A Lady of His Own bc-3

by Stephanie Laurens

  She waited a heartbeat; when he said nothing more, she looked back. He hadn’t moved; he was looking at the candle. He didn’t turn to face her.

  He couldn’t face her…

  A knot inside unraveled; tension flowed away. She smiled, softly, knowing he couldn’t see. “Don’t bother—there’s no point. I know you, remember? You’re not the sort of man who would.”

  She hesitated for another second, then quietly said, “Good night.”

  He didn’t reply, didn’t move. She turned and walked away down the corridor.

  Charles listened to her footsteps retreating, and wondered what malevolent fate had decreed he’d face this. Not the sort of man to blackmail a lady? Much she knew. He’d been exactly such a man for more than a decade.

  He heard her reach the front hall, and exhaled, long and deep. She knew not just some minor piece of the puzzle but something major; he trusted her intelligence too well to imagine she was overreacting to some inconsequential detail she’d inadvertently stumbled on. But…

  “Damn!” Shoving away from the table, he stood and stalked back to the library. Opening the door, he called Cassius and Brutus, then headed out to the ramparts to walk. To let the sea breeze blow the cobwebs and the memories from his brain. He didn’t need them clouding his judgment, especially now.

  The ramparts were raised earthworks ringing the Abbey’s gardens to the south. The view from their broad, grassed top took in much of the Fowey estuary; on a clear day, one could see the sea, winking and glimmering beyond the heads.

  He walked, at first steering his thoughts to mundane things, like the wolfhounds lolloping around him, diverting to investigate scents, but always returning to his side. He’d got his first pair when he’d been eight years old; they’d died of old age just months before he’d joined the Guards. When he’d returned home two years ago with Napoleon exiled to Elba, he’d got these two. But then Napoleon had escaped and he’d gone back into the field, leaving Cassius and Brutus to Lydia’s care.

  Despite Lydia’s affection, much to her disgust, the instant he’d reappeared the hounds had reattached themselves to him. Like to like, he’d told her. She’d sniffed and taken herself off, but still sneaked treats to the pair.

  What was he going to do about Penny?

  The question was suddenly there in his mind, driving out all else. Halting, he threw back his head, filled his lungs with the cool, tangy air. Closed his eyes and let all he knew of the Penny who now was flood his mind.

  When he’d first returned home, his mother, unprompted, had informed him, presumably by way of educating his ignorance of their neighbors, that Penny hadn’t married. She’d had four perfectly successful London Seasons; she was an earl’s daughter, well dowered and, if not a diamond of the first water, then more than passably pretty with her delicate features, fair, unblemished skin, long flaxen hair, and stormy gray eyes. Her height, admittedly, was to some a serious drawback—she was about half a head shorter than he, putting her eye to eye with many men. And she was…he’d have said willowy rather than skinny, with long limbs and svelte, subtle curves; she was the antithesis of buxom, again not to every man’s taste.

  Then, too, there were the not-inconsequential elements of her intelligence and her often waspish tongue. Neither bothered him—indeed, he greatly preferred them over the alternatives—but there were, admittedly, not many gentlemen who would feel comfortable with such attributes in their wives. Many would feel challenged in a threatening way, not an attitude he understood but one he’d witnessed often enough to acknowledge as real.

  Penny had always challenged him, but in a way that delighted him; he appreciated and enjoyed their near-constant battles of wits and wills. Witness the one they were presently engaged in; despite the seriousness of the situation, he was conscious of the past stirring, elements of their long-ago association resurfacing—and part of that was the challenge of dealing with her, of interacting with her again.

  According to his mother, she’d received dozens of perfectly good offers, but had refused every one. When asked, she’d said none had filled her with any enthusiasm. She was, apparently, happy living as she had for the past seven years, at home in Cornwall watching over her family’s estate.

  She was the only offspring of the late Earl of Wallingham’s first marriage; her mother had died when she was very young. Her father had remarried and sired one son and three daughters by his second wife Elaine, a kindly, good-hearted lady—his godmother as a matter of fact. She’d taken Penny under her wing; they’d grown to be not so much mother and daughter as close friends.

