“Bella.” Marcus spoke softly in her ear and Isabella shivered to feel his breath against her skin.
“Mmm?”
“Who was that man?”
Isabella dragged herself from the sensual haze and tried to focus on Marcus’s face. “Which man?” She cleared her throat. “I mean to whom do you refer?”
Marcus laughed. “You sound somewhat distracted. Are you not attending, Bella?”
“Not particularly.” Isabella smoothed her fingers over the curve of his shoulder.
Marcus slanted her a quizzical look. “Then what were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about making love with you.”
Marcus missed his step. For a moment, Isabella wondered whether he would be taken aback by her brazen declaration, but then she saw the mixture of amusement and raw desire in his eyes.
“Generally or specifically?” His voice too had fallen to a rough whisper.
“Specifically. In about five minutes,” Isabella whispered back.
She had pushed it too far. Marcus released her at once, but only to take her hand and pull her off the dance floor and toward the door. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time to make their farewells. There were Mrs. Bulstrode’s concerns to deal with; that matron had thought that Isabella’s hasty departure must owe something to a sudden indisposition, which was true but it was not the same condition that Mrs. Bulstrode had in mind. Marcus swept the good lady aside with the promise that he would take care of his wife. Isabella dealt with Mrs. Goring’s pressing invitation to take tea with summary thanks. All she wanted was to be alone with Marcus in the intimate dark and feel his hands on her. Eventually they were in the coach, the door clicked shut, and she fell into his arms with a little moan of relief, welcoming his hungry mouth on hers.
She parted her lips, trying to breathe, as Marcus crushed his mouth to hers, sliding his tongue deep. His hands tangled in her hair. The kiss was hard but seductive, possessing her but then allowing her tongue to dance with his, to parry and tease and subdue. She was as eager and as eloquent as he.
Marcus slipped his hand into the bodice of her gown and cupped her breast. Isabella pressed closer, arching against his questing fingers. Her mind was blurred with desire. Again, she vaguely remembered that she had wanted to wait before giving herself to Marcus once more, but then she realized that she loved him and to her dazzled mind this seemed reason enough.
In a very short time, she found herself naked from the waist up, facing Marcus, her legs sprawled over his thighs. His hands were braced on her waist and Isabella leaned her head back and sighed with pleasure while he used his mouth on her breasts. He was raking his teeth gently over the tip and circling it with his tongue and she…well, she was drowning in pure sensation and never wanted it to stop.
The carriage jerked to a halt and she almost fell off Marcus’s lap.
“Damn it,” Marcus said, “we really must plan to make this a longer journey in future.”
He swiftly helped Isabella to rearrange her gown and provided a steadying hand as she stepped down and felt her legs buckle beneath her. She wanted him to scoop her up and carry her inside, up the stairs and to the bedchamber. But he was scrupulously careful. In the faint light of the carriage lamps, he turned to her and spoke very quietly.
“Bella, if you have changed your mind then I shall let you go in now. I must do, or I will never allow you to sleep alone.”
Isabella grabbed his arm. “I do not want you to,” she said urgently.
There were no more words. Marcus slid an arm about her waist and drew her up the steps to the front door, pulling her with him into the hall. The excited laughter bubbled up in Isabella’s throat. She could feel the urgency in his hands and the ardent desire in his touch. In a moment they would be safe in her bedchamber and they could tear each other’s clothes away and fall into the feather mattress and take each other with all the fierce passion that she could feel sweeping through her….
She stopped dead, all thoughts of racing up the staircase to bed abruptly banished.
A quantity of luggage was piled up at the bottom of the stairs and from the drawing room came the sound of upraised voices.
“Pen,” Isabella said flatly. “And Freddie, too, I suspect.”
“Lord Standish and Miss Penelope Standish have arrived, my lord, my lady,” the housekeeper confirmed, bustling out into the hall, “and Mr. Cantrell.”
