Christmas in The Duke's Arms

by Grace Burrowes

  I am not a rabbit, either. Pen got to her feet and rang for a servant to take the tray away.

  “You know, Mr. Amblewise, I’m sponsoring this assembly—my first since Sixtus’s death—whether we hold it at Carrington Close or the parish hall. Sixtus would want me to see to the festivities, but having to play hostess will leave me very concerned for Doreen.”

  He was on his feet, eyebrows nearly vibrating. “For Miss Doreen? She seems the veriest angel to me. Knows her Book of Common Prayer by heart.”

  Doreen had probably memorized the thing in a fit of the ruthless determination for which any girl with two older sisters might become well known. Penelope laced her arm through Amblewise’s and escorted him from the formal parlor.

  “Doreen’s older sister is as yet unmarried, Mr. Amblewise. For any young lady, that presents the prospect of lonely, lonely years while she waits for her turn with the dashing swains, and Doreen does so love to dance.”

  Dancing was a touchy subject. Dissenters weren’t the only ones to frown on it, nor on spirits, nor on gambling for farthing points. If Amblewise was to be coaxed into Doreen’s gun sights, he’d need a goodly helping of tolerance.

  “High spirits early in life require an outlet,” Amblewise declared. He was perhaps five years Doreen’s senior.

  Penelope beamed up at him as they approached the front door. “Then I’m sure you’ll enjoy standing up with her.” She stuffed a box of sweets into his hands—the kitchen was nothing if not attentive—wished him a very good day, and thanked him kindly for calling on her.

  Then went back up to her bedroom, stripped off every stitch, and closed her eyes, the better to catch even a hint of lemons and cinnamon wafting from the pillows.

  Chapter Five

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  “What do you advise?” Levi asked. “You’re a veteran of many encounters with the fairer sex, and one of the cleverest barristers in the realm had no words of wisdom for me. Then too, you’ll know something of animal magnetism, whatever that is.”

  Franklin wiggled his nose slowly. He reclined on a parlor windowsill, the cold glass doubtless appealing to his well insulated sense of comfort.

  “I cannot bear the thought of our Penelope marrying some buffoon who won’t appreciate her,” Levi went on, “but my own situation is complicated.”

  Franklin was the largest exponent of his species Levi had ever beheld, and yet, the rabbit hopped from the window to the back of the sofa, to sofa seat, to the floor, as delicately as a bird. His destination was a basket of correspondence sitting beside the rocking chair Penelope had angled near the fire.

  “I’ll not avail myself of a lady’s correspondence,” Levi said. “Not when she might join me at any—Penelope. Good day.”

  The object of Levi’s delight and worry quietly closed the parlor door and stood two yards away, looking delectable in a dark green velvet dress and lavender shawl.

  “I’m not exactly wearing second mourning,” she said, “but this dress is warm.”

  “Sixtus would never have judged you for elevating practicality over convention, and neither should you judge yourself.”

  Franklin thumped a back foot at that sentiment and resumed his place by the cool of the window.

  “Franklin agrees,” Penelope said.

  “Has a single intimate encounter made strangers of us, Penelope?” For she remained where she was, right by the door. Levi crossed the room and brushed a kiss to her cheek. “I would not for anything jeopardize my friendship with you. If my attentions were not to your liking—”

  He’d get drunk for a week then likely drown himself in a rain barrel. Penelope spared him that admission by placing two rose-scented fingers over his lips.

  “Your attentions were very much to my liking. Very much, Levi.”

  “Do I hear a ‘but’ appended to those assurances?” He heard something, and considering he was a man encumbered by a self-appointed fiancée, he should not even have been listening.

  Penelope went up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. She was a fast learner, having already acquired the knack of twining herself around him as she tasted him, of pressing herself against him in a most agreeable and distracting manner. Had Franklin not delivered a hearty thump to the windowsill, Levi might have let the kiss rage unchecked right over to the velvet sofa—or the floor.

  “Penelope, we must talk.”

