They must be worried. She had left without informing a soul, and thereafter she had refused to send word through Lord Adair. She was afraid that the duke would find her and ask her to marry him again, and she didn’t have the nerve to refuse him.
She would disappear into the Finnshire forest, and in a few years he would move on and forget about her. He would marry someone he loved. She was doing this for the duke. If he married her, then he would end up hating her. She could bear his indifference and his arrogance but not his hatred.
Her shoulders slumped. She missed them all dreadfully. Oh, to have Madame scold her one last time, to dress up for a carefree night in a ballroom, one last snuggle from Lady Bathsheba …
The carriage halted and shouts pulled her out of her gloom. She glanced out of the window. They were in the middle of an isolated country road.
She was too miserable to be curious. She sat waiting for someone to come and tell her what was going on.
The door sprang open and a masked man wearing a red silk cloak, green velvet breeches, and a pearl brooch entered the carriage.
“Jimmy,” Penelope said bleakly, not at all surprised to find him here.
Jimmy pulled off his feathery black mask and leaned back on the carriage seat.
“What has the duke done?”
“How do you know it concerns the duke?” Penelope asked.
“When you thought the duke was being robbed, you were willing to take the bullet for him.”
Penelope nodded, “Yes, I was a little obvious.”
“Is he refusing to marry you? I can kidnap him and force him at gunpoint.”
“No, he wants to marry me. I don’t want to marry him.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because he does not love me! How can I marry him and see him fall in love with someone else? It is bound to happen. Or watch him keep mistresses … He thinks I am not good enough. I constantly make mistakes. I am not a refined London lady. I would make a horrible duchess. I would embarrass him. I could go on …”
“No, I understand, and I agree. You would make a terrible duchess. That is not a bad thing. I don’t like duchesses. Haughty lot,” Jimmy said soothingly.
“Well, that’s that.”
“Hmm … how do you know that he does not love you?”
Penelope rolled her eyes, “I asked him why he wanted to marry me. Twice. He said it was because of Lady Plasket. And women know these things. You wouldn’t understand. We are intuitive in such matters.”
“Perhaps your intuition has become a tad muddled? He could have had me arrested. He didn’t, only because I mean something to you, even after I had pulled the gun on him.”
“You should go into hiding. He was distracted. His sister was on her way to Gretna Green with a despicable man. He will recall your existence soon enough.”
“He told me that he will not arrest me. In fact, he offered me a job on his estate. I respectfully declined. A manager on his estate with a generous wage is too restrictive for a creative man like me.”
“Did he say he was letting you go because you meant something to me … What’s that?” Penelope asked, tilting her head to the side.
“What?”
“That. It sounds like … No, it can’t be … Is it?”
Jimmy sighed, and rapped the carriage walls. One of his assistances arrived at the door wearing a mask and a cape.
“Sorry, the baaing alerted her,” Jimmy turned to Penelope. “My new student … err … recently contracted. I think you know him. Shall we call him Chick Chudderly for the moment? Chick because he is a novice Falcon and Chudderly because I feel like it.”
The novice Falcon, dressed in red velvet trousers a size too small and a black satin cape, glared at Jimmy.
“I am going, I am going. Penny, if you need to be saved, just screech,” Jimmy said grinning. He lifted his top hat with a flourish and waving it in the air exited the carriage.
Chick Chudderly turned towards Penelope and offered her a hesitant smile.
“You look ridiculous,” Penelope whispered, her heart thundering.
He reached over and pinched her bottom.
“Ouch, what was that for?”
“To prove to you that I am really here.”
“You always read my mind, your grace.”
The duke pulled off the mask and smiled ruefully, “If I had been able to read your mind, then we would have been married by now.”
“I won’t marry you.”
“And if I promise to dress up as a baby falcon on our wedding day?”
“Your grace, please,” she whispered miserably.
He made a frustrated sound. “I am sorry. I am going about this all wrong, and I had it all planned. Let me start again,” he said taking her hand and pulling her up.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, trying to extricate her hand.
He didn’t reply, and he did not let go. When they were outside in the bright late morning sunshine, he turned to her to say, “This sort of thing should be done properly.”
“What sort of thing?” she asked, avoiding his eyes. Instead, she looked around at the fifteen burglars, thieves and deer stealers of all shapes and sizes standing around them in a semicircle. Jimmy stood at the centre leaning against a tree, his arms around a round, plump woman, who no doubt was his apple dumpling. In the other hand he held Lady Bathsheba’s leash. Penelope’s heart skipped at the sight of her beloved pet all dressed up for some grand occasion. She was wearing a yellow flowery bonnet on her head, and a pink ribbon was tied to her tail. She bleated at the sight of Penelope.
