by M C Beaton
“And he’s no better than my aunt,” ended Penelope. “The Earl of Hestleton, I mean. He was going to kill her!”
“Brute!” said Mrs. Jennings stoutly.
Mr. Jennings put his chalky fingernails together and said in his dry, precise voice, “Now, ladies, all throughout this tale it appears to me that Miss Vesey and the Earl have let emotion take over from intellect. First, let us look at the case from the Earl’s point of view. He could not possibly have received your letter before he set out from London, Miss Vesey. He finds out that the woman who drove his brother to suicide is also a traitor. He decides to no longer worry about protecting his dead brother’s name—a very difficult thing for the Earl to do—supposing he is only half as proud as the gossips say he is.
“And what does he see when he arrives on the quay? You, Miss Vesey, with the conspirators.”
“But he saw me fighting with my aunt!”
“Let me finish,” said Mr. Jennings mildly. “The Earl is almost mad with rage. I do not believe he would actually have pulled the trigger, but, if he had, I should not have blamed him. But you, Miss Vesey, knock up his pistol, setting it off. So what does he think? He forgets about your struggles with your aunt and naturally assumes you are an accomplice.
“Now, if you and Mrs. Jennings will travel back to Wold, I will seek out the magistrate and explain your side of the business to the Earl.”
“Don’t,” said Penelope in a low voice. “I hate him!”
Mrs. Jennings sighed, “What an emotional pair of young people you are, to be sure! Each one hates the other so violently for not being perfect! Ah, well, nonetheless I must go to the magistrate. For if I do not give you some protection, Miss Vesey, the Runners may come looking for you!”
When Mr. Jennings had left, Mrs. Jennings looked anxiously at Penelope. “Why don’t you have a good cry, my love,” she said soothingly.
“I shall never cry over that man again!” said Penelope.
And with that, she put her head down on Mrs. Jennings’s comfortable bosom and cried as if her heart would break.
Chapter Thirteen
The Earl rode up the long driveway towards Wyndham Court, failing, for the first time, to acknowledge the salute of his lodgekeeper.
He wanted to get home and bar the doors, he wanted to get drunk, he never wanted to see another woman again, he did not know what he wanted.
By the time he had changed out of his travel-stained clothes and was seated in front of a roaring fire in his drawing room with a glass of brandy in his hand, he began to breathe easier for the first time in days.
He had laid the whole story in front of the magistrates, nobly absolving that baggage Penelope from all blame. He had then ridden weary days to London and had put the matter before several severe gentlemen at the Foreign Office.
It was decided after much long and weary consultation and interrogation that very little harm had been done. The spies were dead and there was no reason to alarm the British public by broadcasting Viscount Charles’s part in the affair. The Foreign Office knew from their own spies in France that even that famous conversation between the Duke of Wellington and the Prince Regent had entailed no great breach of security.
He had then shaken the dust of London from his heels after closing up his town house.
Everything was done that could possibly have been done. He could not sit at leisure and hate Penelope Vesey as much as he wished. But his thoughts gradually became more troubled. He could not help remembering Penelope’s pleading eyes and the fact that she had been fighting with Augusta when he had erupted onto the scene.
He got wearily to his feet and moved over to the desk at the window to go through his correspondence. Light snow was beginning to fall outside, dancing and swiring over the lawns, intensifying his strange feeling of isolation and loss.
Almost the first letter that came to hand was Penelope’s express. In it she had poured out all her fear and anxiety. How she dared not go to the authorities because his brother’s spying activities might be found out. She forgave him wholeheartedly for breaking the engagement. He would not, she said, wish to ally his great name to that of a girl who was related to a blackmailer, murderess, and spy. A cramped and tearstained postscript at the bottom seemed to leap out of the page. “I will always love you,” Penelope had written, “and will always pray that you will come to forget me and find some suitable young lady of good family to be the mother of your children.”
The Earl put down the letter slowly and stared unseeingly out at the now heavily falling snow. What a fool he had been! He had seen her again, only to lose her again.