  The earl had died five years ago; Penny’s half brother Granville had succeeded to the title. A sole male with a doting mother and four sisters, Granville had always been spoiled, tumbling from one scrape into the next with nary a thought for anyone or anything beyond immediate gratification.

  He’d last met Granville when he’d returned home in ’14; Granville had still been reckless and wild. Then had come Waterloo. Fired by the prevailing patriotic frenzy, Granville had shut his ears to his mother’s and sisters’ pleas and joined one of the regiments. He’d fallen somewhere on that bloody plain.

  The title and estate had passed to a distant cousin, the Marquess of Amberly, an older gentleman who had assured Elaine and her daughters that they could continue to live as they always had at Wallingham Hall. Amberly had been close to the previous earl, Penny’s father, and had been Granville’s guardian prior to Granville attaining his majority.

  And thus the freedom to get himself killed, leaving his mother and sisters, if far from destitute, then without immediate protectors.

  That, Charles decided, opening his eyes and starting to pace again, was what bothered him most. Here was Penny already involved in God knew what, and there wasn’t any male in any position to watch over her. Except him.

  How she’d feel about that he didn’t know.

  At the back of his mind hovered a lowering suspicion over why she hadn’t been eager to marry, why no gentleman had managed to persuade her to the altar, but how she now thought of him, how she now viewed him, he didn’t know and couldn’t guess.

  She’d be prickly almost certainly, but prickly-yet-willing-to-join-forces, or prickly-and-wanting-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-him? With ladies like her, it wasn’t easy, or safe, to guess.

  He did know how he felt about her—that had been an unwelcome surprise. He’d thought thirteen years would have dulled his bewitchment, but it hadn’t. Not in the least.

  Since he’d left to join the army, he’d seen her a few times in ’14, and then again over the past six months, but always at a distance with family, both his and hers, all around. Nothing remotely private. Tonight, he’d come upon her unexpectedly alone in his house, and desire had come raging back. Had caught him, snared him, sunk its talons deep.

  And shaken him.

  Regardless, it was unlikely there was anything he could do to ease the ache. She’d finished with him thirteen years ago—cut him off; he knew better than to hold his breath hoping she’d change her mind. She was, always had been, unbelievably stubborn.

  They would have to set that part of their past aside. They couldn’t entirely ignore it—it still affected both of them too intensely—but they could, if they had to, work around it.

  They’d need to. Whatever was going on, that matter he’d been sent to investigate and that she, it seemed, had already discovered, was potentially too dangerous, too threatening to people as yet unknown, to treat as anything other than a battlefield. Once he knew more, he’d try to separate her from it. He didn’t waste a second considering if she, herself, was in any way involved on the wrong side of the ledger; she wouldn’t be, not Penny.

  She was on the same side he was, but didn’t yet trust him. She had to be protecting someone, but who?

  He no longer knew enough about her or her friends to guess.

  How long before she decided to tell him? Who knew? But they didn’t have a lot of time. Now he was ther
e, things would start happening; that was his mission, to stir things up and deal with what rose out of the mire.

  If she wouldn’t tell him, he’d have to learn her secret some other way.

  He strode along the ramparts for half an hour more, then returned to his room, fell into bed, and, surprisingly, slept.

  CHAPTER 2

  HE AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND OF HOOFbeats. Not on the gravel drive circling the house, but farther away, not nearing but retreating.

  He’d left the French doors to his balcony open, a very un-English act, but in Toulouse he’d grown accustomed to open windows at night.

  Fortuitous. Rolling from the bed, he stretched and strolled across the room. Naked, he stood in the balcony doorway watching Penny, garbed in a gold riding habit, steadily canter away. If the doors hadn’t been open, he’d never have heard her; she’d left from the stables, a good distance from the house. Sidesaddle on a roan, she was unhurriedly heading south.

  To Fowey? Or her home? Or somewhere else?

