Until they came to the lane to Wallingham. Nicholas drew up, his chestnut stamping as he half wheeled to face them. Penny slowed and halted. Charles drew rein beside her.
Nicholas looked at him, then at Penny. “I, er…” His features hardened. “I had thought, or rather understood, that you believed the countess was still at the Abbey.”
Penny had an instant to decide which way to jump. Charles, being Charles, would already have guessed she’d left Wallingham for the Abbey because of Nicholas. A nobleman with four sisters, two of them married, Charles would also know there was no social reason behind her decamping; she hadn’t gone to the Abbey to avoid possible scandal. Nicholas, of course, thought she had, because she’d led him to think so.
But now here she was, staying at the Abbey apparently alone with Charles, to whom she was in no way related.
She had three options. One, take advantage of Nicholas’s misconstruction and seek refuge at Essington Manor, free of both Charles and Nicholas. Unfortunately, Lady Essington, Millie and Julia’s mama-in-law, was a dragon and would expect her to remain with Millie and Julia during the days, and even more during the evenings and nights. She’d never find out what was going on, and what she needed to do to protect Elaine and her half sisters.
Alternatively, she could return to Wallingham Hall on the grounds that residing under the same roof as Nicholas was scandalwise preferable to sharing a roof with Charles; no one could argue that. However, she’d then be using the same stables as Nicholas, the same house, and she’d much rather he remained ignorant of her comings and goings while following him.
Living at Wallingham might be useful if Nicholas lowered his guard while distracted by Charles, but she’d seen enough of Nicholas to be sure that if Charles wasn’t physically present, being distracting, then Nicholas would have defenses aplenty deployed against her.
All in all, her last option seemed preferable.
She smiled reassuringly. “The countess’s elderly cousin Emily is at the Abbey, so there’s no reason I can’t remain there, at least while you’re at Wallingham.”
She glanced at Charles; his expression deceptively open, he was watching Nicholas. His horse didn’t shift. Not by a flicker of a lash did he betray her.
“Ah…I see.” It was Nicholas’s horse that shifted. After a fractional pause, during which she sensed he searched for some other reason to have her return to Wallingham, he conceded. “I’ll bid you farewell, then.” He nodded to Charles. “Lostwithiel. No doubt we’ll meet again.”
“No doubt.” Charles returned the nod, but his tone made the comment anything but comforting.
Enough. With a gracious nod of her own, she set her mare trotting, then urged her into a canter.
Charles’s gray ranged alongside. He waited until they’d rounded the next bend to murmur, “Where did Cousin Emily come from?”
“If she’s your mother’s elderly cousin, then presumably she came from France.”
“Presumably. And what happens when dear Nicholas asks around, innocently or otherwise?”
She kept her gaze forward. “Until recently, Cousin Emily has been staying with other relatives—she only arrived two days ago to spend some time here, in warmer climes—”
“Warmer climes being recommended for her stiff joints, I suppose?”
“Precisely. However, Cousin Emily still prefers to converse in French, and considers herself too old to socialize, so she’s something of a curmudgeonly recluse, and not at home to callers.”
“How convenient.”
“Indeed. Your Cousin Emily is the perfect chaperone.”
She felt his gaze, scimitar-sharp on her face.
“What is it about Arbry that sent you to the Abbey?”
She exhaled, but knew he’d simply wait her out. “I don’t trust him.”
“On a personal level?”
His tone was uninflected, perfectly even; latent menace shimmered beneath. “No,” she hurried to say, “it’s not personal. Not at all.”
They rode on; sure of what his next question would be, she strove to find words to explain her suspicions without revealing their cause.
“Is Arbry the person you’re protecting, or the person you were following, or both?”
She glanced at him, eyes widening. How had he seen, deduced, known all that?
He met her gaze, his own steady. And waited.
Lips setting, she looked ahead as they slowed for the bridge over the river. She knew him; correspondingly, he knew her. The noise as they clattered over the wooden bridge gave her a minute to think. As they set out again along the well-beaten lane, she replied, “He’s not who I’m protecting. He is who I was following.”
That said, she urged Gilly, her mare, into a gallop. Charles’s gray surged alongside, but Charles took the hint; as they rode on through the fine afternoon, he asked no further questions.
She escaped him in the stables, leaving him holding both their horses. He cast her a dark look, but let her go. She reached the house, glanced back, but he hadn’t made haste to follow her.
Just as well. Last night, after leaving him in the kitchen, she’d gone to bed, but memories had swamped her, claimed her; she hadn’t slept well, but neither had she analyzed. She desperately needed to think, to put together the information she’d gathered and decide what it might reveal, especially to someone used to dealing with such matters, like Charles. Telling him…she accepted she would ultimately have to, but if there was a way to present the facts in a more favorable light, she needed to find it first.
