As Penelope lurched unsteadily to her feet, eager to prepare herself for Seth’s arrival, her foot tangled in the trailing hem of her costume. She would have fallen had Julian not caught her. As his arms whipped around her waist to steady her, the single hook holding the back of her gown together gave way, and again her bodice slid down over her shoulders.
At that moment, as Penelope half stood and half lay in Julian’s arms with her sagging bodice exposing more than a glimpse of her bosom, there was a firm rapping on the door. Before she could think, much less respond, the door swung open.
On the threshold stood Seth.
Her heart leapt with pleasure at the sight of him. Smiling with all the love she felt inside, she pulled herself from Julian’s grasp and opened her arms to welcome him into her embrace. “Seth! Darling!”
Seth didn’t say a word, nor did he acknowledge her greeting with so much as a glance. His stare was burning into Julian. Without letting his gaze waver, he stepped into the room, slamming the door behind him.
Julian stumbled backward, blanching the color of ashes. “This isn’t how it looks,” he choked, visibly quailing.
Seth’s stare grew more intense. “Oh?”
Penelope dropped her arms to her sides, taken aback by the implication of his monosyllabic utterance. “You don’t think that Julian and I were …” She released a shaky laugh.
Seth’s gaze cut from Julian to Penelope. “What the hell am I supposed to think when I find my fiancée half-naked and lounging in another man’s arms?” He practically spat the words.
Penelope flinched, stung by his accusation. “I wasn’t lounging,” she retorted. “And I’m certainly not half-naked!”
With insulting thoroughness, Seth’s glittering gaze raked the length of her body, taking in every incriminating detail of her disheveled appearance. Suddenly his eyes stilled, as if arrested, and a grim smile twisted his lips. “Really?”
Penelope followed his line of vision to her breasts, gasping as she noted the way her nipples were clearly visible through the sheer cambric of her chemise. In her joy at seeing Seth, she’d completely disregarded her state of undress, never once pausing to consider that he might think the worse of her admittedly compromising situation. After all, he knew that she loved him and that she’d never do anything to jeopardize their future together.
Or did he? With suddenly nerveless fingers, she yanked her bodice up. Of course Seth knew how she felt. Hadn’t she shown him how much he meant to her? She’d bestowed upon him the greatest gifts a woman could give a man: her love, loyalty, trust, and devotion. She’d promised him her forever.
Most significant of all, she’d given him her innocence. Shouldn’t that in itself be enough to prove the depth of her commitment to him and their upcoming nuptials? Shouldn’t the mere fact that she’d been a virgin when he’d first taken her two months ago be proof that she was no woman of easy virtue?
As she ineffectually attempted to secure the hooks at the back of her costume, her indignation at Seth’s jealous suspicion escalated into self-righteous outrage. How dare he have so little faith in her and her love! How dare he sully her character with his contemptible accusations!
As Penelope fumbled with the contrary fastenings, her cheeks burning with resentment, Julian moved to gallantly shield her from Seth’s insolent stare. Holding out his open hands to Seth in a gesture of supplication, he entreated, “If you’ll listen for a moment, I can explain everything.”
“And what are you going to tell me?” Seth pinned the man with his disdainful gaze. “That my fiancee somehow just happened to fall into your arms?”
“Well, yes,” Julian admitted, realizing how improbable his explanation was going to sound. “Miss Parrish did fall, and it was only by a stroke of luck that I was near enough to catch her.”
Seth lifted one tawny eyebrow. “Let me guess. Miss Parrish, who I happen to know has the constitution of a pack mule, succumbed to a fit of vapors, and being the gentleman you are, you rushed to her rescue.” His jaw hardened into an angry line. “Of course, as a good samaritan, you felt it was your Christian duty to undress her.”
Julian stiffened. “How dare you imply that I’d take advantage of a helpless woman, or of any woman for that matter!”
“I don’t have to imply anything,” Seth countered, his voice laced with biting scorn. “One has only to look at the children one sees clinging to the skirts of half the women in the chorus to see the evidence of your satyric machinations.”