“Your grace,” Penelope said, trying to wrench her hand free to race to the goat.
“Hush, you can kiss your goat in a few moments, I promise. I have taken lessons from Madame and—”
“When?” she interrupted stunned.
“The day I discovered that Madame was sheltering you. I was at Lockwood for two hours. She refused to let me see you.”
“What sort of lessons?”
“This sort of thing has to be done right. It needs an audience.”
“What sort of thing? What needs an audience? What lessons? Your grace!”
“This,” he said, kneeling down on the ground.
Only the wind rustling through the leaves could now be heard. Penelope’s hand trembled in his grip.
“I don’t know when it happened,” he began softly. “You were holding my ear in a painful grip the first time I met you. I don’t think it happened then. Nor when you tumbled down the stairs, became pickled at dinner, tugged my underthing from the goat’s mouth at midnight in my bedroom … Where was I? Oh, it didn’t happen any of those times. Not even when you went chasing ruffians down Mayfair, ripped the gown off a lady in a ball, had a cheetah chasing us out of a dinner party—”
“I wish I had been there,” Jimmy commented impressed. “And you are not doing a very good job, Chudderly, reminding her of her misadventures. Bob and flap, my man, bob and flap,” he added, smiling down at his wife.
Penelope and fourteen other robbers shushed him.
“Go on,” Penelope said breathlessly turning to the duke.
The duke glared at Jimmy and then caught sight of Penelope’s face. He softened and continued, “It could have been the kiss. But you are a terrible kisser. Untutored, raw… Perhaps it was that, or maybe it was when you made me laugh … or when we kissed again … that was glorious. You learn quickly …”
“Your grace, I don’t understand. When what happened?”
“You won the hearts of highwaymen, my mother, my sister, Perkins, Hopkins and the entire household staff. I have never had so many people glaring at me before. The maids that had once quaked in terror in front of me now eye me reproachfully, for they believe that I sent you away.” He tightened his grip on her hand, “When you have won so many hearts, how could you think that you had not won mine as well? And all this time I have spent wondering when it happened. When did I fall in love with you and … honestly,
I don’t know.”
Penelope and the robbers sighed in unison.
“But why didn’t you tell me? I asked you and you said Lady Plasket ….”
“People in love are gooses. They fail to see what is right under their nose. They cannot believe that they are worthy of the one they love. You were filled with self-doubt and so was I. I had treated you so badly that I did not think you could love me. I knew you were attracted to me, but attraction does not equal love. I tried to give you a practical answer hoping that time would turn that attraction into love.”
“Hear, hear,” Jimmy cheered weakly, dabbing his eyes.
“And why take Jimmy’s help?” Penelope asked, frowning at the interrupting highwayman.
“I begged Jimmy to ask you why you had left and he agreed. I was outside listening to everything you had to say. When Jimmy said you were willing to take the bullet for me, I smacked my head. I was such a fool. How could I have overlooked such an important fact? You love me and my blasted knee is killing me, so hurry up and tell me if you will marry me?” he finished softly.
“You are certain that this time it is love?” she asked. She wanted to believe him with all her heart, but the niggling doubt at the back of her mind refused to go away.
He sighed and stood up, “Remember Madame had told me that the thought of losing my love would make me tremble in dread? Penelope, I trembled when you were missing. I was out of my mind with worry. I had half of the Bow Street Runners searching for you. I was a terrible sight to behold. I drank myself into oblivion that night. I scared poor Theodore into hiding. Perkins gave me my breakfast in bed and I absently made the tea in a sugar pot and drank it. The next day I finally tracked Madame down and she confessed that she had you safe at Lockwood. She refused to tell me why you had left, but she did give me lessons on how to woo you back.”
“Your grace,” she said turning her face away, “I will be a nuisance as a duchess.”
“An endearing nuisance,” he replied promptly. “And if I hear you call me ‘Your Grace’ again, I will kiss you. My name is Charles.”
“You brought my goat, your grace.”
The duke frowned and then his face lit up.
Penelope was eyeing him mischievously.
“You want be kissed, do you?” He paused, and then continued in a more serious tone, “You do know that I love you?”
“How can I not? You took lessons from Madame on how to woo me, brought my beloved pet, and dressed up as a highwayman, deer stealer, and a burglar of some note. Only a duke in love would do that, Charles.”
The bandits, burglars, pickpockets, plunderers … all fifteen of them, along with Mrs Jimmy Grey, exploded in cheers. Lady Bathsheba thumped her tail enthusiastically on the ground.
