Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

“ P enelope,” Maxwell called with a smile, striding towards her across the lawn, having emerged from a curious-looking small building at the bottom of the garden. “I thought we were meeting for dinner? Sir Nigel has been showing us some of his instruments for measurement and observation. Fascinating. We must return one night to fully appreciate his telescopes.”

He was in his shirt sleeves, his face slightly pink and golden-brown hair damp and ruffled with physical effort of some sort. Even in Penelope’s somewhat upset state, her husband’s present appearance roused something in her.

“I’m sorry to intrude. I had to come away from the concert early, and I didn’t know where else to go,” Penelope told him, looking around to see whether anyone else was in earshot.

The maid who had brought her out to the gardens had already disappeared back into the house, and there was no one else to be seen. Maxwell followed Penelope’s line of sight, a frown of concern settling on his brow.

“Penelope? Has something happened?”

“Lord Silverbrook was there,” Penelope stated plainly before her voice choked away and died in her throat, temporarily stalling further explanation.

Unable to speak, she found herself wrapped in Maxwell’s arms as delayed tears cascaded down her face from nowhere.

“Did he hurt you?” the duke asked urgently.

“He threatened me and you,” she said and then reported the vile things that Henry had said as best she could, sensing the tightening of Maxwell’s muscles as he took it all in.

“Damn him!” the duke swore when she had finished. “Silverbrook might well try to do as he threatens, but if he does, I will ruin him utterly and take pleasure in it.”

“I cannot bear it, Maxwell! I hate that you might be harmed by this or Victoria or Frederick. I wish I could have done something differently, handled Henry differently so that none of this ever happened.”

“I will not hear this,” the duke declared then, holding Penelope slightly back from him.

For a moment, she trembled, worried that he was angry at her in some way, but then he dropped several light kisses on her forehead, her eyelids, and her lips, driving back such shadows.

“I think you might have believed some of Silverbrook’s claptrap today, Penelope, but I will not have it. I would never put you away or allow you to be disgraced, and you certainly should not blame yourself for Lord Silverbrook’s criminal behavior.”

Now Penelope shed a few further tears of relief, not realizing how heavy the thoughts planted by Henry Atwood had been until Maxwell lifted them away from her shoulders.

“It is enough only to hear you say that, Maxwell,” Penelope told him, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief.

But the duke shook his head, some new resolution gathering on his brow.

“It is not enough,” he said firmly, and after consulting his pocket watch, he took her arm in his. “Come. There is something that must be done immediately before this blackguard grows even bolder.”

“But what are you going to do, Maxwell?” Penelope asked uneasily as the Walden coach raced back towards Argyll House from Bloomsbury.

“I shall talk to Lord Silverbrook and make certain things even clearer than I have done already. You need have no fear, Duchess Penelope.”

In the seat opposite her, Maxwell had already drawn on and fastened his jacket, re-fixed his stock, and combed his hair. His blue eyes were steely now and his jaw set.

“What of your business with Sir Nigel? And what of Victoria? She cannot simply be left at Sir Nigel’s house alone, surely. We all talked about this in the library yesterday.”

Maxwell waved away her concerns, evidently already having satisfied himself on these points.

“Our business is all settled to my satisfaction. Sir Nigel’s sister is there today, and Sir Nigel himself is no danger to any lady. We need not worry for Victoria this afternoon, and she will meet us for dinner. It is you who requires my protection now, Penelope, and you shall have it.”

As the coach slowed, Maxwell jumped out without waiting for the carriage to come to a complete halt or the coachman to open the door. There was something dangerous in the way he moved; his strength and dexterity were those of a powerful animal seeking out and facing down a rival.

Penelope saw him give a silver coin to a manservant at the door of Argyll House and nod at some piece of intelligence given.

“The concert is not yet over, and the Duke of Heartwick’s party is all still inside, except for you,” Maxwell said, returning to the coach and opening the door. “Come.”

“Show me first where it happened, and then I will have words with that man. There is no need to be afraid. I am here now.”

It was with effort that the Duke of Walden kept his voice low and calm enough to induce his duchess to take his arm and enter the building at his side.

“You will not tell Frederick, though?” Penelope asked. “I still fear he will blame me. For all of it.”

“I will not tell him, unless you ask me to do so. You are my responsibility now, not Frederick’s.”

“You will not call Lord Silverbrook out, will you?” Penelope suddenly put to him with a panicked expression on her face. “Oh God! If anything were to happen…”

“He has no honor to defend,” Maxwell answered obliquely while reflecting that a bullet through the heart might be no bad way to rid the world of Lord Silverbrook.

Although his voice was measured and even, the duke was actually intensely angry. In fact, Maxwell could not remember ever being so angry with anyone since his wretched father had died all those years ago. If they had been primitive men, meeting together in a field or forest, he thought he could have torn Lord Silverbrook limb from limb.

It was only Penelope’s presence that forced him to keep such primal rage below the surface in order to avoid frightening her further. While some might have counseled taking his wife home and comforting her there, Maxwell had always found that real-world fears were best quieted by confrontation and uprooting.

“It was here,” Penelope said, showing him the isolated spot where Silverbrook had menaced her that afternoon. “You see, this corner is almost entirely cut off from the main refreshment and sitting rooms. I did not believe he would find me, but he must have followed us from the ladies’ retiring room and waited until Annabelle left.”

Maxwell took in the scene with narrowed eyes, pushing through the door into the staff area and finding the pantry where Silverbrook had threatened to drag his wife. He replayed the account in his head as he explored, quickly agreeing with Penelope’s hypothesis. Henry Atwood was indeed a predator of the worst and most premeditated kind.

