'Twas the Night Before Mischief

by Nina Rowan

  “And what shall you do?” he asked.

  “Try to make amends. Attend my father’s Christmas feast. Be Penelope the Paragon, more scrupulously than I’ve ever been before.”

  And one day, Darius knew, she would marry a man of whom her father approved. A nice, young man, perhaps a barrister or a doctor. She would live with him in a tidy little house, bear children, and live a quiet, dutiful life.

  A life that was entirely un-Penelope. A life that would negate her.

  He tried to smother the thought—and the knowledge that he was partly responsible for setting her back on the path to such a life. He reached into his pocket and removed a bag of sweets that he’d gotten in Keith. He extended the open bag to Penelope.

  She shook her head. “I don’t like kisses.”

  “And for the first time ever, I must accuse a lady of lying through her teeth.”

  She smiled. “Sugarplums are also called kisses. You didn’t know that?”

  “I didn’t know a kiss was called anything except a kiss.” Darius popped one of the candies into his mouth, enjoying the burst of cherry-flavored sugar. “But had I known one could purchase a bag of kisses, I’d have done so much sooner. Then I could just take one whenever I pleased.”

  “You’ve got a softer heart than I’d known,” Penelope remarked. “I’d always thought your heart was…well, serious. Incapable of flights of fancy or believing in fairy stories.”

  “Like falling in love with a mermaid?” Darius shook his head. “Much too impractical. Aside from the water and air issue, the logistics of lovemaking would be impossible to overcome.”

  Penelope gave a hoot of laughter so sudden and unladylike that the man across from them jolted from his sleep with a mutter of disapproval.

  Darius grinned. He thought, fancifully, that he could listen to Penelope’s laughter for the rest of his days.

  “You wouldn’t have to concern yourself with logistics anyway,” she told him. “Because you would never engage in an act romantic or impulsive enough to lure a mermaid from the sea.”

  Darius glanced at the elderly man and moved an inch closer to Penelope. He lowered his voice, his mouth close to her ear.

  “I’m not interested in luring a mermaid,” he murmured. “I am interested in luring a woman with sugar-scented hair and skin that tastes of orange blossoms.”

  She drew in a breath. “I believe you’ve already caught that woman.”

  Have I?

  When she turned his head to meet his gaze, he saw the certainty in her blue eyes…and the challenge. He might have caught her, but now he needed to prove himself worthy of keeping her.

  Chapter Eight

  Until they stopped in front of Darlington’s Confectionery, Penelope didn’t know that she had been hoping her father would be angry with her. He’d never been angry with her before. He’d never been…anything. At least anger would indicate that he’d been worried, even afraid for her safety. At least anger would mean that her betrayal had affected him.

  She grasped Darius’s hand as she stepped from the cab. He had been silent on their ride back from Paddington Station, and now as she looked at him, his expression was unreadable.

  Twisting her hand from his, she gazed at the window of the shop, which was filled with displays of Christmas treats. Dark gingerbread, Twelfth Night cakes laced with lemon, stars of Bethlehem, jellies in gleaming jars. Sugarplums.

  Darius held the door open for her. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Penelope stepped inside. A waft of warm, sugary air greeted her. She nodded at William, the man who helped at the front counter, and went around to the workroom. She felt Darius behind her, but he stopped at the door.

  Henry Darlington was mixing a bowl of chocolate, his broad face set with concentration. Penelope wondered if he was the only person in the world who possessed such a dedication to confectioneries. He looked up when the door clicked shut.

  “Penny.”

  She ran her gloved hands restlessly over her skirt. “Hello, Papa.”

  For a moment, it seemed as if he might come around the table to her, but instead he remained where he was.

  “Mr. Hall telegraphed from Inverness that you were on the way back to London,” he said. “What am I to assume about your engagement to Simon Wilkie?”

  Penelope held herself very still. “There is nothing to assume because there is no engagement.”

  “As well there shouldn’t be.” Henry Darlington gave a short nod and turned his attention back to the chocolate. “You owe Darius Hall a debt of gratitude for returning you safely home.”

  “He…he’s waiting in the other room. I believe he wants to speak with you as well.”

  He nodded. “You’d best see your mother. She’s been worried about you.”

  She’s not my mother. Even now, years later, the protest sparked in Penelope’s mind like a flame set to dry wood. Guilt filled her chest. There was no doubt her stepmother had made her father happy. Penelope thought she would do well to remember that, even to be grateful for it. But…

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because you committed a dangerous, foolish act,” her father replied shortly.

  “No. Why did you plan to hold your celebratory feast on the date of my mother’s death?”

  “On the date of…” Her father shook his head. “I didn’t plan any such thing. I wanted to hold it the week before Christmas. If the dates coincided, I had nothing…”

  He stopped abruptly and looked at her. “That’s the reason you ran off?”

  Penelope sighed. There were so many reasons she’d “run off” that she knew she couldn’t begin to explain them to him.

  Her father continued looking at her. “Penny, do you know who first started Darlington’s Confectionery?”

  “Your father.”

