LITMIR.BIZ

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Willie Tremayne—a dozen of the sheep have gone over the cliff at Striding’s Cove.’

      ‘A dozen?’ Tamsyn realised she was on her feet, halfway across the room. ‘How can that be? The pastures are all fenced, Willie was with them, wasn’t he? Is he all right?’

      ‘Aye, Willie’s safe enough, though by all accounts he’s proper upset. A rogue dog got in with them and the hurdle was broken down in the far corner, though the lad Willie sent says he’s no idea how that happened, because it was all right and tight yesterday.’

      ‘Whose dog?’ Tamsyn yanked at the bell pull. ‘There aren’t any around these parts that aren’t chained or are working dogs, good with stock.’

      ‘Don’t rightly know, Mizz Tamsyn. The lad says Willie shot it and it doesn’t seem to have been mad, by all accounts. Not frothing at the mouth nor anything like that. Just vicious.’

      ‘Oh, Michael, there you are. Find Molly, tell her to put out my riding habit and boots. Jason, saddle my mare.’

      ‘I don’t think there’s rightly anything you can do, Mizz Tamsyn, not at this time in the evening. Some of the men from the village helped Willie barricade the fence and one of the boats has gone down to the foot of the cliffs to see if there’s anything to salvage.’ Jason shrugged. ‘By the time you get there it’ll all be done.’ He looked past her to the fireside and lowered his voice. ‘I think the ladies are a mite upset, perhaps you’d be best biding here. I’ll send the lad back with the message that you’ll be along in the morning, shall I?’

      She wanted to go, to stand on the clifftop and rage, but it would achieve nothing. She had to think. ‘Yes, do that if you please, Jason.’

      When she turned back into the room she was glad she had listened to him. Aunt Izzy was pale, a lace handkerchief pressed to her lips. Rosie was white-faced also, but hers was the pallor of anger. ‘That was no accident. That was Chelford up to his nasty tricks again. Izzy, that boy is becoming a serious nuisance.’

      ‘He is no boy,’ Tamsyn snapped. ‘He is thirty years old with an over-developed sense of what is owed to his consequence and no scruples about the methods he uses to get what he wants. If this is down to him, then he is becoming more than a nuisance. I think he is becoming dangerous.’

      ‘Who is becoming dangerous, if I might ask?’

      Mr Defoe stood in the doorway, dressed, shaved and very much awake. His eyes were fully open, the flexible voice had lost almost all of the painful huskiness, and the long, lean body was clad in what she could only assume was fashionable evening wear for a dinner on the wilder coasts of Devon—slim-fitting pantaloons, a swallowtail coat, immaculate white linen and a neckcloth of intricate folds fixed with a simple sapphire pin that matched the subtle embroidery of his waistcoat.

      ‘What are you doing out of bed. Mr Defoe? The doctor said you should rest and not get up until tomorrow.’ Tamsyn knew she was staring, which did not help her find any sort of poise. And, faced with this man, she discovered that she wanted poise above everything.

      ‘I am warm, rested and I need to keep my muscles moving,’ he said mildly as he moved past her into the room. ‘Good evening, Miss Holt, Miss Pritchard. Thank you for the invitation to dine with you.’

      Invitation? What invitation? One glance at them had Tamsyn seething inwardly. They had invited him without telling her, for some nefarious reason of their own. They should have left the poor man to sleep. She eyed the poor man as he made his way slowly, but steadily, to the fireside and made his elegant bow to the aunts.

      Predictably Aunt Izzy beamed at him and Aunt Rosie sent him a shrewd, slanting smile. ‘Do sit down, Mr Defoe. I can well appreciate your desire to leave your room. Tamsyn, dear, perhaps Mr Defoe would care for a glass of sherry or Madeira?’

      ‘Thank you, sherry would be very welcome.’

      Tamsyn poured the rich brown wine into one of Aunt Izzy’s best glasses. At least their tableware would not disgrace them. The house was full of small treasures that Izzy treated with casual enjoyment. She was as likely to put wildflowers into the exquisite glasses as fine wine and, if one of the others protested, she would shrug and say, Oh, Papa let me take all sorts of things down here. I’m sure none of them are very valuable and I like to use nice objects.

      Mr Defoe stood beside the wing chair, waiting until Tamsyn had completed her task. ‘Thank you.’ He took the glass, then when she perched on the sofa next to Izzy he sat down with grace, and, to an observant eye, some caution. She suspected his overstretched muscles were giving him hell and he was more exhausted than he would allow himself to show. His features were naturally fine cut, she guessed, but even allowing for that, she detected strain hidden by force of will.

      ‘Again, I have to ask you—who is dangerous? I apologise for my inadvertent eavesdropping, but having heard, I do not know how to ignore the fact that you seem to be in need of protection.’

      In the silence that fell the three women eyed each other, then Tamsyn said, ‘A rogue dog chased some of our flock of Devon Longwools over the cliff.’

      ‘And moved a hurdle, I gather.’ He rotated the glass between his fingertips, his attention apparently on the wine. ‘A talented hound.’

      He had sharp ears, or he had lingered on the stairs, listening. Probably both. ‘That must be coincidence and it is simply a sorry chapter of accidents,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Tell me, Mr Defoe, do you come from an agricultural area?’

      ‘I own some land,’ he conceded. The amusement in his eyes was, she supposed, for her heavy-handed attempt at steering the subject away from the sheep. ‘But I do not have sheep. Arable, cattle and horses in the south. This must be challenging country for agriculture, so close to the sea and the wild weather.’

      ‘Everyone mixes farming and fishing,’ Aunt Rosie said. ‘And we have land that is much more sheltered than the sheep pastures on top of the cliffs, so we keep some dairy cattle and grow our own wheat and hay.’ Aunt Izzy opened her mouth as though to bewail the burnt hayricks again, then closed her lips tight at the look from Rosie. ‘We own some of the fishing boats that operate out of Stib’s Landing, which is the next, much larger cove, just around Barbary Head to the south.’

      ‘A complex business, but no doubt you have a competent farm manager. I am often away, so I rely heavily on mine.’

      ‘Oh, no, dear Tamsyn does it all,’ Izzy said cheerfully. Tamsyn wondered why Rosie rolled her eyes at her—it was, after all, only the truth.

      ‘I have to earn my keep,’ she said with a smile. ‘And I like to keep busy. Are you travelling for pleasure, Mr Defoe? We are beginning to quite rival the south-coast resorts in this part of the world. Ilfracombe, for example, is positively fashionable.’

      ‘Perfect for sea bathing,’ Izzy said vaguely, then blushed. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean...’

      ‘I am sure I would have done much better with a genteel bathing machine—I might have remembered to swim back when my time was up and not go ploughing off into the ocean while I thought of other things.’ He smiled, but there was a bitter twist to it.

      ‘Is that what you were doing? I did wonder, for the beach—if you can call it that—at Hartland Quay is hardly the kind of place you find people taking the saltwater cure.’ Not, that Mr Defoe needed curing of anything, Tamsyn considered. He looked as though he would be indecently healthy, once rested.

      ‘I was seized with an attack of acute boredom with the Great North Road, down which I was travelling, so, when I got to Newark, I turned south-west and just kept going, looking for somewhere completely wild and unspoilt.’

      ‘And then attempted to swim to America?’ What on earth prompted a man to strip off all his clothes, plunge into a cold sea and swim out so far that the current took him?

      ‘I needed the exercise and I wanted to clear my mind. I certainly achieved the first, if not the second.’ He stopped turning the glass between his fingers and took a long sip. ‘This

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