The Romantic

by Madeline Hunter

  “I assume he is displeased.”

  “Very displeased. I told him I would publish it anyway. He said it was one reason he would make me return, along with the need for an heir, but I do not think this is about either of those things. Not really.”

  “What do you think it is about?”

  Her expression became thoughtful. “I spoke of his estates in Jamaica, and how the new law had taken away his slaves. Something frightening entered his eyes when I said that. An angry, resentful spark.”

  “The law will have economic consequences. Even with the compensation granted by Parliament, it will cost him dearly.”

  “I do not think it was the financial effects he reacted to. He liked owning slaves, Julian. He loved owning the rights to human beings and having them subjugated to him. He tried to recreate that world here in England, and after I left he visited Jamaica from time to time so he could enjoy that power again for a while. Now, with the new law, that is over. Legally, he can never know it again.”

  Except with me.The chamber seemed to whisper the words. He practically heard her thinking the final sentence that she did not speak.

  She was right. Glasbury could know something very close to those godlike rights with a wife or children.

  All men could, but most did not exploit the power.

  She rose and paced away to the window. She glanced through the curtains, as she so often did when Glasbury was discussed.

  “Until yesterday, I had not really understood what drove him. I had not comprehended just how wicked he is. I should have, however. In two days we will be facing the evidence that should have enlightened me.”

  “I sense that you are unsettled about seeing Cleo, Pen.”

  She tilted her head this way and that, peering through the darkening world, her breath making little fogs on the windowpane. “It is making me remember, that is all. Not that one ever really forgets.”

  Her voice was bland but her eyes looked haunted.

  She was remembering right now.

  He got up and went over to her. He did not want her remembering, ever.

  He carefully placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing the gesture to be reassuring and not possessive. He wanted to embrace her, however. He wanted to hold her and banish her worries. He wanted to make love to her. He had been thinking about little else for three days.

  “I will speak with Cleo alone, Pen. You do not have to see her at all.”

  She glanced back at him. He could see her wavering, tempted.

  She shook her head. “I was responsible for her. I should have understood sooner. If I am going to stir up the past, I should not shirk from witnessing what it does and what it means to her. I will not know otherwise whether she has the courage to stand beside me if the need arises.”

  She appeared so troubled and sad. He instinctively reacted and caressed down her arms in an impulse to— what? Comfort? Seduce?

  Her body flexed in awareness, then did not move. A lovely flush colored the elegant nape mere inches from his mouth. He waited for a sign, any sign at all, that said she would welcome more. He was indifferent to whether it should or should not be, and so hungry for her that the reasons did not matter.

  She did not move. She did not shrug off his hold. Her beautiful neck mesmerized him. He was convincing himself that a seduction would not be dishonorable, when a small commotion interrupted him.

  Outside the door a feminine voice called for hot water. Shoes stomped on wood amidst loud muttering about bitter cold, drenching rain, and muddy streets.

  Catherine had returned and was ensuring they heard her arrival.

  Pen jumped out of his hands, and hurried to the other side of the chamber.

  chapter 12

  Will Mr. Hampton be wanting to depart at once?”

  Typical of her somewhat nettlesome efficiency, Catherine was busy planning the morning down to the last minute while she and Pen ate breakfast at the table in the chamber they shared.

  “I have not spoken to Mr. Hampton since he left us last evening, so I do not know what he intends.”

  After the awkwardness that had greeted Catherine’s return last night, Pen felt some obligation to clarify that she and Julian were nothaving an affair, nor intending to start one.

  “Mr. Hampton spoke of a short journey today. Are we near your destination?”

  Pen had suffered a restless night and unsettled morning. Her conversation with Julian last evening had provoked reactions that she could not sort out. A wrenching sadness shadowed all the confusion, and not only because of Cleo.

  His touch, his closeness, the overwhelming manner in which her spirit had hoped he would embrace her—her need for comfort and distraction was luring her to abuse their friendship most ignobly.

  Catherine’s reference to the journey’s conclusion made her agitation rumble. “We should arrive today. We will stay a day or two. After that, I do not know where I am going.” Perhaps to America. You can come, too. Even Julian will approve if you are there blazing a path for me through the wilderness.

  They prepared for their journey, only to discover that Catherine’s cloak was still heavy with damp from last night’s walk in the rain.

  “Take my blue one and I will use the brown one,” Penelope said. She bent to flip through the garments folded into her smaller trunk.

  Catherine smoothed her palm over the superfine bright sapphire wool. “This is a very lovely cloak.”

  “My brother gave it to me.” Not Mr. Hampton, and not the earl, Pen wanted to add. Never the earl. His allowance had not even paid for her house in London without additional help from Laclere. Help that could ill be afforded when she first walked out.

  The cloak had been a gift, but there had been other garments less obviously given. After Laclere married and his fortunes improved, his wife Bianca made a habit of inviting Pen to join her on visits to modistes. The bills for Pen’s own dresses went to Laclere along with Biancas, with no accounting ever expected.

