“They might be. If they're not, you'll have to break one of the panes. You can do it easy enough with a stone wrapped in cloth. It shouldn't make too much racket.”

“Unless the colonel's in the room,” she mused. “If he is, then I can simply knock on the window.”

“You wouldn't consider the door, I suppose,” Gabriel remarked mildly. “Seems so much simpler.”

Tamsyn smiled. “Simpler but a lot less amusing.”

“Aye, I daresay. And I suppose it'll be less amusing in broad daylight, too.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “So let's get some supper and come back when it's full dark… about ten o'clock.”

They ate in a dingy chop house in Piccadilly, and Tamsyn drank several glasses of porter, trying to quiet the little devils of anxious excitement dancing in her belly. She couldn't understand why she should be so nervous. She knew the man; she knew his body almost as well as she knew her own; she knew his moods and the way the light changed in his eyes; she knew what it meant when he held his body in a certain fashion, when his mouth quirked, when those mobile red-gold eyebrows twitched and his eyelids drooped lazily, half concealing the bright-blue eyes.

And she knew his anger. But why would he be angry? She was simply here to tell him she'd changed her mind, and she was ready to go back to Spain with him… ready to accept the limited liaison that was all he thought he could offer.

Gabriel said little, concentrating on his mutton chops and wine, but his mild gray eyes were sharply assessing. He wasn't at all sure about the wisdom of this enterprise, and if.the truth were told, he wished Colonel, Lord St. Simon to the devil. Tamsyn may have decided she'd found the love of her life, but he could wish she'd settled on someone easier to handle and more conveniently situated than this uncompromising English lord.

If the English lord hadn't turned up, Tamsyn would have found some man like the baron, and they'd all be living contentedly in the mountains, doing what they were good at.

And pigs might fly, Gabriel thought with a dour smile. “Let's get on with it, lassie.” He pushed back his chair. “You're fretting yourself into a frazzle.”

“No, I'm not,” Tamsyn denied, but she couldn't hide her relief that the waiting was over. “You'll wait in the mews until I'm in the house?”

“I'll wait until you let me know I can seek my bed,” he asserted.

They walked briskly and in silence back to Audley Square. St. Simon's house was lit up, and a lantern hung over the front door. “Perhaps he has visitors,” Tamsyn said, the possibility occurring for the first time.

“Once you're in the house, you can wait until they leave,” Gabriel said calmly. “If there's only a skeleton staff, you should be able to dodge them, and you've a decent plan of the house.”

“Yes.” Tamsyn slipped her hand into the pocket of her britches. Lucy had said that Julian kept a very small caretaking staff in the London house because it was used so rarely. It had been very easy to engage her in a casual discussion of the house, and with very little prompting she'd sketched a floor plan to illustrate her description. The paper now crackled reassuringly against Tamsyn's fingers. If Julian was not alone, or wasn't in the house, then she could make her way upstairs and into his bedchamber.

The mews was quiet, only the soft shufflings and whickers from the horses bedded down for the night. The night was overcast, but a lamp glowing in a round window above the stable block where the head groom lived threw a puddle of golden light on the clean swept cobbles. Tamsyn and Gabriel slipped soundlessly through the shadows, Tamsyn's bright head covered by the hood of her dark cloak pulled tight around her.

The gate into the garden was locked as Gabriel had expected. “Up you go.” He lifted Tamsyn easily, setting her atop the gate.

She dropped from sight immediately, then whispered from the other side, “There are lamps lit in the book room.”

“Buena suerte,” Gabriel whispered back, and stepped into the shadows.

Tamsyn crept around the edge of the walled garden, once catching her cloak on a thorn from an espaliered climbing rose. She stopped and painstakingly pulled out the thorn, flattening herself against the wall beside the rose. Light poured from the windows of the book room, illuminating neat flower beds and a square of lawn, and she prayed the shadow of the wall was sufficient concealment if anyone was looking from an upstairs window.

Free again, she flitted forward until she was pressed against the wall beside the lighted window. It was closed but the curtains were open. She sidled sideways until she could peer into the room. Her heart was thudding and her palms were slippery, but she couldn't decide whether it was nerves or excitement.

Julian was sitting at a desk with his back to the window. He was writing, his pen flowing over the parchment. As she watched, her heart in her throat, he paused, leaned back in the chair, and stretched, arching his neck; then he dipped his quill into the inkwell again and resumed writing. Her blood seemed to speed through her veins as she watched him in his absorption, imagining his face when he turned and saw her. He would be delighted… of course he would.

Tamsyn scratched on the window, then stepped back into the shadows.

Julian was preparing a report to present to the prime minister in the morning. Lord Liverpool had asked for yet more information on the action and casualties of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos to bolster the Peer's request for more men and more money.

At the first scratching sound he glanced over his shoulder at the window. A branch tapping against the pane, presumably. Wearily, he rubbed his eyes. He was finding it difficult to concentrate, and he couldn't seem to connect with the words he was writing. He kept hearing Tamsyn's sensual chuckle in his head, and her smile, mischievously inviting, hung disembodied in his mind's eye. He supposed the images would fade in time. Once he got back to Spain, he wouldn't have time to think about her. But even as he told himself that, he knew that in Spain it would be even harder to forget her. The memories would be even more achingly vivid in the land that had produced that extraordinary, impossible creature, with her Penhallan blood and…

Frowning, he squeezed the back of his neck, trying to massage a crick; then resolutely he returned to his report.

The scratching came again, more insistent this time.

He ignored it. Then it changed to a drumming, a rhythmic tap-tap-tap. He spun round in his chair. There was nothing at the window. Impatiently, he pushed back his chair and went over to the window, flinging it wide. There were no bushes or trees near enough for an errant twig to be scratching the pane. He stared into the garden but could see nothing.

Then an unmistakable voice said from somewhere below him, “Good evening, milord colonel.”

He dropped his gaze to below the level of the windowsill. Her eyes gleamed purple in her pale face, the hood of her cloak had fallen back, and her silver hair was a beacon in the shadow of the wall.

“I was beginning to think you'd never come to the window,” she said when he seemed dumbstruck. Turning her back, she reached up to rest her hands on the broad sill, then jumped her backside up. Turning in the window, she smiled, and if he'd been less stunned, he would have read the anxiety behind the smile. “Aren't you going to say anything?”

“You… you imp of Satan!” He found his voice.

“How the hell did you get here?” Catching her around the waist beneath the cloak, he lifted her off the windowsill into the room, but instead of setting her on her feet, he held her up as easily as if she were a rag doll, his large hands spanning her waist, her face on a level with his. Her cloak fell to the floor, revealing the britches and shirt of the brigand.