He leaped into action, roaring for his horse and then taking the stairs five at a time to repack his bags.
Rourke gloomily watched his flying figure and selfishly hoped that he would not have to accompany his lordship this time. Enough was enough!
Penelope put down her needle with a sigh. The ball gown she had just completed spilled its silken lavender folds over her lap. Outside the sun shone merrily down on the snow-covered garden.
The girls were to attend their first ball that evening. Mrs. Jennings had insisted that Penelope go too. It was ridiculous, that good woman had said roundly, for Penelope to mope her life away when there were so many handsome fellows around.
The ball was to be held in the home of Mr. Delton, a wealthy brewer who lived in great style on the outskirts of Dover. In the mysterious way of society, beer was not considered to be “in trade,” and so all the flower of the local county were expected to attend.
The waltz was now danced everywhere, and Penelope had made sure that her charges would be able to perform the dance with grace instead of turning it into a romp as they were wont to do.
Penelope had secretly hoped that the roads would be blocked, but the snow had stopped falling several days ago and the road to Dover was once again clear.
Nor would Mrs. Jennings hear of Penelope’s plan to wear a turban and sit with the chaperones. How was she ever to get over that terrible Earl if she did not make an effort?
Mr. Jennings had met the Earl briefly in the magistrate’s home and had been too relieved to hear that Penelope was exonerated to try to effect a reconciliation between the Earl and the girl.
Privately Mr. Jennings thought Penelope was well out of that engagement. The Earl was too haughty and austere to be the husband of such a young and pretty girl.
All too soon, the Jenningses’ carriage was rolling along the hilly cobbled streets of Dover. Mr. Delton’s town house was very grand indeed with a double row of steps rising up to an entrance on the first floor.
Flambeaux flickered, smoked, and blazed in the brackets outside, and the faint strains of a waltz reached Penelope’s ears as she descended from the carriage.
The Deltons, husband and wife, were terrifyingly gracious and condescending, but Mrs. Jennings seemed to find nothing amiss except in the fact that the Deltons quite patently did not approve of Penelope being one of the party. Mrs. Delton ran one cold eye over Penelope from her blond hair to her fashionable lilac silk dress—too grand for a governess—and said in frigid tones that Miss … er … should sit with the chaperones. ‘Twas more fitting.
Overawed and ill at ease, Mrs. Jennings had not the courage to argue, contenting herself with giving Penelope’s hand a sympathetic squeeze.
Penelope did not know whether to be glad or sorry as she took her seat beside the row of middle-aged matrons.
About twenty couples were dancing energetically in the long room. Banks of artificial flowers, artificially scented, were massed against the walls which had been draped in rose silk for the occasion. Large fires crackled at either end of the room and tall branches of wax candles stared down at their reflections in the polished floor.
The fashions of the ladies were not so extreme as in London. There were no clinging muslins here, damped to reveal every inch of the wearer’s form, no transparent dresses and scanty petticoats. Stiff formal taffetas, velvets, and merinos w
ere the order of the day. The men were as colorfully dressed as the girls—Mr. Brummell’s fashion for strict black and white in the ballroom having not yet penetrated as far as Dover—and many of them wore their hair powdered.
Penelope sat on, grimly counting her blessings. She had a good job and a comfortable home. But all the while a sly little feminine voice in her brain was telling her that it would be marvellous to have just one dance.
Apart from a perpetual aching feeling of loss, Penelope was already beginning to forget the horror of that day on the quay. Augusta already seemed part of some grotesque, feverish nightmare.
A footman hurried into the ballroom and accosted Mr. Delton, then both men hurriedly left the room. Mr. Delton reappeared after a few moments and summoned his wife and whispered in her ear.
Mrs. Delton turned and stared straight across the ballroom to where Penelope sat with a look of shock and surprise on her face. Then she too left the room.
Penelope looked sadly at her slippers. She had tried to tell Mrs. Jennings that silk lilac and an elaborate hairstyle were much too fine for a governess.
