A Lady for the Taking

by Bethany M. Sefchick

  Overwhelmed by everything, Penny tried to process all that Eliza had said without much success, though the salient parts did manage to penetrate her fogged brain.

  She and Harry had been seen together. That was bad enough. But if kissing her in public was Harry’s version of losing control, did he feel the same nearly overpowering attraction flaring between them that she did? Did he care about her as she was beginning to care about him? If so, what came next? Yes, they had agreed to kiss and play at courting, but she had assumed that it was only for his physical pleasure, because he desired her. Because he enjoyed her company. Not because he was coming to care for her.

  “He can’t!” Penny protested. “What I mean to say is that he shouldn’t. I am not suitable for a man like Harry.” In more ways than one.

  “He doesn’t seem to think so.” Eliza laid the stunning dress out on Penny’s bed in the next room. “Oh, he may not even realize what he is doing, and I strongly suspect that is the case. At least not so much that he would admit to himself that he cares for you. But he does.” She stopped in front of Penny. “There is something about you, my dear, that is different. Something that makes Harry desire you in a way he has never desired another woman. Is it love? Well, I cannot say that for certain, but I know that it is more than physical passion. Harry could receive that anywhere, for he is a much sought-after man. What he has never done before is show that affection publicly. He would never even have risked such a thing.”

  “But I can’t. We can’t.” Penny put her head in her hands. “My uncle. If he knew…” Except she couldn’t say the rest. Didn’t want to admit to Eliza what her punishment would be for failure.

  “Then he won’t know. At least for now. Spies can be delayed, my dear. Especially if my husband is involved. But he cannot be put off forever.” Smiling, Eliza took Penny’s hands in hers and forced her to look up. “Which is why Julia is hosting an intimate dinner party for Harry this evening. You see, Lord Westerly has decided that he will never produce another male child and has finally decided to do the right thing and both acknowledge Harry as his son but also name him the Westerly heir.” She bit her lip, amused now. “Which my husband may or may not have had something to do with as well.”

  “And Harry will be told tonight?” Penny could not imagine Harry liking that sort of surprise.

  Eliza waved a hand in the air. “Oh, I would wager he already knows. Tonight? Tonight is a celebration and we all think you, my dear, should be there. For Harry’s sake.”

  Penny wanted to protest. She wanted to tell Eliza that she didn’t belong at what was really a family affair. Except that she didn’t want to say because she wanted to be there. She and Harry had also been spotted last night. Some way, somehow, even with the Bloody Duke’s intervention, that news would leak back to her uncle and then she would be exiled to Cumbria if not someplace far more remote. There would be no more Harry.

  And suddenly, the idea of never seeing him again, of never seeing his smile or hearing him laugh and tease made a knot form in Penny’s stomach again. Once more, she was faced with the reality that time was running out for her. One day very soon, Harry would be gone from her life. So why not seize every opportunity she had to be with him? What could it hurt? Only her heart might be damaged and there wasn’t much of that left to begin with. Or there wouldn’t be once Harry was gone from her life.

  “For Harry’s sake,” Penny finally agreed with a sigh. “I will attend for Harry’s sake.”

  Eliza fairly beamed at her. “Oh, splendid! That is truly splendid!” She gestured to the bed. “And, of course, you now have just the thing to wear.”

  The white and gold gown wasn’t necessarily what Penny would have chosen to wear this evening. Despite its innocent coloring, it was scandalously cut, revealing far more of her breasts than she was comfortable with. Then again, this was to be a private dinner party and not a ball. It wasn’t as if that many people would see her.

  Except for Harry.

  Harry would see her and once again, the memory of how he had suckled at her breasts rose in Penny’s mind. How she had writhed beneath him, silently begging him for more. To do more and take more.

  Would he remember last evening if she wore this gown tonight? Or would he remember and not care?

  A very large part of Penny’s mind whispered that he would, indeed, care. And he might be inclined toward a repeat performance.