Julian advanced toward his antagonist, his face darkening to the color of aged claret. “I ought to drag you out into the alley and throttle you within an inch of your life for casting such aspersions against my character,” he hissed.
“Try it.” By his aggressive stance, it was obvious that Seth was spoiling for a fight.
“Stop this nonsense immediately … both of you!” Penelope pushed past Julian’s anger-stiffened form to stand between the two men, both of whom looked ready to burst into violence at any moment. Facing Seth squarely, she said, “Despite what you’re thinking, nothing happened between Julian and me. The simple truth is that in spite of my, as you so vulgarly put it, pack-mule constitution, I fainted after the final curtain. Julian was kind enough to carry me in here. If you don’t believe me, you can ask anyone in the cast or crew. Go ask Elizabeth Hempal. She was the one who loosened my garments and was with me up until about five minutes ago.”
Seth broke free of his glaring match with Julian long enough to cast her an incredulous look. “Oh? And why did this Elizabeth do something as improper as leave you alone in a state of undress with Don Juan here?” He jerked his thumb at Julian.
Penelope grabbed Julian’s arm as he lunged at Seth, halting him. “Julian, please. Let me handle this.”
After what seemed like a lifetime … a very long, tense one … he nodded. Giving him a grateful look, Penelope dropped her hand from his arm and turned back to Seth. His cynical expression made her long to take a few punches at him herself.
Firmly ordering herself not to say or do anything to further inflame the explosive situation at hand, she pressed her fists into the folds of her skirt and explained, “Lizzie and Julian have plans to go to the German Winter Garden this evening, and I saw no harm in her leaving me with Julian while she readied herself. The stage manager has gone for the doctor, and they should be arriving any minute now. We wouldn’t have been alone for long.”
Seth’s eyes narrowed slightly as he seemed to consider her words. “Let me get this straight. You fainted right after the final curtain call? Correct?”
Penelope nodded.
Seth returned her nod. “All right. I’ll buy that.”
Heaving a sigh of relief, Penelope unclenched her tense hands. “I knew you’d see reason after you heard—”
Seth cut her off with a commanding sweep of his hand. “You fainted and Julian carried you in here. Then what?”
“I already told you what happened.” Despite her best efforts to maintain an even tone, a querulous note crept into her voice.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Tell me again.”
Unable to mask her aggravation a second longer, Penelope rolled her eyes toward the heavens and recited in a purposely monotone voice, “Lizzie had Julian carried me to my dressing room. After I was feeling a bit better, I gave her permission to go change out of her costume. Julian stayed with me.” She shot Seth a defiant look. “Believe it or not, that’s God’s own truth.”
“I believe it.”
“Good. Now that we’ve got that settled, you can apologize to Julian. Then we’ll all forget this whole ridiculous incident. Agreed?” She glanced expectantly from Seth to Julian. When Julian didn’t respond, she gave him a severe look.
“Oh, all right,” he relented. “I’ll agree to forget the whole episode if Mr. Tyler apologizes. But only because you and I are friends, and he happens to be your fiance.”
Penelope gave him an approving look before transferring her gaze to Seth.
“Seth?” she prodded.
“No.”
“No? What do you mean, no?” She braced her hands on her hips, meeting his scowl with one of her own. “Julian has agreed to excuse your appalling behavior if you’ll apologize. Why can’t you be gracious as well and give him the apology he deserves?”
“Who says he deserves an apology?”
Releasing an irate growl, Julian lurched forward, his fists up and ready to strike. Again Penelope foiled his attack, this time by grabbing his elbow. “Julian! I said I’d handle this!”
Without waiting for his response, she released his arm and took a couple of steps toward Seth. Titling her head back, she peered up into his stony face. “Whatever has gotten into you, Seth?” she chided. “You said that you believed my explanation.”
“So?”
She let out an irritated snort. “So … with that admission you also concede to have wrongly accused Julian of ungentlemanly behavior. Surely you can see why you owe him an apology? Even the lowest gutter rat has that much honor.”
