A Lady of His Own bc-3

by Stephanie Laurens

  Nicholas looked from him to Penny, uncertain whom to address. He settled on Penny. “To what do I owe this visit?” He attempted to make the question jocularly light, but failed; it was patently clear he wished them elsewhere.

  With a brilliant smile, Penny swung her heavy skirts about and sank gracefully into a chair before the fireplace. “I just came to tell you this isn’t a visit. Charles’s Cousin Emily’s sister has taken poorly, so Emily has gone north to be with her. She left this morning, so here I am”—she spread her arms—“returning to my ancestral home.”

  Nicholas studied her, then frowned. “I thought…”

  “That my residing here while you, too, are in residence is inappropriate?” Penny’s smile turned understanding. “Indeed, and with the Abbey so close, my second home, and with Cousin Emily there, it seemed wise not to give even the highest stickler cause to whisper. However.”

  She looked at Charles; a faint smile curving her lips, she returned her gaze to Nicholas. “As Charles pointed out, residing under my ancestral roof with a distant relative is far more acceptable than residing under his roof with only him for company. That, even the least censorious would find difficult to countenance.”

  They hadn’t discussed how to explain her return to Nicholas; Charles watched, more wryly amused than she could know as she airily, with quite spurious ingenuousness, informed Nicholas that sharing a roof with him was indisputably the lesser of two evils.

  All he had to do to lend her story credence was to meet Nicholas’s eyes, and smile.

  Nicholas considered his smile for only a second, then swallowed Penny’s story whole. Facing her, he manufactured a smile. “I see. Of course, in the circumstances, I’m happy to have you home again. Perhaps you could speak with Mrs. Figgs. She had a number of questions that I’m afraid I had no notion of. I’m sure she’ll be glad to have your hand on the tiller again.”

  Penny rose. “Yes, of course. I’ll go and see her now, and I must change before luncheon.”

  She looked at Charles. He’d turned to view the jumble of books Nicholas had been studying. “Learning the local lore, or were you looking for something specific?” He glanced at Nicholas. “Perhaps I could help?”

  His gaze on the books, Nicholas hesitated, then said, “It was more by way of learning the local history.” He looked at Charles. “I understand there’s a tradition in these parts of preying on the French from the sea.”

  Charles grinned, relaxed, unthreatening. “There’s the Fowey Gallants, of course—historical and contemporary. Have you come across them yet?”

  “Only in the books.” Nicholas took the bait. “Are they still in existence?”

  “I’ll leave you two to your discussions.” Penny picked up her trailing habit; already intent on furthering their quite different aims, the pair accorded her no more than vague nods as she turned away. Leaving the library, she inwardly shook her head. If Nicholas wasn’t careful, he’d soon be thinking the big bad wolf with the very sharp teeth was his very best friend.

  She returned to the library an hour later, with luncheon shortly to be served. Garbed in a round gown of soft gray—perfect for the excursion she planned for later that afternoon—she walked in on a scene that had subtly altered.

  It wasn’t just that Charles was now seated, elegantly relaxed in the chair before the fireplace, holding forth, or that Nicholas was leaning against the front edge of the library desk, hanging on Charles’s every word. No. Something had happened while she’d been out of the room. She knew it the instant they both looked at her.

  Charles smiled, and a tingle ran from her crown to her heels, leaving all places between alert, on edge. Tensing. Slowly, employing to the full that ridiculous extreme of languid grace he possessed, he uncrossed his long legs and stood.

  Nicholas looked from her to Charles and back again, a hint of concern in his eyes. “Ah…Charles explained your…understanding.”

  She blinked. Managed not to parrot, Understanding?

  “Mmm,” Charles purred, strolling toward her. His sensuality, not this time menacing so much as enveloping, was unrestrained, a tangible force, a current carried on thin air, reaching for her, wrapping about her. “Given you’re now fixed here, and he’ll therefore no doubt see us together, I didn’t want Arbry getting the wrong idea.”