  “Very well,” Penny finally agreed as she stroked her fingers over the silk gown. “I will attend Julia’s dinner party tonight. I will wear the gown.”

  Eliza’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, Julia will be so pleased! And so will Harry.”

  Which was exactly what Penny was counting on. Even though she knew very well she shouldn’t.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Standing in Ben and Julia’s powder blue drawing room, Harry normally would have felt very uncomfortable. At the very least, the delicate hues of soft blue and white would have normally made him itch. He wasn’t much for feminine décor and preferred a darker, more jewel-toned look. However, when he saw Penny enter the room on Marcus’ arm, he forgot everything else but her.

  In a single word, she was exquisite. Oh, he’d always thought her lovely but this evening, wearing a cream and gold gown that seemed to mold itself to her luscious curves, she was breathtaking beyond compare. He was also instantly hard with desire.

  “You might want to put your eyes back in your head, my friend.” Nick was far too entertained by enjoying himself at Harry’s expense. “She will still be here well after the dessert course, you know.”

  “I am merely enjoying looking at a beautiful woman.” Harry did his best to sound indignant, but he thought he rather sounded like an idiot schoolboy instead.

  Nick paused as if eyeing her critically. “If you like that sort of woman, I suppose she is fine enough.” When Harry bristled, the duke simply laughed. “Ah, I have you there, my friend!” He gestured around the room. “Relax. We are a private group this evening, and there is no one here out to snatch your beloved from beneath your nose.”

  “She is not my beloved,” Harry answered without thinking.

  “So you say,” Nick scoffed, clearly not believing anything Harry said, especially when it came to Penny. “My eyes tell me otherwise. As does your tongue which is positively salivating over her.” He gave Harry a little push. “Go on. Talk to her. You know you want to. You are six and thirty, and I should not have to tell you this.”

  Once more, Harry felt more like a schoolboy rather than a renowned Bow Street Runner, but damn it all! That was precisely how he was acting – like he was nine again and had first glimpsed the naked curve of a woman’s breast. He was acting as if he was not a grown man who had bedded a lovely woman a time or two. Which he had. And he hadn’t even bedded Penny yet. But he wanted to, and the very fact that she had agreed to attend this dinner party in his honor hinted that perhaps she felt the same.

  Even after bringing her to release last night, Harry still wasn’t quite certain where he stood with her. There was physical attraction, yes, but was there more? He thought so, or at least he was beginning to and now? Well, now he wanted a bit more, at least for as long as she was willing to indulge him.

  He was under no illusion that what they shared – whatever it was – could be forever. Too much stood in their way, but he was also afraid that, whatever he did feel for her, he would never feel it for another woman again. He wasn’t even certain he was capable of anything more than feeling protective of a woman. After all, that was all he had ever known.

  But if someone could change his mind? It might well be the vision in cream and gold and bedecked in diamonds before him.

  When he wasn’t moving fast enough to suit Nick, the duke gave Harry a none-too-subtle push in the back, sending Harry stumbling into the center of the room. When he finally managed to gather himself, he straightened his jacket and approached Penny. There was little else he could do.

  “My lady. It is lovely to see you
this evening.” Harry looked around the room because he was afraid that if he looked down at Penny, all he would see were her delectable breasts which were threatening to spill out of her gown. “I was unaware that you were invited.”

  Penny inclined her head. “You may thank Julia and Eliza. I would not be here if not for them and their insistence.” She paused. “Harry. We are among friend here, aren’t we?”

  “We are.” Once more, Harry felt foolish. How did that seem to happen so often in this woman’s company? “So Julia and Eliza are responsible for your attendance tonight? Remind me to thank them later.”

  “My very own fairy godmothers,” Penny replied. “Or as near as I am likely to ever come.” She fingered her reticule. “And I understand congratulations are in order. Heir to Viscount Westerly. That is impressive.” She didn’t mention her own feelings about the gentleman, he noticed, though given the reports on his desk that morning, he could guess she was not favorably inclined towards the man. He was in cahoots with her uncle, after all.

