Page 58 of Hold Me Fast
Patricia was wrong. Jowan would not be anxious to see her and would certainly not be rushing over here as soon as he arrived back home.
“I do not deserve him, Patricia, and by now he has realized that,” she told her friend.
“Nonsense,” said Patricia. “He would be a lucky man to have you as his wife, and from what I can see, it is just a matter of you crooking your finger. You are the one he looks for whenever he enters a room you already occupy. From what you tell me, he put his life on hold to rescue you. He has been courting you for months.”
“I am not good for him. Not with the scandal of my past. His weeks in London must have convinced him of that. He will be kind, of course, for he is a kind man, but it is over, Patricia. He no longer wants me, and he has made the right decision.”
“You are wrong, Tamsyn. Your friends and neighbors know who you are, and we all love and admire you. And you are wrong about Jowan, too. He is yours for the asking.”
At that moment, a knock sounded on the door, and Tamsyn jumped. But of course, it could be anyone.
A moment later, the maid opened the door to the parlor. Her words were unnecessary, for the caller stood at her shoulder, but she announced him anyway.
“Sir Jowan Trethewey for Miss Roskilly.”
*
As Tamsyn andJowan walked up onto the moor, signs of early spring were everywhere along the lanes. Daffodils in their clumps. Primroses under the walls and hedges. Lesser celandines, red campion, and periwinkle all in flower.
They walked under the bare branches of trees, but all around them the ground was greening, with the fresh growth of ferns, cow parsley, and fat foxglove leaves.
Tamsyn paused at the top of the lane where a few paving slabs formed a lookout over the village. “It is pretty, is it not?”
“Very,” Jowan agreed, thoughbeautifulwas a better word. He had desired her when she was so frail, he’d feared bruising her if he touched her, but now that she glowed with health, she was stunning.
She had removed her bonnet as they walked up the lane, and her hair—escaping its hair pins as usual—formed a halo of dark curls around her head.
She pushed her hair back with her right hand, and the sunlight gleamed off her ring. He wondered if it was a good sign that Tamsyn continued to wear his ring, now on her ring finger. When he had commented on it one day, she had joked that, if she put on any more weight, the ring would have to move to the little finger.
Every time he made a comment like that, she turned it aside with a joke or a distraction, and he let it go. He had promised to give it time, and he would keep that promise if it killed him. Some days, he thought it would.
She glanced sideways to see him watching her. “The view, Jowan.”
“I am looking,” he told her, without moving his eyes. He knew which view he preferred.
In the months since Coombe’s attack and death, she had fully recovered from what the doctor was calling “Miss Roskilly’s poisoning”. More than recovered. She seemed to have lost the anxiety and lack of self-esteem that he had been conscious of even when she was otherwise happy.
Indeed, rather than arguing or becoming flustered by his obvious compliment, she chuckled. “Oh, you. But truly, Jowan, is St Tetha not the prettiest village you have ever seen?”
“Not as pretty as you, especially because I can tell—you are happy here,” he said.
In answer, Tamsyn turned in a circle, her bonnet swinging from one hand, her head back and her eyes shut. “I am home here,” she replied. “I have you, Patricia, Bran, and Evangeline for friends, and work that makes me happy.”
Jowan bit back his response to her remark about him being a friend. He had been patient. Dear God, he had been so patient! Did she not see him as more than a friend, even now?
“You deserve every good thing,” he told her.
“It is good of you to say so, Jowan,” she replied, avoiding his gaze. “But I know what I am.”
He had been holding his tongue through weeks of hearings in which Coombe’s misdeeds had been discussed in gruesome detail—and by extension, what Tamsyn had suffered. That remark was suddenly the last straw.
“Dammit, woman. What you are is a woman of talent, courage, determination, and strength,” he told her. His anger had to be expressed in movement, and he set off to march back and forth across the little lookout. “I cannot bear to hear anyone disparage you. Even you yourself. Do you not comprehend how I feel about you? Can you not understand how it hurts me to see you putting yourself down?”
She glared at him. “How do you feel about me, Jowan? You are my friend. Am I right?”
His next curse was even less fit for a lady’s ears, and he apologized immediately after. “I beg your pardon. I should not have said that.” The last thing he needed was for her to think he did not regard her as a lady.
“I have heard worse,” she pointed out, and before he could swear again at the mere thought of being compared to Coombe and his acolytes, she added, “Remember the stable master your father used to have? I never knew what was meant by half of the words we overheard.”
