This time she accepted that that was how it would be; she’d gone into this with her eyes open. They would share and indulge in physical pleasure as they would, until they grew tired of it; she had no doubt that whatever transpired they would remain forever friends. He would go off and do whatever he would do, and she would continue as she had been, but with a wealth of memories to warm her, to reassure her that she was as female, as feminine, as desirable as any of her sex.
She knew, this time, what she wanted from him; this time that matched what she could expect to receive. This time, she hadn’t put her heart on the table and expected to receive his in return.
Her gaze drifted to his face, the section she could see. His dark hair lay in heavy locks over his forehead; his beard was starting to shadow his jaw.
Again, that odd, lingering, wanting look of his filled her mind…
He’d spoken of a jigsaw with pieces that didn’t fit; this seemed more like one thread too many for the tapestry she’d thought they’d been weaving. That look was evidence of an extra strand, something she hadn’t expected, something that didn’t fit with the picture of them she’d assembled in her mind.
But that look had been real, not imagined, not something concocted for her distraction. It had been raw, undisguised, unshielded.
Which was why it wouldn’t leave her mind.
Charles came awake in the instant the tumblers of the lock on Penny’s door clunked. He sat up, looked across the room, aware she was awake, too.
The latch lifted, the door swung noiselessly open—all the way open.
The moonlight streaming in was bright; the unlit corridor was pitch-black in contrast. All he could see was the vague outline of a man.
He swore and leapt from the bed.
The man ran.
Grabbing up his breeches, he yanked them on, stomped into his boots. Penny had sat up, covers clutched to her chest, staring at the open door. The sound of running footsteps receding along the corridor reached them.
“Stay there!” He was at the door on the words; he paused only long enough to grab the key from the inside lock, fit it to the outside, then he slammed the door, locked it, and pocketed the key. And raced after the shadowy figure he glimpsed at the head of the stairs.
The man pelted down the stairs, leaping, swinging from the banister. Charles reached the top, and flung himself after him. The man was making for the front door. The bolts would slow him.
Except that the front door stood wide open.
Charles slowed in disbelief as he ran into the wide swath of moonlight pouring into the front hall. Realizing, he swerved to the side, out of the light. He heard the scrunch of booted feet fleeing—then nothing.
Walking out onto the porch, he looked in the direction of the last sound, but as he’d expected, the shrubbery was a mass of dense shadows. The man could be standing there or fleeing through it; it was impossible to tell.
Hands on his hips, he stood waiting for his breathing to even out, and softly swore. He was far too wise to give further chase. The man had come to Penny’s room; if he left the house, the villain might circle around and try for her again. He wasn’t leaving her unguarded, not in this lifetime.
But why the hell had the front door been unlocked? Not even the best locksman could get past its heavy double bolts.
He was turning to check the bolts when a shifting shadow made him freeze. Then he stared. Hands in his pockets, Nicholas came walking up along one of the garden paths, one easily reached from the rear of the shrubbery.
Charles waited where he was, in full sight.
Nicholas saw him from some distance away; reaching the steps, he started up. “What are you doing here?”
Charles paused long enough for Nicholas to sense how very wrong things were, then said, “Some man broke into Penny’s room.”
Nicholas stepped onto the porch. His jaw fell. “What?”
It was a convincing performance, yet Charles wasn’t sure, and wasn’t taking any chances. He waved inside. “The front door was left unbolted.”
Nicholas looked at the double doors, both standing wide. “I…I left them shut when I went out.”
“Shut, but not bolted?”
“Well, no…I had to get back inside.”
“Where have you been?”
“Out.” Apparently stunned, he waved vaguely toward the gardens. “I couldn’t sleep—I went for a walk…” Suddenly, he focused on Charles’s face. “Good God! Is Penny all right?”
Charles almost believed him; his horrified expression appeared very real. “Yes.” He paused, then added, “I was with her.” He started back into the house. Still apparently in shock, Nicholas trailed after him.
Hauling one huge door shut, Charles added, distinctly grim as he thought things through, “Just as well.”
Nicholas closed the other door; he stood back as Charles threw the bolts. “We’d better check the other doors, I suppose.”
“Yes.” Charles did, confirming that the other doors and windows on the ground floor were secure. Not that that meant much; any trained operative could find a way in, and he was sure, now, of the caliber of the enemy.
Nicholas trailed behind him, watching but not volunteering, also just as well. Aside from the fact Charles knew the house better than he did, Charles wouldn’t have accepted his word for anything, not even that a window was locked.
Finally, Charles climbed the stairs. Nicholas followed. Charles halted in the corridor at the stair head; Nicholas’s room was in the other wing, in the opposite direction from Penny’s.