  She withdrew from his embrace. “About the bachelors? I cannot consider them, Levi, not after what transpired upstairs yesterday. There’s a further impediment to my plan to marry by Christmas, one I have yet to discuss with you.”

  A fiancée qualified as a substantial impediment.

  “Then let us visit the barns and talk.” Cold air being an aid to a man’s focus in certain circumstances.

  “You always listen to me, Levi. That’s one of the things I lov—I esteem most about you.”

  She’d nearly admitted to loving something about him. A blast of weather straight from the arctic would not have cooled the pleasure Levi took in her partial admission. Fortunately for his composure, Penelope consented to walk the aisles between pens of furry rabbits, arm linked with Levi’s as she had a hundred times before.

  “Bathsheba is not her usual self,” Levi said when they paused beside her pen. “Has she been truant again?”

  The rabbit was a fine dun-colored doe, on the large side, and possessed of a luxurious coat. Something in her eyes was dull, though, or turned inward.

  “She hasn’t caught,” Penelope said. “Not for lack of trying, either. She’s disappointed in herself because she’ll have no babies this spring.”

  The rabbit looked bored rather than disappointed. “Penelope, talk to me.”

  Her reply was to bundle against Levi while all the bunnies looked on. “I’m disappointed in myself, Levi.”

  He stroked a hand over her hair. “For taking me to your bed yesterday?” That would be no less than he deserved, a scheming hoyden insisting he marry her and the woman he longed for no longer interested.

  “Never for that. Levi, I was not honest with you.”

  Levi had grown so inured to the vicissitudes of his trade that he nearly expected otherwise decent people to lie to him.

  “You didn’t dissemble about anything of significance, Penelope. I’ve an instinct for falsehoods.”

  “I said I lacked experience, Levi, but what I ought to have said was that my marriage to Sixtus was in name only.”

  Levi at once resented his winter clothing—because it interfered with the intimacy of their embrace—and was grateful for it, because simply holding Penelope stirred his desire.

  “Your marriage to Sixtus was as loving and devoted as any I’ve seen.” On his worst widowed nights, he’d wondered if old Sixtus had not enjoyed greater devotion from his wife than Levi had ever enjoyed from Ann.

  “Sixtus was all that was dear,” Penelope said, “but our marriage was not consummated.”

  Levi could tell by the tension suffusing her that the disclosure was upsetting. “Non-consummation isn’t grounds for an annulment, Penelope, and under English law, vows cannot be dissolved posthumously in any case.”

  She stepped back and ran a hand over Bathsheba’s plush coat. “Levi, I am yet chaste, though I’m a widow. This will not do.”

  He sorted possibilities when he’d rather have kissed her.

  “You do not want your next husband to know of Sixtus’s inability?”

  “Of course not, but my next husband will also expect me to know what I’m about. I grasp almost nothing of a wife’s conjugal duties, and yesterday only proved that.”

  “Yesterday proved a number of things. Let’s visit the new foal, shall we?”

  Levi tossed out that gambit, because he suspected Penelope was working up her courage to proposition him into relieving her of her virginity. He’d like nothing better, but not because Penelope needed an expedited course in wife-craft before she wed some other man.

  Penelope gave Bathsheba a final pat
, then took Levi’s arm as they crossed to the foaling barn. Save for the horses, the place was deserted, exactly as Levi had hoped. He led a silent Penelope into the feed room, and this time he both locked the door and propped a bag of oats against it.

  “That sack has to weigh nearly half what I do,” Penelope said. “You toss it about as if it holds feathers.”

  “You are diminutive, and I’m highly motivated to ensure we have privacy.” He dared not take the place beside her when she settled on the narrow bench, though, because his breeding organs had plans for their privacy other than conversation.

  “Please sit, Levi. When you loom over me, I can’t think straight.”

  He piled a second bag of oats against the door and then sat. “You labor under a misconception, Penelope.”

  “I labor under the prospect of ruin for my sisters,” she said, taking his hand. “I’ve added some names to my list.”

