At the apothecary’s, Meredith and Pru descended, leaving Pen in the carriage with Robin. The lengthening silence failed to seem awkward, possibly because the burgeoning pain in her head precluded it. “What ails you?” he asked.
Pen blinked in surprise and answered without evasion. “My head aches.” Robin motioned for the footman to raise the calèche. “Thank you.” Pen sighed with relief as the sun, on its downward path to set, gave way to shade. “Does it show?”
“In your eyes,” he confirmed, lightly touching her forehead. “Where does it hurt?” She jerked away, then winced. His questing fingers made delicate tracings on her face. The privacy of the raised calèche allowed him the liberty to do what he could not in an open conveyance.
“Please do not,” Pen said. “It isn’t proper. They’ll see.”
This amused him. “They won’t see. We’ll hear them coming.” This truth was so evident that Pen smiled in spite of the pain.
Robin needed to touch her. Preferably sexually, but if not then in this way. He moved to sit near her, pulling her back against his chest. “Don’t,” she said again, but her tone lacked conviction and he ignored it.
“Close your eyes,” he instructed softly, and when she obeyed without demur he raised his hands to her face. He touched her gently, but with no sexual intent, and thus Pen found it comforting. He caressed her cheeks and smoothed her temples and cradled her forehead in one hand and massaged her nape with the other. Her spine, stiff at first, softened and curled until it pressed into his belly, an agreeable, if limited, sensation.
Time passed in the usual way, though Pen had little sense of it. He did not stop and she did not move away. As if he sensed the pain in her head was less, one arm dropped lower, fingers curling around the knob of her shoulder. He eased her forward and the other hand began the same sweet work on her back and shoulders.
“Oh,” she moaned, low and fervent. “That is heaven.”
His mouth quirked. These were exactly the words he wished her to speak; only the context was a little off. No matter. He would right that sooner or later, though preferably, of course, sooner.
Pen resembled a molded jelly by the time Pru and Meredith trundled into the carriage, clutching numerous paper-wrapped packages between them. “Do you see,” said Pru, with much the same mien as a cock crowing at dawn. “He is better than Hadley, as I told you.”
Lady Dalrymple dropped the news sheet, which wafted to the floor and lay there peaceably, despite its full complement of ill news. “Well,” she announced, “as unorthodox as it was to leave London midseason, it appears to have been prescient thinking on my part. George is no better and London is suffering the doldrums.”
“Stop pacing, dear, you’ll wear a track in the Aubusson.”
“Sorry,” Pen said quickly. “I can’t seem to settle to anything.”
“Go for a walk,” Pru suggested, “but be back for supper. Meredith will have arrived by then, and most likely the Cavendish sisters and perhaps the Payson-Marches, as well. They were only too pleased to be given an excuse to quit London.” Pen heard little after “Meredith.” The downy hairs on her arms prickled. Pru had said nothing of Robin, so why assume he was coming? She told herself it was just as well, but she felt listless.
In her chamber that evening, changing for company, Pen surveyed herself in the cheval glass. In the main she thought of herself as a person favored by fortune. She could have grown up a whore; no one would have thought twice. Her mother had given birth to her at the Black Swan and died a week later of childbed fever without revealing the identity of the father. Instead of leaving her in a basket at the orphanage door, Salamandre and the others had raised her, a catch-as-catch-can childhood to be certain, but no worse than many. At eleven, a client catching sight of her in the stairwell had decided to relieve his urges with her instead of with Anne, who was waiting for him in room fourteen—a detrimental decision on his part, as Salamandre, drawn by Pen’s vociferous screaming, knocked him on the head with the bag of crowns she had been in the act of counting.
Much worse to Pen’s shocked mind than the scuffle on the stairs, which had not proceeded far enough to do any real damage, was the transference at three o’clock the next day of herself and her meager possessions to St. Mary-le-Bow convent in Cheapside. The Mother declined to accept anything so venal as coin for Pen’s keep, and negotiated a soul-saving pledge of church attendance for Salamandre and a number of women employed at the Swan. There she had resided from the ages of eleven to twenty-two, whereupon she had been sent, a lady by any other name, to live as a paid companion to the Dowager Countess Prudence Dalrymple at Cheyning Court.