The duke wasted not a second longer and gathered her in his arms. The heated kiss was broken only when Lady Bathsheba came bounding up.
“Sorry, could hold her no longer,” Jimmy called.
Penelope hugged her goat, tears of happiness streaming down her face.
Epilogue
On August 5th, under stormy skies, Penelope, dressed in yards of silver satin and lace, walked towards the church with her father. At the entrance her mother fluttered down from the third cloud on the right and gripped Penelope’s hand with her shadowy fingers. Together the three of them entered the church, each of them content and deliriously happy for the first time in years.
Inside the church a hush fell upon the crowd as they caught sight of the beautiful bride walking down the aisle followed by a goat in a white lace bonnet. A few Grande Dames muttered that Penelope seemed a tad eager to reach the duke’s side. They also grumbled that Penelope’s vows were said a little bit too loudly to be considered proper.
But when Miss Penelope Winifred Rose Spebbington Fairweather and the Duke of Blackthorne, Charles Cornelius Radclyff, were pronounced husband and wife, the Grand Dames, along with the rest of those present, cried their hearts out. Gertrude, the evil stepmother, wailed the loudest, and Jimmy Grey actually stood up and cheered.
Finally, when Penelope, as the new Duchess of Blackthorne, kissed the duke, fourteen young women and Sir Henry Woodville swooned. The ladies swooned because, as the Grand Dames put it, the kiss had been outright scandalous. And Sir Henry swooned because during the passionate kiss the duke’s dark moustache completely and irrefutably detached from his upper lip.
At the wedding breakfast table, Penelope smiled across at Anne (now Lady Rivers), who winked back. She continued searching the happy faces until she spotted the person she was looking for. Lord Adair acknowledged her grin with a nod. He also pointed at her chin, and she quickly wiped a crumb off her chin, her eyes grateful.
The late morning revelries continued. The dowager was merrily tipsy and was spotted dancing with Hopkins, the valet, near the full but silent orchestra. Gertrude was wailing in one corner and no one was sure if her tears were from happiness or heart wrenching misery. The rumour mill also buzzed that ‘The Falcon’ had come to give the bride his blessings. Jimmy, in turn, informed Penelope that the Cobra had taken his broken heart to Ireland and decided to run a respectable pub there.
The duke detached himself from Sir Henry, who had spent the last hour lecturing him on the importance of moustaches. He approached his wife, who was busy gossiping with Lady Plasket, and whispered in her ear. She blushed and nodded. They escaped to the orangery for a few stolen kisses and whispered sweet nothings. He promised her that the best part was still to come, and that was the wedding night. The wedding night happened, but before that the wedding afternoon happened (the bride and groom were impatient), and Penelope agreed wholeheartedly that it had truly been the best.
In fact, it had been so good that Penelope conceived that very day and gave birth to a baby girl nine months later. The duke had sweated and paced outside the room until he heard the bawling child.
Ten years later the eighth child was born. Some men would have become used to the process by now and taken themselves off to the gentleman’s club to await the news of whether it was a boy, girl, or twins this time. But the duke was not one of those men. He once again sweated and paced outside the room until he heard the screech of a new born child.
It was a girl, and when he saw the wrinkly baby lying in Penelope’s arms, he hmmphed.
‘No more,’ he said sternly. “No more brats, I am warning you, Penny.’
Penelope smiled watching him pick up the child. Behind his cross expression, his eyes were blazing with joy. She knew he would always be grim, but she also knew that even after all these years, he loved her and would continue to love her and all their little brats until her dying day.
***
As for Lord Adair, he was knighted for his services to the king (He is now in the disguise of a chimney sweep trying to track down an international jewel thief).
Perkins retired. Hotchkins took his place.
Mary married the stablehand.
Lady Bathsheba married Lord Bathsheba and had many little Bathshebas.
In short, everyone lived happily ever after, except for Lady Lydia Snowly, who married the unfortunate Lord Poyning.
The End
Other Books By the Author
Regency Romantic comedy
Seeking Philbert Woodbead
Regency Mystery
Wicked Wager
Murder At Rudhall Manor
Fantasy Novella
Ever After
Contemporary Romance
Love Muffin And Chai Latte
About the Author
Anya Wylde lives in Ireland along with her husband and a fat French poodle (now on a diet). She can cook a mean curry, and her idea of exercise is occasionally stretching her toes. She holds a degree in English literature and adores reading and writing. Connect with Anya Wylde on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+ to be notified about her upcoming releases. Website: www.anyawylde.com
Copyright:
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted
under the Copyright Act 1968, no part maybe reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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