  Five minutes later, he strode into the kitchen.

  “My lord!” Mrs. Slattery was shocked to see him. “We’re just starting your breakfast—I had no idea—”

  “My fault entirely.” He smiled charmingly. “I forgot I wanted to ride early this morning. If there’s any coffee? And perhaps a pastry or two?”

  In between muttering dire warnings over what was sure to befall gentlemen who didn’t start their day by sitting down to a proper breakfast, contemptuously dismissing his proffered excuse that he’d grown accustomed to French ways—“Well, you’re a proper English earl now, so you’ll need to forget such heathenish habits”—Mrs. Slattery provided him with a mug of strong coffee and three pastries.

  He demolished one pastry, gulped down the coffee, scooped up the remaining pastries, planted a quick kiss on Mrs. Slattery’s cheek, eliciting a squawk and a “Get along with you, young master—m’lord, I mean,” and was out of the back door striding toward the stables ten minutes behind Penny.

  Fifteen minutes by the time he swung Domino, his gray hunter, out of the stable yard and set out in her wake.

  He hadn’t had the big gray out since early March; Domino was ready to run, fighting to stretch out even before he loosened the reins. The instant they left the drive for the lush green of the paddock rising to the low escarpment, he let the gelding have his head. They thundered up, then flew.

  Leaning low, he let Domino run, riding hands and knees, scanning ahead as they sped southwest. Penny, sidesaddle and believing herself unobserved, would stay on the lanes, a longer and slower route. He went across country, trusting he’d read her direction correctly, then he saw her, still some way ahead, crossing the bridge over the Fowey outside the village of Lostwithiel, a mile above where the river opened into the estuary. Smiling, he eased Domino back; he clattered across the bridge five minutes later.

  Returning to the high ground, from a distance he continued to track her. Fowey, her home, or somewhere else, all were still possible. But then she passed the mouth of the lane leading west to Wallingham Hall, remaining on the wider lane that veered south, following the estuary’s west bank all the way to the town of Fowey at the estuary mouth.

  But the town was still some way on; there were other places she might go. The morning was sunny and fine, perfect for riding. She kept to her steady pace; on the ridge above and behind, he matched her.

  Then she slowed her roan and turned east into a narrow lane. Descending from the ridge, he followed; the lane led to Essington Manor. She rode, unconcerned and unaware, to the front steps. He drew away and circled the manor, finding a vantage point within the surrounding woods from where he could see both the forecourt and the stable yard. A groom led Penny’s horse to the stables. Charles dismounted, tethered Domino in a nearby clearing, then returned to keep watch.

  Half an hour later, a groom drove a light gig from the stables to the front steps. Another groom followed, leading Penny’s horse.

  Charles shifted until he could see the front steps. Penny appeared, followed by two other ladies of similar age, vaguely familiar. The Essington brothers’ wives? They climbed into the gig. Penny was assisted back into her saddle. He went to fetch Domino.

  He reached the junction of the Essington lane and the Fowey road in time to confirm that the ladies were, indeed, on their way south. Presumably to Fowey, presumably shopping.

  Charles sat atop Domino and debated. At this point, Penny was his surest and most immediate link to the situation he’d been sent to investigate.

  She was concerned enough to follow men about the countryside at night, concerned enough to refuse to tell him what she’d discovered, not without thinking and considering carefully first. Yet there she was, blithely going off to indulge in a morning’s shopping with such concerns unresolved, circling her head.

  She might be female, but he’d grown up with four sisters; he wasn’t that gullible.

  Penny stayed with Millie and Julia Essington for the first hour and a half of their prearranged foray through Fowey’s shops—two milliners, the haberdasherer’s, the old glove-maker’s, and two drapers. As they left the second draper’s establishment, she halted on the pavement. “I must pay my duty call—why don’t you two go on to the apothecary’s, then I’ll meet you at the Pelican for lunch?”

  She’d warned them before they set out that morning that one of the retired servants from Wallingham had fallen gravely ill and she felt honor-bound to call.

