“My dance with Mavis, don’t you know. Wouldn’t want her taking the floor with one of the old roués her mother keeps pushing her way. Foolish chit is liable to let some rakehell lead her out to the gardens.”
And Nicky was going to provide propriety? That was Lady Bainbridge’s job, wherever she was.
West strolled out the open doors to gather his wits after a night of surprises, and cool his temper after watching Penny and her current partner. The handsome devil was one of West’s best friends, which made him a womanizer and a rogue. Darkened daylights might be a new fashion, but if Hazlitt did not loosen his hold on Penny’s waist, he would be holding his own privates in his hand next. Ensuring that gentlemen kept their proper distance was Lady Bainbridge’s job, too. Where the devil was the companion?
A few steps onto the terrace and West found out. The chaperone, the expert in polite behavior, the respectable widow, was out in the shadowed garden with Cottsworth, who could not dance but could obviously canoodle.
Good grief, West thought again. Good grief.
Chapter Thirty-two
Baron D. and his lady made the best of the bargain their guardians had arranged. He wore waistcoats to match her gowns; he grew stout when she became pregnant. She grew whiskers on her chin. And in their dotage they had matching wheeled chairs.
—By Arrangement, a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber
West peeled Lady Bainbridge out of Cottsworth’s arms. If he could not hold the woman of his choice, why should his friend have the pleasure?
In turn, Lady Bainbridge tried to drag Miss Amelia away from her poet, insisting they had to dance with other partners. Only spouses—and those seldom did so—or betrothed couples could sit in each other’s pockets all night without causing talk.
“Very well,” Mr. Culpepper said, falling to his knees right there on the ballroom floor. “Will you marry me, my dearest Amelia, my muse, my inspiration, my beloved, so we never have to be parted?”
Amelia said yes, of course, through her tears and stammers.
Her outraged mother started to say no, of course. Lady Bainbridge hastily whispered that the young gentleman was second in line for a marquisate, and wealthy in his own right. How else could he get his poetry published?
So the dancing was interrupted for a happy announcement and a champagne toast, with more people congratulating Penny than the newly engaged pair. She gave the credit for her coup to Nicky, of all people. Sir Gaspar shook Nicky’s hand, clasped him in an embrace, and walked off with West’s brother in serious conversation. Mavis trailed behind, listening to every word.
West started toward his wife and his own celebration, but she was busy with the servants, ordering more wine, more waltzes, more food put out on the refreshments tables because no one appeared to be leaving. When he looked for her again, she was whirling around the room in that cad Hazlitt’s arms. And laughing.
This was not the homecoming West had planned. He’d dreamed of Penny rushing into his arms, of carrying her to his bed, of making love all night for the rest of their lives. He’d dreamed of her hair loose, her skin warm, her lovely breasts in his hands, in his mouth. Now he had a glass of flat champagne in his hand, and a bitter taste in his mouth. And an awkward arousal. So he went back out to the terrace, where Cottsworth was smoking a cheroot.
“Have one?” his friend offered, so moonstruck he’d forgotten that West did not smoke.
West was so rattled that he forgot that fact, too, and accepted, then coughed when the smoke filled his throat and lungs, so he drank the warm champagne. “Horrid night,” he said.
“Oh?” Cottsworth leaned back against the railing. “The stars are out, the music is delightful, the smell of flowers is in the air, and the company was lovely, until now. What more could a man ask?”
“Straight answers to my questions.”
“Oh.” If Cottsworth had two good legs, he would have jumped off the terrace and fled through the gardens. Instead, he had to tell West what he knew, from Lady Bainbridge and the servants. “I am not certain what is fact and what is fiction,” he concluded. “But the scandal seems to have been averted. Your wife is a success.”
His wife was in yet another man’s arms when West stormed back into the ballroom. Damn.
He had heard so many accounts of events, been subject to so many innuendos, raised eyebrows, and outright smirks, that even he began to wonder if the gossip grist contained a grain of truth. Some of the men—his former friends—must believe the stories, because they were buzzing around Penny like bees on a flower, or libertines on a loose woman. Damn.