  I have not been in want, but it has not been easy. I have had to humble myself. I have been reduced to taking charity, no matter what other pretty name it is given.

  She was being stupid and she knew it. There was no competition with Catherine on who had been more miserable. Catherine would win that hands down just because of her daughter. But she wanted to disabuse this self-possessed young woman of any notion that just because a woman was a countess she paid no price at all, and lived in luxury and committed adultery with impunity and attended the best parties in her jewels and silks.

  Catherine’s presence became intrusive and annoying. For one thing, Pen noticed that the blue cloak looked stunning on her. It made her appear fresh and lovely and brought out peaches in her cheeks.

  Julian already thought Catherine was admirably independent. If he saw her now, he would also realize she was gorgeous.

  “The other cloak is not here. Please go and ask the servants to bring my large trunk from the carriage.”

  As Catherine left, her blue eyes glanced to the wall adjoining Julian’s chamber.

  The glance did not seem conspiratorial on Pen’s behalf this time. Pen pictured the man in that chamber the way Catherine saw him, handsome and dark and cool and masterful. If he kissed this young woman the way he had kissed the Countess of Glasbury, he could probably have whatever he wanted. Catherine would ask only for protection in return.

  Pen fussed with the mess she had made in her small trunk, fretting all the while with a simmering unhappiness. She did not know its reason, but it was making her sour and nasty this morning.

  “Will you be ready to depart within the hour?”

  She looked toward the doorway, and the question. Julian stood there. Yes, handsome and dark and cool and—

  “Did Catherine leave my door open?” she asked.

  “It appears that she did.”

  “Well, please close it. And go away. I am not fit company for anyone today.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know
why, Julian. I just wish my other trunk would arrive. I want to take a turn in the fresh air. Perhaps then I will feel better.” She slammed the lid down on her trunk. “When will we see Cleo?”

  He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, neither entering nor leaving. “We will arrive in Grossington this afternoon. I thought that we would call on Mrs. Kenworthy tomorrow, unless you would prefer to do it some other way.”

  “There is no other way. For once, where Cleo is concerned, I should not be a coward.” She pushed to her feet. “I will go to my trunk, since the alternative is to wait a year for it to come to me.”

  For once, where Cleo is concerned, I should not be a coward.

  She was remembering things she did not want to remember. She admitted that as she strolled through a kitchen garden tucked behind the inn. Every mile closer to Cleo brought forth more images that engendered more guilt and humiliation.

  She had been so ignorant. So unbelievably naive. When she had seen that isolated country house in Wiltshire filled with the dark-skinned servants, she had never suspected that they still lived in England like the slaves they had been in Jamaica.

  She had not guessed that Glasbury kept that private estate so that he could indulge himself with those servants in ways no English servant would allow.

  His ability to do so had probably protected her for a while. It had been a year before he began treating her like a slave, too.

  At first the earl’s dictates had been mild, but his scathing anger made her fear displeasing him. He would order her to change her gown for dinner, then dislike her new choice and make her change again and again, each time heaping her with criticism about her inadequacies as a countess.

  He found fault with everything, until she dreaded his presence and cringed at his approach. He isolated her from her friends. He said terrible things about her family and went into a rage if she had the temerity to object. When she did not become pregnant, he used that as a lash, too.

  Her fear grew and her joy died. He liked what he was doing to her. He fed on the tremor in her voice, on her vain and anxious attempts to please him. For her efforts she received only more criticism, more demands, more rules.

  Finally, when he had her cowed and childish and afraid to think, the punishments began.

  She halted in her walk and stood there, immobile, as those memories finally broke through the barriers she had built around them.

  The physical punishment had been the least of it. The rituals he demanded were what made it thoroughly degrading. He never just hit her. He let her wait, knowing what was coming, like a child preparing for a whipping.

  Then he would arrive in her chamber and demand she strip naked and walk to him and lay herself across his lap so he could use his hand on her bottom.

  It aroused him. It took her a long time to realize that. And the rituals got more creative, and more sexual. She winced at the memory of the first night he made her crawl to him and turn and raise her bottom to his strap until she was screaming. When he had her begging him to stop he had taken her like the submissive animal he had made her become.

  She wiped the images from her mind. She forced them back into the shadows where she kept them. She had gotten off easy compared to little Cleo. Or at least she escaped before he dared go as far with her as he had with that girl.

  A blue cloak appeared near the garden gate. Catherine spied her and gestured to indicate the carriage was ready to depart.

  Pen marched to the inn’s yard, consumed by an unholy anger toward herself. She should not have been so docile. She should have confided in someone, no matter how humiliating the admissions would have been.

  She should have seen sooner that she was not the only female in that household who cowered and shrank when his attention lit on her.

  The activity of departure distracted her. Focusing on the confusion of carriages in the yard, she was able to block other, darker thoughts from her mind.

  They would come, however. She did not doubt that they would. She would not be able to face Cleo and not face the past, too.

