In a heartbeat.
Kissing Penny had been a revelation. She had felt so damn good in his arms. Tasted so damn fine on his lips. That delectable, womanly body of hers fitting against his to perfection, so soft...so seductive. Despite the layer of his shirt and her nightdress, he had enjoyed the way her breasts had flattened against his chest, the way he had known exactly where the tips of her nipples rested against his body, rousing his passions further and driving him mad with need. It had been a miracle he had managed to stop himself from hoisting up her nightgown and filling his greedy hands with those breasts, tracing for himself the hard, pebbled shape of her nipples. Instead, he had made do with dragging her hips to press against his, showing her in no uncertain terms exactly what effect their illicit kiss had had on him.
Recollections which really weren’t helping his current state of confusion or arousal one jot.
With a groan, he pushed threw back the covers and stared at it in disgust. Then, when that didn’t work, stalked over to the vanity and sloshed the chilled water from the jug into the basin before sluicing it roughly over his face and body.
What was it about Penny that affected him so? Passion aside, he’d allowed her to convince him to stay the night—with very little fight, all things considered—he’d willingly gone to her assistance in the kitchen, stared at her body shamelessly without her knowledge and thoroughly enjoyed being alone with her once the staring was done. Then, told her things about his parents he had never confessed to a living soul. Private things. Intensely personal things which could never be taken back and then he had blithely given in to temptation and kissed her. A whole other and equally as terrifying Pandora’s box, except he had practically ripped the lid off this one and had no idea where he had carelessly tossed it.
He stared at his still rampant privates miserably. Lord Fennimore was arriving at ten and would expect a thorough summary of his progress on the case since last week. How was he supposed to do that when his mind was stubbornly lodged elsewhere?
Miserably, he shoved his feet in his breeches and did his best to make his crumpled shirt from yesterday seem more presentable. If only the damn thing didn’t still carry the lingering scent of her subtle floral perfume. Or happen to be the same shirt her hands had wandered beneath. Had he not overslept, he would jolly well get on his horse now, ride like the wind back to town, and swap the guilty garment for another. Preferably the stiffest, most starched shirt in his wardrobe. Or a hair shirt, if such a thing existed beyond the annals of history. So he could repent properly.
With leaden feet, he took the servants’ staircase down and followed the sounds of the voices. He could hear the Dowager laughing. Then, to his horror, he heard Lord Fennimore’s wife, Harriet, laughing and accepted it was probably fitting that his abject mortification should be witnessed by all and sundry. He undoubtedly deserved nothing less—unless fate would take pity on him and present him with Penny before he entered the dining room.
But typically, the hallway was ominously empty as he walked through it, forcing him to stop outside the door and take one last fortifying breath before he stepped inside.
‘Good morning, Mr Lazy Bones!’ At the Dowager’s exclamation, poor Penny sloshed hot chocolate over Lord Fennimore’s hand.
‘Ouch!’
‘Oh, I am so sorry, my lord!’ Her lovely face glowed beetroot red as her eyes flicked to meet Hadleigh’s before they hastily looked away. Because the world was cruel, she looked particularly lovely this morning. She had done something different with her hair. A looser, yet more intricate style. Yet another well-fitting new dress he had never seen before did wonders for her figure and, once again, his throat dried at the sight.
‘Thank goodness I have another hand I can use now that this one has been burned to a crisp.’ Lord Fennimore’s curmudgeonly response snapped him back to the present, reminding him that Penny didn’t look particularly pleased to see him. If anything she was horrified, which further compounded his shame at taking advantage of her.
‘Pay him no mind, Penny,’ said Harriet, swatting her husband’s arm. ‘Cedric is a dreadful grouch in the mornings. Unlike our handsome barrister here, he clearly didn’t get a good night’s sleep.’
Hadleigh felt the tips of his own ears redden, trying to brazen out his entrance for Penny’s sake as well as his own, because, frankly, she was doing a very good job of looking as guilty as sin. Trust him to ravish a woman who was incapable of lying! She might as well be carrying a placard.
