by Rose Lerner
“Of course,” Sir Jasper said sympathetically, calling over a footman to summon their carriage, and Nev was left to wonder if he’d imagined the murderous gleam in his eye. “I’m sorry we did not get our dance,” the baronet said to Louisa. “But I had the pleasure of watching you, and that must suffice. You look lovely in your new dress. I hope soon to give you another opportunity to wear it.”
Oh, for the love of God. “Louisa, can you fetch Mama?”
“Whatever you say, Nev,” Louisa said with poisonous sweetness. Nev glanced swiftly at her, but she had already turned away.
He turned back to Penelope. “Come on, love. We’re going home.”
She stood. “All right.” She seemed steady enough on her feet, but Nev put an arm around her waist anyway. She swayed into him, and he closed his eyes, just letting himself feel the trusting length of her against his side.
“I’ve got her.” Louisa’s resigned voice was close by, and he opened his eyes. His mother was draped over Louisa. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Nev,” Thirkell said. “Nev, I need to tell you something-”
“Ugh, her earring is caught on my dress.” Louisa tried impatiently to untangle herself from Lady Bedlow’s jewelry.
“Careful!” Lady Bedlow slurred. “That’s your father’s hair…”
“That is so very morbid, Mama.” Louisa twisted her head around in a vain attempt to see what she was doing.
Sir Jasper stepped forward. “Allow me.” In a moment he had disengaged the earring and was straightening Louisa’s neckline. Louisa slapped his hand away.
“I’m sorry, Thirkell,” Nev said, “but maybe now’s not the best time. Why don’t you come by for dinner tomorrow?”
The drive back to the Dower House passed mostly in silence. That was all right with Nev; he could have sat a million years with Penelope slumped against him, breathing quietly. It felt so natural and right, as if they had been formed just for this, just for each other.
At the Dower House, however, Lady Bedlow proved difficult to wake. “Come on, Mama,” Louisa said. “Get up and put your arm over Nate’s shoulders so he can help you down the steps.”
“Nate, is that you?” Lady Bedlow asked.
“Yes, it’s me.” He put his hands on his mother’s waist to steady her. “Come on, now.”
“Always such a good boy.”
Nev rolled his eyes. “I was never a good boy, Mama. Yes, that’s right, hold on to the rail.”
“You were always my favorite, Nate.” There was still a smile in her voice.
Nev almost dropped her. Instead, he said, “Hush, Mama,” and got her down the carriage steps. Louisa climbed down without waiting for his help.
“Louisa-” All summer he had ignored his mother’s treatment of her. No wonder she was miserable at home and desperate to get away. No wonder she resented them all.
Louisa sighed. “Come, Nate, it’s nothing we didn’t all know before.” Her smile was resigned. “It’s all right. You were always my favorite too.”
“You’re coming to live with us,” he said fiercely. “Start packing your things. You can move into the Grange tomorrow.”
“I-you needn’t-” She sniffled. “Oh, Nate!” She threw herself at him. He hugged her tightly with the arm that wasn’t supporting their somnolent mother. “I’m so sorry for everything! I hope-I hope you can forgive me.”
“Of course I can.” He was surprised to find it was true. “You’re my little sister, aren’t you? Everything will come right, you’ll see.”
“I hope you still feel that way tomorrow.”
“I’m not drunk. I know I haven’t been a perfect brother, but I’m not so fickle as all that.”
She hugged him again. “I do love you, Nate.” There was a catch in her voice. “Come along, Mama,” she said with weary affection, taking their mother’s arm. “Let’s get you inside.” Nev watched to make sure they got safely through the door before climbing back into the carriage.
“Your family gives me a headache,” Penelope said.
“Penelope!” Edward hissed.
“They give me a headache too.” Nev took his seat again, feeling a moment’s triumph when Penelope immediately leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Actually, maybe it’s my hairpins that are giving me the headache.”
“We’ll be home soon.”
