That’s all it could be for him.
Even if it meant the world to her.
Unable to stand the ambiguity of what had just happened consuming her mind for another second, she tilted her head down, her forehead sliding along the skin of his chest. “I need to get dressed. We need to leave soon.”
Silence. His arms tightened harder around her.
She shifted her face upward, her chin resting on his chest. “You don’t want me to go there.”
His light brown eyes seared into her. “I don’t.”
“Why?”
“You don’t need them. They aren’t the salvation you think they are.”
She drew a deep breath and pulled slightly up and away from him. “I may not need them, but I do need to know—know what happened to my mother. My father. Mama June never got a chance to tell me of them—the real story—if she even knew herself.”
“Don’t you think there was a reason for that?”
Her mouth clamped closed.
Of course, there was a reason for that. She knew it as well as he did.
But it had been years. Years and years since her mother had left these shores.
Whatever had happened, surely the passage of time had numbed memories, be they good or bad.
They had to welcome her into their family.
They had to.
{ Chapter 12 }
Pen stood in the middle of the peach-hued drawing room, holding her body still as she glanced about her. Her fingers curled into each other and her middle right finger began scratching her right palm, the seam of the new white satin gloves Strider had procured interrupting any damage her nail could do.
Aware that her body had just betrayed her within a minute of setting foot into the Jacobson manor house, she turned slightly away from Strider standing next to her, feigning interest on the large pastoral oil painting to the left of the white marble hearth.
Strider stepped around her, blocking her view of the painting, his gaze intent on her as he grabbed both of her wrists and pulled her hands apart.
He leaned forward, his lips next to her left ear, his breath tickling the skin along her neck. “Don’t fall to it, Pen. Don’t stiffen or I’ll have to set my lips onto your neck in this very proper peach explosion of a drawing room.”
“Your lips are already nearly there,” she whispered, praying the butler that had just let them into the room hadn’t turned around and was watching this spectacle from the doorway.
“So don’t make me slip and do it. For if I slip, my hand may just stray to your breast to steady myself.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“There is very little in life I won’t do.”
He drew back slightly and the devil spark in his eyes forced an exasperated smile onto her lips before she could control it. The bugger. With that low rumble of his voice, the mere mention of touching her breast with his lips on her neck made her core awaken, heat flooding between her legs.
He dropped her wrists and moved to stand next to her, admiring the landscape scene with a sudden devoted interest. He’d donned a different tailcoat for this meeting—crisper, the lines of it impeccable—but less functional than the dark coat he usually wore, if he was wearing a coat at all.
His hands clamped behind his back as the tip of his head nodded to the painting. “A celebration of sheep, if I’ve ever seen it.”
“It is.” She looked to him. “The butler said Lord and Lady Jacobson were expecting us. How did you arrange to have them meet with us?”
“I had to call in a favor from a friend of Lord Jacobson. That has gotten us in the door, at the least.” He glanced at her and his eyebrows lifted. “What did you think, we would knock on the front door and they would welcome us into their home?”
“Maybe? It would be polite.”
“That is not how society works, Pen.” He looked back to the painting. “It may have been how it worked in Belize with even the finest homes, but England is half a world away from that life.”
“Polite is not polite here?”
He looked at her, his eyebrows drawing together. “Half a world away.”
She nodded, her brow slightly wrinkled. He was judging her. Judging her naivety.
Before she could reply, footsteps on the fine marble in the hallway echoed into the room. Both of them turned around.
Her hands immediately lifted to curl her fingers together, but Strider grabbed her right wrist, pulling it back down to her side. He released it only a second before two women and one man appeared in the wide doorway.
Pen’s breath caught in her throat—one of the women was elderly, shorter than her with gray hair that had been artfully pulled back. Green eyes that had yellowed with time. Her shoulders were straight—not hunched as afflicted so many her age.
But it was the other woman that startled her. That woman was younger—somewhere marking the middle between Pen’s age and the elderly woman’s age. She also looked so akin to the person Pen saw in the mirror every day of her life. She had the same green eyes and dark lashes. Light blond hair. Round face that held defined cheekbones.
But wrinkles had taken root. What she would look like herself in thirty years.
The three of them paused at the threshold of the room, studying both her and Strider up and down. The elderly man was the first to step into the space, the women following him.
Four strides into the spacious drawing room he stopped, facing Pen and Strider. The women flanked either side of him. If any of them saw the resemblance between Pen and the younger woman, they didn’t show it.
“Mr. Hoppler, you requested an audience with me and my wife?” The man—she could only presume was her grandfather—pursed his lips in annoyance.
“I did, and this is?” Strider made a motion to the younger woman.
“My daughter, Anne.” He said the words without looking at her. “What is your business here, sir?”
Both of the women stayed silent, staring at Pen and Strider, their staid, drawn faces not giving any hints as to what was going on in their minds.
