Page 2 of Hold Me Fast
She’d stopped loving him. The thought cut the way it always did, lacerating his heart yet again. But what else could it be? She’d had a ticket she could have used at any time. The Earl of Coombe might have stopped franking her letters, but he did keep his promise to make her famous. She had just been on her second tour through Europe for crying out loud. She must have money to burn, plenty to buy her own tickets, frank her own letters.
Her silence was her message to Jowan, and the more fool him for the hope that lingered, somewhere in the remote corners of his mind and heart.
“I must assume she changed her mind,” he said and if his jaw was set and his foot tapped with the tension in his frame, his voice was commendably even.
“Or she thinks you did,” argued Bran. “Look, Jowan, the girl you told me about isn’t one who would cut you without a word.”
Why was Bran pressing this? Couldn’t he see how much it hurt? “She changed,” Jowan pointed out. “Or I was wrong.”
Bran shook his head. “You are not wrong about people. You recognized me right off. In any case, you haven’t let her go. If you’re right, this is your chance to dig out the last of your hope and start to heal. If I’m right, the lady might need to be rescued.”
Jowan was still thinking about the pain of losing all his hope, and Bran’s last few words took a moment to make sense. “Rescued?”
“If she wants to come home and can’t? For whatever reason? Yes. Rescued.”
Jowan shook his head. “How can I leave? We haven’t finished the shearing and then it will be planting time. I’ve the plans to sign off for the new mine.” He shrugged. “You know the list as well as I.”
“And how to make it all happen,” Bran pointed out.
Jowan put his knife and fork down while he thought about that. Bran was right. He could stay here with Jowan’s authority and do everything Jowan would do himself. “I could go to London,” he said, testing the words on his tongue.
He’d been there before but with Bran at his side. Their father had agreed for him to go to Oxford, and Bran had gone—theoretically as his servant, but they had looked after one another and Bran had been his shadow, attending lectures and tutorials even though only Jowan was enrolled.
Jowan always introduced Bran as his brother, and people became used to the arrangement and behaved towards Bran as they did to Jowan. They had friends with homes in London and had stayed with them during long weekends and holidays.
The tutors soon realized that Bran was learning more than Jowan, and he had just been offered a scholarship when word came that Sir Carlyon had died. Jowan was now the baronet. Bran had insisted on coming home to Cornwall, leaving the scholarship behind, and while Jowan felt guilty that Bran had given up a potential academic career for him, he was also grateful, for Sir Carlyon had made as much of a mess of the family’s finances as he had of his personal relationships with his wife, his mistresses, and his sons.
Bran had worked as hard as Jowan on the recovery and knew as much as Jowan about what needed to be done. “I could go to London,” Jowan repeated.
“You could,” Bran agreed. “You should. You could go and see the man with whom Sir Carlyon apparently invested. He hasn’t answered any of our letters, but you might get some answers if you are there in person. We need to check up, too, on the agent who is handling the investors in our mine, who keeps promising but failing to deliver. You could do all that and work out where you are with your Tamsyn.”
Jowan thumped the papers. “Tammie Lind, the Devon songbird.” He growled his displeasure. “Even the name is a lie. Is Tamsyn still there, inside?”
“You won’t know unless you go to find out,” Bran said.
*
Every so often,Tammie Lind was struck by a sudden moment of clarity—a step into reality, as it were. Moments when she saw the company she was with, and her own behavior, through the eyes of Tamsyn Roskilly. It was a sort of haunting, for Tamsyn had been killed long ago, strangled by Guy’s manipulations and Tammie’s own weaknesses.
Today, Tamsyn gazed with scorn at the fellow denizens of the laughing gas party. Ether was the drug of choice today. Tammie herself was as high as a kite, floating well above such mundane concerns as tomorrow’s rehearsal and the foolish fellow pawing at her. He was a peer of some sort. A boy with pretensions to being a songwriter. Guy would own him within a few weeks, and Tammie was part of his bait.
The boy was far too drunk on ether to do more than squeeze and prod. Tamsyn was indignant on her behalf. Silly Tamsyn. Tammie had not owned her own body in more years than she could, at the moment, count. She tried it anyway, numbering the years on her fingers, but she became lost in the mystery of whether a thumb counted as a finger and forgot the question.
She was vaguely aware that Guy was free from Tamsyn’s scorn. Tamsyn avoided looking at him. Wise Tamsyn. As usual, Guy sat a little apart, the untouchable Earl of Coombe, amused at the havoc he had caused. He seldom indulged in more than a taste of the various substances he supplied to his sycophants and the people he owned, as he owned Tammie.
Tamsyn despised them all, and she hated Guy. Reality was overrated. Tammie no longer bothered with such emotions. She lined up for another turn at the gas, to nail Tamsyn’s soul back in the coffin of her imagination, but Guy stopped her with a word to the attendant.
“No more for Miss Lind. She has a rehearsal tomorrow. Tammie, time for bed.”
Tammie wanted to whine and howl. Instead, she turned obediently towards the stairs, but the sudden movement set her off balance, and as she steadied herself, she saw Guy nod towards the boy, who followed her to her room.
Tamsyn had made a mistake years ago, when she was still a girl, and followed it up with several more. Ever since then, Tammie had paid and paid and paid. The boy was making a mistake now. Tammie felt a distant pity for him, but in the end, she would do as Guy ordered.
She took his hand. At least tonight was only the seeming of the thing. He would sleep off the ether and by the time he awoke, she would be at rehearsal. Everyone would believe he had been favored by the Devon Songbird. Perhaps he would believe it himself.
Sooner or later, it would be true. Guy had used her that way before and she knew how it went. Blackmail material or bribery or simply yet another way to soften the boy’s resistance and break his spirit until he was putty in Guy’s hands.
Tammie was desperately trying to claw her way back to the floating sensation, but the harder she tried, the further it receded. She needed a shot of the gin she had hidden in her room. Guy had taken the last of her secret laudanum.
