Epilogue

EPILOGUE

A t dawn on the day following the Heartwick Hall open house, as the final yawning dancers ended their last merry reel in the long unused ballroom, two men descended from a plain black carriage on the docks of Portsmouth harbor.

Despite the time of day, the harbor was busy, with dockers, sailors, and traders hurrying about with papers, small packets, and carts full of larger cargo. Portsmouth was a busy merchant harbor, and time here depended on the moon and tides rather than the conventional hours of the sun.

The two men were evidently not friends. The man in the smart, if travel-crumpled, black suit and hat of a typical lawyer stood a little apart from the other man and watched him with suspicion, if not outright dislike. It would have been hard to know what to make of the second man in his fine but wildly disordered clothing, his face angry, lost, and thwarted in its expression.

“Your ship awaits, sir,” Adam Finch said brusquely, nodding towards a small rowing boat and the larger packet ship that lay beyond it, slightly out at sea. “You must leave now.”

The other man followed his gaze with an expression of disbelief and outrage.

“But that’s a merchant vessel!” Lord Silverbrook objected, clutching the one ill-packed bag he had brought from his London house, its fastenings almost bursting open. “Do they even have passenger cabins? Or are you expecting me to sleep among tea chests and bolts of cloth? Look at those men in the boat! This is outrageous! I am a nobleman. How could I travel like that, with those people?”

His haughty outburst was very much at odds with his disheveled appearance, still in the very suit he had worn at Heartwick House, now with missing buttons and several bloodstains from the blows he received at the hands of Duchess Penelope’s defenders. Henry Atwood’s face was bruised and battered as a prize fighter’s, with one eye swelled almost closed.

More than a viscount going on a journey, he resembled a criminal fleeing the country. Indeed, that was what Maxwell had briefly informed Adam that Lord Silverbrook truly was. This man merited neither compassion nor mercy.

“My instructions from the Duke of Walden were to put you on the next ship that would take you to France, no matter its size, type or purpose,” the lawyer stated implacably. “My good friend also informs me that you are no kind of gentleman, whatever your rank, and that the women of England will be safer for your departure. Jack.”

This last word was spoken in the direction of the coachman, a tall, well-built, and silent man who was normally well-paid to facilitate any work Adam Finch had to do in the rougher areas of London.

“Women! Capricious creatures who can’t be trusted,” Henry Atwood began to rail and then shut his mouth quickly as the burly coachman who had climbed down from his cab began to slap a large whip against his meaty palm.

Lord Silverbrook had already had one taste of Jack’s strong-arm approach when he had tried to refuse to enter the unmarked cab in London, wanting to ride in his own crested carriage despite the attention that would draw. The man had lifted him by the collar and thrown him into the back of the plain carriage as though he were a sack of potatoes.

Finally, here on the docks of Portsmouth harbor, the humiliated viscount seemed to accept his impotence and his fate. He began to walk reluctantly towards the boat, muttering to himself as the early morning sea breeze disordered his hair even further.

“I shall make the arrangements for your mother, as I told you in the coach,” Adam called after him.

“Do as you please with the old trout,” Silverbrook shouted back. “I’ll have no more use for her in France, will I? God knows why Walden should pretend to care anymore than I do…”

With these callous final words on English soil, Henry Atwood, Lord Silverbrook, climbed awkwardly into the rowing boat and took the space indicated to him by an older man at the tiller. Two others, dressed and bearded in the manner of sailors, unfastened the rope and jumped in beside the unwilling nobleman, laughing at his fright when the boat rocked with their weight.

As Maxwell had instructed, Adam and Jack remained on the harbor side, watching without pity in the cool morning air, until the small boat reached the ship, and then the ship itself finally raised its anchor. With a traveling telescope, Adam Finch saw Lord Silverbrook on the ship’s deck, grinding his teeth with helpless rage as his homeland receded before him.

“Never trust a man who doesn’t respect his mother. That’s all I know,” said the burly minder, perhaps the longest speech Adam Finch had ever heard the taciturn man utter.

The lawyer smiled and nodded as he put away the telescope.

“Good riddance,” Adam added and offered Jack a nip from the brandy flask he had carried in his coat pocket in anticipation of this long wait in the open air.

“To bad rubbish,” Jack concurred, raising the flask to the horizon and taking a long swig.

Two weeks later

“Maxwell!” Penelope giggled, playfully pushing his hands away. “I thought you paid off the bathing attendant so that we could talk privately about our plans for London when we return from Brighton.”

“Then you thought wrong, beautiful wife,” Maxwell grinned, pulling the laughing Penelope fully into his arms. “I paid that good lady to depart and let me take you out alone in the bathing machine just so that I could have my way with you again with a perfect sea view before us. Look at that sky!”

“But what about London?” she asked in between returning his insistent kisses as his hands unfastened her dress and brought down her golden hair from its pins. “What about the Lords and Lloyds? What about all your plans?”

“Oh, to hell with London and its denizens. I am perfectly capable of conducting correspondence from Brighton for a few weeks. Anyway, what right-minded man wishes to talk of London when faced with the most perfect breasts in the world?”

Penelope laughed and then gasped, pushing into the hands that now covered her bare bosom and then ripping at her husband’s shirt and stock. She loved hearing Maxwell speak like this, just as much as she loved his unrestrained desire.