Nicholas stepped up to the corridor; his gaze moved over Charles’s bare shoulders and chest, slid down to the knee buckles on his breeches, hanging free. Halting, he stared at Charles through the dimness, transparently making the obvious connections.
Charles simply waited.
Nicholas cleared his throat. “Ah…you said you were with Penny?”
Crouched behind her bedchamber door, her ear to the keyhole, Penny heard his question and the inference behind it.
“Damn!” She’d already sworn in both English and French at Charles for having locked her in. Panic of an unfamiliar and unprecedented sort had attacked her when she’d heard the thuds as two men—Charles and the mystery man—had gone flying down the stairs. After that, no matter how hard she’d strained her ears, she’d heard nothing. Her window gave onto the courtyard; she’d seen nothing either.
Now she listened with all her might. The door was old, solid, and thick, but so was the lock; the keyhole, with no key in it for Charles had taken it with him, was large. With her ear pressed against it, with night’s quiet prevailing through the rest of the house, she could hear their words. She had no idea where Nicholas had come from, but he and Charles were standing along the corridor, she thought near the stairs.
“Indeed.” That was Charles at his drawling worst. In the circumstances, pure provocation.
She heard an odd sound—wondered for one instant if Charles was throttling Nicholas—then realized it was Nicholas clearing his throat again.
“Ah…you mentioned you and Penny had an understanding. Am I to take it that there’ll soon be talk of a wedding?”
Behind her door, she screwed her eyes shut and swore at Nicholas. How dare he? She wasn’t his responsibility; he had no right to ask such questions, and definitely no right to prod Charles’s far-too-active conscience to life. Damn, damn, damn!
“Actually…” Charles’s drawl was getting even more dangerously pronounced. “That’s not the sort of understanding Penny and I have. Regardless, as far as I can see, whatever our understanding might be, it’s no concern of yours.”
Yes—precisely! She held her breath, listened as hard as she could. Given the tone of Charles’s last words, Nicholas would have to be witless to do anything other than climb down off his high horse and retreat.
“I see.” The words were clipped. After a moment, Nicholas added, “In that case, I’ll…no doubt see you in the morning.”
Relief swept her; straightening and stepping back from the door, she uttered a heartfelt prayer. The last thing—the very last thing—she needed at this point was for Charles to decide that he had to marry her out of some misplaced notion of propriety.
He stopped outside her door; she heard the key slide in, turn, then he opened the door. He saw her, stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it once more. Then he turned to her; his gaze traveled her face. She drew herself up, folded her arms beneath her breasts, thankfully concealed behind the robe she’d hastily donned, and narrowed her eyes at him.
His only response was to raise a faintly resigned brow.
“Why did you lock me in?”
He cocked his head, still watching her face. “I would have thought that was obvious—so he couldn’t easily return to attack you if he slipped past me.”
“And so I couldn’t follow you.”
His lips twisted; he looked away and moved past her to the bed. “That, too.”
With a swirl of her robe, she followed him. “What if he’d come back and picked the lock—he did the first time, why not again?”
Sitting on the bed and reaching for his boots, he glanced at her. “I credited you with having enough sense to scream. I would have heard you.”
Faintly mollified—why she wasn’t sure—she humphed. She wasn’t going to even attempt to explain the sudden fear for him that had assailed her. He was used to plunging headlong into danger; she’d told herself that. But she’d never before had to stand by and wait while he did it. “Did you see who it was?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t get any clear view of him, not even height or build. He was fast. When I got downstairs the front doors were wide-open—he went through like a hare and headed straight for the shrubbery.”
“Where was Nicholas?”
He told her. “At least, that’s where he said he was.”
“Well…” She suddenly felt cold. Shrugging out of her robe, she slipped back under the covers, tugging them up to her throat, snuggling back into the lingering warmth. “We do know he hasn’t been sleeping well.”
“Indeed.” Charles had seen her shiver and followed her progress. “What we don’t know is whether he’s so on edge he decided to do something about you, and left the doors open to create a plausible story of how someone broke into the house and attacked you while you slept. He didn’t know until just now that I’ve been staying every night.”
Setting aside his boots, he stood, stripped off his breeches, then crawled over the bed to slump beside her. He looked down at her for a moment, but couldn’t read her wide eyes. Reaching for the covers, he tugged them from her grip, lifted them, and joined her beneath.
He drew her into his arms and she came. He settled her head on his shoulder; she draped one arm across his chest, spread her hand over his heart.
They didn’t immediately fall asleep, yet despite the appearance of the intruder—something they’d both almost expected and so weren’t as surprised as they might have been—there was a sense of peace between them. As if simply being together created a haven of safety and security, a connection of such fundamental rightness no intruder could shatter it.