  His eyes had locked on hers; reading all that glittered in the deep dark blue, she saw not just satisfaction at the consummate mastery with which he’d exploited the situation, making Nicholas feel that he had no real interest in him, but also a devilish glint she’d seen often enough in the eyes of a wild and reckless youth. “I see.”

  His long lips lifted; he smiled into her eyes. “I felt sure you would.”

  Halting beside her, he reached for her hand, lifted it to his lips.

  Eyes locked on hers, he kissed.

  Damn, he was good. She was distantly aware that Nicholas was watching, yet was far more aware of the compulsion drawing her to Charles, weakening her resistance, making her wish to lean into him, to lift her face and offer her lips…the clearing of a throat behind her broke the spell.

  “Luncheon is served, my lady, my lords.”

  Thank heaven! She managed to half turn and acknowledge Norris. Charles lightly squeezed her fingers, then set her hand on his sleeve.

  He turned her to the door, glancing back at Nicholas. “Shall we?”

  Luncheon had been set out in the small dining parlor overlooking the back garden. Charles seated her at the round table, then took the chair on her left; Nicholas claimed the one on her right.

  Under cover of the conversation—about horses, local industries, the local crops—the casual conversation any two landowners might exchange, she tried to imagine what “understanding” Charles had revealed to Nicholas.

  The basic element was easy to guess, but just how far had he gone? Having glimpsed that glint in his eye, she was longing to get him alone and wring the truth from him. And most likely, knowing him, berate him after that. She spent most of the meal planning for that last.

  In between, she watched Nicholas. Even though he was distracted by Charles’s glib facade, still wary yet not sure how wary he needed to be, there remained an essential reserve, a nervous watchfulness that didn’t bode well for a guilt-free conscience.

  Was she sitting beside a murderer?

  She lowered her gaze to Nicholas’s hands. Quite decent hands as men’s hands went, passably well manicured, yet they didn’t seem menacing.

  Glancing to her left, she reflected that if she had to judge the murderer purely on the basis of hands, Charles would be her guess.

  She’d seen Gimby’s body, still felt a chill as the vision swam into her mind. Yet she couldn’t seem to fix the revulsion she felt certain she would feel for whoever had slain Gimby on Nicholas.

  Then again, as Charles had pointed out, an accomplice might have committed the actual deed, someone they didn’t yet know about.

  She was making a mental note to check with Cook and Figgs to make sure there were no food or supplies mysteriously vanishing—she knew how easy it was to move about any big house at night—when the men finally laid down their napkins and stood.

  Rising, too, she fixed a smile on her lips and extended her hand to Charles. “Thank you for seeing me home.”

  Taking her hand, faintly smiling, he met her eyes. “I thought you wanted to go into Fowey?”

  She stared into his dark blue eyes. How the devil had he known?

  Smile deepening—she was quite sure he could read her mind at that moment—he went on, “I’ll drive you in.” His tone altered fractionally, enough for her to catch his warning. “You shouldn’t go wandering the town alone.”

  Not only had he guessed where she was going, but why.

  Nicholas cleared his throat. “Thank you, Lostwithiel—now Penelope is living here, I confess I’d feel happier if she had your escort.”

  She turned to stare at Nicholas. Had he run mad? She was no pensioner of his that he
need be concerned. She drew breath.

  Charles pinched her fingers—hard.

  She swung back to him, incensed, but he was nodding, urbanely, to Nicholas.“Indeed. We’ll be back long before dinner.”

  “Good. Good. I must get back to the accounts. If you’ll excuse me?”

  With a brief bow, Nicholas escaped.

  Penny watched him depart; the instant he cleared the doorway she swung to face Charles—

  “Not yet.” He turned her to the hall. “Get your cloak, and let’s get out of here.”

  In the past, she’d been quite successful at bottling up the feelings he provoked; now…it was as if letting loose one set of feelings had weakened her ability to hold back any others. By the time she’d gone upstairs, fetched her cloak, descended to where he waited in the hall, nose in the air allowed him to swing the cloak over her shoulders, then take her arm and escort her outside, she was steaming.

  “What in all Hades did you tell him?”

  The question came out as a muted shriek.