And then he realized his own wife was avoiding him. Damn.
When the current dance ended, Penny found herself near the ballroom entry, facing Lady Greenlea, who was not invited, on the arm of a raddled marquis, who was. Penny had to nod graciously and allow the marquis to kiss her—thankfully—gloved hand. Lady Greenlea waved her fan, making certain Penny saw the flash of a ring on her own gloved finger, a thick gold band, set with a garnet. West’s ring.
He wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have. And where was the toad when she needed him?
Before Penny could demand an answer, or start crying, Nicky pushed past her. “That’s my ring,” he shouted, “and you were the last person I spoke to before getting sick.”
“Dear boy, you were dreadfully drunk that night.” The widow kept wafting her fan, and the ring.
Nicky tried to grab her hand to pull the ring off. “You put something in my wine. I know you did!”
The marquis started to make huffing sounds, and Lady Greenlea stepped back. “What, are you foxed again? Tsk. You really must learn to hold your liquor, you know, especially at your new sister’s ball.”
A crowd had gathered around them, eager to taste scandal broth more potent than the punch being served. Penny’s chances of restoring her reputation, of taking her place in proper society, in West’s world, were slipping away. She did not care, not if West cared so little for her.
Then he was beside her. “A problem, my love?”
“Take your glove off,” Penny demanded, no matter who heard.
West paused. Here he’d been ready to cause a scene in the ballroom, but his lady wife was before him.
“Take it off,” she repeated, pulling at his glove, de rigueur for a formal affair. She freed his hand, revealing the garnet ring. Then she threw herself into his arms, right in front of the entire beau monde.
Her stepmother shrieked; Lady Bainbridge staggered into Cottsworth’s arms. “I thought I taught her better than that.”
“I knew you wouldn’t give her your ring.”
“Of course not. It was a last gift from my mother.” West kept his arm around Penny’s shoulder, and raised the eyebrow of his undamaged eye at Maeve Greenlea.
“No woman likes being cast off,” was all she said, turning her back on him and taking the marquis’s arm.
“Not so fast,” West said, but before he created even more of a scandal for the avid listeners, Nicky dived past him, almost knocking Maeve to the ground. He wrestled the ring off her finger. “My mother gave me one, too. I’d never part with it. I bet you were working with Nigel Entwhistle to cheat me.”
The marquis sidled away.
West was about to usher Maeve, Nicky, and Penny into a private room when Penny’s grandfather shouted from his nearby corner of the ballroom: “I say, ain’t that Maeve O’Brien?”
“Eh?” another old gent shouted back, holding up an ear trumpet.
“You know, Maeve who used to pose nude for Froggy Fogerty. I recognize the voice.”
Another of his cronies held up a pair of opera glasses. “Sure as the devil. I never forget a bosom like that.”
The second aged artist slapped his thigh. “Too bad you can’t remember what to do with one. I wonder if Froggy still has that portrait over his mantel. You know, Maeve and the wolfhounds and the fruit.”
“Shut up, you old fools,” Maeve screamed as she ran past the
m, but Grandpapa Littleton put out his cane to stop her, not so accidentally setting it on the hem of her clinging green satin gown. Which ripped, right up the back, revealing her lack of petticoat or much else under it.
“That’s Maeve, all right,” the fellow with the spyglass yelled for the benefit of his deaf friend. “I never forget a—”
“Not in my granddaughter’s ballroom,” Mr. Littleton warned, grabbing for the magnifying glass. Lady Greenlea was already out the door, the efficient Parker draping a cloak around her.
“Good riddance, I say,” Nicky called after her, until West’s glare stopped him. “I’ll just, ah, say adieu to some of my chums, shall I?”
