It wasn’t the reasons to kiss Tristan which bothered him. It was the reasons not to. Good lord, she had knocked the wind from his sails! There he was, racing headlong into a full-blown romantic attachment and he had given scant consideration to how she was feeling.
He had stupidly assumed she felt the same—excited, happy, consumed with longing and lust and need, when in actual fact she was scared. He had seen that for himself when he had tested her, his words intentionally ambiguous to see how she would react. Her intense reaction to ‘I suppose it is time for bed’ had brought him up short. Her fingers had gripped his hands, not with passion, but with alarm, while it was fear which skittered across her expression before she quashed it with a brave, stoic smile which broke his heart.
He couldn’t ignore irrefutable evidence. Penny had suffered. Words like ‘Am I ready for intimacy?’ and ‘forget the awful chore of the marriage bed’ suggested she had low expectations at best and at worst, she was dreading the prospect. Not that he had gone to her last night intent on immediately seducing her, but it had been on the cards at some point in the not-so-distant future because the passion had positively sizzled between them. And as much as he didn’t want to have to think about her in the arms of another man, he now had to think about her with Penhurst, because the monster had clearly put her off it—or worse.
Worse! He felt sick. And so furious, he wanted to smash the furniture.
What the blazes was number five all about?
Will Tristan also find me unattractive?
What had Penhurst done to make her think such twaddle? Belittled her, no doubt, issuing criticism where there should have been compliments? Or worse?
Worse!
It was a good job The Boss had had him murdered because Hadleigh would have jumped on his horse last night and choked the life out of the bastard with his bare hands otherwise!
None of which would help Penny now—but he could. Hadleigh was going to have to broach the subject with her when the time was right, help her face her demons as she had helped him, then prove to her he would rather never have her than allow her to think it a chore. This was a wrong he could right and gladly so if she would allow him. Of course, she had every right to refuse and he would honour that decision. But if she didn’t...well, then he would gift her with something she couldn’t return once bestowed. With patience and tenderness. Rather than plunging headlong into full passion, he was going to kiss away her fears and her awful memories of the sexual act with Penhurst. Banish all thoughts of the ridiculous and unfair number five from her mind. She was a beautiful woman. Totally perfect. He would prove that to her while waging a sensual assault and a painfully slow seduction to initiate her into the wonderful world of carnal pleasure. Until she begged him to bed her rather than that trembling, martyr-like ‘I suppose so’ he had heard last night. She deserved nothing less.
And the wanting was going to kill him.
It couldn’t be helped. Penny needed to understand what it meant to be loved by a man.
Loved? He hadn’t been expecting that and certainly had not expected to feel perfectly at ease with the concept—if indeed it was a concept. He didn’t have to be in love with a woman to make love to her, did he? It was merely a turn of phrase. Wasn’t it? Although...
He shook his head and decided not to torture himself by analysing one random thought when he had enough on his plate already, if the biggest and most important trial of his career or thoroughly seducing Penny or facing the demons of his past didn’t kill him first. As he handed the reins of his horse over to the waiting groom, he took a cleansing breath and stared at his house.
‘Hello.’ She suddenly appeared from the stables, holding Freddie’s hand in hers, her expression pleased to see him tinged with a little shyness. His heart swelled at the sight of her. He had no idea if the pink flush staining her cheeks was because of their kiss last night or the biting cold of the day. ‘We’ve been petting the horses. Have you been riding?’
‘I thought I’d best get some fresh air... I have this harridan of a housekeeper who is forcing me to take better care of myself. Can I walk you both back to the house?’
‘Of course.’
Hadleigh took Freddie’s outstretched little hand, snugly encased in a knitted mitten, and walked slowly alongside. Wordlessly, they both began to swing him as they walked, enjoying his babyish giggles as his tiny booted feet flew up in the air.
They came to the part of the path where it split and she naturally turned towards the kitchens, assuming that would be the entrance he intended to take, because that had been the entrance he had chosen to take since that first visit weeks ago.
‘I am going to take the front door, Penny...it’s long past time. But I would appreciate your moral support if you don’t mind offering it.’
She simply nodded and he was grateful. She didn’t offer platitudes or advice. Didn’t allow either pity or concern to cloud her expression, instead she continued forward alongside him, both still swinging Freddie in the air.
He paused briefly at the wide stone steps before the door and she waited with him, watched the footman open it and allowed him the brief time he needed to prepare himself for the onslaught. Then together, Freddie still sandwiched between them, they climbed them.
In front of him was the staircase. The unforgiving stone steps rising in a twin arc either side of the imposing atrium. The hard, cold marble floor. He forced himself to look at it all properly, accept the tragedy which had occurred here and then push his memories beyond that. There were so many, they brought a lump to his throat. Good and bad.
The exuberant welcomes when he came home from school. The echoing, hollow sounds of his parents fighting upstairs behind a door. Snippets of long-forgotten inane conversations. ‘Don’t forget your gloves...’ She was obsessed with him catching a chill while out riding... ‘I would like to see the ridiculous bright purple bird that feather belonged to...’ His mother had adored a tall headdress... ‘It’s a statement, darling!’