  “Right-oh!” Julia, rosy-cheeked and forever sunny-tempered, linked her arm in Millie’s.

  Quieter and more sensitive, Millie fixed Penny with an inquiring gaze. “If you’re sure you don’t need support? We wouldn’t mind coming with you, truly.”

  “No—there’s no need, I assure you.” She smiled. “There’s no question of them dying, not yet.” She’d managed not to mention any name; both Millie and Julia were local landowners’ daughters, had married and continued to live locally—it was perfectly possible anyone she might mention would have relatives working at Essington Manor.

  “I won’t be long.” She stepped back. “I’ll join you at the Pelican.”

  “Very well.”

  “We’ll order for you, shall we?”

  “Yes, do, if I’m not there before you.”

  With an easy smile, she left the sisters and crossed the cobbled street. She followed it slowly uphill, then, hearing the distant tinkle she’d been listening for, she paused and glanced back. Millie and Julia were just stepping into the apothecary’s tiny shop.

  Penny walked on, then turned right down the next lane.

  She knew the streets of Fowey well. Tacking down this lane, then that, she descended to the harbor, then angled up into the tiny lanes leading to the oldest cottages perched above one arm of the wharves. Although protected from the prevailing winds, the small cottages were packed cheek by jowl as if by huddling they could better maintain their precarious grip on the cliff side. The poorest section of the town, the cottages housed the fishermen and their families, forming the principal nest of the local smuggling fraternity.

  Penny entered a passageway little wider than the runnel that ran down its center. Halfway up the steep climb, she halted. Settling her habit’s train more securely on her arm, she knocked imperiously on a thick wooden door.

  She waited, then knocked again. At this hour, in this neighborhood, there were few people about. She’d checked the harbor; the fleet was out. It was the perfect time to call on Mother Gibbs.

  The door finally cracked open an inch or two. A bloodshot eye peered through the gap. Then Penny heard a snort, and the door was opened wide.

  “Well, Miss Finery, and what can I do for you?”

  Penny left Mother Gibbs’s residence half an hour later, no wiser yet, but, she hoped, one step nearer to uncovering the truth. The door closed behind her with a soft thud. She walked quickly down the steep passageway; she would have to hurry to get back to the Pelican Inn, up on the High Street in
the better part of town, in reasonable time.

  Reaching the end of the passage, she swung around the corner.

  Straight into a wall of muscle and bone.

  He caught her in one arm, steadied her against him. Not trapping her, yet…she couldn’t move.

  Couldn’t even blink as she stared into his eyes, mere inches away. In daylight, they were an intense dark blue, but it was the intelligence she knew resided behind them that had her mentally reeling.

  That, and the fact she’d stopped breathing. She couldn’t get her lungs to work. Not with the hard length of him against the front of her.

  Had he seen? Did he know?

  “Yes, I saw which house you left. Yes, I know whose house it is. Yes, I remember what goes on in there.” His gaze had grown so sharp it was a wonder she wasn’t bleeding. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing in the most notorious fishermen’s brothel in Fowey?”

  Damn! She realized her hands were lying boneless against his chest. She pushed back, dragged in a breath as he let her go and she stepped back.

  Having air between them was a very good thing. Her lungs expanded; her head steadied. Grabbing up her skirt, she stepped past him. “No.”

  He exhaled through his teeth. “Penny.” He reached out and manacled her wrist.

  She halted and looked down at his long tanned fingers wrapped about her slender bones. “Don’t.”

  He sighed again and let her go. She started walking, then recalled the Essingtons and walked faster. He kept pace easily.

  “What could you possibly want from Mother Gibbs?”

  She glanced briefly at him. “Information.”

  A good enough answer to appease him, for all of six strides. “What did you learn?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Another few steps. “How on earth did you—Lady Penelope Selborne of Wallingham Hall—make Mother Gibbs’s acquaintance?”

  She debated asking him how he—now Earl of Lostwithiel—knew of Mother Gibbs, but his response might be more than she wanted to know. “I met her through Granville.”