She had a round face and strangely shaped eyes—her mother’s eyes, they had told her—straight, thick brown hair, unamenable to the ringlet styles of the day. Of small breasts, sloping shoulders and slim hips, she had none. Her neck was long enough, but ended decisively at straight shoulders, which gave way peremptorily to large breasts and wide hips, though between these two eminences her waist was pleasingly small. She was not society’s idea of a great beauty, but to herself, in this personal regard, she seemed familiar and friendly. Pen finished tying the ribbon in her hair, wrinkling her nose at her reflection. For good measure she stuck out her tongue, turning from the glass to run quickly down the stairs.
She walked into the hard chest of the Earl of Thanet as though she had walked into a brick wall. As her leaping senses identified him, her throat closed, her breath stopped, and her heart beat at triple its usual pace, the obvious result of which was a dizzy spell. Pen had never swooned in her life. She was not wearing a corset. The current Grecian-inspired dresses did not allow even for the stiffly boned stays of previous years. She was left quite unfortunately without a single item of clothing on which to blame her ignominious state: half-fainting and held upright between Robin’s strong arms.
A general hubbub ensued. The Cavendish sisters, as they acted only in tandem, vacated their seats and then could not decide which seat Pen should occupy. Pru sent for her salts. Meredith patted her on the arm and said yes, running down the stairs too quickly, it was bound to happen, an idea Pen seized on as a lifeline in turbulent waters. She avoided looking at Robin, although the same could not be said of him in return. The salts were brought. Water was brought. Her heart continued to thump along at an alarming rate, but was luckily concealed by her left breast. She managed to greet Robin as was customary in polite society, received a bow in return and Tony opened the door and announced that supper was served.
Sometimes Pen used the servants’ stairwell. It was steep and narrow and two could not pass abreast without bumping and jostling, but if one was at that end of the house and one was late for church and one was sent to get Pru’s special parasol that she must have and the servants could never find, then it was faster. Save Pen and the servants, no one used it, which was why it surprised Pen greatly to find herself face to face with Robin on the small landing below the second story. Her heart, lately an unfaithful companion, began to pound erratically. He smiled, which did little to help matters in the pounding department, but was propitious for the spot low in her abdomen which began, like a flower in the sun, to unfurl itself a petal at a time. “Lord Tufton,” she greeted him, backing up a step.
“Don’t you dare Lord me,” he growled. “You have my name. Use it.”
Pen licked her lips, considering. Since his arrival at Cheyning Court, they had not been alone. The whole point of the London season was parties and balls, but the populace felt constrained; it did not do to make merry when George was taking off his clothes and running starkers through the grounds at Kew, and God might know why, but none of his physicians did. As a result, half of London—the rich half—had removed themselves to Cheyning Court. Pen could be alone virtually anytime Pru had no need of her, but Robin was an eligible earl and had not been left alone for a waking moment. Pen had learned a few things in a week: how he liked his tea and the sound of his tread across a marble floor and the little c
ough he made when he cleared his throat in conversation because he disagreed but had no intention of saying so. Those outer markers were there, but they did not matter. The core of him that lived as a mass in his chest or belly was what she knew, and no amount of knowledge about tea or politics could affect it. It was a form of alchemy and like so much about him, if someone had told her of it before meeting him, she would have laughed blithely in disbelief at the notion.
“Robin,” she replied, nothing so blithe now, her voice gone low and gritty simply from the way he was staring at her. Maybe the week had worn on him, as well. It couldn’t be pleasant to be stalked, however politely, by a herd of marriage-minded misses whose idea of conversation was tedious at best. She backed up another step, lifting her skirt higher than she needed to in the process.
Robin had not been planning to see her. He was late for church and the servants’ stairs were quicker; one could hurl oneself pell-mell down them without raising an eyebrow. But here she was, and he was in no mood to let the opportunity pass by. “Stop backing up,” he commanded, to little noticeable effect.