  “No. Your mother’s father. James Westford. He and my father became business partners, but James was the one who invested in the company. Who determined what it should be. And he’d always hoped that one day we would be granted a royal warrant.”

  He turned back to the chocolate. Though he would say nothing more on the matter, the word we rang in Penelope’s mind. It wasn’t a word that she needed to define.

  She went to the door. Darius stood on the other side.

  “I’ve told the driver to take you to your father’s house,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “I’ll have a word with him.”

  “All right.” There was so much she wanted to say to him, so many words locked inside her, but she suppressed them all. Now that she was back where she’d started, there was little sense in bringing forth useless imaginings again.

  She returned home, leaving her father and Darius in the confectionery shop, just as she had done so many times in the past. As she let herself in the front door, a burst of shouting came from the parlor.

  A sudden warmth filled Penelope. She dropped her bag in the foyer and hurried inside. The scent of pine drifted from the tree on the front table, and holly adorned the mantel. Her three young brothers were engaged in a game of blind man’s bluff, while their nursemaid tried to persuade them to sit down for tea.

  “Penny!” Her brother James hurled himself across the room, careening into her with a force that knocked life back into her heart.

  With a laugh, she kissed and embraced them all, the boys who had filled her father’s house with such energy. She assured them all she’d brought them back gifts from her journey, promising to tell them tales of her adventures before excusing herself to clean up after the train trip.

  As she returned to the foyer, her stepmother came out of the dining room.

  “Oh, I was so glad to hear you were on your way home.” Esther hurried forward, as if she were about to embrace Penelope, then stopped uncertainly. “You’re all right?”

  Penelope felt the shame beginning to crawl up the back of her throat. She averted her gaze from her stepmother and nodded. She hadn’t thought much of Esther when she agreed to marry Simon. She’d n
ever thought much of Esther at all, except for when she had first married Penelope’s father.

  “Why did you leave?” Esther asked, her voice containing only a tinge of hurt rather than any judgment.

  Penelope gripped the folds of her skirt. She wanted to regret what she’d done. She knew she should. A respectable young woman didn’t run off to the Highlands with the intention of eloping with a man of whom her father disapproved. If anyone outside of their family found out about this, Henry Darlington would be deeply shamed.

  Yet Penelope couldn’t quite bring herself to be sorry. Not any longer, at least. If she hadn’t sought adventure in the most dramatic manner possible, if she hadn’t allowed Simon to seduce her into eloping with him, if she hadn’t actually gone with him…then Darius Hall wouldn’t have had a reason to come to find her. She would never have experienced him.

  “I…I thought I loved Simon Wilkes,” she finally said, then shook her head. She could not be deceitful any longer. “No. I never thought that. I thought it would be an adventure, something daring and reckless. I’ve never done anything reckless. I…I was just tired of being so obedient all the time. I wanted to be like my mother. Or, at least, to know what it might have been like to be her.”

  Esther gazed at her for a moment. “I don’t know if this is any help, but no one has ever wanted you to be like someone else.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your father has only ever wanted you to be yourself. So have I.”

  “My father has wanted me to be his invisible daughter.”

  “Invisible?” Esther lifted her eyebrows. “He wouldn’t have spent so much time making Darlington’s Confectionery a success unless he thought his very visible daughter would one day run the company.”

  Penelope blinked. “I’d always thought he would leave it to the boys.”

  “Well, yes, but to you first, Penny. Did you not know that?”

  “I…I never much thought about it. He never said anything.”

  Neither, Penelope realized, had she.

  She swiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “He’d always hoped that one day we would be granted a royal warrant…”

  “You’d best unpack and get things in order,” Esther told her gently. “Oh, and your portmanteau arrived two nights ago. Sent from a Mr. Harvey in a place called Wick. I had it put in your room.”

  Penelope thanked her and went to her bedchamber. She took a hot bath to wash away the grime of travel and changed into a clean dress and petticoats. Her portmanteau contained several trinkets that she’d procured on the road to Scotland, and she was more than happy to hand them over to her brothers.

  She spent the next day reacquainting herself with her life as it was before. She returned to needlework, took a walk in the park, joined her stepmother for tea. The following day, she accompanied her father to the shop and spent some time asking him about how the shop was run and the process of making all the confections. Her father seemed pleased by her interest, and though Penelope was glad of their tentative reconciliation, she continued to silently hope that Darius would walk through the shop door. When he hadn’t come in by the end of the day, Penelope asked her father if he had seen Darius since their return.

  “He left yesterday evening,” Henry replied, arranging peppermint drops on a tray. “We settled our finances shortly beforehand.”

  Penelope’s heart chilled. “Your…your finances?”

  “We owed him a debt of gratitude, but also a monetary debt for his hire.”

  “And…and he took it?” She couldn’t quite believe it. Though her father would have insisted upon paying Darius for expenses incurred, she hadn’t imagined that Darius would take payment for being hired to follow her.

  Henry glanced at her. “Should he not have?”

  Penelope shook her head. Tightness filled her throat.

  “He…had a word with me,” Henry said.

  Penelope didn’t have to wonder what Darius had said. What he had confessed. She stared at the peppermint drops.

  “What do you think of him?” she asked carefully.