A few coins to the attendant on the door gave Maxwell entry to the chamber where the melancholy strains of a toccata in a minor key were playing. Leaving Penelope at the door, he marched purposefully down the main aisle and put a silent hand on the shoulder of Lord Silverbrook from behind.

The man’s sandy head turned sharply, and his brown eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw the Duke of Walden. Silverbrook’s gasp was audible and shushed with annoyance by other listeners nearby.

The Duke of Heartwick’s seat was as empty as his sister’s, and Maxwell dropped down into one of the vacant chairs without loosening his grip on Henry Atwood. Had Frederick gone to look for Penelope, perhaps? Or was the concert only a respectable cover for some assignation of his brother-in-law? Probably the latter, but no matter. It would be simpler to deal with this problem in his absence.

“A word,” Maxwell spoke under his breath into Lord Silverbrook’s ear. “Outside. Now.”

The other man shook his head, feigning bewilderment, but Maxwell was not to be ignored.

“Either you come with me now, or I drag you out by the collar and tell the world why,” the duke whispered again. “It is your choice.”

Reluctantly and slightly clumsily under Maxwell’s iron hand, Lord Silverbrook rose and was steered out of the room. Likely, anyone bothering to look at them would see only two men leaving a concert together, one with a friendly arm around the other.

It was only once they were out of the chamber and the attendant had closed the door on the concert once more that the Duke of Walden shoved his semi-prisoner forward with any real force.

“That way,” he barked, Penelope in his peripheral vision.

“What are you doing? What right do you have to treat me with such ill manners?” Silverbrook protested, although not too loudly.

“I have the right of any husband whose wife has been threatened by your cowardly and criminal behavior,” Maxwell answered coolly, driving Lord Silverbrook through the empty refreshment rooms. “Believe me, this is only a small taste of what I suspect you deserve.”

With a final shove, he sent the sandy-haired man stumbling into the corner where he had besieged Penelope not an hour before.

“Is that what she told you?” Henry Atwood sneered, attempting to straighten up as he caught sight of Penelope hovering behind Maxwell. “Penelope will have her little games. You shouldn’t trust everything she says, Your Grace. In fact, you shouldn’t trust her at all. Do you think you were even the first man to enjoy her charms?”

At this provocation, Maxwell leapt forward and seized Henry Atwood by the collar, dragging him forcibly into the staff corridor and through into the small pantry exactly as he had threatened to do to Penelope.

Hearing his frightened wife shouting his name behind him, Maxwell flicked the lock on the pantry door to keep her out and pushed Henry Atwood backward over a table by his throat. It was so easy to overpower this man that it was almost laughable, his physical form debilitated by alcohol, drugs, and other bad habits. He could only ever be a danger to women.

“If you ever approach my wife again, or even speak of Duchess Penelope with disrespect, I will destroy you,” Maxwell growled. “Do you understand?”

At first, Lord Silverbrook said nothing, and Maxwell slightly loosened his hold on the other man’s throat.

“Do you understand?” he repeated, and Silverbrook nodded, red in the face and gasping for breath.

“Good,” Maxwell said crisply and stood back from the table where Silverbrook lay flopping and gasping like a hooked fish. “Never make me repeat myself.”

Slipping the catch back off the door, he joined Penelope in the corridor, ensuring the door was open long enough that she saw Silverbrook inside, vanquished but physically unharmed.

Her face showed her relief and trust in him. The radiance of those beautiful green eyes almost made Maxwell wish Silverbrook had been more of a challenge to overcome. He had not quite earned the admiration his new wife seemed to feel for him. Or at least, he had not earned it in combat.

Maxwell remembered Penelope’s face in bed again as he pleasured her, the wonder in her eyes, and then the ecstasy so intense it was close to pain. In bed, he had given her all that he had promised. If the experience had not been so maddeningly distracting as well as exciting, he would have bedded her morning, noon, and night.

A strong wave of lust washed over him, but he resisted it as they climbed into the coach. They must collect Victoria, return to Walden Towers, and dress for dinner with their neighbors, Lord and Lady Wilton, who had been good friends of the previous Duke of Walden.

“Penelope —”

Maxwell began to speak and then stopped himself. There was no time for sexual congress. Unless he took his wife in the carriage? Once that temptation had occurred to him, the next waves of lust to roll in were stronger than the first and harder to damp down.

In future, it might be a good idea for the two of them to live apart and only come together at prearranged times. Penelope could be mistress at Walden Towers while he stayed in London, perhaps. Such an arrangement would certainly make it easier to avoid the constant torture of sexual distraction in her presence as well as enable the planning of future children.

“Maxwell?” Penelope questioned as he lapsed back into silence. “Were you going to say something?”

“I only wanted to make sure you will be up to joining tonight’s dinner,” he lied. “I do value your presence at my side.”

He shifted his position slightly as his manhood gave its own unwanted response to his fantasies about what might be done on the velvet seats if he lowered the curtains at the windows and instructed the coachman to drive around Hyde Park for half an hour.

Penelope nodded, her expression hard to read when his imagination was projecting his own desires onto her so strongly.

“Of course. The Earl of Wilton and his wife are very well respected in the county and among their tenants. We should get a good picture of the local social and political landscape from them as well as a feel for how your uncle managed his estate.”

“I knew I could rely on you,” he commented, pleased with her focus on their priorities for the night, even while sexual frustration still gnawed at him.

“We can rely on each other,” Penelope answered. “Thank you for what you did today, Maxwell.”

“I am your husband, and Lord Silverbrook had to be put in his place. I have done as I promised, and there is nothing to thank me for,” he replied, attempting to remain businesslike in tone but losing himself in the green of those eyes on his…

To Maxwell, determined to keep his distance and focus, the rest of that day and night at Penelope’s side felt very long indeed.