“Thank you for meeting with us.” Strider smiled—as affable as Pen had ever seen him. “We won’t take much of your time. We are investigating a possible family connection with my friend—this is Penelope Willington.” He set his hand on the small of her back as he introduced her. “We have reason to believe she may be related to your family and we were hoping for your assistance in investigating the matter.”
Baron Jacobson’s grey eyebrows stretched impossibly high. “This is what this meeting is about?” He refused to look at Pen, his ire-filled dull blue eyes set on Strider. “You waste our time. We don’t know anyone by the name Willington.” He spun on his heel, grabbing the elbow of his wife as he did so. “You will excuse us.” He started toward the door.
The younger woman, Anne, looked at Pen for a long moment. Nothing changed in the countenance of her face, but in her green eyes—the tiniest flash. A flash of hatred, if Pen were to guess. But it disappeared so quickly Pen had no time to analyze it. Anne turned about and followed her parents.
“But wait, please,” Pen blurted out, running around the settee to cut them off before they could escape the room. “You don’t understand. My mother—my mother’s name was Margot.”
She planted herself in front of them, her palms up to them. “Margot—I do not know what her maiden surname was. She died in childbirth and I never knew her but people told me—us,” her hand waved maniacally toward Strider, “about her when she was alive. She arrived in Belize alone and with child after her husband died. She was from this area, we believe. Maybe you know—”
Lord Jacobson threw a hand out and pushed Pen to the side, ushering his wife past her. “We don’t know anyone by that name. We never have, child. We cannot help you. Please see yourselves out.”
Pen stumbled a step to the side and by the time she regained her balance, she was watching the backs of all three of them exit the drawing room. Her hand went out to the tall back
of the settee to steady herself before her legs that were now jelly collapsed. Her head dropped, her eyes closing.
How could they not see it?
The obvious resemblance between her and Anne? How could they not know anything? They had the same face. The same hair. The same eyes. The same damn eyes.
Her head lifted and she looked to where Strider was—except he wasn’t there any longer.
Her head swiveled and she found him next to her, his hand lifted with his fingers splayed wide in the air behind her back, ready to catch her if she fell over backward.
The second she saw him, tears flooded her eyes, turning him into a blurry outline. “How could they not…” She jabbed at her eyes with the butt of her palm, wiping away tears, the satin of the glove not absorbing, only smearing the wetness about her cheeks. Tears. She hadn’t cried in seventeen years—not one tear had fallen—and now this? “How could they not see… How…”
His hand landed on her spine between her shoulder blades. “I know. I saw it, Pen. I saw it too.”
A sob shot upward through her throat and she could only half stifle the sound.
The force of his hand on her back pulled her toward him and he collapsed his other arm around her, locking her onto his chest, his lips on the top of her head.
“I don’t know what’s happening here, but they aren’t going to tell us anything. That much is clear.” His voice was soft—softer than she’d ever heard it. “We need to leave.”
She nodded into his chest, but she couldn’t pull away, couldn’t make her feet move.
Strider lifted her, her toes just grazing the floor, and he walked them out of the drawing room to the front door already held open by the butler.
The balls of her feet stumbled along as he stepped down the three wide marble stairs and onto the gravel before he set her down onto her heels.
Strider’s carriage pulled up to them, and Strider waved off the footman. Keeping one arm wrapped around her waist, he leaned forward to open the carriage door and pull down the metal stairs.
She swayed, almost losing her balance, but in the next moment she was sitting in the carriage—not truly understanding how she got up and in there. Her arms wrapped around her middle as her stare moved numbly to watch Strider set the steps in place, and then he hauled himself up into the coach.
The carriage rocked with the weight of Strider getting in and sitting down opposite her. He knocked on the roof and the coach jerked into motion.
Silence sat about them until the horses turned from the long drive onto the main road and she could no longer see the estate out of the open window.
She had to force her shoulder blades to remain connected to the cushions behind her as it was nearly impossible to not scoot forward and lean out the window to keep her eyes on the perfectly manicured gardens that her mother once surely ran through, laughing. The sweeping lawn that her mother had grand picnics upon. The trees that her mother had once played hide and seek amongst.
Excruciating, not to look back and search for a piece of her heart that had been missing her entire life.
With a long blink, she looked away from the window, her gaze landing on Strider sitting across from her. His eyes locked on her, the intensity in his brown irises burned so fierce she almost jumped.
She heaved a breath, her chest lifting, and then she exhaled it, her voice cracking. “You were right. You knew. You knew what would happen and you were right to not want me to go.” Her right hand tugged away from holding her belly and moved up to stretch wide across her forehead, covering her eyes. “You were right to think me naïve—to have hope. I should have listen—”
“I can torture them.”
“What?” Her hand dropped away from her face. “Torture them? What are you talking about?”
“Torture, or I’m sure Lord Jacobson has some vice that I can exploit to get the truth out of him.” The growl in his voice nearly shook the floorboards beneath her boots.
“You—you want to torture him?”
“Or her—not torture, per se—a lady of that standing will do anything to keep her family out of scandal, so that would be more of a blackmail situation.” He nodded to himself, his right hand folding in and out of a fist.
