by M. C. Beaton
“Sit down, my lord, and let us discuss this like two rational beings. I shall fetch you some wine.”
Before he could protest, she had left the room. He paced angrily up and down. His mother could not be far behind. If Miss Mortimer continued as stubborn as this, he might be tempted to use force himself.
He looked around the little living room, at a few good bits of furniture, which obviously belonged in a grander setting. The ceiling was low and raftered, and he was in danger of banging his head on the beams.
Penelope came in with a decanter and two glasses on a tray.
“What is it?” asked Lord Andrew. “Elderberry wine.”
“No, thank you, Miss Mortimer. Now, listen to me—” He broke off. There was a steady rumble of a carriage approaching at a great pace.
“My mother is arrived,” he said grimly.
“She will make the most dreadful scene,” said Penelope, turning a little pale. “But then that will be the end of it.”
“Stay where you are!” he commanded as she made for the door.
“Fiddle. It is best I meet her and get this distressing business over with as soon as possible.”
“As you wish.” Lord Andrew pulled a pistol out of his greatcoat and began to prime it.
Penelope laughed, amusement driving out fear. “You are being ridiculous. Your own mother! One would think you were preparing to meet Attila the Hun.”
She walked to the door and held it open.
The duchess was sitting in the heavy traveling carriage. Two outriders in jockey caps and striped waistcoats and breeches sat on horseback on either side of the carriage. There was a thickset coachman up on the box.
A footman and groom came up the path at a run and seized Penelope by the arms and began to drag her towards the carriage.
“Get her quickly,” shouted the duchess through the open carriage window, “and gag her if she starts screaming.”
“Leave me,” said Penelope, wriggling in her captors’ grasp.
“Yes, leave her,” came Lord Andrew’s level voice from the doorway.
The footman and groom twisted about and found themselves looking down the barrel of Lord Andrew’s pistol.
“Only taking orders, me lord,” said the groom. They dropped Penelope’s arms, and she ran back to Lord Andrew’s side.
The carriage door crashed open, and the duchess jumped down onto the road.
“Unnatural boy!” she screamed. “How dare you interfere. I command you to go away and leave this matter to me.”
“No, Mama,” said Lord Andrew. “It is you who must leave. You have lost your wits. This is madness. This is folly.”
“You are no son of mine,” cried the duchess. “Go on. Shoot me. Kill your sainted mother and strike her down.” She wrenched open the bosom of her gown. A black whaleboned corset of quite staggering dimensions was exposed to view.
“Cover yourself up,” said Lord Andrew sharply. “You look ridiculous.”
“Ah, do you hear his words?” shrieked the duchess. “I curse you. You are no son of mine. From this day hence, I renounce you.”
“Good,” said Lord Andrew coldly. “For you are become a most tiresome parent.”
“Help me,” said the duchess, beginning to sway, her round figure making her look like a spinning top on the point of running down.
Lord Andrew drew Penelope inside and shut and locked the door. “NOW will you pack your things?” he said.
Penelope threw him a scared look and darted up the ladder, which led to her little bedroom under the eaves. Lord Andrew crossed to the window and looked out. Without her audience, for the Duchess of Parkworth did not consider servants people, she had closed her gown and was being helped into the carriage. Lord Andrew stayed by the window until she had driven off.
He was sure Penelope now had nothing to fear. A part of him knew his mother had shot her bolt. But there was a little doubt left, and that little doubt was enough to spur him on to get Penelope into hiding.
Chapter 9
“Where are you taking me?” asked Penelope in a small voice as Lord Andrew drove her through the village of Lower Bexham.
“I don’t know,” he said crossly. “Supper first, I think, and somewhere to rack up for the night.”
“You are going to compromise me again,” said Penelope.
“Not I. We shall have separate rooms at the first well-established posting house we come to.”
“Where, no doubt, Her Grace is waiting.”
“If you had your wits about you, you would notice we are not on the London road.”