The quadrille came to a finish and Penelope had found some comfort in thinking that her charges had performed their parts competently.
The double doors at the end of the ballroom were flung open.
The Earl of Hestleton entered, flanked on either side by Mr. and Mrs. Delton.
He immediately made every man in the room look provincial and dowdy.
He was dressed in a close-fitting black silk evening coat, tailored by the great Weston. His black knee breeches and white stockings clung to his muscular legs and sapphires blazed from the snowy lace of his cravat and on the buckles of his shoes. He wore his auburn hair unpowdered, and his face looked very severe and tense.
Penelope sat rigid in her chair, unable to look away. He had come to disgrace her! Why else would he look so severe, thought Penelope, mistaking the Earl’s fatigue and apprehension for anger.
The couples had started to dance the waltz, and above their bobbing heads Penelope saw the Earl making his way round the edge of the ballroom towards her.
Suddenly Mrs. Jennings was at her side, her motherly face creased with worry. “It’s that awful Earl again,” she whispered. “I have talked with Mr. Jennings and he agrees I should take you straight home.”
The Earl craned his head above the dancers and saw Penelope and Mrs. Jennings hurrying towards the door. He started forward, to push his way through the dancers, when, to his dismay, he was waylaid by the town magistrate, Mr. Henry Desmond. Mr. Desmond had proved to be very kind and helpful on the day of the deaths of Augusta and the Comte, and the Earl realised he could not cut him. He was forced to carry on a conversation with Mr. Desmond while the double doors of the ballroom opened and closed behind Penelope and Mrs. Jennings.
Well, at least he knew her address. As Mr. Desmond talked on at length about the magisterial problems of his job, the Earl remembered his arrival in Dover only that evening. He had obtained Mr. Jennings’s direction from the landlord of the Green Man and had then ridden hard to Wold, only to find the house empty except for the servants who told him that the Jenningses and their governess had gone to the Deltons’ ball in Dover.
Another gruelling ride back to Dover and more lost time while he changed into his evening clothes, although he would have preferred to defy the conventions in the manner of young Lochinvar and ride into the ballroom on his horse.
He set his mind to extracting himself from the magistrate’s company. Then there was a tedious period of time to be endured trying to escape from his hosts. Finally he managed to corner Mr. Jennings and ask that very surprised gentleman permission to pay his addresses to Penelope.
“I’m not really sure,” said Mr. Jennings in his maddeningly slow and precise way. “Let us examine the case …”
And the Earl answered his questions patiently while inside his angry soul screamed and consigned the whole of the legal profession to hell.
“I think it would be best,” said Mr. Jennings finally, “if you called on Miss Vesey in the morning. I will tell her that your intentions are honorable and that I have given you my permission—for what it is worth—to pay your addresses.” He looked up at the Earl’s hard face and gave a little sigh. “However, my lord, if you will take the advice of an older man, I would suggest you look less angry when you go a-courting.”
“I am not angry,” said the Earl between his teeth. “Only frustrated.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mr. Jennings, quite shocked. “In your suit, I trust, and not in your passions.”
“In both,” said the Earl grimly.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Jennings again. “How free-spoken is the youth of today! Not that you are by any means a youth, my lord. In fact I would say you were considerably older than Miss Vesey. In fact…”
“I am not in my dotage,” snapped the Earl.
“Well, well, I did not say that. What a bad-tempered man you are, to be sure. Don’t look so toplofty, my lord. I realise my remarks might be construed as impertinent, but I assure you, I and my wife have come to love Miss Vesey very much and look on her as a daughter.”
His lordship gave a faint sigh and then set himself to please. Nothing could come of antagonising Penelope’s employer. The Deltons observed the conversation from afar, wondering what on earth the Earl could find to amuse himself in such undistinguished company! And why had he said that he wished to speak to the Jenningses’ governess?