Entering the house through the garden hall, she halted, wondering where to hide to gain the greatest time alone. She might wish to have the rest of the evening to assemble the facts and cudgel her brains, but of that she held little hope. Charles had never been renowned for patience.
Persistence, yes; patience, no.
“The orchard.” Grabbing up her habit’s train, she whirled, reopened the door, and peered out. Charles hadn’t left the stables; he was probably brushing down her mount. Slipping outside, she ran for the shrubbery, then used the cover of the high hedges to make her way to the orchard, currently a mass of pink and white blossom effectively screening her from the house.
An old swing hung from the gnarled branch of an ancient apple tree. She sank onto the seat with a sigh and turned her mind to her troubles. To all she’d learned over the last months, to all she now suspected.
And to all that in turn suggested.
Charles found her half an hour later. The house was huge, but it hadn’t taken him long to check in her room and discover neither she nor her riding habit was there. So he’d returned to the gardens; there were only so many places she could hide.
She was facing away from the house, apparently looking out over his fields. She was slowly swinging, absentmindedly pushing away from the ground with one booted toe; she was thinking, and didn’t yet know he was there.
He considered going near enough to push the swing higher, but he didn’t think he could get so close without her knowing. Not that she’d hear or see him, but she’d sense him the instant he got nearer than two yards.
That had been the case for as long as he could remember. He could effectively silence enemy pickets, but sneaking up on Penny had never worked. He’d only succeeded the previous night because, unsure of her identity, he’d kept his distance until the last.
Now, however, there were things she had to tell him. He needed to make clear that, no matter what she thought, she had no choice; telling him, and soon, was her only option. After meeting Arbry, he wasn’t prepared to allow her to keep her secrets to herself for even one more day; he needed her to tell him so he could effectively step between her and all he’d been sent to investigate, including, it now seemed, her “cousin” Arbry.
If he could separate her from the investigation, he would, but he couldn’t see any way of managing that yet.
One step at a time. He needed to learn all she knew about this business. Had she been any other woman, he’d alrea
dy have started plucking nerves of various sorts, but with Penny such tactics weren’t an option, at least not for him. His plucking her nerves was too painful for them both. Just lifting her to her saddle that afternoon had been bad enough, and he hadn’t even been trying. He’d distracted her by asking after Arbry, and she’d recovered quickly, but…not that way. All he could do was be water dripping on stone.
He strolled toward her, deliberately making noise. “Tell me—why did you choose to come to the Abbey?”
Penny glanced at him. Slowly swinging, she watched as he leaned against a nearby tree trunk; hands in his breeches’ pockets, he fixed his dark gaze on her.
They’d been lovers once. Just once.
Once had been enough for her to realize that continuing to be lovers would not be wise, not for her. He’d been twenty, she sixteen; for him, the encounter had been purely physical, for her…something so much more. Yet their physical connection continued; even now, after thirteen years and her best efforts to subdue her susceptibility, it still sprang to quivering life the instant he got close. Close enough for her to sense, to be able to touch—to want. Even now, looking at him leaning with casual grace against the tree, the breeze stirring his black hair, his eyes dark and brooding fixed on her, her heart simply stopped. Ached.
Her susceptibility irritated, annoyed, sometimes even disgusted her, yet she’d been forced to accept that regardless of him having no reciprocal feelings for her, she would always love him; she didn’t seem able to stop. That, however, was something he didn’t know, and she had no intention of letting him guess.
Forcing her eyes from him, she looked ahead and continued to swing. “Nicholas is no fool. If I was following him out of the Wallingham Hall stables, he’d notice.”
“How often have you followed him?”
She swung a little more, considering how much, if anything, to reveal. “I first realized he was visiting places no nonlocal gentleman such as he should know of in February. I don’t think he’d started before then—none of the grooms were aware of it if he had—but in February he spent all five days he was down here riding out. I’d done the same then as I did this time, coming here to the Abbey when he arrived, so I didn’t realize he was also riding out by night until it was too late.”
His silence made it clear there was a lot in that he didn’t like. Eyes on the corn rising green in his fields, she said nothing more, just waited.
“Where did he go? Smugglers’ haunts, I assume, but which?”
She hid a resigned smile; he hadn’t missed the point of her seeing Mother Gibbs. “All the major gathering places in Polruan, Bodinnick, Lostwithiel, and Fowey.”
“No farther afield?”
“Not as far as I know, but I missed his nighttime excursions.”
“Did you ask Mother Gibbs what he’d been doing in those places?”
“Yes.”
When she didn’t elaborate, he prompted, his voice carrying a wealth of compulsion—no, intimidation. “And?”
She set her jaw. “I can’t tell you—not yet.”
A moment passed, then he said, “You have to tell me. I need to know—this isn’t a game.”
She looked at him, met his eyes. “Believe me, I know it’s not a game.”