She laughed at him. “Full of demands this morning, aren’t we? And if you don’t move, we’re going to get a scolding from Pru, not to mention the minister.”
Robin was sure of only two things at that moment and unfortunately for both Pru and the minister, the time that church began was neither of them. He was going to kiss her, and she was going to want him to. “Church by all means,” he agreed pleasantly. “I’m not preventing you.” He backed up against the wall, giving her all possible room to pass, which was, thankfully, very little. She had done nothing but surprise him. In a distant corner of his mind, he wondered why he was surprised when she stopped on the stair above, her mouth level with his, and kissed him. It was bold. It was something a woman of experience would do, but her lips were not experienced. They were tentative and seeking and hungry and he all but groaned with pleasure and need.
In four minutes on the stairs everything Pen had ever heard about kissing flew out the oriel window above their heads, to be supplanted by everything she was discovering for herself: the seamless joining of their mouths, the lovely suck and drag of his lips against hers and, when it came, the hot slide of his tongue that made her stomach muscles tighten in response and shivers run down her inner thighs. Under this onslaught, church was the least of what Pen forgot. She forgot her own name. She forgot every resolve she had made regarding her behavior where he was concerned.
Robin was suffering the torments of a man who had just discovered that not just any woman would do; that, in fact, only this one woman would suffice, who was neither wife possessed nor whore for the taking. A violent urge to subdue that knowledge made him lay her down on the stairs, made him press the full-length of his body against hers; made her, in instinctive answer, widen her thighs and hold him in the cradle of her hips. He ground his cock against her, thwarted by several layers of extraneous clothing, and ground his teeth at his own lack of finesse. Over the years he’d acquired some, but it was gone now. Perhaps only lacking the experience to know the difference, Pen offered no complaint and met him with equal urgency, lifting her hips to meet his grinding thrusts, her hands clenching at his flanks to bring him closer. He was heavy, but she did not care about breathing. She cared about the hot, wet joining of their mouths, and his hands rucking up the green-sprigged muslin of her dress to reach the flesh beneath.
Three steps above them Cedony, the above-floors chambermaid, coughed loudly into her hand. Toffs, she thought scornfully, always in the way of a body’s work. Although it was of some interest to note that the girl under this particular toff was the lady’s personal companion—a woman who, Tony had recently sworn, could not bear the sight of a man and had an unnatural feeling for her own sex. Well, Cedony thought, if the state of her dress was any indication, she looked to be bearing this man well enough, and she would tell Tony that at the first opportunity.
Scarlet faced and gasping, Pen scrambled out from under Robin and refused to meet his eyes as Cedony descended, giving the visible bulge in Robin’s breeches an appreciative glance as she went by. “Pru upstairs left parasol, it getting,” Pen mumbled incoherently. Panting, Robin watched her go, his eyes fixed on the hand she trailed along at waist level to keep her balance. He leaned against the wall, waiting for his erection to subside. If that girl had not appeared, he would have taken Pen on her back, on the servants’ stairs of her employer’s house. Given their respective positions, it was a little low, even for him. Make no mistake, he’d had women on their backs on the stairs, some of them in their employer’s houses, but that was the status quo. Pen was a different quantity, though how exactly he couldn’t have said. And she wouldn’t have stopped him: that was the hell of it. She might want to resist, but the inferno between them was strong enough to demolish it. In her body, when they lay together, there was little artifice and no resistance at all.
Pen sat through church and heard nothing of Reverend Dickon’s sermon; just as well, as he had decided that morning to preach on the avoidance of the temptations of the flesh. She felt as if she had got more than she bargained for, and also as if what she had wanted had been kept tantalizingly out of her reach, and she did not know what to do next.
As it happened, she was not required to come to any decision about the Earl of Tufton. He avoided her. Formal in company, he made sure they were never alone. Worse still, all familiarity was abruptly sanctioned and she was left facing an impenetrable stranger. To have his regard and lose it was aggravating to the point of pain. Beneath that, covered over like a leper’s spots, she felt certain it must be a flaw apparent to him alone that had turned him away.