  Charles looked at her, his expression mild, unperturbed; he knew perfectly well why she was exercised but clearly believed himself on firm ground. “Just enough to smooth our way.”

  “What?”

  He looked ahead. “I told him we had an understanding of sorts. Recently developed and still developing, but with its roots buried in the dim distant past.”

  She stopped dead. Stared, aghast and flabbergasted, at him. “You didn’t tell him?”

  “Tell him what?”

  His clipped accents, the look in his eyes, warned her not to pursue that tack; he’d never breathed a word of their past to anyone, any more than she had.

  She found her voice. “We have Lady Trescowthick’s party tonight. He’s invited. What happens when he mentions our ‘understanding’?”

  He shook his head, caught her hand and drew her on. “I told him it’s a secret. So secret even our families have yet to hear of it.”

  “And he believed you?”

  He glanced briefly at her. “What’s so strange about that?” Looking ahead, he went on, “I’ve recently returned from the wars to assume an inheritance and responsibilities I never thought would be mine. I accept I need to marry, but have little time for the marriage mart nor liking for chits with hay for wits, and here you are—a lady of my own class I’ve known for forever, and you’re still unmarried. Perfect.”

  She didn’t like it, not one bit. Taking three quick strides, she got ahead of him and swung to face him, forcing him to halt.

  So she could look him in the eye. Study those midnight blue eyes she couldn’t always read…they were unreadable now, but watching her. “Charles…”

  She couldn’t think how to phrase it—how to warn him not to imagine…

  He arched a brow. They were almost breast to chest. Without warning, he bent his head and brushed his lips, infinitely lightly, across hers.

  “Fowey,” he breathed. “Remember?”

  She closed her eyes, mentally cursed as familiar heat streaked down her spine, then jerked her eyes open as, her hand locked in his, he towed her around and on.

  “Come on.”

  She let out an exasperated hiss. If he was going to be difficult, he would be, and there was nothing she could do to change that.

  Granville’s curricle was waiting when they reached the stable yard, a pair of young blacks between the shafts. Charles lifted her up to the seat, then followed. She grabbed the rail as the curricle tipped with his weight, then he sat; she fussed with her skirts, helpless to prevent their thighs, hips, and shoulders from touching almost constantly.

  It was not destined to be a comfortable drive.

  Charles flicked the whip and expertly steered the pair down the drive. She paid no attention to the familiar scenery; instead, she revisited the scene in the library before luncheon, and luncheon, too, incorporating Nicholas’s belief in their “understanding”…Nicholas’s reactions still didn’t quite fit.

  She drew in a tight breath. “You told him we were lovers.”

  Eventually, Charles replied, “I didn’t actually say so.”

  “But you led him to think it. Why?”

  She glanced at him, but he kept his gaze on the horses.

  “Because it was the most efficient way of convincing him that if he so much as reaches out a hand toward you, I’ll chop it off.”

  Any other man and it would have sounded melodramatic. But she knew him, knew his voice—recognized the statement as cold hard fact. She’d seen the currents lurking beneath his surface, the menace, knew it was real; he was perfectly capable of being that violent.

  Never to her, or indeed any woman. On her behalf, however…

  She let out a long breath. “It’s one thing to protect me, but just remember—you don’t own me.”

  “If I owned you, you would at this moment be locked in my apartments at the Abbey.”

  “Well, you don’t, I’m not—you’ll just have to get used to it.”

  Or do something to change the status quo. Charles kept his tongue still and steered the curricle down the road to Fowey.

  They left the curricle at the Pelican and strolled down to the quay.

  Penny scanned the harbor. “The fleet is out.”

  “Not for long.” He nodded to the horizon. A flotilla of sails were drawing nearer. “They’re on their way in. We’ll have to hurry.”

  He took her arm, and they turned up into the meaner lanes, eventually reaching Mother Gibbs’s door. He knocked. A minute later, the door cracked open, and Mother Gibbs peered out.

  She was flabbergasted to see him, a point he saw Penny note.

  “M’lord—Lady Penelope.” Mother Gibbs bobbed. “How can I help ye?”

