Page 34 of Hold Me Fast
“I had help,” Tammie said.
*
Evangeline decreed aweek of convalescence. On the first day, Jowan wrote to David Wakefield to see what his surveillance of Coombe had disclosed. Jowan couldn’t believe that the man had let Tammie go without some reaction.
On the second day, Evangeline allowed Tamsyn out of bed to sit up in the cottage’s sunroom, provided someone carried her down the stairs. Jowan volunteered and was shocked to find how light she was. She had already been thin to the point of gaunt, but she now seemed to be little more than skin and bone.
She had little appetite, too. She approached her meals with gusto but lost interest before consuming even half of the small portions she had been served. Evangeline said her capacity for food had shrunk but would expand again quite quickly. “She will need to eat as much as she comfortably can, and do it often,” Evangeline said and had a word with the cook.
In the afternoon, Tamsyn begged to go for a walk in the garden. Evangeline agreed, provided Jowan or Bran was on hand to help her if she became unbalanced or overtired. “Afterward, you may feel like a rest,” she added. Tamsyn pointed out that she had already had a morning nap.
Jowan offered his elbow and let her set the direction. As they made their slow way around the garden, Bran and Evangeline followed, chatting quietly. Apart from noticing that Evangeline was laughing, Jowan ignored them, all his attention on Tamsyn, who was examining everything they came across as if it was new to her.
“It feels… real, Jowan,” she said. “The colors, the shapes, the smells.” She stopped and put her head back, her eyes shut. “The wind.” She looked up at Jowan. “I did not even know I missed this. The poppy blurs the pain, but it also blurs the edges of everything else.” With a soft smile, she stroked a leaf and then the bark of a tree. “Can we sit down? Iama little tired.”
He conducted her to the bench they’d almost reached and handed her onto the seat, then sat beside her. Evangeline and Bran nodded as they passed and continued down the path, still talking. Jowan sat with Tamsyn, content to be silent if that was what she wished.
He was weary to the bone. If she had another nap, he would take one himself, but he was somehow afraid to sleep when she was awake as if she would be snatched back by the fairies if he did not keep a close lookout. Which was a silly thought, and just proved how tired he was.
Had Janet, the heroine of the ballad, looked at the knight she had stolen from the faery queen and wondered if she could live up to the expectations of someone who had been in faery land? Or if she even wanted to?
Was she haunted by the shapes her knight had taken in her arms and the secrets he had disclosed in his torment? What simple maiden could hope to have the bedroom skills to satisfy one who had been with the Queen of the Fae—and who knew how many of her ladies?
What simple boyo from Cornwall could hope to measure up to the sophisticated lovers his Tamsyn had had, starting with Guy, and including how many others? The names she mentioned in her delirium echoed in his brain, but he had no desire to count them. Jowan, who had twice been with a bargirl in Oxford, and had visited a cheerful widow in Launceston once a week for a six-month, had otherwise sought satisfaction on his own. He knew nothing by comparison to those sophisticates.
She had turned to him for help but as a friend, not as a lover. Their youthful promises were seven years in the past, separated from the here and now by a mountainous terrain of broken promises and different experiences.
He would not press her. Perhaps, in time, this Tamsyn, the one shaped by the past seven years, would come to love this Jowan. In the meanwhile, all he could do was offer her his support. The devil of it was that he had not changed. Not in the essentials, not in his love for Tamsyn.
In the past ten days, he had come to know her again, at least a little. And surely the Tamsyn he saw in her agony was a true picture of the woman—still determined, still passionate, still brave and intelligent.
He’d learned more than he wanted to know about what her life had been like, but it didn’t change his love. She had been debauched. He blamed Coombe for it. She had been actively involved in orgies. Coombe’s fault again. She had helped Coombe to capture others and addict them so Coombe could force them to his will. She hated herself for it, but Jowan absolved her and blamed Coombe.
Coombe needed to be destroyed, but Jowan had no idea how a country baronet from a remote corner of England could manage to take down a popular earl with contacts throughout the English aristocracy and beyond into Europe.
He was roused from his thoughts by Tamsyn’s voice. “I do not think I can walk inside, Jowan,” she told him. “Not up the steps, at least. Will you carry me?”
“I will carry you to bed,” he said, “and then I will find my own. An hour’s sleep would be a good idea.”
By the third day, she was eating more and staying awake for longer between naps. And Evangeline and Bran both looked better for a couple of good nights of sleep. Jowan, too, when he examined his face reflected in a shaving mirror, was less pale and the bags under his eyes less pronounced.
That was the day that David Wakefield and his wife Prue arrived from London. He had sent two reports over the past few days. In one, he had mentioned that Thatcher had been let out on bail and had disappeared. The other had been about Coombe’s efforts to find his missing Devon Songbird.
“We thought we would see how you were, and let you know what we have discovered,” David explained after the initial greetings were over. “It is, after all, only an hour’s drive and Coombe has no watchers on us since he has not discovered our involvement in the rescue.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Prue added, dryly. “He or those working for him have been questioning everyone they found that came in touch with either of you gentlemen. Including David, of course.”
David chuckled. “A couple of locals, which was useful, for they knew enough about me not to be stupid. I told them that I never discuss my clients’ business. They attempted a bribe but didn’t bother with any threats. Coombe came himself but got no further.”
Prue was indignant. “The man tried to bully you, David. He must be an utter fool.”
“He has an elevated opinion of his importance, Prue,” David told her.
Tamsyn was clearly concerned. She leaned forward in her eagerness to convince the Wakefields. They did not know Coombe the way she did. “You must take him seriously,” she said. “He is friends with the king, and has other highly-placed friends, too. And if seeking to have you harassed by the magistrates and planting rumors to destroy your reputation does not satisfy him, he is not above hiring low criminals to attack you directly.”
“We appreciate your warning, Miss Lind,” Prue said, “but you must not worry. A relative of David’s has already had a word with the king, and we have far too many allies in Society for any rumors to take root. In fact, any attempt to destroy our reputation is likely to backfire and undermine Coombe’s, which is no more than he deserves.”
“David is a half-brother of the Duke of Haverford and a protégé of the Duchess of Winshire, and he and Prue have worked for at least half of the ton,” Jowan explained.
