A Lady of His Own bc-3

by Stephanie Laurens

  She pondered that comment as the carriage traversed the few streets to Amberly House. To their relief, the marquess was at home, but he wasn’t alone.

  Charles had sent a rider ahead of them with a message for Dalziel; as they were shown into the library, Penny glanced briefly at her relative as he struggled up from the chaise, then transferred her attention to the gentleman who rose from the armchair opposite.

  He was tall, well built; although neither as tall nor as heavy as Charles, he was every bit as physically impressive. His hair was dark brown, almost black, his face pale with the austere planes and strong features that marked him as an aristocrat. Deep brown eyes of that shade most often referred to as soulful took her in; as his gaze, outwardly lazy yet intelligent and acute, met hers, she had little doubt of the caliber of mind behind those bedroom eyes.

  If anything, she would have labeled him even more dangerous than Charles. No matter that his manners were polished and urbane, the unmistakable aura of a predator hung about him.

  She curtsied to Amberly, then less deeply as she offered her hand to—

  “Dalziel.” He bowed over her hand with the same effortless grace Charles possessed. “Lady Penelope Selborne, I presume.”

  His gaze flicked to Charles. There was the faintest trace of a question in his eyes.

  When Charles didn’t respond, Dalziel looked at her, his lips lightly lifting as he released her.

  She moved on to join Amberly. Behind her, Dalziel turned to Charles. “After receiving your missive this morning, I decided my presence here might be wise.”

  Charles nodded and stepped forward to greet Amberly and shake his hand. “Nicholas is well—he sends his regards.”

  Amberly was over eighty years old, white-haired, his blue gaze faded. He blinked, frowned. “He’s not here?”

  Charles exchanged a glance with Penny. Gently, she eased Amberly back to the chaise, then sat beside him. “Nicholas would have come with us, but he’s a trifle under the weather at the moment.”

  “Perhaps,” Dalziel said, glancing at Charles as he resumed his seat, “you could bring us up to date with recent events?”

  Charles drew up another chair, using the moment to marshal his thoughts. Amberly was attentive, watching and waiting, yet while his mind might still be acute, he didn’t look strong; there was no need to shock him unnecessarily. However glibly he couched his report, Dalziel would read between the lines.

  Dalziel mumured, “I’ve already explained to the marquess all that happened up to the point of Arbry’s grappling with the intruder one night, the intruder’s subsequent escape and Arbry’s recovery from his injuries. Perhaps if you recount all that’s happened since.”

  Charles did, relating only the bare facts in the most unemotional language. Dalziel picked up his omissions, but said nothing, just met his gaze and nodded for him to continue.

  Despite his efforts, the tale left Amberly distressed. Fretfully plucking at his coat buttons, he looked at Charles, then Dalziel; finally, he turned to Penny. “It was never meant to be like this. No one was supposed to die.”

  Penny patted his arm, murmuring that they understood; he didn’t seem to hear. He looked at Charles. “I thought it was all over—finished. All’s fair in war, and it was war, but the war’s ended.” Tears in his old eyes, he waved weakly. “If they want the boxes—the snuffboxes and pillboxes—they can have them. They’re not worth anyone’s life.”

  Gaze distant, Amberly drew a short breath. “That poor boy Gimby, and a little maid, and now a fisherboy…” After a moment, he refocused; he looked at Charles and Dalziel. Confusion clouded his eyes. “Why? They weren’t part of the game.”

  “No, they weren’t.” Dalziel sat forward, capturing Amberly’s gaze, steadying him by the contact. “This assassin’s not playing by the recognized rules, which is why, with your help, my lord, we need to bring his assignment to a swift end.”

  Amberly looked into Dalziel’s eyes, then spread his hands. “Whatever I can do, my boy—whatever I can do.”

  They spent the next hour discussing the possibilities. Charles was relieved to have his reading of Amberly’s abilities confirmed; although physically doddery, and sometimes vague when he became distracted, there was nothing wrong with his grasp on reality, his memory, or his courage.