Penelope shrugged, sat up, and began pulling out her hairpins.
If they had been alone he would have let her, but they weren’t. Even so, it was several seconds before he could bring himself to speak. “Penny, sweetheart, don’t.” He reached for her hands.
She stopped, looking stricken. “Oh, God, am I acting vulgar? I can’t tell anymore. I don’t want to embarrass you, Nev.”
“This is dreadful,” Edward said in a low voice.
“This is your fault for not making her eat something like I told you to!” Nev turned back to Penelope. “You’re not acting vulgar, sweetheart. You know I love your hair.” He reached out and tugged on a sleek brown lock that had fallen over her ear. “But if you take all your hairpins out, you’ll lose them.”
Penelope smiled. “Do you really like my hair?”
“I adore it.”
She sighed contentedly. “I love your hair too.”
Nev swallowed hard. She had told him that once before, after he had pleasured her for the first time with his mouth. He remembered clearly the heat of her naked thigh against his cheek and her fingers in his hair, and he wished Macaulay at the devil.
“It’s like cinnamon,” she said dreamily.
Nev glanced at Macaulay and saw only his rigid profile as he stared out the window. Unexpectedly, he felt sorry for the man. It was impossible to be jealous when they were almost to the Grange, and then Macaulay would go to his room alone and Penelope would come with Nev. “Hush, Penny. You’re making Edward blush.”
“I’m sorry,” she said at once, and was silent until they were standing in the hall at the Grange.
“Good night.” Macaulay turned away.
“Good night, Edward.” Penelope pulled away from Nev to stand on tiptoe and kiss Macaulay’s cheek. “I’m sorry I embarrassed you. You’re my very dearest friend and I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
He smiled sadly down at her. “I’m not angry with you, Penelope. You’re my dearest friend too and-I hope you shall be very happy,” he finished roughly. “Good night.” He looked into her face for another moment, then hurried off.
Penelope turned and saw Nev watching her. “Edward is stuffy,” she said, “but he loves me.”
“I know.” He hesitated. He had been waiting impatiently for this moment, but it seemed crass to simply take her in his arms as soon as Macaulay was out of sight.
Then it didn’t matter; Penelope stepped toward him and put her arms around his neck. “Kiss me.”
He obeyed her. She tasted like brandy. He pulled her hairpins out by feel, her hair tumbling down around his fingers as he kissed her.
“Upstairs,” she murmured against his mouth, and he picked her up so he could walk and hold her at the same time. “No Sir Jasper this time.”
He remembered carrying her over the threshold, muddy and laughing, the day he had made her his. It seemed so long ago. They had been so uncertain and so easily cowed. “No. Not this time.”
“Sir Jasper doesn’t like me.”
“No, he doesn’t. I can’t think why.”
“He keeps talking to me about Miss Wray, and I think he thinks I’m having an affair with Mr. Garrett.”
“He what?” Was that why Sir Jasper had let Percy stay at Greygloss? Why would he do that?
“Well, I might be wrong. But Louisa was telling me not to have an affair, and Sir Jasper heard her and he said-”
“Louisa told you not to have an affair?”
“She was suspicious of Edward,” Penelope confided. “And I felt guilty because I hadn’t told him no, and I made things worse. And then she told me what you said,
and the truth is-” She looked at him with sudden decision. “The truth is that-”
She was going to tell him everything, just as he’d always wanted her to. And she was going to do it because she was drunk. “Penelope, stop. Tell me in the morning.”
“I thought you wanted to know. I thought you wanted to know how I really felt.”
“I do. I do, more than anything. But tell me in the morning.”
“All right. I never knew being foxed was so pleasant. Why on earth did you give it up?”
Somehow it was easier to say it when Penelope was soft and slow and heavy in his arms and the house was dark. “My father was drunk. He was drunk and he got his brains blown out. I’m not going to do that to you.”
“Oh, Nev,” she said sadly. “You would never do that to me anyway.”
