Tamsyn stumbled to stand, heart skittering, feathers flying as the gull departed.
“Who?” she rasped, raw and low.
Tendrils of the dark past crept over this bright day, causing her throat to clench and voice to fail. For so long, she’d fought to put that fiend’s whispered words behind her, of fearing every movement, every shadow. He’d never come back. He was dead.
Hehadto be dead.
Mrs Mildern smiled as she squinted up, all the ancient crags of her sun-beaten skin curving with the movement.
“Why, the man with two faces, dearie.”
Chapter Three
A valet should be seen and not heard.
“Miggens, will you please cease that infernal racket,” Jack ordered, kicking his valet’s boots with his own immaculate hessians.
The snoring lessened but it did nothing to alleviate Jack’s crotchety disposition. Odd, as normally he felt as cheery as an escaped goose on Christmas Eve.
After all, why spend your days in melancholic stupor when you could be relishing life? He’d sought to speak with Byron about it once at Brooks’s, told him that although the poetry stuff was good, all those affected frowns and downcast lips would lead to an early death.
The chap hadn’t listened, of course, although that very night, he had commenced writing his celebrated poem about the passionate sable-curledCorsair.
Coincidence? Jack thought not.
Every poet needed a muse.
However, nigh on eight days cooped up in this carriage with a snoozing Oliver Miggens was enough to drive a rogue insane.
Despite purchasing the most sumptuous and laden Fortnum and Mason hamper, it had only sustained them for some thirty miles – excepting the suspicious jar of potted goose meat. Moreover, the weather had conspired against them too.
Warm and muggy, the heat languished in the air with nary a breeze, as though Mother Nature had just remembered she was into the ninth month of the year and sought to make up for the sodden summer before the deep freeze of winter.
Sighing, he leaned forward to view the landscape tumbling by. The sea’s proximity carried through the lowered window – saline and not a little whiffy – but nothing except bleak moorland stretched as far as the eye could see.
Still, that was an improvement on the scenery before their noon-day ale interlude, when the hedges had been so high ’twas as if they’d travelled at night, and the byway had thinned to a ribbon of dust, far too narrow for the carriage of a marquess.
Some rickety hay cart had then appeared in the conflicting direction and the backing up of horses, ensuing squabble as to who saw whom first and the Cornish fellow’s general discontentment over damn boshy, yes boshy London coaches had caused one’s humour to sour until vinegar.
Surely they were nearly there?
Jack had bid Sobers the coachman not to spare the horses and they’d made good time down to Cornwall, solely halting by day to swap prads and gobble pie. Miggens had complained of not having enough hours to starch his master’s attire to any semblance of perfection, but this infernal journey, in Jack’s view, required completion in as little time as possible.
Naturally, Miggens had travelled with an array of books to relieve the boredom – although the china clay tome had been readily forsaken in a bedside drawer of The Minerva Inn at Plymouth – but Jack didn’t have the patience for reading. He preferred doing.
Millie had hugged him hard upon his farewell, and he missed her warmth already, but ifLa Chauve-Souriswas still alive and Miss Penrose’s memories could assist in any way, then the mission would be worthwhile.
Truth was, this new employment for the Crown suited him as he was aware a rogue could become aimless, no longer seducing for the pleasure but because it had become habit.
Not all his missions involved high society either. Forays into the Rookery and witnessing the silent misery of so many kept him mindful. Bruised women, crying children…memories.
How would this girl receive his attentions? No doubt the country miss would be rather dewy-eyed upon meeting a London marquess.
Miggens snuffled as the carriage lumped over yet another rut, and Jack wriggled, attempting to settle on a part of his anatomy that wasn’t bruised to hell.
Another benefit of this expedition to the wilderness was a rest from all those wedded couples. Obviously, he’d been only too pleased to assist the fellows in their romantic endeavours but nowadays, he felt a positive fifth wheel at their soirees.
This past summer, he’d noted them seating “suitable marchionesses” by his side at dinner and although they’d all been perfectly delightful, intelligent and witty, they were not for him.