  Dalziel’s reading of the events to date, his prediction of what Fothergill was most likely to do next, tallied with Charles’s. The plan they agreed on was simple; give Fothergill what he wanted—the marquess at Amberly Grange.

  “There’s no value in pretending you haven’t been warned,” Dalziel told Amberly. “A man of your age and standing, when threatened, would most likely retreat to his own estate, to be kept safe by his loyal staff. Given the snuffboxes are there, too, and he’ll imagine you’re obsessed with them and will know he means to take them, such a move makes even more sense.”

  Dalziel’s gaze shifted to Penny, then he looked at Charles. “He won’t be surprised to see you there, acting as protector.”

  Charles noted Dalziel didn’t clarify whom he would be protecting, Amberly alone, or Penny, too. That, he understood, was left to him to define.

  “What Fothergill won’t know is that I’ll be there as well.” Dalziel met Amberly’s eyes. “I’ll remain with you for the rest of today, just in case—no sense taking any unnecessary risks. We’ll leave tomorrow morning—I’ll travel down in your carriage. Easy enough to slip into the house after we arrive.”

  Dalziel’s gaze grew harder, colder. “Fothergill knows Charles—he’ll be expecting to have a guard he needs to distract to get to you, and Charles will obviously be that person. Once Charles is decoyed away, Fothergill will come in—from all we’ve seen of him to date, he’ll be overconfident. The last thing he’ll expect is to walk into me.”

  Dalziel’s lips lifted in a faint, cold smile. Penny quelled a shiver.

  “That,” Dalziel said, glancing at them all, “is how we’ll catch him.”

  “And stop him,” Charles said.

  There’d been a degree of finality in Charles’s tone, echoed in Dalziel’s murmured affirmation, that seemed to set the seal on Fothergill’s fate.

  Once again in Charles’s town carriage rocking steadily back to Bedford Square, Penny thought of Gimby, Mary Maggs, and Sid Garnut—remembered Fothergill’s expression when he’d been about to slit Nicholas’s throat—and couldn’t find any sorrow for Fothergill in her.

  One point puzzled her. She stirred and glanced at Charles. “Dalziel—I’m surprised someone in his position would…how do you phrase it? Go into the field?”

  Charles glanced at her. After a moment, he said, “I would have been more surprised if he’d left it in my hands alone.” He considered, then went on, “We’ve always spoken of Dalziel as if he simply sits behind his desk in Whitehall and directs people hither and yon. Recently, we’ve known that isn’t the case—in fact, it’s probably never been the case. Our view of him reflected what we knew, and that wasn’t the whole picture. Still isn’t the whole picture. We’ve always recognized him as one of us—he couldn’t be that without similar background, similar training, similar experience. In this instance…”

  Charles paused, then glanced at her. “I told you whoever corners Fothergill has to be one of us.”

  Penny nodded. “You or someone equally well trained.” She slipped her hand into his. “Like Dalziel.”

  “Indeed.” Grasping her hand, Charles leaned his head back against the squabs. Of all those he knew who were “like him,” prepared to kill when their country demanded it, there was none other more “like him” than Dalziel.

  They reached Lostwithiel House to discover Charles’s mother, sisters, and sisters-in-law all waiting to pounce. Not that his mother pounced; directed by Crewther to the drawing room, Charles ushered Penny in—his mother immediately saw them and held out her hand, compelling him to cross the room to her side. Clasping her hand, he bent and kissed her cheek.

  Her gaze lingered on Penn
y, who had stopped to talk with Jacqueline and Lydia, who had squealed and pounced on her—the reason he’d made sure she preceded him into the room. Seated nearby, Annabelle and Helen were eagerly listening to Jacqueline’s inquisition and Penny’s replies.

  Smiling, his mother looked up at him. “Business?”

  Dragging his eyes from the scene, his mind from wondering how Penny was coping, he nodded. “We’ve just come from Amberly House.”

  His mother’s eyes widened—the marquess was the titular head of Penny’s family. He rapidly clarified, “It’s the same business that took me away.” Pulling up a chair, he sat beside her. “Arbry was at Wallingham.”