Penny looked around to see the shambles of her ball. All her guests were scurrying to spread the tale. Even the orchestra had stopped playing. Worse, West’s uninjured eye was narrowed, almost black instead of his usual warm brown color, and his mouth was set in a harsh line. The question in her mind was the cause of his anger. The rumors about her and Nigel? Nicky? Her failure as a hostess?
Perhaps, she thought in hope, he was mad at Lady Greenlea, or at himself for leaving her alone, the way Grandpapa blamed him? No, the dagger looks he was sending her way told her exactly the object of his fury. She had not trusted him, or acted like a proper viscountess. Now he made no pretense of smiling for the company, no efforts to urge the guests to stay. Penny thought about leaving with her father and his family, but Nicky had already noticed West’s dark looks and offered to accompany the Goldwaites home. “Coward,” she hissed as he made his farewells.
Nicky tapped his temple. “Older and wiser.” Then he became a boy again, pleading, “You won’t tell him, will you? I am speaking to Sir Gaspar about my future. If I can prove to West I am turning over a new leaf, perhaps he won’t be so mad. I don’t want to join the navy.”
“Is that what he threatened? Nevertheless, I do not think he is angry at you.”
“Only because he does not know the full story yet. Please, Penny?”
She was starting to get mad herself, not at Nicky, but at West. Half this mess could be laid at his door, for not being in London, for not marrying her when he should have. Besides, weren’t proper British gentlemen supposed to hide their feelings, not show any displays of emotion? He was doing a poor job of it, brusquely hurrying the last guests off, looking thunderclouds at the servants who were starting to clean up, glaring at Lady Bainbridge and Mr. Cottsworth as they said their good-nights. Then, without a word to Penny, he disappeared into the library. She took herself to bed. She thought about locking the door in case he was drinking himself into a rage, but West would not do that. At least she did not think so.
She dismissed her maid after being helped out of the rainbow gown, cursing West in her mind. She’d wanted him to be the one to unfasten the shimmering cloth, to see how eager she was to renew their lovemaking. The thought of joining their bodies together made her body grow taut and moist.
A plague upon her husband, he was about as eager as a goose going to market. Penny brushed her hair until it crackled, her temper along with it, while she waited for his huffiness to recall he had a wife.
He came to her door an hour later, still wearing his formal clothes, white satin knee breeches, white marcella waistcoat, dark blue superfine tailcoat, his neckcloth as pristine as when he donned it. He had the same grim lines at his down-turned mouth, the same dour crease between his eyes, one swollen, one skewering her with a steely glint.
Penny did not wait for the attack. She went on the offensive, instead. “I suppose you heard the rumors. You do not trust me.”
He was quick to return: “You did not trust me when I said I parted company with Maeve long before our wedding. Nor did you trust me to arrive in time for the ball, if at all. I saw the surprise in your eyes. And you did not tell my valet to lay out my evening wear, which delayed me further.”
“Further? You only made the beginning of the ball by minutes.”
“While you had nearly two weeks to make a byword of yourself.”
Penny started to close the door on him. “I refuse to speak of matters if your mind is already made up.”
He put his foot in the door to keep it open. “Blast it, my mind is so muddied I do not know what I think. I needed the last hour to compose myself enough not to tear the house apart. No, not you, so stop looking at me as if I had a horse whip in my hand. Thunderation, are you going to invite me in or are we going to wake up the household again?”
She stood back, reluctantly. He seemed larger and darker without his ready smile and easy charm. She ignored his words and put her dressing-table chair between them.
“None of it is true,” was all she said.
“I do not know what it is, dash it.” West reached out to touch her, then obviously thought better of it. He stroked one of his yellow roses, which were placed on the mantel in a porcelain vase, between two Stafford shire dogs.
Penny wanted to go to him. He should be stroking her skin, not a rose. But she could not give up Nicky’s part, and she could not name Nigel. West looked ready to issue a challenge here and now. “You shall have to trust me.”
“As I trusted you to handle your moneys yourself? I could have fought to have control of everything you own. A husband has that right, you know. Instead I let you keep your savings for yourself. Now I find out that you have closed your accounts. Without consulting me. I have no idea where you spent the money, and cannot like it.”