“There is nothing up with my long sight,” said Penelope. It was hard to imagine, thought Penelope, that only so recently she had been yearning for him. Now they were engaged in their usual rancorous exchange like a married couple who should never have married in the first place. The shock of the duchess’s visit had made her feel weak and shaky. She longed for comfort and caresses, and that longing sharpened her tongue.
“And how goes Miss Worthy?” she asked.
“Very well. All is forgotten and forgiven.”
“Of course it is,” said Penelope. “You are rich and have a title. That must cover a multitude of sins.”
“I am not deformed and I am not old.”
“But not young,” said Penelope sweetly. “Nigh middle age, I should guess.”
“If you have nothing pleasant to say, then hold your tongue, miss.”
“You started it.”
“Started what, for goodness’ sake?”
“Sniping and complaining and saying my face was dirty.”
“Is, my dear Miss Mortimer. Is.”
“Ooh!” Penelope scrubbed at her face with a handkerchief. Then she took out a phial of rose water, moistened her handkerchief, tried again, and looked down gloomily at the resultant mess on the once-white cambric.
She decided to make a heroic effort to be pleasant and natural, as if it were quite normal for duchesses to appear on the doorstep on kidnapping expeditions. “The weather is very fine, is it not?” she ventured.
Her companion said something like “Grumph,” and Penelope relapsed into silence.
Lord Andrew was wrestling with his conscience. Back in London lay stern Duty, that mistress who had controlled him for so long. He could turn about and take Miss Mortimer back to her cottage. He himself could put up at the vicarage and stay for a day or two to make sure there were no further attempts to take her away. There was no need to head off into the unknown with her.
But an air of irresponsibility and holiday was creeping over him. The greenish twilight turned the landscape into a gentle dream country where the trees stood out like black lace against the fading light. He did not need to rely on his parents for a single penny, he mused. He did not need to marry a woman with a dowry. How very simple it would be to marry Penelope Mortimer! There would, in all probability, be a nasty breach-of-promise case, but when all was over and Miss Worthy financially compensated for her loss, then he and Penelope would be together. His senses quickened at the thought.
Since he had lost his virginity at the clumsy hands of that housemaid, he had never really lost his head over any woman. Courtesans and prostitutes repelled him, and so he had taken his infrequent pleasures with a few of the ladies of cracked reputation, widows or divorcées who knew how to carry on a light affair and take their leave gracefully.
His whole body craved that of Penelope Mortimer. He glanced down at her. She looked so young and fresh and innocent that she made him feel hot and sweaty and lustful. Such a virginal creature as Penelope could never be racked with the same dark passions as a man.
Penelope looked vaguely over the dreaming landscape and wondered if her body was going to fall to bits. Every little cell seemed to be straining towards her companion. She had a sudden picture of what he had looked like naked, and blushed all over. Fiery, prickly heat made her clothes itch, and there was a nasty cramping feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was no cure for what ailed
her. Or rather, no cure she could possibly have. The only relief for this sickness would be if it were possible to throw off all her clothes, claw his from his body, and lie with him naked. A moan nearly escaped her lips.
They were approaching a fairly sizable town. Lord Andrew drove into the courtyard of a posting house. This time, the respectably demure and bonneted Penelope and the exquisitely tailored Lord Andrew were treated to a warm welcome. Lord Andrew asked for a room for his ward, one for himself, and a private parlor for supper.
The posting house was modern, and the rooms were light and airy. There was no need for fires in the bedrooms. There was always a need for fires in Penelope’s little cottage, which was built over an underground stream and therefore damp and cold even in the best of weather. Penelope brushed her hair till it shone and twisted it into a loose knot on the top of her head. She put on one of her own favorite gowns, a simple blue silk, hoping that the piece of new silk she had let in on the front to replace a piece that she had burned with the iron would not show.
They both drank a great deal at supper and talked little. Both were trying to damp down the fires of passion with quantities of wine.