  He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “I haven’t yet told Elaine—we need to keep the whole quiet, at least for the moment, but…” Briefly he explained how the Selbornes had been involved in a long-running scheme providing incorrect information to the French, and how some French agent was now intent on exacting revenge.

  “Good God!” His mother’s gaze went to Penny. “Penny will remain here, of course.”

  His frustrated sigh had her glancing back at him. He felt her eyes searching his face, but kept his gaze on Penny. “I would, quite obviously, prefer she remain here, with you or with Elaine, but I doubt she’ll agree.”

  A moment passed, then his mother merely said, “Hmm…I see.”

  When he looked at her, she was studying Penny.

  “Still,” she mused, “at your relative ages, it’s to be hoped you both know what you’re doing.”

  He did. It didn’t make the doing—the adjusting—any easier.

  “So.” His mother turned to him. “How long will you be in town?”

  “Just tonight—and no, we won’t be attending any events. We’ll be leaving for Amberly Grange in the morning.”

  He stood, intending to go back down the room and greet his sisters and sisters-in-law. The twinkle in his mother’s eye made him pause. “What?”

  At his suspicious tone, she smiled—gloriously smug. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to hide away here, not tonight.”

  A hideous thought bloomed. “Why?”

  “Because I’m hosting a dinner, followed by a ball.”

  When he only just succeeded in biting back an oath, she raised her brows at him, not the least bit sympathetic. “Without the distraction of organizing your life, your sisters fell back on theirs. As it happens”—she gave him her hand and let him help her to her feet—“there’s a captain in some regiment who’s been casting himself at Lydia’s feet, and a rakehell if ever I saw one sniffing at Jacqueline’s skirts—not that either Lydia or Jacqueline is likely to succumb, but it’s just as well that you’re here.”

  She patted his arm, ignored his groan. “Now come, I must warn Penny.”

  It was two o’clock in the morning before, with the captain and the rakehell routed and most of the guests long gone, Charles finally succeeded in seizing Penny’s hand and dragging her upstairs. To his room.

  She protested; her hand locked in his, he kept walking down the corridor to the earl’s apartments, now his private domain. He didn’t release her until they were in his bedroom and he’d locked the door.

  Exasperated, she sighed and met his eyes. “This is hardly the right example to set for your sisters.”

  He shrugged out of his evening coat, then looked down as he unlaced his cuffs. “I’m not sure this isn’t exactly the right example to set them.”

  Placing her earrings on a side table, she looked at him, puzzled, but he made no move to explain. Insisting she spend the night in his room, in his bed, with absolutely no concern over who in his household knew of it, was, to his mind, a clear declaration of his commitment to their goal—to her being his wife. Nothing else could explain such a blatant act; he was certain his mother, sisters, and even more his sisters-in-law, would see it for the admission it was.

  They’d probably coo. Thank God he wouldn’t be about to hear them.

  Penny pulled pins from her hair, then unraveled the intricate braid Jacqueline’s maid had set her long tresses in. She assumed she was in his room rather than him being in hers because her room was near his sisters’, and thus far since returning from Amberly House they hadn’t had a chance to talk—he hadn’t had a chance to persuade her to remain in London. She knew the argument was coming, had known it from the moment she’d jockeyed him into bringing her to town. In London with his mother, or Elaine, was where he would deem her safest, where he would prefer her to be.

  That was not, however, where she needed to be.

  But she couldn’t explain until he broached the subject. Combing out her long hair with her fingers, she shook it free, then started undoing the buttons on her gown.

  Still in his trousers, he stopped behind her and undid her laces. She murmured her thanks, then drew the long silk sheath off over her head; she felt his hands slide around her as she shook the gown out. Tossing it aside, clad only in her fine chemise, she let him draw her back against him. Let him wrap his arms around her and surround her with his strength.

  Bending his head, he pressed his lips to her throat, lingered there. She could almost hear him thinking how best to open the debate, then he raised his head, steadied her, and stepped back. “Before I forget…”

  Crossing to his tallboy, he lifted a letter from the top. “This was waiting for me.” He handed it to her. “It’s really for you.”