  Somewhat grimly he said, “I think we’d better talk inside.”

  He didn’t want to cross the threshold himself, much less take Penny with him, but she’d already been there, alone; they didn’t have time to accommodate his sensibilities. Mother Gibbs would speak much more freely in her own house.

  “Dead, you say?” Mother Gibbs plopped down on the rough stool by her kitchen table. “Mercy be!”

  It was transparently the first she’d heard of Gimby’s death.

  “Tell your sons,” he said. “There’s someone around who’s willing to kill if he believes anyone knows anything.”

  “Here—it’s not that new lordling up at the Hall, is it?” Mother Gibbs looked from him to Penny. “The one you was asking after.” She looked back at Charles. “Dennis did mention this new bloke had been asking questions and they’d strung him along like…” She paled. “Mercy me—I’ll tell ’em to stop that. He might think they really do know something.”

  “Yes, tell them to stop hinting they know anything, but we don’t know that it was Lord Arbry. Tell Dennis from me that it’s not safe to think it was him, in case it’s someone else altogether.”

  He would have to speak to Dennis again, but not tonight. He refocused on Mother Gibbs. “Now, tell me everything you know about Gimby.”

  She blinked at him. “I didn’t even know he was dead.”

  “I don’t mean about his death, but when he was alive. What do you know of him?”

  It was little enough, but tallied with what the old sailor had told them.

  Penny asked after Nicholas; Mother Gibbs had little to add to her earlier report. “Been down Bodinnick way, he has, talking to the men there again, saying the same thing—that he’s in Granville’s place now and anyone asking for Granville should be sent to him.”

  “All right.” He took a sovereign from his pocket and placed it on the table. “I want you to keep your ears open for anything anyone lets fall about Gimby or his father, and especially about anyone seen near his cottage recently, or anyone asking for him recently.”

  Mother Gibbs nodded and reached for the sovereign. “I’ll tell me boys to do the same. Those Smollets might not have been sociable-like, but there was no ’arm in them that I ever saw. That Gimby d
idn’t deserve to have his throat cut, that’s fer certain.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but said nothing to dampen Mother Gibbs’s rising zeal. “If you hear anything, no matter how insignificant it may seem, get Dennis to send word to me—he knows how.”

  Mother Gibbs nodded, face set, chins wobbling. “Aye, I’ll do that.”

  They left and walked quickly back to the harbor. They reached the quay to see the first of the boats nudging up to the stone wharf. Charles hesitated. If he’d been alone, he would have gone down to the wharf and lent a hand unloading the catch, and asked his questions under cover of the usual jokes and gibes, and later in the tavern. But he had Penny with him, and…

  “Lady Trescowthick’s party, remember? She’s unlikely to approve of the odor of fresh mackerel.”

  She’d leaned close, speaking over the raucous cries of the gulls. He glanced at her, met her eyes, then nodded toward the High Street. “Come on, then. Let’s head back.”

  They did, driving along in the late afternoon with the sun slowly sinking in the west and the breeze flirting with wisps of Penny’s hair.

  She sat in her corner of the curricle’s seat, and tried unsuccessfully to think of ways to further their investigation. Impossible; if she’d kept on her habit and ridden into Fowey, she might have been able to focus her mind. As it was, she’d very willingly unfocus it, suspend all thought, all awareness.

  Being close to Charles for any length of time had always suborned her senses. She tried, kept trying, to tell herself she found his nearness uncomfortable…lies, all lies. She was good at them when it came to him.

  The truth, one she’d known for years and still didn’t understand, couldn’t unquestioningly accept, was that, quite aside from the titillation of her senses, he made her feel comfortable in a way no other ever had. It was a feeling that reached deeper, that was more fundamental, that meant more than the merely sensual.

  One word leapt to mind whenever she thought of him—strength. It was what she was most aware of in him, that when he was beside her, his strength was hers to command, or if she wished, she could simply lean on him, and he would be her strength and her shield. He’d protect her from anything, lift any and all burdens from her shoulders, perhaps laugh at her while he did and call her Squib, but yet he would do it—she could rely on him in that.