The Earl duly presented himself at the Jenningses house at nine o’clock the following morning to be met by Mrs. Jennings, still wearing her nightcap and quite shocked that any gentlemen should call at such an early hour. He must wait until Penelope was dressed and prepared to see him.
Mrs. Jennings knew that Penelope had finally fallen asleep at dawn after a restless night of worry. Mr. Jennings had decided not to tell Penelope of the Earl’s honorable intentions. She must make up her own mind when she saw him without anyone else influencing her, he had said. And Mrs. Jennings was determined that Penelope should have her beauty sleep before she faced the ordeal ahead of her for, in her heart, Mrs. Jennings was sure Penelope would refuse the haughty Earl.
The Earl waited patiently for two hours in the sitting room, stretched out in an armchair in front of the fire. He finally closed his eyes and fell asleep.
And that was how Penelope found him when she timidly opened the door.
She crossed quietly to the armchair and stood looking down at him. He looked much younger asleep and somehow vulnerable. She stretched out her hand slowly and gently stroked the copper curls. His eyes flew open and he imprisoned her hand in a strong grasp.
A strong current of attraction ran from one hand to the other until both were trembling. All the hates and doubts seemed to disappear like magic. He forgot about all the long speeches of love and desire he had so carefully rehearsed and got to his feet and pulled her urgently into his arms, kissing her until she was breathless.
“We’ve been mad,” he murmured huskily. “Absolutely mad. I want you more than anything in the world, Penelope. Will you marry me?” He gave her a little shake. “You must marry me.”
“But I am related to a murderess,” whispered Penelope. “You must think of your name.”
“A pox on my name,” said the Earl. “Concern for the Hestleton name started all this mess. I am not asking you to marry me, Penelope. I am telling you that you are going to marry me. No other man is ever going to touch you. I’m jealous of everybody who even looks at you.”
He drew her down on to a hard horsehair sofa covered in shiny leather. “What do you say?” he whispered intensely.
“Oh, yes, Roger,” said Penelope thankfully, sinking into his arms. She gave a sudden giggle. “How do you know I am not a murderess too? I might put rat poison in your port.” Her hand flew to her mouth and her face blenched. “How can I joke about such things! Did I tell you of Aunt Augusta’s poor footman! She—she poisoned him. How shall I e
ver forget?”
“Like this,” he whispered into her hair. He turned her mouth up to his and covered her lips in a long, long kiss which sent both their senses reeling.
Penelope recovered enough to feel herself slipping from the shiny sofa onto the uncarpeted floor. She clutched wildly at the Earl’s shoulders and both of them landed on the floor with an undignified bump.
“Now,” said the Earl, smiling wickedly into her eyes, “I have you just where I want you.”
The frenzy of their lovemaking rose to fever pitch. “Why do women have these damned little buttons on their dresses?” murmured the Earl at one point, his voice sounding in his ears strangely unlike his own.
Penelope smiled tantalisingly up into his eyes. “To stop making things too easy for the gentlemen, I suppose,” she giggled.
“I shall persevere,” said the Earl, reaching his long fingers to the little buttons at the throat of her Kerseymere gown. “There is one, there is another … and another … and …”
“MY LORD!”
The Jenningses’ husband and wife stood in the doorway, rigid with shock.
The guilty couple rose hurriedly to their feet.
The Earl took Penelope’s hand in his own.
“We are to be married in a month’s time,” he said to the horrified Jenningses. “I am taking Miss Vesey to Wyndham Court today. We shall be married from there.”
“Such goings-on!” said Mrs. Jennings severely. “Miss Vesey is not going anywhere without being chaperoned and so I tell you. Mr. Jennings and I will be there to see Miss Vesey married as she should be, especially after your abandoned behavior, my lord.”
“My Aunt Matilda is in residence and will be chaperone enough,” said the Earl coldly.
“So you say,” replied Mrs. Jennings, equally coldly. “Mr. Jennings, tell the servants to make ready. You are having us as houseguests, my lord, whether you like it or not!”
Chapter Fourteen