‘Good morning, everyone. I apologise for my tardiness. Sorry for startling you, Penny.’ She nodded, then practically sprinted from the room, still clutching the chocolate pot.
‘Did you have a bad night?’ the Dowager asked innocently. ‘Or was it a particularly good one?’ She and Harriet exchanged a knowing look thanks to Penny’s jittery behaviour and he feared the blush might spread to his face, too, branding him as the guilty party responsible for it. Another loaded look passed between her and Harriet, except this time, they included Jessamine and his friend Flint.
‘I slept like the dead.’ Which was true, but felt like a lie with everyone suddenly watching him. Stalwartly ignoring them in case his guilt gave him away, too, he took himself to the sideboard and began to load a plate, taking his time in the hope they might actually forget about him.
It was only when he had dished up a veritable mountain that he realised he would now have to choke it all down. Something good manners dictated needed to be done with more decorum than panic wanted to allow. Desperately strapping on his lawyer’s mask, he decided to grasp the bull by the horns and direct the conversation at the person he reasoned was likely to be the least interested in speculation and gossip. Lord Fennimore.
‘I am going to visit all the wives later and see if any of them would be willing to testify.’
‘Against their husbands? Is that likely when all six have already been named as witnesses for the defence?’
‘It is worth a try. One or two might feel aggrieved enough or ashamed of their spouses’ treachery to feel the urge to vent. If nothing else, it will give me an idea how best to question them in court. Perhaps find clues to their Achilles heels. How goes your side of the investigations?’
Fortunately, never one to miss an opportunity to talk about business, Lord Fennimore gave him an extensive rundown of everything the King’s Elite agents had been working on all week. He barely paused for breath, which meant that Hadleigh could pretend he didn’t sense Penny as she came back into the room, nor did he have time to allow his gaze to linger as she filled his own cup with coffee and he managed to mumble his thanks. In fact, by the time old Fennimore was done, the servants had cleared the plates, the ladies had all left and only the pair of them and Flint remained.
* * *
Penny walked past the dining room for the third time and for the third time that hour had to resign herself to not speaking to him any time soon. He was thoroughly engrossed in his work and attempting to interrupt him to have a word seemed trivial, when she still had no earthly idea what words to use.
What exactly did one say to the master of the house after shamelessly plastering herself against him and kissing him with such enthusiasm her lips were still swollen from her fervour?
Excuse me, my lord, but did you mind me kissing you?
Mortifying. Because of course he had. He had put a stop to it.
Shall we draw a veil over last night? We were both tired...
Her toes were cringing inside her slippers at the lie, because she had never been particularly good at lying. She had been tired. Then she had been wide awake and willing. Shockingly willing.
She had lain awake for hours, her body all aquiver and positively throbbing with need, trying to think of a believable reason to knock on his door on the off chance he might want to continue what she had patently started. Or had he? The start of the kiss was a bit of a blur, it was all so overw
helming. The middle was a fuzzy haze of scandalous sensations which had fizzed around her body like freshly released champagne bubbles. The end had been awkward. He had said goodnight and she had been left yearning for more. Which probably meant she had instigated the kiss because he had had to extricate himself from it.
Gracious! She had been all at sea. Still was, truth be told. So much so, she barely recognised herself this morning at all. Her breasts still resolutely refused to feel anything like her own. She kept glancing down at them, convinced they had grown twice their size overnight they felt so heavy.
Perhaps the best course of action was to wait for him to speak first? Simply carry on, pretending nothing whatsoever had happened at all. Just as she had when he had walked into breakfast and she had spontaneously combusted while simultaneously scolding one of the guests under her charge. Yes! A positively spectacular piece of acting on her part that had been! She should have hung a sign around her neck—I kissed Lord Hadleigh like a wanton—not that it would hang particularly straight now that her breasts had ripened.