Supper consisted of fish in oyster sauce, a piece of boiled beef, neck of pork roasted with apple sauce, hashed turkey, mutton steaks with salad, roasted wild duck, fried rabbits, plum pudding and tartlets, with olives, nuts, apples, raisins, and almonds to accompany the port.
“You seem to take all this fare for granted,” said Penelope. “There is on this one table enough to last me for over a week at least.”
“That is understandable. You are poor.”
“Yes, I suppose I am,” said Penelope. “But by next year, I shall have vegetables from the garden and will be able to set some snares in the parsonage land at the back.”
“What do the villagers think of such as you living alone?”
“They have known me all my life and do not think it odd. Were I to live somewhere else, I would be obliged to have a companion, and that would be a great deal of unnecessary expense.”
“I can send you some game from time to time,” said Lord Andrew.
“Your wife will object to that, I should think.”
“Any wife of mine, Miss Mortimer, will do exactly what I say.”
“It is very hard to enforce laws and rules unless you plan to beat her.”
“It is woman’s duty to look pretty and obey her husband,” he mocked.
“Then it is as well I am not to be married,” sighed Penelope, “for I should prove rebellious. But it is only in very elevated circles that women have the luxury of being idle and decorative. I am glad I am quite finished with high society.”
“If my mother has anything to do with the matter, then I fear she will have ruined your reputation.”
“It does not matter. A female’s reputation only matters in the Marriage Market.”
Her independence irked him. He did not like to think of her going out of his life, free to do as she wished, free of him.
“What do you wear on that chain round your neck?” he asked abruptly.
Penelope blushed and tugged out his ring, which had been hanging inside her gown between her breasts. “I was merely keeping it safe,” she said awkwardly.
“No, keep it,” he said quickly, seeing she was about to detach it from the chain. “I told you it was yours. I would like you to have it.”
He was looking at her intently, and Penelope’s eyes fell beneath his own. She rose to her feet. “I am tired, my lord, and would retire. Where are we bound tomorrow?”
“We will discuss that in the morning.” He rose as well. They walked in silence to Penelope’s bedchamber. He held open the door for her and then stood looking down at her.
“Goodnight,” he said softly.
“Goodnight,” echoed Penelope, and darting inside, she shut the door in his face.
He went to his room next door and slowly washed and changed into his nightgown. He could sense her through the walls. The longing and desire would not go away. He had drunk a great deal, but his brain seem to be clear and wide-awake. He went to the window and raised the sash. There was a full moon riding above the trees. A dog barked in the distance, someone laughed somewhere down in the courtyard, and then there was silence.
He turned and leaned his back against the windowsill and crossed his arms. What was he to do with Penelope Mortimer?
He crossed the room and, seizing his quilted dressing gown, shrugged himself into it and marched next door. Penelope was lying in bed, reading a book, her steel spectacles on the end of her small nose.
“Do you ever knock?” she asked, peering at him over the tops of her glasses, too startled at his sudden appearance to remember to take them off and hide them. Her lorgnette lay in the bottom of her luggage. She wished she had unpacked it, but then, she had not expected a night visit from him.
“My apologies,” he said stiffly. “They have forgot to give me soap. May I take some of yours?”
“By all means,” said Penelope, waving a hand in the direction of the toilet table.
He picked up a cake of Joppa soap and tossed it up and down in his hand. “Are you comfortable?”
“Yes, my lord. Thank you.”
“Well… goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Lord Andrew.”
He went back to his own room and moodily threw the cake of soap on his toilet table, where it joined the three tablets already there.
Damn!
He sat down on the bed and rested his chin on his hand.
After a few moments he sighed and took off his dressing gown and got into bed, sulkily pulling his nightcap down over his ears.
There came a scratching at the door as he was leaning forward to blow out his bed candle.
“Enter,” he called.