That rightness closed around them, cocooning them. She fell asleep first. Reassured, he followed suit.
“You can’t seriously mean to keep me with you for the entire day!”
Charles turned his head, simply looked at her, then faced forward and walked on, towing her behind him up the bank to the folly. He’d given up even the pretense of leaving; this morning, he’d quit her room only to go and change, then had gone straight down to breakfast—just in case Nicholas had not got his message last night.
From the shuttered but wary look on Nicholas’s face when he’d joined him at the table, Nicholas had, indeed, got the salient facts quite clear.
Unlike certain others.
She huffed out an exasperated breath. “And anyway, why here?”
“Because I need to think, and I’d just as soon keep Nicholas under observation while I do.” They reached the folly. He didn’t pause but towed her up the steps and along to the chaise with the best view, then faced her and released her hand.
Eyes narrowing, she glared at him, then, with a swish of her skirts, sat. He sat beside her.
“Very well,” she said. “If you must think, then think about this—why did whoever it was come to my room last night? Are we sure it was the murderer?”
He stared across the lawns to the house, screened by the intervening trees. “Why would some man come to your room at…what was it? Two in the morning?”
“Just before. Hmm…but even if he is the murderer, why?”
“That’s what I need to think about.” He’d left her discussing household matters with Mrs. Figgs and had gone to speak with Canter and the grooms. “I sent a message to Dennis Gibbs this morning, asking him to get the Gallants to keep their ears and eyes open regarding our five ‘visitors to the district.’ I spoke with Norris, too. Needless to say he was horrified.”
“Mmm…but I still can’t see why this person, whoever he is, would have any interest in me, not to the extent of breaking into the house and coming to attack me in my room. Anyway, how did he know which room was mine? Had he searched all of them?”
A scenario was taking shape in his mind. “I don’t think that’s how it happened. If we develop our theory of revenge…then I think he, whoever ‘he’ is, was watching the house, possibly with a view to making a move on Nicholas, and he saw Nicholas go out, leaving the front door unbolted. He must have thanked his stars, but then he was faced with two options. He could follow Nicholas and do away with him, or he could enter the house and do away with you—and leave suspicion hanging over Nicholas’s head.”
“But why me?”
“Two reasons. First, you’re Granville’s sister—he might well see you as Granville’s surrogate for revenge. He’s punished Gimby—the next on his list would be Granville before Nicholas. On top of that, he’d reason that Nicholas would know your death was, if not directly, then indirectly on his head. As a first attack on Nicholas, attacking you would do nicely.”
“You mean this man views me as a pawn?”
Her incipient outrage had his lips quirking. He closed one hand over hers. “Strangely, some men would see it that way.”
She sniffed, but left her hand under his. After a moment, she asked, “How did he know which room was mine?”
Charles thought back. “The open window. If he’d circled the house, that would have marked that room as the most likely. Once he got to the door and found it locked, he’d have been sure.”
She shivered.
He looked at her. “He won’t come back—I can take an oath on that. He knows I’ll be there, and it’s no part of his plans to get caught.”
Penny considered, then nodded, feeling rather better, not least because it seemed Charles planned to spend all forseeable nights with her. That was reassuring, and…she wasn’t sure what the lightening of her heart meant.
They sat for a while, thoughts rambling, then saw an open carriage come rolling up the drive.
“That’s Lady Carmody.”
They watched as her ladyship was handed out and went inside. Ten minutes later, Nicholas escorted her back to her carriage. He stood watching it roll away, then returned to the house.
“A dinner or, horrors, a musicale?”
She laughed. “Not a musicale—she hates music.”
“One point in her favor.” Charles stirred, stretched. “I hope she’s already called at the Abbey.”
“Why?”
“Because I think we should ride over there.”
She remembered. “And check if Dalziel has discovered anything and sent word.”
Together they rose and headed back to the house.
“I’ll speak to Norris—we can leave Nicholas under
his eye. I’m sure Nicholas will have understood the significance of last night’s intruder—given his behavior to date, he’ll most likely remain inside, in safety.”
“I’ll change into my habit—I won’t be long.”
“No rush. We can let Filchett and Mrs. Slattery feed us—there’s no reason we need return here until dinnertime.”
CHAPTER
15
CONTRARY TO THEIR HOPES, THEY REACHED THE ABBEY TO find no communication from London awaiting them. Filchett and Mrs. Slattery were delighted to serve them luncheon. Cassius and Brutus were equally ecstatic to have Charles at home again, and even better, with company.
A Lady of His Own Page 30