  “He had always been a good man. A good friend.”

  It was what Penelope had always known. She just hadn’t known that one didn’t need to run away in order to find freedom and exhilaration. Sometimes those things found you.

  After telling her father she had errands to run, she hurried out to Oxford Street and the cab stand. She instructed the driver to take her to the Albion Hotel, and forced her steps to slow as she approached the front desk.

  “Mr. Darius Hall?” The clerk looked at his ledger and shook his head. “I’m afraid he checked out yesterday, miss.”

  “He checked out?” She tried to pull in a breath. “Did he say where he was going?”

  “No, miss. Left no messages either.” Appearing to realize this was not what Penelope wanted to hear, the clerk gave her a weak smile. “You might leave word yourself, should Mr. Hall return.”

  “No.” Penelope turned to the door. “No word.”

  Chapter Nine

  The aromas of roasted goose, nutmeg-laced wassail, and spiced apples drifted amid the chatter of the festive crowd. Henry and Esther Darlington circled the room with smiles of welcome, as their guests congratulated their host on the royal warrant and praised the exceptional quality of his chocolate. The tree and holly sparkled with color, and even the fire in the hearth seemed to burn with crackling good cheer.

  Penelope slid easily back into the role she had always played so well. She was polite, welcoming, gracious. The reckless young woman who had run away to the borders of northern Scotland, picked herself up after being cast aside by a rogue, and then had the best time of her life with a serious, intellectual man whose laughter seemed meant for her alone, who had inexplicably proven that there truly was exhilaration in the world…that Penelope was gone.

  No. Not gone. But packed away somewhere beneath her heart, right alongside her abiding love for Darius Hall.

  Who actually was gone. Well and truly gone.

  She wasn’t certain she wanted to know where. If, as she feared, he’d returned to Russia, then she had little hope of seeing him any time soon. Not that she wanted to after he’d betrayed her by leaving without a word.

  Not at all what she would expect from the man who lived for words.

  And she couldn’t imagine things being the way they once were—Darius returning every year just for Christmas, while she simply…waited.

  After she ensured the guests had enough to drink, she went to check on the preparations for the feast. Her father had ordered an array of extravagant dishes—roast beef, goose baked with chestnuts, lobster, oysters, mincemeat pies, plum pudding, and, of course, all of the specialties from Darlington’s Confectionery.

  Penelope picked up a sugarplum and popped it into her mouth. A fruity sweetness burst over her tongue, laced with the flavor of lime. Sweet and spicy, just like one of Darius Hall’s kisses.

  Strange how she’d never liked sugarplums before now. Perhaps she’d simply never given them a chance.

  After assuring all was in order, she went to help Esther organize the guests when the dinner bell rang. Laughter, conversation, and exclamations of praise filled the air. And when the dinner was over and the guests began to depart, Penelope approached her father and rested a hand on his arm.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “All the accolades…you deserve them. You deserve the royal warrant. I’m sorry I never told you that before.”

  He gave her a short nod, but for a brief moment his gaze lingered on her face. “I hope you know your mother would be pleased with…everything.”

  “Even me?”

  For the first time since she’d returned home, her father smiled at her. “Especially you.”

  Though Penelope knew she and her father were still on tentative ground, she felt more at ease. By the time the last guest had departed, she was tired but pleased at how the celebration had gone and oddly thankful that Darius had gotten
her home in time for it.

  After returning to her bedchamber, Penelope asked the maid to help her change out of her holiday gown, then dismissed her before putting on her cotton shift and dressing gown. She unpinned her hair by the light of a candle. Rain pattered against the window.

  Rain? It had been snowing earlier in the evening.

  Penelope picked up a book and started to climb into bed. The rain pattered harder, sounding like hailstones.

  Penelope pushed the covers aside and went to the window. She opened the curtain and shrieked at the sight of a man’s face showing through the glass, his hair and face damp.

  Darius?

  She stared at him in shock, her heart pounding wildly. A moment passed before she realized he had climbed the trellis outside her window and was no doubt quite precariously balanced. He gestured to the window sash.

  Penelope struggled to open it. A gust of wind and cold snow blew into the room.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” She grasped his arm as he clambered over the sash, leaving puddles of slush all over the floor. “What are you doing at all?”

  “Getting soaked,” he muttered, brushing snow off the sleeves of his coat.

  Penelope pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart beat like a bird trying to escape a cage. A bird longing for the soaring, lovely freedom of flight.

  “But you…you left,” she stammered. “I thought you were back in Russia.”

  Darius blinked. “You thought I’d return to Russia without telling you?”

  He sounded so baffled by the very idea that a surge of hope filled Penelope. She tightened her hands into fists, trying to suppress the feeling for fear that it might be misplaced. She allowed her gaze to trace his features, the hard lines of his cheekbones and jaw that had become so familiar to her. So beloved.

  “What else was I to think?” she asked. “Where did you go?”

  “I went to find Wilkie, of course. Your father asked me to ensure that he not contact you again. I wanted to ensure that myself. He was more than willing to accept payment in exchange for his silence. Not that I’d expect a coward like him to have behaved any other way.”