Penelope came in wearing a nightgown and wrapper and a frivolous lace nightcap on her head. She did not look at him. “I find I have forgot my tooth powder,” she said.
“I have plenty. You are more than welcome to take it,” he said eagerly, swinging his long legs out of bed. “See, here is an unused tin of Biddle’s.” He handed it to her. She was so close to him, he could feel the heat from her body, smell the rose water on her skin.
“Thank you,” said Penelope. “Well… er… goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Miss Mortimer.”
Fetters of convention kept those arms of his, which wanted to seize her, firmly to his side.
He sadly watched her go. He jumped back into bed, blew out the candle, tore off his nightcap, and threw it across the room, and then lay flat on his back staring up into the darkness.
Then all of a sudden, he had a clear picture of her toilet table next door. Among a few scattered bottles of washes and creams there had been a new tin of tooth powder. Could Penelope possibly be suffering as much as he?
His heart hammering against his ribs, he slowly got out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown, and went next door.
She was standing by the window, looking out.
“You already have a can of tooth powder,” he said softly.
Without turning round, Penelope answered, “And you, my lord, have cakes and cakes of soap.”
“I want you,” he said raggedly, and held open his arms.
Penelope rushed into them, and burning, aching body clung tight to burning, aching body. He kissed and caressed her, feeling his passion rise to fever heat. He carried her to the bed and laid her down and then stretched out beside her and gathered her close. There was so many places to kiss: her eyes, her hair, her mouth, her breasts, her mouth again.
“No,” he began to mumble like a drunk. “No, no, no. Must marry me. Now.”
“I can’t. You can’t. It’s the middle of the night. Oh, Andrew, kiss me again.”
“No,” he said more firmly. “This is torture. I bed you as my wife or nothing else. We have to get away from here, where you are known as my ward. We must go and find a preacher.”
“We need a special li
cense.”
“Nonsense. I shall bribe some cleric to do the necessary and then marry you again in London.”
“But Miss Worthy.”
“A pox on Miss Worthy.”
“Your mother…?”
“Her, too. Come along. Clothes on.”
“I am so tired.”
“Penelope, if I kiss you again, I cannot answer for the consequences. We cannot live apart. If I do not quench this fever in my blood soon, I shall strangle you.”
“But what if we are not suited?”
“You must be mad!”
“What if it is only lust?”
“If it is, then I swear there’s enough to last a lifetime. Why are you always arguing and quibbling?”
“I am not quibbling,” said Penelope crossly.
“Either you dress yourself or I shall dress you.”
“No, I shall manage.”
Lord Andrew rushed next door and started to pull on his clothes. He was worried she might take fright and run away. But she was just fastening the lid of her imperial when he erupted into her room again.
The landlord was distressed and thought he must have displeased his noble guest in some way, for Lord Andrew woke him up to pay his shot and shout for his carriage.
Soon they were bumping along the country roads. After a time, Penelope fell asleep with her head against his shoulder. He drove on as dawn rose over the fields and the sun began to climb up above the fields and woods.
The large, bustling county town of Ardglover was reached by nine o’clock. It boasted an even more luxurious posting inn. This time Lord Andrew, having woken the sleeping Penelope, took the ring from her chain and put it on her finger before booking one room for Lord and Lady Andrew Childe.
Leaving Penelope to enjoy a solitary breakfast, he went off to explore the churches. He talked to several vicars before making his choice. The Reverend James Ponsonby was vicar of a run-down back-street church called St. Jude’s. Even at that early hour of the day, he smelled strongly of spirits. He took Lord Andrew into the vestry and there enjoyed a pleasurable hour of haggling before settling on the price of a rushed wedding.
Penelope was asleep when he returned to the inn. He made a hasty breakfast, sent for the barber to shave him, and, attired in his best morning dress, went to rouse Penelope and tell her roughly she was about to be married. Still exhausted, Penelope struggled into a white muslin gown with a pink sprig.
