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.
She’d be prickly almost certainly, but prickly-yet-willing-to-join-forces, or prickly-and-wanting-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-him? With ladies like her, it wasn’t easy, or safe, to guess.
He did know how he felt about her—that had been an unwelcome surprise. He’d thought thirteen years would have dulled his bewitchment, but it hadn’t. Not in the least.
Since he’d left to join the army, he’d seen her a few times in ’14, and then again over the past six months, but always at a distance with family, both his and hers, all around. Nothing remotely private. Tonight, he’d come upon her unexpectedly alone in his house, and desire had come raging back. Had caught him, snared him, sunk its talons deep.
And shaken him.
Regardless, it was unlikely there was anything he could do to ease the ache. She’d finished with him thirteen years ago—cut him off; he knew better than to hold his breath hoping she’d change her mind. She was, always had been, unbelievably stubborn.
They would have to set that part of their past aside. They couldn’t entirely ignore it—it still affected both of them too intensely—but they could, if they had to, work around it.
They’d need to. Whatever was going on, that matter he’d been sent to investigate and that she, it seemed, had already discovered, was potentially too dangerous, too threatening to people as yet unknown, to treat as anything other than a battlefield. Once he knew more, he’d try to separate her from it. He didn’t waste a second considering if she, herself, was in any way involved on the wrong side of the ledger; she wouldn’t be, not Penny.
She was on the same side he was, but didn’t yet trust him. She had to be protecting someone, but who?
He no longer knew enough about her or her friends to guess.
How long before she decided to tell him? Who knew? But they didn’t have a lot of time. Now he was ther
e, things would start happening; that was his mission, to stir things up and deal with what rose out of the mire.
If she wouldn’t tell him, he’d have to learn her secret some other way.
He strode along the ramparts for half an hour more, then returned to his room, fell into bed, and, surprisingly, slept.
CHAPTER 2