Seth laughed, but in an awful, humorless way. “True enough, my love. True enough.” His lips contorted into a bitter line. “Even a gutter rat such as myself knows that it is proper to tender an apology … when one is due.”
“You’re deliberately twisting my words!” she snapped. “You know I wasn’t calling you a gutter rat. I was simply using the term to illustrate—”
He cut her off with another laugh. “Words uttered in haste are always more candid than their well-considered counterparts. Invariably they reflect the speaker’s true thoughts.”
“But—” she sputtered.
“But we’re digressing,” he interjected in a cool tone. “I was about to give you my reason for not rushing to apologize to your professedly blameless Mr. Tibbett. While I admit to believing your explanation as to what he is doing in your dressing room, there are still a few things that have yet to be clarified.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what you were doing in his arms just now.”
His baiting tone, not to mention his goading smirk, was enough to make Penelope’s foot itch to kick him. “For your information, Mr. Tyler, I insisted on getting up and going to my dressing table to prepare myself for your arrival … against Julian’s better judgment. When I stood up, I tripped over my hem, and as Julian explained, he caught me. You just happened to walk in before I’d had a chance to right myself.”
“Getting up after what?” His voice was ladened with a wealth of lurid insinuation. “It seems to me that he’d have had to be mighty close to have been near enough to catch you like he did.”
“For God’s sake, man! Be reasonable!” Julian exploded.
“Reasonable would be to kill you for dallying with my fiancée,” Seth shot back.
“We weren’t dallying!” Penelope objected, while Julian narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists tighter.
Seth’s face could have been carved from marble for all the warmth it possessed. “You have your definitions and I have mine. And in my book, engaging in the kind of amorous play I witnessed when I walked into this room qualifies as a dalliance.”
Roaring his rage, Julian hurled himself at Seth, knocking Penelope to the floor in the process.
Years of street fighting had made Seth an expert at self-defense, and he easily caught the other man’s fist before it connected with his jaw. In one fluid motion he wrestled his attacker’s arm behind his back, wrenching it until the man yelped with pain.
Scrambling to her knees, Penelope cried, “Don’t, Seth! Please don’t hurt him!” When he continued to glare down at Julian, pointedly ignoring her pleas, she crawled over and frantically tugged at the hem of his evening cape. “Please, Seth.”
The silence was thunderous as Seth slowly shifted his gaze from the grimacing man in his grasp to the woman kneeling at his feet. “Please let him go,” she entreated, her fingers tightening around the bunched fabric in her palm. “For me?”
Making a disgusted sound deep in his throat, Seth looked away. Roughly seizing Julian by the hair with his free hand, he yanked his head back, forcing him to meet his gaze.
“Since Miss Parrish seems to harbor a fondness for you and pleads so prettily on your behalf, I’m going to give you one chance to exit this room on your own accord. You’ll walk through that door and leave me and Miss Parrish to finish our business in private.” He jerked the man’s head back farther. “Understood?”
“If you think I’m going to leave Miss Parrish alone to face your abuse—”
In the blink of an eye, Seth released Julian’s hair and savagely slammed his forearm against his windpipe, effectively silencing him. “Damn you, Tibbett. I ought to strangle you here and now for even implying that I’d strike a woman.”
Julian clawed ineffectually at Seth’s garroting arm, gurgling hideously. Terrified that she was about to witness murder, Penelope furiously pummeled Seth’s legs. “Seth! No! You’re killing him!”
Seth glared down at her, the steely command in his eyes directing her to cease her flailing attack. As if under some dark spell, her arms fell to her sides. Visibly easing his pressure on Julian’s throat, he rasped, “Never fear, Princess. I won’t kill your lover. Even I’m not heartless enough to leave you without solace in the wake of our broken engagement.”
Penelope heard his words, and her mind registered their meaning, but she was too incensed to care.