Then came childish giggles and he looked down at Freddie, assuming it was him. But they weren’t. They were from another little boy from another time. A little older than the one holding his hand. Sliding joyously down the banisters encased in the cage of his mother’s arms.
‘You are smiling.’
He was. His eyes had filled with tears, but he was smiling. ‘It is not all bad.’
‘Of course it isn’t. Good always triumphs over bad.’ She picked up her son. ‘There will be hot tea and cake in the music room once you are done reminiscing. According to my mother, a cup of tea made everything better.’
‘I’ll take it in the morning room.’ The room which he associated the most with his mother.
‘Then I’ll reinforce the tray with biscuits, too.’ With that she left him, clearly sensing, now that he had found the courage to face it, he needed time alone with his past. All of it. Still wearing his coat and clutching his hat, he walked towards the stairs, steeled his shoulders and climbed them.
* * *
Penny intended to give him space for an hour before she checked on him, but then the day got in the way. The house full of guests was certainly keeping her busy. Alongside the Flints and the Fennimores, the other King’s Elite agent Gray had descended the previous evening with his new wife, Thea, this time, alongside an excitable black dog whose tail wagged so fast it blurred. Freddie had fallen for the hound instantly, the pair becoming fast friends. Thea’s Uncle, Viscount Gislingham, the husband of the main traitor soon to be tried, had also come in the same full carriage with his friend, Bertie.
The last two houseguests, Seb and Clarissa, had arrived shortly after she had ordered Tristan’s tea tray for the morning room and then her best friend in the world had insisted they have a proper catch up in Penny’s sitting room. It had been just the two of them and for the first time in two months they reconnected as friends.
&nbs
p; ‘You look well, Penny! Lighter, somehow...more your old self.’
By old self, she assumed her friend was harking back to the old Penny, the one she had made mischief with in ballrooms and garden parties while flirting with the many gentlemen who had buzzed around them like bees, rather than the downtrodden and largely invisible woman she had been during her marriage. Or the lost and broken shell she had been over the course of the arrest and trial.
‘I feel like my old self. I love it here. Having a purpose was exactly what I needed.’ A tiny dig, perhaps, seeing that Clarissa had been so against her seeking employment.
‘I can see that. You seem to have blossomed. Is that all because of your new purpose?’ She made no attempt to hide her intimation or her curiosity. ‘Or has something else put the spring back in your step?’
‘For the time being, it is the new purpose.’ Penny wasn’t ready to discuss all her confused thoughts regarding Tristan just yet—not even with her dearest friend. ‘I’m going to reopen Ridley’s. Nothing quite so grand to begin with, but from little acorns...’ Excitedly, she confided in Clarissa all her plans and the reasons behind it, and even when she explained that she was intent on heading back to Cheapside, her friend didn’t attempt to caution her against it. Instead, once she learned that the Dowager and Harriet were keen to invest in it, she offered her financial support, too.
‘But what about you? If I have blossomed, then you are positively blooming. I hope you insisted on this private talk so you can finally confess to me you are expecting—although I’ve known for a while.’
‘You have?’ Clarissa appeared stunned at the news.
‘The lack of appetite in the mornings...the need to constantly touch your stomach...those wondrous, secret looks you and Seb exchanged, constantly assuming I wasn’t looking. Besides, you have always had an abdomen as flat as a washboard and suddenly you didn’t. What are you—three months along now? Nearly four?’
‘Nearly four.’ Clarissa looked guilty. ‘I should have told you sooner.’
‘Yes, you jolly well should have! But you were so obsessed with wrapping me in cotton wool and protecting me from the world after the trial, I suspected you didn’t think you should confess your own happiness in case it made me bolt sooner. I know you too well, Clarissa.’
‘And I know you too well to have coddled you so. You always were made of stern stuff. I think we both lost sight of exactly who Penny Henley was. I just couldn’t bear the thought of you all alone.’
‘I know. It was well meant. For a little while I needed it, so I shall be for ever grateful. But it is time for us both to move on. The bright bold horizon awaits...’
‘Seeing that we are talking of bright and bold horizons—how are things between you and my favourite barrister? Flint told Seb he suspects there might be a little romance brewing between the pair of you. Is that true?’
‘Hardly a romance.’ Because a romance sounded so much more permanent than she was prepared to consider at the moment. ‘But we have shared the odd kiss.’ Penny sipped her tea and tried to sound blasé about it all. ‘After all, it is perfectly acceptable for widows to indulge in the odd affair.’
‘Oh, it’s just an affair then.’ Clarissa frowned, disappointed. ‘That is a shame.’
‘To be frank, after Penhurst, that I would even consider an affair is a miracle. Not that it is an affair yet. Not in the strictest sense of the word.’
‘So you haven’t...’
‘No! Not yet and nor may we...’
‘Now that would be a shame. He is very handsome and he has such fine and expressive eyes, don’t you think? And I am guessing he would look very nice out of his clothes, staring at one hungrily with undisguised passion.’ Two perfect blonde eyebrows lifted suggestively as she fanned herself with her other hand. ‘I would, if I were you.’