Isabella exchanged a look with Marcus and saw an expression of faint surprise and something more in his eyes, almost as though he had been expecting this. He looked at her and shook his head with disbelief and a fierce frustration.
Isabella bit her lip. “How very inconvenient,” she said.
“My lord?” the housekeeper said uncertainly. “I put your guests in the drawing room.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Lawton,” Marcus said slowly. He took a deep breath, smiled at Isabella and held out a hand.
“Come, my dear, and let us see what our unexpected guests have to say for themselves.”
They could hear Pen upbraiding her brother even as Mrs. Lawton opened the door for them.
“Really, Freddie,” Pen was saying, “whatever can have got into you? To leave in such a hurry and with no proper word!”
“I fancied a trip to the seaside,” Isabella heard Freddie say defensively. “M’health, you know.”
“Balderdash!” Pen denounced. “You hate the country.”
“Yes!” Freddie seized on it. “I hate the country but not the seaside, Penelope…”
“Good evening, children,” Isabella said peaceably, going across to the sofa to kiss Pen on the cheek while Marcus greeted Alistair. “We could hear you out in the courtyard! What a delightful treat to see you both!”
“I am sorry, Bella.” Pen had the grace to look faintly embarrassed. She swung around on the sofa. “Good evening, cousin Marcus.” She turned back. “I was just telling Freddie that he should not go dashing off without proper preparation.”
“We heard that, too,” Isabella agreed, very conscious that Marcus was studying Freddie’s languid form with a curious speculative look. “I take it, then, that you did not travel down here together?”
“No indeed,” Pen said indignantly, “since Freddie did not wait long enough for me to accompany him!”
“Devil a bit,” Freddie said, flushing. “Spur of the moment impulse, y’know. Can a man not be spontaneous when he wishes to be?”
Isabella turned to Alistair Cantrell, who was waiting in his customary quiet manner.
“Good evening, Mr. Cantrell,” she said. “I apologize for the fact that you have been obliged to tolerate my difficult siblings and I must thank you for escorting my sister safely here.”
“Pleasure, Lady Stockhaven,” Alistair said promptly.
“I see that you have been offered refreshment,” Isabella added, her gaze falling on the remnants of a tray of food that looked as though it had been set upon by wild animals, “and that Pen at least has partaken.”
“I was hungry,” Pen said defensively. “Traveling raises an appetite.”
There was a silence. Isabella noticed that Alistair Cantrell was watching Pen, a smile lurking in his eyes. Isabella mentally raised her brows. Pen and Mr. Cantrell? She had noticed their mutual interest in London but had assumed that Alistair was just another of the poor unfortunates entranced by Pen’s prettiness only to be disillusioned by her independent mind. Perhaps this time, however, things would be different.
“I was going to take a nightcap,” Marcus said easily. “Alistair, Standish, would you care to join me?” He looked at Freddie and once again Isabella was aware of an element of speculative antagonism in his gaze. She had sensed it before, this animosity between Freddie and Marcus, but she was at a loss to explain it.
Freddie shifted a little uncomfortably. “Think I’ll have a word with m’sister first, Stockhaven, if you will excuse me.”
“Of course,” Marcus said politely, ushering Alistair
toward the door. “We shall be in the library should you care to join us.” He glanced at Isabella, a smile lurking about his mouth. His look spoke of apology and promise, and Isabella understood it very well.
“Good night, my love,” he said.
Isabella sighed unconsciously, then returned to her warring siblings as the door closed behind her husband.
“Tell you what, Pen,” Freddie was saying, “Cantrell won’t be so interested now he’s seen what a virago you are, tearing a strip off me like that. No man likes a shrew!”
Pen blushed fiery red. “I am not attempting to attract Mr. Cantrell, Freddie.”
“And a good thing, too!” her brother interrupted caustically. “Nothing gives a fellow a greater disgust than a haranguing woman!”
“Freddie, Pen,” Isabella interposed. “If you could cease your squabbles for just one moment to tell me what is going on, I should be grateful.”
