were you.” And he walked off around the house, whistling to himself, leaving Gareth staring in mute and indignant astonishment.

Gabriel turned up his nose in the darkness. The colonel's brother-in-law was a blockhead. Put a pistol in his hand, and he'd probably shoot his foot. Couldn't hold his liquor, either. He turned into the stable yard and climbed the outside stairs at the side of the stable block to the whitewashed room he shared with Josefa. He preferred the privacy out here away from the house, and the room above the stables much more closely resembled the simple cottage rooms that he and Josefa were accustomed to.

She greeted him softly as he ducked beneath the low lintel and entered the cheerful, tidy room. His woman had a talent for creating domestic comfort wherever they happened to fetch up, even in the most unlikely places. In fact, Gabriel often said she could make a home under a cactus. He flung himself into a low chair, and Josefa bustled over to pull off his boots.

“I came across those cousins of the bairn's tonight,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt as Josefa poured him his nightly tankard of rum. The woman nodded, her eyes bright with understanding as she took his shirt and carefully folded it.

“Right nasty-looking pair,” he went on, kicking off his britches, standing on one leg to pull off his sock. “They'll bear watching.” He stood on the other leg to remove his other sock before pushing off his woolen drawers.

Josefa gathered up his garments as they fell to the floor, folding them with loving care and placing them in a cedar chest. She didn't say anything while he mused, imparting little snippets of information, more to clarify things in his own mind then to share his thoughts. But she heard and nodded, and he knew she was storing it all away, and if he ever needed advice or an opinion, she would give it sensibly, so long as it was solicited.

He drained his tankard and with a groan of contentment fell onto the bed, the bed ropes creaking mightily under his weight. Josefa clambered in beside him, and he reached for her warm, soft, accommodating roundness, burying his head in the pillowy bosom. She made a little clucking sound of pleasure and wrapped her short arms around him as far as they would go, opening herself readily as he burrowed into her.

“You're a pearl, woman,” Gabriel muttered, and she smiled and stroked his back. “But those twins will definitely bear watching.”

Gareth's indignation was only exacerbated when he entered the house and saw that his new Hessians were caked with mud and gave off a pungent farmyard aroma. The hall was dimly lit with a thick wax candle on a table at the foot of the stairs, two carrying candles beside it. A light showed beneath the library door. Presumably St. Simon was still up and would claim the second candle.

Presumably someone would also lock up. Or perhaps they didn't bother in this neck of the woods.

Gareth lit his candle and stomped up the stairs. Two candles in wall sconces lit the long corridor, and the house was very quiet. He found his way to the bedchamber at the end of the corridor and opened the door softly. The curtains were drawn around the bed, moonlight filtering through the thin summer curtains at the window.

“Is that you, Gareth?” Lucy's voice spoke nervously from the tented bed.

“And who else would it be?” He realized he sounded ungracious, but the reek from his boots was almost overpowering. He yanked them off against the andirons, picked them up, and deposited them gingerly outside the door for the boot boy.

He undressed, put on his nightshirt, and took a step toward his dressing room. Then he paused. He was damned if he was going to be deprived of a decent bed when he didn't have anything to feel guilty about… nothing to send him to the narrow daybed next door. He blew out his candle and pulled back the bed curtains. Lucy was curled on the far edge of the bed, a lace cap on her brown hair. He slid in beside her. Her sweet-smelling warmth filled the dark cavern of the bed. He reached out to touch her and felt her immediate recoil.

Sighing, he rolled onto his side, facing away from her. He was no brute, and he hated it when she wept and shivered beneath him and he knew he was hurting her. Every now and again he forced both of them to go through the motions, because there must be a child of the union. Once he had an heir or two, then they could both let the whole miserable business slide.

He closed his eyes and conjured up the image of Marjorie, her knowing hands, her lascivious little wriggles.

Lucy lay wide-eyed in the darkness, trying not to weep, thinking of the shocking things Tamsyn had said. How dared she talk in that fashion? And how in the world did she know about such things… an unmarried girl?

Julian heard Gareth's return and waited until his footsteps had receded on the stairs; then he snuffed the candles and left the library. He locked and barred the front door, lit his own candle, extinguished the wax taper, and made his way up to bed, leaving the candles alight in the sconces in case anyone wandered abroad at night.

His own apartments, consisting of bedchamber, dressing room, and private parlor, occupied the center of the house with a sweep of mullioned windows facing the lawns and the sea. On either side were the tower rooms. Opposite were a string of guest apartments, the largest being occupied by his sister and her husband.

He let himself into his bedchamber, feeling restless and yet jaded. His sister's marital problems depressed him, but that was not at the root of his dissatisfaction. Part of it was the acute discomfort of his own need aroused by the liquid light of inviting arousal in Tamsyn's eyes, the catlike sensuality of her body in the chair. That was part of it, but it was also caused by distaste at his own roughness. He'd hurt her without a word of explanation and certainly without justification. She had done everything she could that evening to repair the breach between them, and then she had offered herself in her customary open, trusting fashion with no expectation of rejection. He'd seen the flash of shock, the glitter of tears in her eyes, before he'd turned from her, and he couldn't rid himself of the image.

He closed the door of his bedchamber and then turned back to the room, holding his carrying candle high. For a crazy moment he thought he was seeing simply the figment of his imagination, and then he knew that of course he should have expected it. Tamsyn was not one to accept rejection, however hurt and vulnerable she might have looked.

She sat naked on the window seat in the moonlight, chin cupped in her palm as she looked out over the silver-washed lawns to the horizon where black velvet sky met the midnight-blue line of the sea.