  Harry shook his head. “Not so much as you might think, and it hasn’t officially happened yet.” He glanced at Nick. “Though I have no reason to believe it won’t. What Nick wants, Nick gets. Even from my wretched bastard of a father.” He wanted to make certain Penny understood that he held no great love for the man who had sired him. Not even if he had been conceived in love, as his mother had always said.

  “And Lord Candlewood wants the viscountcy for you.” There was a question in Penny’s lovely eyes.

  “He does, though I have no idea why.” Really, Harry had no bloody clue.

  “I do.” She made a face as if to say that he was being deliberately dense.

  “You do?” Well, Harry wished someone would finally tell him why Nick was pushing so hard for this recognition and pulling all of the necessary strings to see it done.

  Penny nodded. “You are more than a friend to him. You are like his brother and, if I have learned one thing in the last fortnight, it is that the Bloody Duke takes care of his family. Or at least those he considers his family, blood or otherwise. You said so yourself. In your case, he sees an injustice and he seeks to correct it. What Westerly did to your mother, a woman he once claimed to love, is abhorrent and forcing both of you from his home was even worse. While Lord Candlewood cannot make Westerly pay in the way I suspect he would like, he can force the viscount’s hand in this matter. Especially when the man has almost no other option.”

  Strangely enough, Harry had never considered the situation in that manner, though now that Penny mentioned it, he did. “I suspect you are right,” he replied as he offered her his arm when Julia’s butler arrived to call them all in to dinner.

  She smiled a bit and Harry felt his insides twist strangely. “For what it is worth, I think the man is reprehensible. He and my uncle are…friendly and Uncle Charles often seeks out Westerly’s advice. That advice? Well, it is often questionable.”

  “I have heard that,” Harry agreed. “Remember. There is little that escapes Bow Street’s notice, even if nothing is done about such matters. I am also well aware that there will be a great deal of, shall we say ‘repair work’ to be done to the viscountcy when I inherit, though Nick assures me he will be there to assist me. It is all just so unexpected.” He sighed, weary simply thinking about the matter. “Still, the hows and the whys don’t really matter, I suppose. In the end, the outcome is the same.”

  “Which is?” Harry felt Penny’s hand tighten just the slightest bit on his arm.

  “That in the near future, I will have to resign my position as a Runner.” He sighed again. This wasn’t something he had ever considered, really, but then, hadn’t he just been thinking that he had been doing the very same thing for a very long time? “I do nothing by half-measures, Penny, and if I am to be the viscount’s heir, then I will need to learn what is necessary to assume those duties in the future.”

  Penny frowned. “Could you not do both at the same time? You enjoy your job. Don’t you?”

  “Not as much as I once did,” Harry confessed. Then he gestured toward Julia who was laughing with her husband. “Ben has offered to tutor me for now. As have Marcus, Sebastian, Lachlan, and several other of my friends. And Nick, of course, as I said. For the most part, they were all born to that life, at least in some fashion. I was not. In fact, my early years were spent in Whitechapel before my mother and I relocated to Seldon Park. However, they are all willing to share what they know, though I do suspect it will be a rather lengthy process. And really, it is time for a change. One cannot be a Runner forever. There comes a time in every spy’s life that he loses his edge in one fashion or another.”

  Together, they strolled into Julia and Ben’s expansive dining room while Penny appeared to contemplate his words. “So you no longer enjoy investigation? Being a Runner?”

  “I still do. Though again, not as much as I once did.” For Harry, it was a rather complex situation. “However, our world is changing. Things that were once rather black and white to me now have innumerable shades of gray, and I find that I am having trouble discerning between them. Good people do bad things for reasons often too horrific to mention.”

  Harry was giving Penny an opportunity to open up to him. He wasn’t sure if she would take it, or even if this was the most appropriate place for such a discussion, but it seemed like the thing to say just then. They were speaking of the future, after all.