  •••

  The sun shone all the way to Grossington that afternoon, but it did not lighten Penelope’s mood. She had returned from her walk as preoccupied with her thoughts as when she had left. Even above on the box with the driver, Julian could sense her disquiet.

  That night he stood by the window of his chamber, looking out on the silence. On the other side of the wall he could hear subtle movements. Floorboards creaked in a regular rhythm as feet trod them, back and forth.

  She was remembering things, she had said.

  He held the vigil with her, even though she would never know. For two hours he listened to her pace.

  He takes pleasure in giving punishment.Those were the words she had used that day while she looked resolutely at a corner in his chambers so that she would not see his reaction.

  He guessed that she had spent weeks finding a way to say it without having to actually say much at all. It had been eloquent in its own way, however. She had not said he beats me when he is drunk.Her simple statement had alluded to much more.

  It seemed the pacing would never stop. Finally he could no longer bear it. He stepped out of his chamber and lightly rapped on the door several feet from his own.

  The door opened a crack. Pen stood there in her white nightdress and lace-trimmed cap, with a blue shawl wrapping her shoulders and breasts.

  He looked in her eyes and knew that she would pace all night.

  He pressed the door wider with his palm. In the chamber’s darkness, he could see Catherine sleeping on a small bed against the wall.

  He took Pen’s hand and pulled her out of the room and closed the door. Ignoring her resistance, he dragged her into his chamber.

  chapter 13

  She crossed her arms over the shawl and pressed her back against his door.

  “Catherine says that if men accost her, they find her knee where they wear no armor.”

  “If I accost you, I deserve the same.”

  He walked away from her because he did want to touch her, very much. She looked lovely and womanly in her nightdress. He imagined plucking the bed cap off her head and her hair falling down.

  “You have not been to sleep yet, Pen. The night is half gone.”

  “You have not been to sleep, either.”

  “I have been listening to you pace.”

  “It happens sometimes that I cannot sleep.” She still hugged the door with her back, as if she feared him.

  “There is a reason this time, however. I will go alone tomorrow.”

  “You cannot spare me this, Julian. You have no shield that will protect me from this dragon.” She moved away from the door. Her expression turned sad as she walked aimlessly about the chamber. “I was the mistress of that house. I was responsible. But I was blind.”

  “He made sure you were too frightened to see.”

  “No, Julian, I covered my own eyes because what existed in front of them made no sense, and was so foreign to the world I knew.” She shot him a challenging look. “He did not want me unseeing at all. So one night when he punished Cleo, he forced me to witness it. I was horrified. Shocked. Both trembling and numb at the same time. I did not comprehend all of it yet, but I could not lie to myself after that. So I came to you.”

  He had always guessed that one specific episode had driven her to the confidences in his chambers. There had been an initiation. A night when the earl had shown Pen what his pleasure really required. No doubt he had thought her fully broken by then.

  He had been wrong. The soft, innocent bride had proven stronger than the earl expected.

  “It was disgusting,” she muttered, speaking more to herself than to him. “I thought I had descended into hell.”

  “You had.”

  “My heart broke for her. But one thought stayed in my head and would not go away. A selfish one. That could be me, I thought. Someday, it willbe me.”

  She turned away. He knew she was crying.
His heart clenched. He went to her and laid his hands on her shoulders. “You got her out, Pen.”

  “Yougot her out, Julian.” She turned, but did not pull away from his touch. “You guessed all of it, didn’t you? That imagination of yours could see it all, couldn’t it?”

  Her eyes sparkled with the tears brimming in them. “You always knew what he did with her. And with me.”

  “I do not dwell on what he did with you.” He brushed a tear off her cheek with his thumb. “You were only a victim. A sweet, kind girl who had been grabbed by the devil. I have wanted to kill Glasbury because of it, but it never once changed my thoughts about you.”

  Her reaction almost broke his heart. She appeared grateful, skeptical, and terribly vulnerable. The old images of meeting Glasbury on a field of honor entered his head.

  Thank God she had been strong. Thank God she had found the courage to leave. And thank God her experiences had not indeed ruined her, or left her a shell of a person as they had little Cleo.

  His thumb still rested on her soft cheek. Her eyes still held confusion and sadness. The chamber pulsed with a raw intimacy provoked by her emotions.

  “I should go,” she said.

  “Will you sleep now?”

  “Most likely not.”

  “Then stay here. We will await the dawn together.”

  “I should not.”

  He could not bear the thought of her returning to her chamber and the memories. “If you are not alone, perhaps the dragon will stay in his lair.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Rest here in my arms. You will be back in your chamber before Catherine wakes.”

  She did not agree, but she did not refuse, either. When he stepped backward toward the bed there was no real resistance in the body that he guided by the hand.

  She looked at the bed for a long while.

  “If I accost you, you can always follow Catherine’s advice about knees and no armor,” he said.

  She giggled. The musical sound broke through the sadness and lifted the darkness.

  She removed her shawl, folded it neatly, and placed it on a chair. The domesticity of the action entranced him.