With his arm still wrapped around Julian’s throat, Seth marched him to the door and flung him out into the hall. There was a loud thud as his body bounced off the facing wall, a sound accompanied by the buzz of shocked voices. Apparently their argument had drawn attention.
Pausing briefly on the threshold, probably, Penelope thought sourly, to intimidate the crowd with his glower, Seth ordered, “Please relay the message that Miss Parrish and I don’t wish to be disturbed.” With that, he slammed the door and faced her.
Infuriated beyond all reason, Penelope sprang to her feet and stalked across the room, stopping directly in front of him. “How dare you!” she spat. “How dare you humiliate me like this!”
“You humiliate yourself by carrying on with a womanizing bastard like Julian Tibbett,” he sneered.
Bristling like a cat with its fur ruffled the wrong way, she hissed, “You’re the bastard, not Julian. And if you were half the man I thought you were, you would have listened to reason instead of jumping to sordid conclusions as you did.”
His eyes flickering like twin flames, Seth slowly leaned forward until his face was just inches from hers. In a voice that was little more than a savage whisper, he replied, “Then, perhaps you don’t really know what kind of man I am after all.”
Penelope jerked her face away from his. “Apparently not. The Seth I know and love would never have made such vile accusations.
“And the Penelope I wanted to marry wouldn’t have insulted me by whoring with a sorry excuse of a man like Julian Tibbett.”
“Damn it, Seth! I wasn’t doing anything illicit with Julian.” It was all she could do not to stamp her foot in anger. “I can’t understand why you’re having such a hard time believing me. I’ve never given you any reason to doubt my loyalty.”
“The little scene I witnessed between you and Julian just now gives me every reason to doubt it.” He let his cool gaze slide from her face to focus on her waistline. “Though I was blinded by your false sweetness, I now see you for the faithless jade you are, and I’m not about to be cuckolded into giving my name to the evidence of your infidelity when it makes an appearance in say … eight or nine months.”
Never in her life had Penelope hated anyone as much as she hated Seth Tyler at that moment. Desperate to hurt him as badly as he had just hurt her, she lashed back, “If you think that I’d even consider marrying you after the way you treated me this evening, well …” She shot him a look that should have knocked him dead on the spot. “I wouldn’t marry you if marriage was my only salvation from eternal damnation and you we
re the last bachelor on earth. Your offensive behavior has proved that you’re nothing but … but … a gutter rat trussed up like a gentleman!”
Seth eyed her with contempt. “Perhaps. But even this gutter rat has higher standards than to tie himself to a slut like you.”
“Fine! Then, go! Take your so-called standards and return to whatever sewer you crawled from.”
“Oh. I’m going, but not to the sewer. I wouldn’t want to run the risk of encountering you and Tibbett’s bastard down there.”
Tears of impotent rage sprang to Penelope’s eyes. “I’d rather live in the foulest of sewers than in a fine palace with a contemptible bastard like you.” With that, she sank down on the bench before her dressing table, tears coursing hotly down her cheeks. For a long moment she wept in silence, wanting nothing more than to hear the door slam behind the exiting Seth so she could freely release the fury of her emotions.
When he didn’t leave, she choked out, “Go, damn you!… Get out and stay out! I never want to see your arrogant face again!”
“Princess …”
So soft was the utterance that Penelope was uncertain whether or not she’d truly heard it. Puzzled, she began to turn to face him, then stopped herself. Considering the brutal nature of their exchange, it was unlikely that Seth would be whispering her nickname, and in such an anguished tone. Apparently she was more hysterical than she thought and was hearing things.
But what if he had spoken? What if, by some miracle, the enormity of what had passed between them was just now sinking in, and he’d regained enough of his sense to realize what his made fit of jealous rage had cost him? What if his whisper had been a tentative plea for a chance to mend the rift between them?
Logic told her that she was hearing things, while her savaged pride commanded her to stem the torrent of irrational hope flooding her heart. He’d given her every reason to hate him, and if she had even an ounce of self-respect she’d march to that door and have him tossed out on his impeccably tailored backside.
Tomorrow's Dreams Page 2