Lips abandoned his and he starved for their return.
“Thank you, Jack,” she murmured softly. “Thank you, my honourable rogue.”
Yes. A rogue was who he was. They must both remember that.
With time, he would forget Tamsyn, forget this overwhelming need.
And to ensure she also forgot him, he must remind her of who he was.
“I’m no honourable man, Tamsyn. I’m a rogue. A rogue who lives for pleasure and little else.”
But the words tasted like ash. Sour, dirty and so very wrong.
Chapter Nineteen
Jack tar.
“AnotherFair Maid, please.”
The girl winked and drifted off to the cider barrel.
Jack felt…odd.
Normally, he’d be ensconced at the bar of such a hostelry, regaling the locals and flirting with the comely barmaid but here he sat in the unlit corner, feeling a tad…odd.
Perchance Mrs Pencally’s snuffles were proliferating.
The Treloor Inn’s whitewashed exterior and thick stone walls repelled the sultry heat of this September evening. Homely and snug, the scent of apples, hops and clay pipe smoke twirled in the air and thisFair Maidcider was fulsome indeed.
Captain Lynch had been sitting at the bar when he’d entered, hobnobbing with the girl, and they’d nodded tightly at each other, but he’d left soon after and Jack had heaved a sigh of relief at not having to engage in mannerly prittle-prattle.
The inn seemed busy, so he surmised the lack of wind was driving fishermen to the grog, and chomping on dried fishy morsels, he surveyed the other patrons from his secluded corner.
Leathery tanned faces haunted the bar, eyes morose like mermaids forced onto land, muttering about causes for the becalmed weather – piskies, black cats and even outlanders from up-country had been blamed…
Having left Tamsyn in the safekeeping of her father, Jack had discovered a crisply folded note from Miggens on his bedchamber desk, requesting his presence in this establishment on the chime of ten; he’d arrived an hour previous, wishing to calm the rage that simmered in his gut after hearing Tamsyn’s terrifying recollections.
Earlier in the day, he’d visited the Helston magistrates to question their churchyard attacker, but despite languishing behind bars, the squalid creature had declined to bleat.
Instead, his eyes had rolled white, staring to the cell window with terror, hands clawing at the threadbare blanket.
Jack had concluded that the malodorous villain was merely a puppet, but who’d pulled the strings? A mastermind of kidnap, perchance? The sort to terrify a young girl and scar her with a knife?
Coincidence, Asher Rainham had forever pronounced, did not exist. Look at the connections, he would say, and assess the probabilities.
A botched murder attempt on himself, the churchyard attack, Tamsyn Penrose – and all to the backdrop of Napoleon’s defeat.
La Chauve-Souris.Alive?
A high probability.
And if so, what did he want? Tamsyn?
Did he truly intend to reclaim her like some spoil of war?
The French fiend was an insane obsessive who had seen the courage and strength within a young girl – seen it and wanted it, biding his time until France ruled England. But with Napoleon conquered, the rat with wings could do no more than run.
Jack’s thoughts slid to Tamsyn herself: so very determined yet scared, spirited yet vulnerable, tugging her bodice low to bare her soul.
