She pushed back her chair, but then made the mistake of looking up and meeting his eyes. The candle flame glowed in them, giving his face a devilish cast, one the lean, harsh planes, wide brow and bladelike nose, and the tumbling locks of his thick black hair only emphasized. His eyes were heavy-lidded; his jaw was chiseled, but its hard lines were offset by the subtle beauty of lips sculpted by some demon to lure mortal women into sin.
As for his body, with broad, squared shoulders, lean torso, and well-muscled, rangy limbs, he exuded strength tempered by a grace only few men possessed. His hands were narrow, long-fingered, by themselves quite beautiful. The entire package was quite sufficient to make an angel weep.
Yet his sensual allure wasn’t his greatest threat, not to her. He knew her, far better than anyone else in the world. With her, he had a card he could play-one she sensed he more than any man alive would know how to play-a weapon guaranteed to make her comply.
As he sat and looked at her-did nothing more than let the weight of his gaze rest on her-she had no difficulty imagining and believing what his life had been like for the past decade and more. He didn’t need to tell her that he’d been alone for all those years, that he’d let no one close, or that he’d killed, and could kill again, even with his bare hands. She knew he had the strength for it; she now knew beyond doubt that he had the courage and conviction for it.
He never called her Penelope except on formal occasions; he used Penny when they were with family. When they’d been alone, he’d often teased her with a different moniker, Squib, a nickname that said it all; when it came to anything physical, he would always be the victor.
Yet this wasn’t physical, and when it wasn’t, he didn’t always win. She’d dealt with him in the past; she could do so again.
Holding his gaze, she stood. “I can’t tell you-not yet. I need to think.” Stepping around the table, she walked neither hurriedly nor slowly toward the door. It lay beyond him; she had to pass him to leave.
As she did, he shifted. She sensed his muscles bunch, tense, but he didn’t rise.
She reached the doorway, and silently exhaled.
“
She froze. He’d called her that on only one occasion. His threat was there in his tone, unspoken yet unmistakable.
She waited a heartbeat; when he said nothing more, she looked back. He hadn’t moved; he was looking at the candle. He didn’t turn to face her.
He couldn’t face her…
A knot inside unraveled; tension flowed away. She smiled, softly, knowing he couldn’t see. “Don’t bother- there’s no point. I know you, remember? You’re not the sort of man who would.”
She hesitated for another second, then quietly said, “Good night.”
He didn’t reply, didn’t move. She turned and walked away down the corridor.
Charles listened to her footsteps retreating, and wondered what malevolent fate had decreed he’d face this. Not the sort of man to blackmail a lady? Much she knew. He’d been exactly such a man for more than a decade.
He heard her reach the front hall, and exhaled, long and deep. She knew not just some minor piece of the puzzle but something major; he trusted her intelligence too well to imagine she was overreacting to some inconsequential detail she’d inadvertently stumbled on. But…
“
The ramparts were raised earthworks ringing the Abbey’s gardens to the south. The view from their broad, grassed top took in much of the Fowey estuary; on a clear day, one could see the sea, winking and glimmering beyond the heads.
He walked, at first steering his thoughts to mundane things, like the wolfhounds lolloping around him, diverting to investigate scents, but always returning to his side. He’d got his first pair when he’d been eight years old; they’d died of old age just months before he’d joined the Guards. When he’d returned home two years ago with Napoleon exiled to Elba, he’d got these two. But then Napoleon had escaped and he’d gone back into the field, leaving Cassius and Brutus to Lydia’s care.
Despite Lydia’s affection, much to her disgust, the instant he’d reappeared the hounds had reattached themselves to him. Like to like, he’d told her. She’d sniffed and taken herself off, but still sneaked treats to the pair.
What was he going to do about Penny?
The question was suddenly there in his mind, driving out all else. Halting, he threw back his head, filled his lungs with the cool, tangy air. Closed his eyes and let all he knew of the Penny who now was flood his mind.
When he’d first returned home, his mother, unprompted, had informed him, presumably by way of educating his ignorance of their neighbors, that Penny hadn’t married. She’d had four perfectly successful London Seasons; she was an earl’s daughter, well dowered and, if not a diamond of the first water, then more than passably pretty with her delicate features, fair, unblemished skin, long flaxen hair, and stormy gray eyes. Her height, admittedly, was to some a serious drawback-she was about half a head shorter than he, putting her eye to eye with many men. And she was…he’d have said willowy rather than skinny, with long limbs and svelte, subtle curves; she was the antithesis of buxom, again not to every man’s taste.
Then, too, there were the not-inconsequential elements of her intelligence and her often waspish tongue. Neither bothered him-indeed, he greatly preferred them over the alternatives-but there were, admittedly, not many gentlemen who would feel comfortable with such attributes in their wives. Many would feel challenged in a threatening way, not an attitude he understood but one he’d witnessed often enough to acknowledge as real.
Penny had always challenged him, but in a way that delighted him; he appreciated and enjoyed their near- constant battles of wits and wills. Witness the one they were presently engaged in; despite the seriousness of the situation, he was conscious of the past stirring, elements of their long-ago association resurfacing-and part of that was the challenge of dealing with her, of interacting with her again.
According to his mother, she’d received dozens of perfectly good offers, but had refused every one. When asked, she’d said none had filled her with any enthusiasm. She was, apparently, happy living as she had for the past seven years, at home in Cornwall watching over her family’s estate.
She was the only offspring of the late Earl of Wallingham’s first marriage; her mother had died when she was very young. Her father had remarried and sired one son and three daughters by his second wife Elaine, a kindly, good-hearted lady-his godmother as a matter of fact. She’d taken Penny under her wing; they’d grown to be not so much mother and daughter as close friends.
The earl had died five years ago; Penny’s half brother Granville had succeeded to the title. A sole male with a doting mother and four sisters, Granville had always been spoiled, tumbling from one scrape into the next with nary a thought for anyone or anything beyond immediate gratification.
He’d last met Granville when he’d returned home in ’14; Granville had still been reckless and wild. Then had come Waterloo. Fired by the prevailing patriotic frenzy, Granville had shut his ears to his mother’s and sisters’ pleas and joined one of the regiments. He’d fallen somewhere on that bloody plain.
The title and estate had passed to a distant cousin, the Marquess of Amberly, an older gentleman who had assured Elaine and her daughters that they could continue to live as they always had at Wallingham Hall. Amberly had been close to the previous earl, Penny’s father, and had been Granville’s guardian prior to Granville attaining his majority.
And thus the freedom to get himself killed, leaving his mother and sisters, if far from destitute, then without immediate protectors.
That, Charles decided, opening his eyes and starting to pace again, was what bothered him most. Here was Penny already involved in God knew what, and there wasn’t any male in any position to watch over her. Except him.
How she’d feel about that he didn’t know.
At the back of his mind hovered a lowering suspicion over why she hadn’t been eager to marry, why no gentleman had managed to persuade her to the altar, but how she now thought of him, how she now viewed him, he didn’t know and couldn’t guess.