“Have we interrupted your honeymoon by arriving unannounced, Bella?” Pen inquired, picking the crumbs from the tea tray. “If Marcus is not expecting to see you again tonight then I gather not. It seems a lukewarm affair, this marriage of yours.”
“That is none of your concern,” Isabella said with composure, resisting the impulse to tell Pen that had she not arrived so inconveniently, her marriage would have been white hot.
“What concerns me is why you both decided so precipitately that a visit to the seaside was in order.” She looked interrogatively at her brother. “Freddie?”
Freddie shifted uncomfortably. “Fancied some company and sea air,” he muttered. “No society in Town now that the Season is at an end. With you gone, too, Bella, things were dull.”
“You flatter me,” Isabella said dryly. She could tell from the stubborn expression on Freddie’s face that she was unlikely to get any more information from him, though she doubted that this was even approaching the truth. She could see unhappiness as well as a bullish obstinacy in his face. She decided to let it lie for a little.
“And you, Pen?” she inquired.
“It was your fault,” Pen said, firing up. “You seem to forget, Bella, that you were the one who left London in a hurry in the first place. I was worried about you. Then Freddie rushed off and I did not know what to do. So I sent for Mr. Cantrell.”
“As one would,” Freddie put in.
Pen ignored him. “We agreed that the best thing would be to come down here and ascertain that everything was well.”
“How extraordinarily precipitate you have both been,” Isabella commented dryly. “I hope you were accompanied by a maid, Pen.”
Pen’s blush deepened. “Naturally Mr. Cantrell arranged for the proprieties to be observed. We borrowed a servant from his mother’s establishment.” She sighed. “One would expect no less of him. He is everything that is proper.”
With a flash of intuition and no little surprise, Isabella recognized that part of the reason for Pen’s fidgets and bad temper was thwarted desire. She was flushed and agitated and on edge after hours in the company of a man whose behavior had been so utterly irreproachable that it would make one want to scream. Isabella prayed that Freddie’s natural obtuseness would keep him from making the same deduction until she could spirit Pen from the room.
“Well,” she said placatingly. “You are here now and I am very glad to see you both. You must be tired. Are you ready to go up to your rooms?”
“You may take Pen up,” Freddie said. “I would prefer a nightcap of that brandy you have over there, Bella.”
“As you wish,” Isabella said. “You do not prefer to join Marcus and Mr. Cantrell?”
Freddie looked shifty. “Prefer to take a snifter on my own.”
Once again Isabella felt that prickle of awkwardness in his manner. It was going to be a rather difficult house party if her husband and her brother were living in a state of armed neutrality. She sighed.
“Very well,” she said. “Then Mrs. Lawton will show you to your room when you are ready.”
She took Pen’s arm and they went out of the drawing room and up the stairs. She could hear Marcus and Alistair talking together quietly in the library and, although Pen cast a glance in the direction of the door, she hurried past, her color still high. Isabella could see that she was deeply preoccupied. She made no observations about being back at Salterton Hall and no sooner had they reached the privacy of the blue bedchamber than she grabbed Isabella’s hand.
“Bella, there is something that I simply must tell you, and then you may cast me from the house if you please!”
Isabella looked at her. “I am sure I shall do nothing so gothic, Penelope. What must you confess?”
Pen threw herself down into the armchair and wrung her hands together. “Mr. Cantrell tells me that I must tell all to you—”
“I see,” Isabella said, suddenly quaking at the thought that she had misread the situation completely and that Alistair Cantrell had seduced her sister on the journey to Salterton.
“I was going to tell you in my own time, but I never seemed to have the appropriate opportunity. It was simply that we had no money, and I was so worried about Freddie’s debts.” Pen’s blue eyes were anguished. “Oh, Bella, please forgive me! I never meant to betray your confidence.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Isabella said, “although you are alarming me somewhat, Pen.”