  “That is true enough,” she allowed. “Often times, people are horrified at what they must do, but feel as if they have no choice. If they do not do terrible things, other, far more innocent people might end up paying the consequences. There is no way for anyone to win in that situation. Good or bad. Right or wrong.”

  Penny was talking about her cousin and her own impossible situation. Harry knew that, but he said nothing, nor would he force Penny to confess, for he was just as guilty in that regard. He should tell her that he knew about her uncle’s plans and how she had become mired in the middle of them. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that just yet. Therefore, how could he fault her for withholding things from him, too? He couldn’t.

  “People are wretchedly complex,” Harry finally replied. “More so now than before.”

  “And this is an awfully complex conversation to have just before dinner,” Julia broke in as she shooed Harry over to the other side of the table so he could take his seat across from Penny. “Now sit, Harry. There are toasts to make and I know that Nick is absolutely famished.”

  “Starving, actually! I feel faint from hunger, damn your miserably tardy hide!” the duke called from his position farther down the table. “Now sit your arse down, Harry, so we can begin eating!”

  With that remark, the tension was broken and Harry allowed himself to be swept along with the jovial mood of the evening. With each toast to his upcoming change in social status, he found himself relaxing more and more until he simply decided that it was best to let the worry over Penny’s ongoing deception go. He knew the truth. So did his friends. In the end? Well, he could not say what the end result would be, but he had to trust that Nick would come up with a way to extricate Penny from the mess her uncle had created. He was the Bloody Duke, after all.

  Across the table from him, Penny seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. Here, away from the prying eyes of Society, he had a feeling that he was once more seeing the real Lady Penelope Marshwood and she was something of a revelation.

  He had always known she was intelligent, but she was also witty and clever with her words, far more than he had given her credit for being. At one point, she made everyone at the table, including Marcus – who was known to have mood swings toward the dour side on occasion – laugh uproariously at some observation about Lady Jersey and her tight hold upon vouchers for Almack’s.

  Penny was also kind and extremely considerate, insisting on helping Diana, Lady Hallstone to the retiring room when the other woman felt faint. While they were gone, Lachlan, Diana’s husband and the
current Marquess of Hallstone, had confided to everyone that Diana had just discovered that she was with child and the effects of the babe now growing in her belly struck her at odd and unexpected times. Penny, who had no way of knowing Diana’s complex history with childbirth had simply leaped to her feet the moment Diana had announced she was feeling ill and then assisted the woman back to the dining room before gently suggesting that perhaps it was time the couple headed home for the evening so Diana could rest.

  In short, by the end of the meal, everyone around Julia’s table was utterly enchanted by Penny – including Harry himself. Not that he hadn’t been before. He had been. He simply hadn’t wanted to admit it.

  However, watching Penny associate with his friends tonight, he was finally able to see all of the remarkable lady hiding beneath the fear she wore like a cloak, so tightly wrapped around herself that one was never quite sure if the woman they saw was real or only what she wished people to see.

  What worried Harry even more was that this woman captivated him even more than the Penny he had first met not so very long ago in Jane and Sebastian’s ballroom. This woman was magic. More than that, she was a woman Harry could see himself growing old with and that notion did more than worry Harry. It terrified him.

  For the first time in his life, Harry saw himself as more than a protector for a woman. He saw himself as her lover. Penny’s lover. As her husband. As the father of her children. Those were thoughts he had never considered before. Never allowed himself to consider, actually. Always nothing more than a protector and only a protector. But with Penny? Harry believed he could be more. He wanted to be more.

  Which was why he wished this evening would end very, very soon, even though he was grateful to Julia for hosting this celebration in his honor. Because Nick had been right earlier. The best way for Harry to keep Penny for his own – and he had just come to the rather startling conclusion that he did very much want to keep her – was to seduce her. To bed her. Because he wanted to and because for the first time in his life, he could see a future that didn’t include Bow Street but did include a woman by his side.