Possessive ardour. Scalding want. Primitive need.
Without his usual finesse, he dragged a hand down her side, cupped her rump, pulled her against his wanton arousal. And with the other, he dragged at the neck of her gown for more skin, more of Tamsyn.
“No,” she suddenly whispered, yanking his hand away. He paused, staring into those bright-blue eyes which glittered with passion and… He knew not what. Shame? Fear?
“Miss Penrose?” A loud knock and the two of them scattered like cats disturbed outside a kitchen door, lurching away and smoothing clothes.
“Come in.”
The vicar entered, eyeing them suspiciously, even though Jack had made it as far as the trunk by the window.
“Your carriage is outside, my dear, to take you all home. We can discuss the donkey another time. I’ve already collected Mrs Pencally and Miss Treherne from the dressmakers.”
“Th–” Tamsyn cleared her throat. “Thank you, Vicar.”
“No need, dear. To think such a terrible deed took place in God’s Acre. Now, you tidy yourself as you appear a little more rumpled than when we placed you here.” He tightened his lips. “Lord Winterbourne? Why don’t we have a quick nip in the bar whilst the lady attends to herself? I could remind you of Jesus’s time in the wilderness, resisting temptation.”
Jack nodded, head bowed, and shuffled after the vicar, but as they left, he swiftly whirled and blew a kiss.
Incorrigible rogue.
Chapter Seventeen
“That man of loneliness and mystery.”
(Byron’s Corsair.)
Auburn hair snaked the woman’s shoulder and slid over her lover as if with a life of its own, brushing his cheek and twining with his sinful black locks.
Darkly handsome with a lethal gaze, his lips remained but a breath away, ready to strike. She stared back, without fear.
Hades and Persephone, the original mismatched couple to Tamsyn’s mind, took no heed of her intimate perusal, with eyes uniquely for each other upon the canvas.
At any moment, Jack would saunter through the library door as requested the previous day and the prospect raised a goose skin, a slight clogging in her throat and a certain apprehension.
He’d been absent for most of the day – in Helston again, she supposed – but tonight he’d been his usual jocular self over dinner, prodding Lowdy to wear lemon and enticing Father to enthuse over clay extraction methods, grin broad.
But she’d also felt his eyes upon her. Assessing and asking the question: are you sure?
And at this moment, she was far from sure.
Tamsyn recalled long-ago evenings in this room, listening to Papa readGulliver’s Travelswhilst she’d lounged with her mother on silk cushions upon the floor, their heads resting against his knee.
Her parents had lived in unbroken harmony, so alike, and whilst Papa had read, Tamsyn had stared at this painting, wondering how the nature-loving Persephone had coped with months in the dreary Underworld.
Would it not have been better if they’d each found spouses with similar inclinations?
“Were you happy?” she enquired of the captured Persephone.
“Always,” came the goddess’s answer in rather a deeper voice than she’d imagined.
She didn’t turn, merely felt his presence, an enticing blend of port and lemon ripening the air. The door closed and she heard the click of a lock, his light tread. Everyone else was occupied with their own affairs tonight – Aunt and Lowdy writing letters, Papa at the Treloor Inn and herself supposedly reading in the library…alone.
A finger pointed over Tamsyn’s shoulder to Hades clasping his wife’s waist, indentations in her white silk shift revealing his passion. “She leans into his touch, yearns for it, as does her wayward hair. Likewise, he is utterly beguiled, cannot look away, aches for her kiss.”
“Is that not purely desire?”
“No. It is love. They would do anything for one another.”