  “You think women married for more than few weeks must all be sirens, wise in the ways of passion, skilled at pleasing their husbands and enjoying the intimate varieties of marital bliss. You are mistaken.”

  She tucked her chin lower, into a scarf of soft blue that matched her eyes. “I know not all unions are blissful. My own parents barely speak, and yet, somehow, they managed three daughters.”

  What Levi had to share with her now would have felt disloyal when he’d been newly bereaved. Eight years after the loss of his wife, the words were merely sad and honest.

  “Ann never troubled to acquaint herself with the intimate pleasures I might have afforded her. I gather from what’s said at The Duke’s Arms around a late-night hand of cards, many men aren’t even permitted to visit their wives’ beds once a few children have come along. No decent fellow will expect you to bring anything other than marital goodwill to the conjugal bed.”

  Levi intended to relieve Penelope’s fears with his admission, to assure her that sexual skill mattered little compared to her many endearing traits.

  “You are not relieved,” he observed when Penelope got up and began to pace the small, shadowed space.

  She kicked the sacks of oats, then kicked them again. “I wish I knew how to curse, Leviticus Sparrow.”

  Definitely not relief. “Curse at me?”

  “Blast and drat, not at you. At the situation.”

  Levi wasn’t relieved, either. “What aspect of the situation?” And which situation? His? Hers? A situation involving some daft old squire who’d gone down on creaking knee while Levi had been pouring out his troubles to Gervaise Stoneleigh?

  “I’m trying to trick you back into my bed, Levi, and you won’t be tricked. I must rid myself of an inconvenient store of chastity, and I cannot abide the notion of enduring that process with anybody but you, and you refuse to oblige me!”

  “Penelope, you’ll worry the horses if you continue to shout.” She’d already worried him, for Penelope Carrington never shouted.

  “Then let them be worried, for I am worried. I had hoped that if I could entice you to my bed—as if a virgin widow knows anything of enticing—then you might enjoy the encounter sufficiently to”—she kicked the oats again—“offer for me.”

  Levi took her by the arm and drew her into his lap. “You seek an offer of marriage from me?”

  She heaved a sigh and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Yes. Only from you.”

  *

  Pen had always treasured the sense of calm Levi wore like a well tailored great coat. Calm voice, calm eyes, calm hands, that was Levi.

  She wanted to shriek at him now.

  “You see me as a known quantity,” he said, linking his arms around her. “A man already broken to the marital bridle, a connection with Sixtus.”

  “You’re an idiot.” Penelope kissed him, because a fellow’s lap was an excellent vantage point from which to share kisses with him. “I see you as my friend, Levi, in whom I can repose all my confidence and trust.” More kisses, as if she’d kiss sense into his handsome head. “I see you as my lover, the only man with whom I crave marital intimacy.”

  He did not kiss her back, but instead, pressed his cheek to hers. “I have not been honest, either, Penelope, though you do me great honor.”

  You do me great honor was the polite prelude to a firm rejection. Penelope scrambled off Levi’s lap and settled on the stacked sacks of oats, the only seat available out of kissing range from Levi.

  “I have made a fool of myself,” she said, arranging her skirts in an effort to muster some dignity.

  “Not that, my dear, but my situation is complicated. You said you wanted a dalliance, Penelope, and I had hoped that I might build on your interest, until an offer from me would meet with your approval.”

  “It would,” Penelope replied, though the look in Levi’s eyes was not that of a man on the verge of a proposal.

  He stood, and he was quite tall. Penelope was ready to scramble to her feet when Levi lowered himself beside her, sitting right on the dusty floorboards.

  “I have a problem, Penelope, in that at present, I am not precisely in a position to make an offer.”

  Not precisely in a position… Solicitors used words as deftly as a reaper wielded a scythe or a swordsman his foil. Dread collided with uncertainty in Pen’s belly.

  “Are you married, Levi?”

  “No, I am not, nor do I expect to be in the near future, but I might well be engaged.”

  Marriage was a contractual business, though increasingly, a sentimental one as well.