“Before I met you I was drunk almost every night. I was a good-for-nothing. I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
She sighed. “Mr. Garrett said you could not compromise. Because you studied Latin. I told him it was stuff, but maybe I was wrong.”
They were at his door. Nev opened it with his foot and set her down on the bed. “What do you mean?”
“You can drink a little.” She smiled as if she were pointing out the obvious. “And play cards a little.” She fell back on the bed, bouncing slightly. He watched her breasts and hips through the layers of muslin.
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid that if I start I won’t be able to stop.” Afraid was an understatement. He was terrified that the person he had become over the last few months was an illusion, who would vanish like words written in the sand when confronted with temptation. That his true self was the hard-drinking ne’er-do-well he’d been.
She frowned. “Let’s try an experiment. You’ll drink a glass of brandy, and then you’ll stop.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll probably be too drunk to make love to me, and I’ll cry.” She smiled lazily up at him from where she sprawled on the bed.
He sat on the edge of the bed and ran a finger along her thigh. “I could make love to you now.” He let his finger slide over the juncture of her thighs.
She tilted her hips up. “Mm. Brandy first.”
“I don’t know if I can wait that long.” He slid his finger up and down and watched her back arch.
“If you hurry…you can be done by the time…Molly takes my clothes off.” She closed her eyes.
“I like you just fine dressed like this.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I have a surprise for you. I-I hope you don’t laugh at me.”
A surprise involving Penelope and nightclothes? “You win. One glass.” Her smile was triumphant, but she sighed when he drew back his hand.
She stumbled getting to her feet, and he put out a hand to steady her. “It’s not the punch,” she said. “You make me dizzy.”
When the door was shut, he drew in a deep breath and rang the bell.
“Davies, will you decant a bottle of brandy for me?”
Davies’s eyes widened. Of course the entire household knew of his recent puritanism. Nev tried to look as if he did not see anything unusual about his request. What made it so odd was that Davies had decanted probably hundreds of bottles for him, over the years.
“Of course, my lord, at once.” Davies didn’t move. Then, abruptly-“My lord, is everything all right?”
Nev wanted to snap at him, but he was touched by the man’s concern. “Everything is splendid. I am simply in the mood for some brandy.”
Davies nodded, and in a few minutes he was back with a full decanter and a snifter. After the man had left the room, Nev poured himself a glass. He stared at it, turning it in his hand. This was it, then.
For a moment he was tempted to pour it in the grate and tell Penelope he had drunk it. But that would be ridiculous. He was a grown man, and he refused to be afraid of a damn glass of liquor. He took a small sip. It tasted just as good as he remembered.
The warmth spread down his throat, all the way to his stomach. But there was no time to savor it. Penelope must be ready by now. He smiled and gulped the brandy down.
Changing into his nightclothes, he already felt himself affected. His hands were clumsy on the ties of his dressing gown. He hadn’t eaten in a few hours, and he had grown unaccustomed to liquor.
To his surprise, being drunk was not the seductive paradise he had created in his mind during these last few months of sobriety. He felt a little happier, that was all. He could still remember his problems but they seemed smaller, further away.
Penelope wasn’t far away, though. She was in the next room. His smile grew. He had been afraid he would want another glass; at that moment he didn’t want anything that would delay getting to Penelope.
He didn’t bother to knock. Penelope was waiting; she was on him before he got two steps into the room. Her mouth was sweet and warm, and the heavy embroidered silk of her robe was smooth and sensuous under his hands. There was a heady floral scent in his nostrils.
“You did drink the brandy,” she said happily when he finally pulled his mouth away from hers.
“You told me to, didn’t you? I-” He got a good look at her and stopped talking. She was wearing a dressing gown made of the same fabric that covered the ridiculous new settee. In the candlelight the golden dragons glimmered and the contrast of the dark blue silk with her pale skin was shocking. The robe covered most of her; all he could see was her head and neck, her bare feet, and the ends of her fingers. It reminded him of that first night at Loweston, of Penelope swathed in her nightshirt. There were three great purple chrysanthemums curling in her loosely pinned hair. “You-you-where did you get chrysanthemums?”
