“I don’t know.”
“So which other gangs are still operating?”
He took her on a seemingly peripatetic ramble around the district; often it wasn’t her answer that enlightened, but the fact she gave any answer at all that told him who she’d recently had contact with, or thought to ask about.
It was the speed at which his questions came that finally opened Penny’s eyes. They were immersed in a rapid-fire discussion of the Essington brothers, Millie’s and Julia’s husbands, when the scales fell. She stopped midsentence, stared at him for a moment, then shut her lips. Firmly.
He accorded her glare no more than an arched brow, a what-did-you-expect look.
Indeed. Tossing her napkin on the table, she rose. He, more languidly, rose, too.
“If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll retire for the night.”
She turned, but by then he’d reached her. He walked beside her to the door. Closing his hand about the knob, he paused and looked down at her. Waited…until she steeled herself, looked up, and met his eyes.
“No game, Penny. I need to know. Soon.”
They were no more than a foot apart; regardless of her senses’ giddy preoccupation, the look in his midnight eyes was unmistakable. He was deadly serious. But he was dealing with her straightly, no histrionics, no attempt to dazzle her, to pressure her as only he could.
He had to know he could; that moment in the orchard had demonstrated beyond question how much sensual power he still wielded over her.
If he wished to
use it.
Tilting her head, she swiftly studied his eyes, realized, understood that he’d made a deliberate choice not to invoke their personal past, not to use the physical connection that still sparked between them against her, to overcome, overwhelm, and override her will.
He was dealing with her honestly. Just him and her as long ago they’d used to be.
Moved, feeling oddly torn—tempted to grasp the chance of dealing openly with him again—she raised a hand, briefly clasped his arm. “I will tell you. You know that.” She drew in a tight breath. “But not yet. I do need to think—just a bit more.”
He searched her eyes, her face, then inclined his head. “But only a little bit more.” He opened the door, followed her through. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She nodded a good night, then climbed the stairs.
Charles watched her go, then headed for the library.
In one respect his prediction went awry; he saw her next very late that night.
After spending three hours leafing through Burke’s Peerage and Debrett’s, studying Amberly’s connections, then looking for locals with connections to the Foreign Office or other government offices, trying to identify who Penny might feel she should protect, all to no avail, he turned down the lamps and climbed the stairs as the clocks throughout the house struck half past eleven.
Halting on the landing, he looked up at the huge arched window, at the stained glass depicting the St. Austell family crest. Rain beat a staccato rhythm against the panes; the wind moaned softly. The elements called, tugged at that wilder, more innocent side of him the years had buried, teased, tempted…
Lips curving in cynical self-deprecation, he took the left branch of the stairs and climbed upward, heading not for his apartments as he’d originally intended but to the widow’s walk.
High on the Abbey’s south side immediately below the roof, the widow’s walk ran for thirty feet, a stone-faced, stone-paved gallery open on one side, the wide view of the Fowey estuary framed by ornate railings. Even in deepest night with the moon obscured by cloud and the outlook veiled by rain, the view would be magnificent, eerily compelling. A reminder of how insignificant in Nature’s scheme of things humans really were.
His feet knew the way. Courtesy of the years, he moved silently.
He halted just short of the open archway giving onto the walk; Penny was already there.
Seated on a stone bench along the far wall, one elbow on the railing, chin propped on that hand, she was staring out at the rain.
There was very little light. He could just make out the pale oval of her face, the faint gleam of her fair hair, the long elegant lines of her pale blue gown, the darker ripple of her shawl’s knotted fringe. The rain didn’t quite reach her.
She hadn’t heard him.
He hesitated, remembering other days and nights they’d been up here, not always but often alone, just the two of them drawn to the view. He remembered she’d asked for time alone to think.