Her head snapped back. “Do you even hear yourself, Strider?” Her face contorted as his words—the true meaning of them—hit her. “You’re talking about torturing my grandfather.”
“Aye. I would slide shears under his fingernails if it would get him to admit to who you obviously are.”
The savagery in his voice stilled her, cut into her chest. Savagery at her behest and he thought not twice on it.
She jerked forward, stretching across the carriage to grab his fisted hand, capturing it between her palms. “This—this isn’t right, Strider.” She met his manic gaze straight on, fighting the brutality of it with as much calm as she could muster. “We will not do anything to them—you will not do anything to them. They don’t deserve that.”
“You don’t know what they deserve.”
“I know they don’t deserve torture. I know they don’t owe me anything and I was wrong to show up here and ask them about my mother when there were years—years that her family could have searched for her. There were ship manifests—she could have been found if they had been determined. But they didn’t search for her. Search for me. It’s clear they don’t want anything to do with me and that is devastating—breaking my heart.”
Her head dropped, shaking for a moment before her gaze lifted back up to him. “But that is their choice. Made in weakness or fear or the need to forget the past—I don’t know—but they don’t deserve pain and torture for it.”
His right fist wrapped in her hands flickered, unfurling as his left fingers lifted and slid along her jawline, his thumb brushing her cheek. “You don’t have the stomach for it. You never did. I don’t have lines not to cross, Pen. Let me find the truth of this. I can.”
“No—then this is a line I am drawing for you.” Her head shook against his hand along her face. “Leave them to their lives—to whatever past they are trying to pretend doesn’t exist.”
“But, Pen—”
“No. There is right and there is wrong, Strider.” Her words came out sharp. “And I’ll not have you cross that line for me.”
“And I don’t think you can move on—”
“Mr. Hoppler! Mr. Hoppler!” A shout—a woman’s shout—from outside the carriage cut his words and they both moved along the benches to the open carriage window.
A woman in a green riding habit atop a horse thundered along the road, her arm waving until she caught up to the speed of the coach and she slowed the horse, looking in at the two of them. “Mr. Hoppler, please, slow the carriage. I must speak with you.”
{ Chapter 13 }
With one look at the woman atop the horse, Strider reacted, his fist banging on the roof.
Her gut twisting, Pen stared at the woman—she had the same blond hair, the same face, the same eyes as Anne, but was easily fifteen years younger.
The driver immediately slowed the horses. Once the carriage hit a slow roll, Strider opened the door and bounded down, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked up at the woman. “You are?”
Pen jumped from the still moving carriage as the words left his mouth.
She glanced at Pen and then looked to Strider. “I am the youngest daughter of Lord Jacobson.” Her stare landed on Pen. “I know what happened to your mother.”
Her look lifted and she glanced around, then pointed to a lone, gnarled oak tree in a field down a gentle slope away from the road. “There. I’ll not speak of this on the road.”
She set her horse off the road and into a direct line to the oak tree.
Pen’s heart pounded madcap in her chest as she looked to Strider. “Can we believe this?”
His eyes narrowed as he watched the woman dismount and walk the last twenty yards to the tree, leading the horse. “She has the exact same look about her. She�
��s your kin of some sort.”
Pen looked to the woman. So poised. Elegant even in riding clothing. Beautiful, just like she always imagined her mother to be.
“Do you want to talk to her alone?” Strider asked.
She shook her head, reaching out to grab his hand. “No. Please come with me. I don’t…whatever she has to say, it is just like in Baron Jacobson’s house. Anything she says will be easier if you are with me.”
He nodded, flipping his hand over under hers and entwining his fingers with hers.
A lifeline, for she wasn’t sure what this woman was going to tell her. But with Strider next to her, she could hear anything and not crumble.
They walked, her hand gripped tight in his, onto the field until they stopped under the cover of the oak tree.
The woman turned from tying the reins of her horse onto a low branch, pulled off her leather gloves, clutching them in one hand as she looked both of them up and down, almost exactly as Baron Jacobson had done. With a slight nod, she moved to stand in front of them. A weak smile crossed her face. “I must apologize for my family—I was eavesdropping in on the conversation you had with them in the drawing room, which is why I felt the need to come after you.”
“You were?” Pen asked.
“I only caught a side glance of you as you got into the carriage, but I knew I needed to catch you.” She stared at Pen, her green eyes shifting about, taking in everything about Pen. “And now that I see you straight on, there is no doubt in my mind. Let me explain. My name is Florence and I am your mother’s sister. I’m your aunt, dear child.”
“You—you think I am your niece?” The words squeaked out of Pen’s tight throat.
“I don’t think it, I know it. You are the exact image of her. Penelope? Did I hear that correctly?”
Pen nodded.
Florence reached out and grabbed Pen’s free hand. “My family won’t speak of Margot—your mother—and I don’t know if this will give you peace or not. But if you want to hear what I know, I will tell you.”
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