She smiled. “My mother grows them in our back garden at home. I asked her to send me a few plants. I didn’t tell her why I wanted them.”
Penelope had gone to all this trouble for him, because of a chance remark. “You’re the best wife in the world.” Pulling her forward by her wide yellow sash, he crushed her mouth beneath his. He felt for the ends of the sash and worked them free. His fingers told him the best part, but he didn’t believe it until he pulled back and looked.
She was naked underneath.
Nev had died and gone to heaven. He raised one hand to her breast, filled with intoxicated wonder. “So beautiful. So damned beautiful…Sorry, dashed.”
She hummed in satisfaction. “Come here.” She tugged him over to the settee. He sat, reaching for her eagerly, but before he could kiss her she climbed on top of him, pushing him back against the cushions, and trailed openmouthed kisses down his neck. “Nev.” Her breath was hot against his skin. “Mine.”
“Yours,” he gasped.
“I bought you. I bought you and you’re mine.”
He nodded, drunk on happiness and desire, and threaded his fingers in her hair. A chrysanthemum fell to the floor and filled the room with fragrance.
Penelope woke up feeling happy, although she didn’t remember why. It was late, nearly ten o’clock. She ought to be up doing things, but somehow it was all right that she wasn’t. She was wearing-she was wearing a Chinese silk dressing gown and sleeping in Nev’s bed. His hand rested lightly on her waist. She smiled.
However, she also had to use the necessary. She sat up gingerly, trying not to wake Nev-abruptly nausea washed over her and her head ached. At the same time she remembered everything that had happened the night before.
Oh, God. She had exposed herself utterly. Figuratively and literally. She barely made it to the basin in her room before being sick. So this was a hangover.
But it was worse than that. She had wondered about love, she had wondered if Nev loved her and if she loved him, but it had been almost like a game; she had never quite believed in it. It was real now. She was in love, she loved him madly. She had always thought that grand passions were a myth created by fools to explain their own weak-willed behavior, and now their reality was blinding. Penelope felt as if she had turned a corner on
an ordinary London street and seen a great dragon coiled there.
She took deep breaths and tried to be still; every movement made the nausea worse. She loved Nev. She would have told him so, last night. She was pitifully grateful that he hadn’t let her.
Still, he must know. She had barely stopped touching him the whole evening. Everyone must know. Edward must know. Oh, God, had she really tried to take her hair down in the carriage? Had Nev really had to cajole her into propriety as if she were a spoiled child? Had she really told him his hair was like cinnamon? That he made her dizzy?
Her mouth tasted like acid and her head ached. She planted her hands on either side of the washstand and stared in the mirror, her chest still heaving. In the brutal light of morning she saw her plain face and slight form swathed in blue and gold and felt sicker than she had ever felt in her life. She looked like a sparrow borrowing a peacock’s feathers, and she had let herself feel pretty. She had let herself feel beautiful, because Nev had said she was. Dear, sweet Nev who must have said that to a million girls. Who must have made a million girls believe it.
Nev cares about me, she reminded herself. He respects me. Well, he did before last night. That was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? A marriage based on reason and compromise and mutual esteem?
Reason and compromise and mutual esteem were shadowy intellectual conceits. Her love for Nev was blood and bone and sinew. It was all true, all the poetry and the damn Minerva Press novels. She really did feel as though she would die without him.
But the idea of living with him, like this, knowing that she loved him, was far worse. God, her head ached! She wanted someone else to fix it, to comfort her, to smooth back her hair and give her cool water to drink. She wanted Nev.
She shied away from that, searching for something safe, and thought of her mother. What would Mrs. Brown say? She wouldn’t understand, that was certain; she wouldn’t see that it was complicated. She’d say, What a lot of fuss over nothing, Penny. Just tell him how you feel!