Page 23 of Hold Me Fast
The muscle’s face cleared. “Yes, Miss Lind,” he said. “Run along, Henry. This way, Miss Lind.”
There was something else. Tammie could not remember it.Oh yes.“Your message will be welcome, Henry,” she told the footman. “Mac knows.”
But for the life of her, she could not remember who Mac was. She could only hope that Jowan knew.
*
For once, Jowanand Bran had gone in different directions. They had bribed a street boy to keep up with the movements of the coach Tammie used, and the urchin had arrived with news of her arrival at the house of a Lady Bevan just as the brothers were about to join David Wakefield, whose agents had been watching the Earl of Coombe on behalf of Wakefield’s other client.
Apparently, the uncles and former trustees of a viscount new to his majority were concerned about the company their nephew was keeping. Bran had gone to join Wakefield, and Jowan had searched through the invitations that had accumulated in their little sitting room since the Duchess of Winshire had noticed them to find the one that gave him entry to this, one of the most boring garden parties he had every attended.
Not that he was an aficionado of garden parties. He could count on one hand those he’d been to, and that included three in Cornwall over the past four years. Still, if he had been to two a week for four years, he could not imagine any of them would have been more stultifying.
This one had a string quartet providing background music, and a lot of people he would normally not be interested in meeting chatting loud enough to drown out the music. He didn’t know anyone else at the party. The hostess introduced him to one gentleman and then abandoned him to the victim’s increasingly desperate attempts to discover whether Jowan knew anyone who, as the man put it, mattered.
Once the man was satisfied that Jowan was hopelessly provincial and disastrously ill-connected, he wandered away to better company, leaving Jowan to sip at the wine he had been given, and to wander from group to group, listening in on what other people were saying.
Fashion, horses, scandal. Nothing momentous. Nothing interesting. Only overheard mentions that confirmed Miss Lind would be singing this afternoon kept Jowan from leaving.
At last, his patience was rewarded. Tamsyn appeared from the house, flanked by a couple of hulking footmen and with a maid scurrying behind. Lady Bevan stood on the platform of the little open summerhouse being used as a bandstand and tapped a teaspoon on a glass to attract attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she nearly shouted. “For your pleasure, I have brought the Devon Songbird to sing for you.”
Tamsyn stepped up into the bandstand, curtseyed to Lady Bevan, and curtseyed again to the guests. A man standing near Jowan commented, “She can pleasure me, anytime.” Which brought a chuckle to those with him and had Jowan forming fists of his hands and picturing the blood spurting from the idiot’s nose all over the snowy lace of his cravat.
If you make a scene, you will be ejected, he reminded himself urgently, but nonetheless, he was breathing heavily when someone tapped on his shoulder, and he whirled ready to defend himself. It was the footman from Coombe’s house, the one who had given Jowan Tamsyn’s note. He gestured with his eyes and headed to the shelter of a nearby shrub.
Jowan followed him, realizing that the shrub masked him from the view of the singer and from those nearest to her, including her maid and her minders.
“Sir Jowan, isn’t it sir?” checked the footman.
“I am,” he agreed. “And you are Coombe’s footman.” He couldn’t keep his disdain for the man from his voice.
The young man blushed. “Miss Lind’s footman, sir. I have a message for you, from Miss Lind, sir.”
“I hope to speak to her myself,” Jowan told him.
The footman shook his head. “We have been instructed to keep Miss Lind from meeting with you, sir. I am sorry. It is as much as my job is worth not to obey. The other men will obey Coombe, anyway. And Miss Lind will suffer if she manages to speak with you. Please don’t get her into trouble, sir.”
“Is that your message?” Jowan asked, his anger at the thought of Coombe hurting Tamsyn making it hard for him to keep his voice to a low mutter.
“No, sir. The message is…” the footman frowned as if bewildered, “the ballad of Tam Lin.”
Now Jowan shared the sensation. “The ballad of Tam Lin? What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know, sir. I hoped you would. ‘Tell Jowan the ballad of Tam Lin.’ Oh, she also said, ‘Mac knows,’ sir.” He shook his head as if that might dislodge some more information.
“I must fetch the carriage, sir. That is the whole message.”
“Thank you,” Jowan said, accepting that the young man knew nothing more. “Please let Miss Lind know I stand as her friend.”
“I will, sir.”
The footman faded into the crowd and Jowan moved far enough out from the shrub to be able to see Tamsyn. The ballad of Tam Lin? What on earth could that mean?
Tamsyn held the audience in the palm of her hand. Even the men in Coombe livery could not take their eyes off her as her rich voice soared over the garden. Jowan, too, truth be told, but he retained enough sense to keep close enough to cover that he could step sideways to be out of sight of Coombe’s servants.
Quite apart from her magical voice, her appearance captured the crowd, and the way her eyes passed over them, pausing on face after face, then moving on. Jowan waited for her to see him, and at last, halfway through her second piece, her eyes met his, widened, and moved on.