  Puzzled anew, she took it, unfolded the sheets, smoothed them, and read. It was an account of an engagement at Waterloo, written by a corporal who’d been in the same troop as Granville.

  She read the opening paragraph, slowly moved to the bed and sank down as the action unfolded, told in the young corporal’s unpolished phrases. She read on, aware that Charles sat beside her; blindly, she reached for him. He took her hand, wrapped his around it, held it while through the corporal’s eyes she saw and learned of the circumstances of Granville’s death.

  When she reached the end, she let the letter refold, sat for a moment, then glanced at Charles. “Where…how did you get this?”

  “I knew Devil Cynster led a troop of cavalry in the relief of Hougoumont. It was likely he or some of his men would know various survivors, so I asked. One of his cousins had assisted Granville’s troop afterward; he remembered the corporal and searched him out.” He nodded at the letter. “The corporal remembered Granville.”

  Mistily, she smiled at him. “Thank you.” She glanced at the sheets in her hand. “It means a lot knowing he died a hero. In some way it makes it, not easier, but less of a waste.”

  After a moment, she looked at him. “Can I give this to Elaine?”

  “Of course.”

  She rose, crossed to the side table, and left the letter with her jewelry. Turning back, she paused, studied him waiting for her, broad chest bare, his dark mane framing his dramatically beautiful face, his midnight eyes steady on her. He held out one hand. She walked to him, gave him her fingers, and let him clasp them as she sat again on the bed, angling to face him as he shifted to face her.

  He searched her eyes, then simply said, “Please stay here and let me and Dalziel handle whatever happens at Amberly Grange.”

  She studied his eyes, equally simply replied, “No.”

  The planes of his face hardened. He opened his lips—she stayed him with a raised hand. “No—wait. I need to think.”

  His eyes widened incredulously, then he flopped back on the bed, gave vent to a pungent curse, followed by a muttered diatribe on the quality of her thought processes and her familial failing regarding same.

  She fought to straighten her lips, aware of the tension riding him—aware of its source. “I know why you want me to stay here.”

  His dark gaze flicked down to fix on her face. “If you know what violence it does to my feelings to have you exposed to any danger, let alone a madman who’d be quite happy to slit your throat”—he came up on one elbow, patently unable to keep still—“then you shouldn’t have to think too hard.�
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  She met his blatantly intimidating gaze. “Except that there’s more at stake here, something more important than just catering to your protective instincts.”

  For a moment, he stared into her eyes, then he sighed tensely and looked away. And sotto voce in idiomatic French reminded himself of the futility of arguing with her.

  She tightened her fingers, squeezing his hand. “I understood that.”

  He glanced at her, and humphed.

  They were both trying to lighten a fraught moment—fraught with emotion rather than threats. Dealing with emotions had never come easily to either of them; what they now had to face, to manage, accommodate and ease, was daunting.

  He was descended from warrior lords; one of his strongest instincts was to protect, especially those he cared about, especially the females in his life. Especially her. She’d accepted that in drawing close to him again, his protective instinct would flare again, and it had, even more fiercely than before. But she was neither weak nor helpless, and he’d always acknowledged that and tried to rein in his impulses so they didn’t unnecessarily abrade her pride. However, this time the danger was immediate and very real; he wouldn’t easily be persuaded to let her face it with him.

  She searched his dark eyes, saw, understood, and felt certain, this time, that it was important she be with him; why, however, wasn’t easy to explain.

  Slipping her fingers from his, she slid from the bed and stood; clasping her elbows, she walked a few paces, then turned and slowly paced back.

  Charles watched her, saw the concentration in her face as she assembled her thoughts. As she neared the bed, he sat up. She lowered her arms; he reached for her hands and drew her to stand between his knees.

  She looked into his eyes, her gaze steady; her fingers locked with his. “There are two reasons I need to go with you. The minor one is that this ‘game’ was a Selborne enterprise—concocted, instituted, and executed for years by Amberly and my father. Amberly represents his side of it, I represent my father and Granville, who are no longer here. It’s right that Amberly should have one of us beside him to the end.”