Just as she had ripened.
Obviously, the world had gone quite mad—she was now actively considering inviting another man to her bed, when she had been thoroughly determined to empty it of the first. But she couldn’t deny a newly awakened part of her was considering it. If Lord Hadleigh’s kiss was anything to go on, it had been nothing like the aggressive, intrusive and sloppy kisses her husband had foisted upon her when drunk. Nor had her body felt violated at his touch. Most striking of all the comparisons was that she had been actively part of the proceedings last night and not pretending she was elsewhere during the intimacies. A first for her as the only way to tolerate Penhurst’s intrusions—because she couldn’t think of any other word to accurately describe the distasteful, brisk coupling she had suffered with him—had been to be elsewhere in her mind while it was occurring to such an extent, she rendered herself numb from the neck down.
There had been no need to do that with Lord Hadleigh. Her body had screamed for his touch. Welcomed it. Craved it still. What was she going to do about that?
Absently, she wandered back down the hallway, completely forgetting she was actively avoiding the ladies after her ridiculous display of gaucheness over breakfast.
‘There you are!’ The Dowager beckoned to her through the open door of the drawing room. ‘We have been looking for you!’
Penny attempted to paste on her diligent housekeeper’s mask. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘We have tea,’ said Harriet, patting the seat next to her on the sofa ominously, ‘What we need is some juicy gossip to go along with it. We are all dying to know what all that was about this morning.’
‘I am not sure I know what you mean.’ Penny didn’t sit. Didn’t dare.
‘Oh, come on, Penny! You are among friends here. What the blazes was all that?’ The Dowager waved her arms about frantically. ‘All that stuff between you and the handsome lawyer? You were both blushing...neither of you could hold the other’s eye...’
‘There was a distinct frisson in the air, I thought.’ Harriet smiled knowingly. ‘The sort of delicious frisson which only occurs when a man and a woman have something to feel guilty about.’
‘Honestly, he startled me. I am not used to him being there over breakfast.’ She felt guilty blotches bloom on her neck at the flagrant untruth.
‘Ah...bon...of course.’ Even Jessamine was clearly unconvinced, although for some reason, with her French accent her agreement sounded like an accusation. ‘He never stays the night, so of course you were startled to see him. That vivid blush had absolutely nothing to do with the cosy chat the pair of you had in the middle of the night. The one which you wore your nightgown for and Lord Hadleigh attended in a state of scandalous dishabille...’
‘How did you know about that?’ The guilty blush exploded in all its shameful glory, making her uncomfortably warm in her new wool dress.
‘In this house of spies, nothing happens without somebody knowing about it.’ Harriet patted the spot on the sofa again and, mortified, Penny perched upon it. ‘An agent told Flint and Flint told Jessamine.’
‘And obviously Jessamine told us.’ The Dowager giggled. ‘Although we all thought it was only a matter of time. The pair of you have been doing a great deal of looking these past few weeks. And looking invariably leads to touching, in my experience, and then nature takes its course.’
‘He stumbled across me trying to get Freddie back to sleep and assisted. We drank some hot milk and then went to bed.’
‘Together?’ Harriet had leaned forward expectantly.
‘Certainly not!’ This was getting out of hand. ‘You are all making gross assumptions about a perfectly innocent conversation.’
‘So there was not even a kiss?’ The angry red blush turned instantly purple and her mouth hung slack for several seconds before she attempted, too late, to deny it. ‘I knew it!’ The Dowager slapped both hands on her knees. ‘She has the look of a woman who has been recently kissed. That dress, the flirtatious hairstyle...’
‘It was an accident.’
‘Tripping over a rug is an accident—unless you tripped over the rug and inadvertently found your lips flying towards his as a result.’ Harriet patted her hand as if she were a child. ‘Why don’t you start the story again properly? He stole a kiss...’