Having avoided her usual haunts for several days, it took Robin a good hour to find Pen in the gazebo behind the oak trees at the foot of the south lawn. The day was fine and warm, a promise of the hotter days of summer. He took the shallow steps in a single bound, making the spacious interior seem suddenly cloistered. He was handsome, youthful and in the pitch of good health, and none of these attributes did anything to soothe Pen’s simmering temper. “I heard Pen and Liza talking,” he said without preamble. “They said you haven’t been yourself. Are you ill?”
“I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Please remove yourself.”
He laughed at the tart, formal propriety of it. Of all the mistakes he had made with her this proved, though inconsequential to his own way of thinking, to be the worst. “Look,” he began placatingly, still smiling, “I know it must seem—” But she cut him off.
“No, you look—don’t look. I don’t want to see you. Go away.” She was serious, and it dawned on him slowly as he advanced toward her, head cocked to one side, that she was not ill at all. He put one hand experimentally on her arm and she slapped it away, a sharp blow indicating, among other things, that she was stronger than she looked.
“Penelope,” he began again.
“Don’t you say my name,” she said, on a rising intonation. “You aren’t allowed. You can’t just—”
He tried again. “I just want—” And she talked across him.
“—ignore me for a week and then waltz in here and ask me how I am, and if you th—”
“—to explain—”
“—that I have one iota of interest in anything you have to say, you are an insufferable, arrogant, delusional, pig-faced lout—” He stopped her words with his mouth. Instantly, all that anger was transmuted into a different kind of intensity. She kissed him ferociously, openmouthed and greedy, a week’s worth of pent-up frustration goading her past her own lack of experience. Anger made her the aggressor. She bit his lower lip and sucked on his upper lip and tangled her tongue with his and held him to her mouth with hot fingers clamped to his face. Not that he needed to be held. He kissed her back, all resolve lost in the heady rush of passion. He backed her into a post, wrapping her legs around his hips, fighting with her dress, trying to lift the skirt up and drag the bodice down and hold her there and kiss her fran
tically, all at the same time. She was not ill. She was gloriously, passionately, violently angry and selfishly, he welcomed it: the only emotion able to snap the taut control he’d kept over himself for the last miserable week. He gave up on standing as a bad idea and sank with her in a tumble of arms and legs to the wooden floor of the gazebo. She took the opportunity to suck in great lungfuls of air. He let her mouth go, licking and biting her neck and shoulders instead. Control was hopeless with her. It was always this fast, hot explosion, this instant stiff cock and the liquefaction of everything else except the driving need to bury himself inside her and make her come, fast, so he could, too.
He searched for bare skin and found it high up under her drawers, a short, silky stretch of thigh between stockings and garters. He held to that place and abandoned her neck for her bodice, working one breast free, clamping his lips on the reddish nipple and sucking hard. She groaned and arched her back; he pressed her nipple to the roof of his mouth and held it there with the rough salve of his tongue. Her breathing disintegrated, every panting exhalation ending on a high, breathy note. This was going to happen. If he had stopped to think, control might have reasserted its shaky tenure. The same savage joy coursing through him was in her as well; he took possession of it and moved his hand in that instant to touch the hot, wet, open cleft of her body.
An explosion occurred, but it was not—grievously—either one of them. Pen went perfectly still beneath him, drawing away into herself. An irate male voice carried from the lawn. “For God’s sake, Templeton, no shooting this close to the house. You’re none so fine a shot as you think and Lady Dalrymple will not be amused if you shoot one of her swans—or one of her guests.” The answer was lost as the party of hunters moved away. Robin levered himself to his feet, half expecting Pen to run. She didn’t. She climbed jerkily to her own feet, anger or passion making her movements awkward. She stuffed her breast—his breast, he thought possessively, with regret—back into her bodice with a ruthless efficiency that made him cringe.
The Earl Takes a Lover Page 2
