Page 47 of Hold Me Fast
Jowan couldn’t believethat Coombe had just given up, even after they discovered the inn he had been using and were told that he had paid his bill and left.
Jowan and Bran hired a cadre of off-duty sailors to escort them and the ladies whenever they went out, and perhaps that was enough to deter the villain. However, they saw no more of him in their remaining days in Plymouth.
When they left, it was with a cart to carry their purchases and Patricia Mayhew’s possessions, for she had accepted the position of Tamsyn’s companion.
They were back in St Tetha on a Friday, and on Sunday, they were all present in church for the second reading of banns for Bran and Evangeline. They lingered in the church yard after the service to accept congratulations and to introduce Patricia to their neighbors. Word of her arrival had, of course, already spread, and the forthcoming wedding had to vie for first place in conversations with what was being done to the cottages to prepare one for the newlyweds and the other for Tamsyn and Patricia.
Not that either would be ready in time for the wedding. The reroofing would start this week, as would some of the other major repairs and alterations, but neither place would be habitable for at least two months. Jowan was glad of it.
“I am in no hurry to see you go,” he told his friends.
“We are not going far,” Bran pointed out, which was true, but a separate house a few minutes’ walk away was not the same as being under the same roof.
On the other hand, Jowan had to admit that living with Tamsyn, given the way he felt about her, was playing havoc with his emotions and his sleep. His brother had been right to warn him that the Tamsyn of today was very different, in many ways, to the Tamsyn of seven years ago. But this had only given Jowan the opportunity to fall in love with her all over again.
Her strength of character and of purpose, her courage, and her determination, all attracted him as much as the quiet sense of humor, the curiosity about the world at large, and the kindness that remained of the girl he once knew.
As for attraction, he had been almost ashamed of how drawn he was to her when she was little more than skin and bone. Now that her curves were returning, along with color in her complexion and a sparkle in her eye, he was uncomfortably aware of her whenever she was near—a discomfort that was only alleviated during dreams in which she was finally his.
He had promised to respect the time she needed to come to terms with the woman she now was, but it was a daily, and sometimes an hourly, challenge not to show her how much he wanted her. Even with Evangeline and Patricia living in the house with them, he was afraid that temptation would overcome him. The last thing Jowan wanted to do was to emulate Coombe by putting pressure on her. He had seen how much she hated and despised the fiend, even as she feared him. But every time he saw Bran tug Evangeline into a sheltered corner for a kiss and a cuddle, his frustration with his own situation threatened to overwhelm him.
It was just as well that the wedding was fast approaching, and that the newlyweds had agreed to his proposal to take their wedding trip to London, where Bran would attempt to track down the investments for which they now had documentation.
Four days before the wedding, a letter from Coombe’s solicitor gave the couple another task in London.
*
The letter wasdelivered just before breakfast. Addressed to Miss Tamsyn Roskilly, it was waiting for her when she came to the table. She opened it and gasped.
“What is it, Tamsyn?” Patricia asked.
“A letter from a solicitor. The Earl of Coombe is suing me for breach of contract.” Her eyes continued to move to and fro across the paper. “He claims that I was under contract to sing where and when he instructed me and that I have lost him…” she turned to the next page and peered at the writing. “An absurd amount of money by running away.” She turned to Jowan, indignation and alarm battling for dominance. “This cannot be legal.”
“No,” Jowan agreed. “Of course, it is not.”
Bran stretched out his hand. “May I see?”
Tamsyn handed him the letter.
“Do you remember signing any such agreement?” Evangeline asked, but Tamsyn shook her head.
“Not ever. My mother might have done so. Or Sir Carlyon.”
“Those would not count now,” Bran said, his voice distant as he perused the pages. “You are now an adult, and any contract signed by your legal guardian on your behalf would have ceased to have effect when you turned twenty-one.” He looked up. “You should look, though, to see if you can find something in your mother’s belongings.”
Tamsyn had been told the Inneford servants had packed Mrs. Roskilly’s belongings into trunks when they cleaned up the cottage after she died. The trunks were currently in the Inneford attics.
“I’ll do that,” Tamsyn agreed. “He can’t make me pay all of that, can he? I do not have anything except what my mother left me and the money from the sale of the jewelry.”
Bran was cautious. “It depends on whether he can produce an actual contract that was signed by you after you came of legal age.”
“But if you do not remember signing one…” Patricia said.
Evangeline shook her head and Tamsyn admitted, “I do not remember a great deal that happened in the past five years.”
“What would be the benefits to Tamsyn of such a contract?” Jowan asked. “And where are they? If his contract with Tamsyn’s mother gave Mrs. Roskilly a lump sum or a share of Tamsyn’s earnings, what has happened to them? And the same with any more recent contract. How much did a performance earn you, Tamsyn? Roughly?”
Tamsyn frowned, bewildered by the question. “I have never been told,” she said, amazed she had never considered the matter. “I have never seen any accounting… Guy…”No. Not Guy.He did not deserve that level of intimacy from her even if he never knew that she had taken to calling him by his title. “Coombe, I should say, told me my performances helped to pay for the costs of my keep. But that cannot be the entire truth, can it? Other star performers live off their earnings without the need for a patron. I have no idea what Guy charged for my performances, but I have been hired out to entertain audiences no fewer than four or five times a week for the past seven years, often more when I am also engaged for a theatre season. I should have savings, should I not?”