“You were gone. Furthermore, I did not need your permission to spend it as I saw fit, as we agreed before we wed.”
But West needed some of that money, which put him in a worse mood, if possible. “I gave you that right, not thinking you would abuse it. Or my good name. What, did you pay off your lover? The tittle-tattle has Nigel with a check in your name. Is that why you wanted him gone tonight, before I tore him limb from limb?”
“How dare you! Who knows where you have been for a fortnight? Yet when you finally come home, you accuse me, instead of apologizing for your mistress on my doorstep!”
“For the last time, she is not my mistress.” He took a step closer, leaning on the chair in front of her. “Now tell me what has been going on.”
“I did tell you, none of it is true.”
“You never wrote a check to Entwhistle?”
“Well, that is mostly true. But he never got the money.”
“You never called at his house when you knew no one else was home?”
She bit her lip. “Well, I was not thinking about where the family might be. And no, I shall not tell you why I went. I doubt you would believe anything I say. And isn’t it odd, don’t you think, how you asked first about the money, then about my call on Nigel? I wonder which is more important to you.”
He looked at her with sorrow. “If you still think I wed you for your money, then I suppose there is nothing left to say. Good night.”
She slammed the door behind him. She’d already said too much.
West could have kicked himself for not saying enough. Instead he kicked the door, and mumbled, “I love you.”
The door snapped open. “What did you say?”
“I said I love you, damn it.”
Which were the only words Penny wanted to hear. In a heartbeat she was in his arms, weeping. “I love you, too. Oh, West, I would never look at another man. You have to know that.”
With her in his embrace, nothing else mattered. He held her like he would never let go. “I do know it, just as I would never want another female.”
“And I moved the money into an account with both our names, so Nigel could not get his hands on any of it.”
“Both our names?”
“The bank manager said I could. So you can use it whenever you need. I have other investments in the funds, which I left in case I am destitute in my old age, but you will be there with me then, too, won’t you?”
“Forever,” he said between kisses. “And I don’t require a lot of cash, I swear. And I will put it back
for our children.”
“There is a lot of money.”
“Then we better get started on the children.”
Her nightgown got in the way. Penny was wearing the new white satin negligee, the one strategically trimmed with fluff and feathers. A feather got in his mouth when he kissed her neck. One went up his nose when he kissed her breast.
“Damn, I am tempted to toss the blasted thing out the window, to see if it flies,” he said, coughing and sneezing and pulling the fabric over her head. Penny held her arms up to help, then went back to tearing his clothes apart to get to his skin.
She laughed as she threw his cravat on the floor, atop her nightgown. “I thought you would like it. I bought it as a gift for you.”
He pushed her hands aside so he could kiss her naked body, without choking on a feather. When he reached her navel, he whispered, “You are the only present I need, past, present, and future.”
She was trembling now, her legs going watery in anticipation as his kisses went lower. “But . . . but there are twelve others.”
“One for every year of our betrothal?” he asked, his lips poised above the tight gold curls between her legs.
“No, one for every year I have loved you.”
“I will have to think of thirteen ways to show my gratitude.” He lowered his mouth. But he could not get past the first way. “I can’t wait, sweetings.” He did not even finish removing all his clothes. He kicked his shoes aside, ripping at his buttons, then carried Penny to the bed, and filled her with two weeks’ worth of wanting. “Sorry, so sorry,” he apologized for hurrying ahead and leaving her behind. “I’ll . . . make it up to you . . . next time.”
That was a bit more eagerness than Penny had bargained for. “How soon until next time?”
“Soon,” he answered, rolling off her, pulling her against him, one arm possessively cradling her breast, one of his legs over hers, so she could not move.
She had no place she’d rather be. Penny felt as full as when he was inside her, part of her. This time her heart was full of love. “We’ll straighten everything out in the morning—your brother, Nigel, Lady Greenlea, the money, all right?”
The Bargain Bride Page 26