  “Either you are engaged or you’re not, Levi.”

  “She says I am, I say I am not. I haven’t yet found a means to resolve the matter that won’t result in scandal for my sisters, and Daphne is not yet married.”

  Daphne resembled Levi most closely, though she was nearly fifteen years his junior. Tall, shy, serious, and dark-haired rather than fashionably pale. Levi would never jeopardize her chances at a happy union.

  “You’ve been waiting until Daphne has a husband to resolve this, haven’t you?”

  “I have, but then, I don’t see a resolution even then. The lady is most adamant that poems I wrote to her constituted an offer of marriage, while I know they did not. I missed my wife, and the verses from a certain perspective are ambiguously worded. By the time I understood that this woman had designs on me, I’d already escorted her to a number of social functions.”

  Penelope cast back to formal dinners, assemblies, hunt balls, and came up with a name.

  “Amanda Houston.” The greatest bitch ever to make up numbers at an otherwise enjoyable house party.

  “How did you guess?”

  Pen wished he’d protested or tossed any other lady’s name into the discussion, for Amanda Houston was shrewd, pretty, and determined.

  “Every time I saw you with her, Levi, I worried a little. You made a handsome couple, but her expression when she beheld you wasn’t…wasn’t…”

  Levi sat cross-legged on the floor, not a much-respected man of business, not a decorated veteran of Wellington’s staff, but a man engaged—ironic word!—by an enemy he could not comprehend.

  “She regards you as a prize, Levi, like a stud bull led home from the auction, helpless to deny her bidding.”

  More than Penelope fretted for her family, more than she fretted for herself, she now worried for Levi. He’d be quietly miserable married to Amanda Houston, and Amanda would delight in that.

  “I am not a rabbit, Penelope, and I am also not a breeding bull. The lady has stated her claim, but I have not accepted it, nor will I.”

  “Levi, listen to me. Sixtus had house parties, and you were often invited to them. Amanda also attended two of them as a last-minute companion to some other guest, and she did not comport herself. That is to say—”

  Levi took her hand, his grip somehow different than it had been previously. He wasn’t being gallant or even flirting, he was instead connecting himself to Penelope, anchoring himself.

  “Amanda behaves one way in the churchyard an
d another behind closed doors. I know that, Penelope, and I’m hoping she’s caught in a misstep sooner or later.”

  Women like Amanda weren’t caught in missteps unless they wanted to be. Sixtus could have made that point more effectively than Penelope, but she tried anyway.

  “Levi, when Amanda finds herself with child, she’ll claim you’re the father. You’ll marry her then and have a cuckoo to inherit your baronetcy, too.”

  His dark brows drew down nearly into a single line, suggesting he hadn’t considered this scheme.

  “Diabolical, but it makes sense. Why else would she keep me in her pocket all these years?”

  Because he was handsome, honorable, a baronet, comfortably fixed, and would make an excellent father to any child in his keeping. Penelope considered Amblewise’s cool hands and the dog hair on Squire Hungerford’s breeches and wanted to weep.

  “I longed for you to make love with me today,” she said, kissing Levi’s knuckles. His hands bore a whiff of leather and lavender, good, sturdy scents that Pen would always associate with the sadness of his revelations.

  Levi rose in a single graceful surge, then tugged Pen to her feet. “I long for the same thing, Penelope, and I shall not admit defeat. I have a plan for extricating myself from Miss Houston’s claims. When that plan is executed, you will have an offer from me so quickly, you might indeed mistake me for a rabbit.”

  His tone was solemn, but his grasp was warm.

  Penelope leaned against him. “Is this a very devious plan, Levi? Only a devious plan will do for this situation.”

  “Devious and deceptive,” he said, sounding wonderfully confident.

  “Then I have two conditions. First, you must acquaint me with the details of this plan, allowing me to refine your scheme and participate in it to the extent practical.”

  He kissed her nose. “Of course. The second condition?”

  “We will have this discussion in my bed, right now.”