‘Actually, I think I might have been the one to steal it.’ Penny buried her burning face in her hands. ‘He ended it. And now I have made everything so awkward I have no earthly idea how to fix it.’
‘Oh...’ Jessamine sounded sympathetic. ‘By ended it, he rebuffed your advances...or did he join in and then end it?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘Oh, my dear—a great deal!’ Harriet wrapped a reassuring arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. ‘Men are simple creatures when it comes to women. They can take what they want without caring. Take what they want because they cannot help themselves or deny what they want out of some misplaced belief they shouldn’t be taking it in the first place. Does that make sense?’ None whatsoever. ‘Therefore, the most pertinent detail we need to consider before we acknowledge he ended the kiss, is if he kissed you back first.’
‘Well, I suppose he might have.’
‘If you have to suppose,’ said the Dowager sagely, ‘it couldn’t have been much of a kiss.’
‘It was a lovely kiss.’
‘Passionate?’
At Jessamine’s question Penny hid her face back in her hands. ‘Yes. A little too passionate.’
‘There is no such thing as too passionate, darling.’ Harriet again. ‘A kiss is designed to give your body ideas and by the sounds of things, it gave your body quite a few of them. Should we ask if the ideas were...reciprocated?’
Penny nodded miserably. She had felt his desire and practically glued herself to it. ‘Splendid! Then it sounds as if both of you are in the same hideous place. Both mad with lust and longing and not quite sure what to do about it. We have a strong foundation to build upon.’
‘There is nothing to build upon.’ Despite their delight at her situation, this needed to be nipped in the bud. ‘It was a mistake for so many reasons.’ Three faces stared back at her blankly, clearly not understanding her dilemma at all. With a resigned sigh, Penny started to list them. ‘For a start, I am a housekeeper and he is a viscount.’
‘Weren’t you once a viscountess?’
‘Which leads me to my second point, that being the sordid fact that I am a traitor’s widow. Lord Hadleigh was the man who tried my husband! It’s all very messy.’
‘But you hated your husband. You testified against him.’ The Dowager pushed a cup of tea into Penny’s hand. ‘Why, only the other day you admitted to Jessamine and me that you never shed a single tear when you heard he had been murdered. Good riddance to the brute, you are well shot of him.
’
‘Which is exactly why I cannot plunge headlong into a relationship with another man! I’ve been a chattel and I have no desire to be again.’
‘To be his chattel, you would have to marry him and he would have to be the sort of man who makes his wife a chattel, which I am entirely convinced he is not.’ The Dowager gestured to the other ladies. ‘We all know Hadleigh well and can categorically vouch for him being a thoroughly decent man. But you are missing the point, my dear. This has nothing to do with marriage yet and nor does it need to be. One of the biggest benefits of being a widow is the freedom it gives you.’
Penny blinked incredulously, not at all understanding the bizarre turn this unwelcome conversation was taking. It was Harriet who said the unthinkable and rendered her totally speechless. ‘What she means, darling, is it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to take a lover. Nobody would blink an eyelid. It’s positively expected. I certainly enjoyed a few of them after my first husband died—and before I met Cedric, of course.’
The Dowager nodded, raising her eyebrows suggestively. ‘What better way to forget the chore of your marriage bed than finding passion with another who is willing. I’ll bet Hadleigh will not be an atrocious lover. That man is far too diligent. And your position here is only temporary, after all, Penny. Soon you will move on and so will he. And thanks to Cedric and the government’s generous fifty guineas it’s not as if he even pays your wages. So you see, there is nothing messy about your situation at all.’
Chapter Fourteen
By late afternoon that day, when he had failed completely to track her down, Hadleigh had left Chafford Grange in a state of total wretchedness. It was obvious she was avoiding him and had clearly chosen to traipse to the village to run an errand rather than see him and listen to his apology. Therefore, all the awkwardness between them would still be hanging in the air upon his return today. An awkwardness that his three-day absence would only serve to feed.
The Determined Lord Hadleigh Page 15