“The gossip column in the papers!” Pen said dramatically. She dragged her portmanteau into the middle of the floor and unbuckled the lid, talking all the time. “I wrote scandal for Mr. Morrow at the Gentlemen’s Athenian Mercury! All the bits about your debts and the house in Brunswick Gardens and your sudden marriage…”
“I see,” Isabella said slowly.
“I needed the money,” Pen said miserably, rummaging through the case and sending her underwear flying. “I thought it would not matter, Bella, but then when we got to know one another again I liked you so much that I felt an absolute traitor….”
Isabella sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “Let me understand you aright,” she said. “You are the one who was feeding those stories to the press.”
“Yes.” Pen was flushed and unhappy. She sat back on her heels, copies of all the papers now in her hands. “I am so sorry! I felt as though I had betrayed you and Mr. Cantrell said—”
“Yes,” Isabella said. “Where does Mr. Cantrell fit into all this?”
“He writes for the same newspaper. We met at Morrow’s offices and Mr. Cantrell guessed that I had been the one submitting the column. He urged me to tell you the truth.”
“I am glad that someone in this has some scruples,” Isabella said dryly.
Pen blushed harder. “Oh, Bella, pray do not hate me! I was so desperate for the money, but then we met up again after all these years and it felt so wrong to take advantage and I have been desperately torn.” She sighed. “I see now that it was very bad of me.” She sighed. “I will never do it again. There must be other ways of finding the money rather than bartering with my sister’s good name.”
Isabella was silent. She understood rather more than Pen knew of what it felt like to be so desperate.
“You made reference to Freddie’s debts,” she said. “I had no notion. Is that what this is all about, Pen? Are they very bad?”
“I do not know for sure,” Pen said unhappily, “but the household bills are mounting up and we cannot pay the maid and I fear there is a lot Freddie is hiding from me.”
“Such as why he came dashing down here to Salterton on a whim,” Isabella said thoughtfully. “Why did you tell me none of this before, Pen?”
“You had your own difficulties,” Pen said, troubled. “I am sorry that I did not confide. I wish I had told you sooner.”
Isabella was frowning. “I cannot believe that you would sell the story of my marriage to the gossip merchants.”
Pen looked as though she was going to cry. “I am sorry! I swear I never meant to stoop so low.” She sighed. “Do you hate me, Bella?
”
Isabella shook her head. “I cannot hate you, Pen. I know all too well what it is like to be in dire financial straits. Besides, we do not have much family left, do we? We cannot afford to lose one another.”
Pen burst into tears. “Oh damnation!” She blew her nose loudly on a pair of drawers. “I am so sorry, Bella! How can I make amends?”
Isabella sighed. “You can tell me everything you know of Freddie’s situation,” she said, settling back against the bed head. “And I mean everything, Pen.” She frowned. “Have you ever known Freddie to rush off anywhere, least of all the seaside? There is something going on here.”
Pen got to her feet. “Yes, that was the most extraordinary thing. Of course he had had that odd letter at breakfast, and he dashed off straight away, but he never came back! I had gone to see you,” she added reproachfully. “We were supposed to be attending the exhibition at the Royal Academy.”
“So we were,” Isabella said, trying to sort her sister’s jumbled information into order. Not for the first time, she reflected that very clever people could sometimes be extremely hard to follow. “What odd letter was this, Pen?”
“A letter about his gambling debts, apparently.” Pen yawned. “I beg your pardon, Bella. I am so tired. I know this is making little sense.” She rubbed her eyes. “He received the letter at breakfast and hurried out immediately. He never came back—he merely sent me some cock-and-bull message about going to Salterton. And he left without any luggage.”
“He has some now,” Isabella said slowly. “I saw it in the hall.”
Pen frowned. “Now that is passing strange, for where could he have got it from?”
“He could have bought some essentials on the journey, I suppose,” Isabella said.
Pen spread her hands. “But he has no money!”
“Gambling debts,” Isabella said quietly. She thought of their father and his weakness for deep play and the anguish squeezed her heart. Please, God, Freddie had not got himself embroiled with some hideous moneylender who would bleed him dry.
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