She paused, holding his gaze, then went on, “I need to think things through, to work out how much I actually know and what it might mean before I tell you. As you’ve already realized, what I know concerns someone else, someone whose name I can’t lightly give to the authorities. And regardless of all else, you, in this, are ‘the authorities.’ ”
His gaze sharpened. For a long moment, he studied her, then quietly said, “I may represent the authorities in this, but I’m still…much the same man I was before, one you know very well.”
She inclined her head. “My point exactly. Much the same, perhaps, but you’re not the same man you were thirteen years ago.”
That was the matter in a teacup. Until she knew how and in what ways he’d changed, he remained, not a stranger but something even more confusing, an amalgam of the familiar and the unknown. Until she understood the here-and-now him better, she wouldn’t feel comfortable trusting him with what she knew.
What she thought she knew.
Recalling her intention in coming to the orchard, she rubbed a finger across her forehead, then looked at him. “I haven’t yet had a chance to work out what the snippets I’ve learned amount to—I need time to think.” She stopped the swing and stood.
He straightened away from the tree.
“No.” She frowned at him. “I do not need your help to think.”
That made him smile, which helped her thought processes even less.
She narrowed her eyes. “If you want me to tell you all, soon, then you’ll allow me a little peace so I can get my thoughts in order. I’m going to my room—I’ll tell you when I’m prepared to divulge what I’ve learned.”
Head rising, she stepped out, intending to sweep past him. The trailing skirt of her habit trapped her ankle.
“Oh!” She tripped, fell.
He swooped, caught her to him, drew her upright. Steadied her within his arms.
Her lungs seized. She looked up, met his eyes.
Felt, as she had years ago, as she always did when in his arms, fragile, vulnerable…intensely feminine.
Felt again, after so many years, the unmistakable flare of attraction, of heat, of flagrant desire.
Her gaze dropped to his lips; her own throbbed, then ached. Whatever else the years had changed, this—their private madness—remained.
Her heart raced, pounded. She hadn’t anticipated that he would still want her. Lifting her eyes to his, she confirmed he did. She’d seen desire burn in his eyes before; she knew how it affected him.
He wasn’t trying to hide what he felt. She watched the shades shift in those glorious dark eyes, watched him fight the urge to kiss her. Breath bated, helpless to assist, she waited, tense and tensing, eyes locked with his, for one crazed instant not sure what she wanted…
He won the battle. Sanity returned, and she breathed shallowly again as his hold on her gradually, very gradually, eased.
Setting her on her feet, he stepped back. His eyes, dark and still burning, locked with hers. “Don’t leave it too long.”
A breeze ruffled the trees, sent a shower of petals swirling down around them. She searched his eyes. His tone had been harsh. She wished she had the courage to ask what he was referring to—divulging her secrets, or…
Deciding that in this case discretion was indeed the better part of valor, she gathered her skirts and walked back to the house.
CHAPTER
3
SWEEPING INTO THE ABBEY’S DRAWING ROOM AT SEVEN o’clock, just ahead of Filchett, she fixed Charles, watching her from before the massive fireplace, with a narrow-eyed glare, then stepped aside to allow Filchett to announce that dinner was served.
Unperturbed, Charles nodded to Filchett and came to take her hand.
Steeling herself, she surrendered it, but didn’t bother to curtsy. As he laid her fingers on his sleeve and turned her to the door, she stated with what she felt was commendable restraint, “I would have been quite happy with a tray in my room.”
“I, however, would not.”
She bit her tongue, elevated her nose. She knew better than to waste breath arguing with him.
Half an hour after she’d regained her room, a maid had tapped on her door and inquired whether she would like a bath. She’d agreed; a long, relaxing soak was just what she’d needed. The steam had risen, wreathing about her; her thoughts had circled, constantly returning to the crucial question. Could she trust Charles, the Charles who now was?
She still wasn’t sure, but now understood she couldn’t—wasn’t going to be allowed to—put him off for much longer. Witness this dinner he’d jockeyed her into.
When the maid, Dorrie, had returned to inquire which gown she wanted laid out, she’d replied she intended to have dinner in he
r chamber. Dorrie’s eyes had grown round. “Oh, no, miss! The master’s told Mrs. Slattery you’ll dine with him.”
An exchange of notes had followed, culminating in one from Charles informing her she would indeed be dining with him—where was up to her.
She’d opted for the safety of the dining parlor, the smaller salon the family used when not entertaining. He sat her at one end of the table, then walked to the carved chair at its head. The table was shorter than usual—every last leaf had been removed—yet there was still eight feet of gleaming mahogany separating them. Nothing to overly exercise her.
Reaching for the wineglass Filchett had just filled, she smiled her thanks as the butler stepped back, and reminded herself that dinner alone with Charles didn’t mean they’d actually be alone.
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