In the week they had been at Brighton for a belated honeymoon, Maxwell had seemed insatiable, his lust only spurring on her own in turn. They had already made love twice that morning before leaving their rented house. Penelope could not even remember how many times they had coupled yesterday. If she had ever longed for Maxwell’s undivided attention, she had it now.

“What if someone sees us?” Penelope demanded, pushing his shirt from his shoulders and wrangling with the fastening of his trousers as she stepped out of her own discarded dress and petticoat. “Remember all those old men on the shore with their spyglasses, ostensibly watching boats.”

“Out here?” Maxwell scoffed, looking out through the open wooden doors of their bathing machine. “There is no one to see or hear us but the gulls and fish.”

The sun was high in the sky, and their machine was facing out to sea. Its attendant returned to shore on the horse that had dragged it out into the depths. The old lady had easily and without question accepted Maxwell’s money when he expressed his wish to be alone with his wife. Evidently, they were not the first honeymooning couple to have such an idea.

It had been a glorious week so far, and the horrors of Henry Atwood and his wretched mother already seemed to belong to another time. Adam Finch’s letter confirming eyewitness to Lord Silverbrook’s departure had come the very day after the Heartwick Hall open house. Their enemy should now be in France, and the French were welcome to keep him.

Penelope expected that with the Silverbrook problem dealt with, they would continue with the season as planned. To her astonishment, Maxwell announced that it was time for them to take a honeymoon and leave the ton to themselves.

When he first suggested taking a house in Brighton for the rest of the summer, Penelope thought he was joking, but arrangements were made in a matter of days.

This was admittedly in part due to Victoria’s efforts. The young woman had just returned from the Lake District, delighted to see her brother doing something spontaneous and pleasure-seeking for once in his life. Victoria had found a suitable property, consulted Soames and Mrs. Kenton on staffing, and had the bags packed and ready in the coach without Penelope having to lift a finger.

“She only wants to install a large telescope on the roof in my absence; I’ll be bound,” Maxwell grumbled cheerfully as they waved their farewells to Victoria in the coach. The younger woman stood framed in the Walden Towers approach with both Soames and Mrs. Kenton behind her. “We’ll come back and find half the Royal Society living in the attics.”

Penelope had laughed most of the way to Brighton after that, finding that with responsibilities lifted from his shoulders, Maxwell actually had a keen wit and intelligent sense of humor. Their moods were lifted further on arrival in the seaside town when they received an express message from Huntingdon Manor, Duke Charles proudly announcing the birth of a healthy daughter and the safe delivery of Duchess Madeline.

Now, a week later, kneeling down at Penelope’s side near the door of the bathing machine, Maxwell peeled the garters and stockings from her legs. He took advantage of his position to drop tantalizing kisses on her furred mount of Venus and the slight swell of her belly, accentuated in the bright sunlight.

One hand came down to cup that curve as lovingly as it had held her breast a few moments before, sending a pang of both love and desire through her body. Penelope guessed that Maxwell had noticed something she had not yet shared, and when he looked up at her, there was a question and obvious hope in his eyes, which meant she had no qualms about answering.

“Yes, I believe I am with child,” Penelope said softly. “The physician I consulted here in Brighton this week is of the same mind. In fact, he thinks I am already at least two months along and my recent sickness was only the start of pregnancy. I believe Mrs. Kenton recognized it even if you and I did not – that tonic was actually one for expectant mothers.”

Maxwell’s face melted into the most joyful smile Penelope had ever seen him display as he kissed her belly again.

“More than two months already? Then it must have happened the very first time we coupled fully,” he said with wonder, and Penelope nodded.

“I enjoyed that first time so much that I feel I ought not to be surprised,” she laughed. “But I suppose we both assumed this would not happen quite so quickly.”

“Then we have both been fools,” Maxwell declared, letting his hands run lightly over Penelope’s hips, buttocks, and thighs, now entirely stripped of clothing. “Fools for love.”

“Maxwell,” she sighed, offering no resistance at all when he parted her thighs and pressed into her folds with his tongue as she leaned back against the open door frame. “My love…”

For some minutes after this, there was only the sound of gulls, waves, and Penelope’s mounting cries of excitement as her husband aroused and caressed her with hands and mouth. She clung to him at her peak and then found herself on Maxwell’s lap as he sat at the top of the wooden stairs down into the sea, his eager manhood rearing between her opened thighs.

“I want you, Maxwell,” she told him in a voice deep and low with physical desire.

“You have me,” he growled back, adjusting his organ to press at Penelope’s excited gates.

She slid his shaft into her slowly with small moans of pleasure and then wrapped her legs around his waist, holding his length in her throbbing depths while he kissed her neck.

“You have me,” he sighed again, closing his eyes and luxuriating in the heat of Penelope’s slick embrace and the press of her breasts against his torso.

When Penelope shifted slightly and began to move on him, Maxwell groaned with pleasure. Opening his eyes, his wife was pink and gold and very naked indeed on his lap in the bright sunlight, her face dreamy and lost in ecstasy as she rode him.

Any worries either of them might have retained about being seen or overheard were entirely forgotten in the driving rhythms of their bodies and the pinnacle of pleasure they could not help but seek.

When it was over, still conjoined, Penelope laid her head on Maxwell’s shoulder contentedly and let her long hair fall across his body in the way she now knew he liked.

“I have you,” she sighed, “as you have me.”

“My love,” Maxwell confirmed with a contented sigh of his own. “Forever.”

The End?