‘Clarissa! You are married!’
‘Yes, I am. Deliriously so. But I’m not blind or dead and neither are you. Pour me a second cup of tea this instant and tell me all the gory details about those kisses, you saucy vixen! And I will warn you now I will be asking lots of questions and doing my best to convince you to sample him sans clothes. You are in dire need of some passion. What is the point of an affair otherwise?’
* * *
Several hours later, after the rest of the gentlemen had long left Tristan’s presence to change for dinner, Penny wandered to the music room in search of him, imbued with a new sense of daring courtesy of Clarissa’s enlightening conversation. Not that she was truly ready to do the deed yet, but she was considerably more encouraged it might not be as awful as she continued to fear it might be.
Penny had no idea that it had been Clarissa who had first seduced Seb, nor had they ever discussed the physical aspect of a relationship between a man and a woman. But Clarissa had been very open about the passion she felt for her husband, blaming her scandalous lack of decorum before their marriage on the sinful way the man’s kisses had made her feel from the outset.
According to Clarissa, they were so intoxicating she rapidly reached the point where if he didn’t try to take more, she’d be forced to take matters into her own hands because the constant lust and yearning was sending her mad. Then she had confessed that six months of marriage had done nothing to dampen that lust either, which was how she happened to find herself thoroughly pregnant when they had both decided to give it at least a year to start a family. But then he’d kissed her one day in a carriage and that kiss had been so magnificent, the pair of them quite forgot to be careful in their haste to tear each other’s clothes off in that bouncing conveyance to Norfolk and neither could bring themselves to regret the mistake.
That she might get to the same delirious state with Tristan on the back of his magnificent kisses was certainly food for thought. Food that was making her lips and other parts tingle with anticipation as she hurried along the hallway.
The sound of the pianoforte made her hesitate before approaching and she lingered outside the door listening. Mozart. She recognised the composer despite not knowing the exact sonata which was being played. Clearly one of the ladies had taken over his office in his absence. Whoever it was played beautifully.
Needing to know which of her guests was so accomplished, she silently cracked open the door and then stared agog, because it was Tristan. He sensed her and stopped, a wistful smile on his handsome face.
‘I didn’t know you played.’
‘I haven’t played in years and was intrigued to see if I still could.’
‘I think Mozart would have approved of your efforts.’
‘He was my mother’s favourite and she adored the sound of the pianoforte, but alas, she had absolutely no musical talent herself so she insisted I take piano lessons. I think I was five or six when I started. She had delusions I would be a virtuoso and then we would travel around Europe together, playing for all the royal courts. It was our secret. My father never knew I could play. He wouldn’t have approved of such pointless nonsense. He never considered I would ever do anything except run the ancestral estate.’
‘He disapproved of your legal training, then?’
‘He would have, had he not been stark staring mad already by the time I started.’
‘And how did your mother cope with you dashing her dreams of consorting with European royalty?’
‘Remarkably well, all things considered. She embroidered crochets and quavers over my favourite shirts and that revenge seemed to get all the crushing disappointment out of her system.’
‘Dare I ask how your day went?’ They both knew she was referring to his demons rather than the case.
‘It was better than I expected and worse all at the same time. I find I now veer between happily nostalgic and horrendously sad. I am taking a leaf out of your book and embracing both stoically. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, after all.’
‘And you need to exp
erience the bad to appreciate the good. There is a great deal of good, I suspect.’
‘There is. I should never have let it go.’ He smiled and watched his hand while he played another few bars aimlessly. ‘I had forgotten how relaxing I find this. For some reason, sitting here helps my mind unclutter.’ Then he stood and sauntered towards her. ‘I intended to wait till later to kiss you, but I don’t think I can. Do you mind?’
She had barely nodded when he dipped his head to hers and brushed a whisper-like kiss on her mouth. Then he looped his arms around her waist and smiled. ‘I’ve been wanting to do that all day. Since breakfast, in fact. Or a little before if I’m honest. I think I deserve another kiss for being so patient, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps.’
But he didn’t take it. His eyes dropped to her lips and then locked with hers, waiting. After what felt like for ever, she raised herself on tiptoes and closed the short distance between them herself. Only then did he kiss her the way her body wanted him to. Desire bloomed instantaneously and its presence gave her renewed confidence, or at least it did until she stopped thinking entirely. As he had last night, Tristan had the power to banish everything but the moment and she poured herself into it completely, not caring that her hands had gone exploring beneath his coat.
He was so solid, his body so unlike hers. When his palms began to do the same she welcomed it, moaning against his mouth in encouragement until one finally found her breast and she arched against it greedily. Because of the difference in their heights, he lifted her to sit on the piano and his big body nestled perfectly between her thighs as he kissed her breathless. Just when she thought she might die from the wanting, he stepped back, smiling, his index finger tangling in a wayward lock of hair which had somehow escaped its pins. ‘You seem to have the ability to make me forget where I am.’ As did he.
The Determined Lord Hadleigh Page 20
