Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"I am kidnapping you," Penelope said, speaking quietly, though Lucien was alone in his study. "I thought you'd never let Uncle Theo go."

Lucien rose and came around the desk. Since Tabitha's arrival two days ago, Penelope hadn't seen much of him, and their most private interactions had been limited to a few good-night kisses. He attended supper with the family, sat sphinxlike at the head of the table, and contributed to the conversation to the extent necessary to entertain Tabitha, but no more.

"I thought he'd never let me go," Lucien said, taking Penelope in his arms. "When sober, that man has a lot to say."

This embrace had a wonderfully mundane quality. In the past days, they'd stolen a few quiet moments, a hug here, a brief clasp of hands beneath the table, a half hour sitting side by side in the family parlor while Penelope embroidered and Lucien read some agricultural pamphlet. Nothing ardent or obvious, but precious to Penelope all the same.

Lucien's presence sank into her body and mind with each encounter. He truly was home .

"Touching you brings me inordinate joy," she said, her cheek against Lucien's chest. "For so long, you were not here to be touched."

Lucien kissed her temple. "Touching you brings me joy as well, my lady. Joy and temptation."

Penelope retaliated by kissing him on the mouth, and what followed was part skirmish, part celebration, until she was perched on the corner of Lucien's desk, her beloved wedged between her legs and her wits flown straight out the window.

"We can't do this here," she said, letting her legs fall from around Lucien's hips. "At any moment, Cousin Lark will tap on that door with plans for the garden, Tommie will seek your counsel on carpets for the gallery, and the marchioness will demand my assistance with her London packing." That her ladyship had not begun to pack for a journey less than two weeks off was vaguely puzzling.

Lucien smoothed a hand over Penelope's hair. "What is it, precisely, we cannot do here, Pen?"

Penelope was abruptly as mortified as she was determined. She rested her forehead on Lucien's chest, the better to hide a blush.

"We mustn't tryst."

Lucien bent his head. "Tryst, as in kissing and caressing and embracing?"

They'd become adept at that part, or at least comfortable with it. "I meant the rest of it."

"The intimate rest of it—the part that can lead to procreation?"

Even the timbre of his voice pleased her. "Must you sound so self-possessed?"

"Tell me about the kidnapping part, Pen. Leave nothing out."

"The coach will be out front by now, the hampers packed. I thought we'd inspect Finbury today." Penelope's admission left out a good deal, but Lucien was a smart fellow, good at reasoning from facts to conclusions.

His embrace shifted so his chin rested on her crown. "You seek to have your way with me?" He wasn't laughing, which was fortunate for the marquessate's succession.

"I hope we have our way with each other." Put like that, the plan seemed laughable. "Must we discuss this? Can't we simply fall into a convenient bed behind a stout and equally convenient locked door? I go mad at night, touching myself..."

Lucien hugged her as if he'd shelter her from her own awkwardness. "You do me great honor, Pendragon. The greatest honor. If I refuse this generous overture, you'll be hurt, won't you?"

"I will be frustrated and bewildered. We are courting, and courting couples enjoy certain freedoms. I have it in my head that if I can take you to bed, you won't disappear again."

She'd said it. Voiced the fear she hadn't quite admitted even to herself. Penelope yearned to put her imprimatur on Lucien's mind and body, even as she knew that limiting his freedom in any way was beyond her. Her path was illuminated by instinct rather than common sense, and yet, that path blazed brightly.

Lucien gently rubbed her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger. "You have abandoned logic, unless you believe that honor will bind me where devotion and my own self-interest could not."

"Honor is a powerful bond, Lucien. I'm not clear in my own mind why I believe as I do. I just know I've reached for my dressing gown with intent to seek your bed more times than I can count."

He stepped back and kept hold of her hand. "While I have lectured myself about the folly of haste and the need for abundant self-restraint, as if actually embarking on a happy future terrifies me."

"Does it?" How courageous of him to disclose such thoughts, even in the conditional.

He stroked her fingers. "I am afraid I will wake up in Rome, having twitched away another quarter hour in fitful nightmares, the pantry mouser regarding me from the foot of the bed with a feline disdain that approaches pity."

She hated to think of him in those tangled sheets, alone in the dark, only an aloof cat to witness his struggles. Lucien doubtless wished even the cat hadn't seen him in such a state.

"Let's go to Finbury," she said. "The tenants are off at the seaside, I've sent notice that I'm making a visit, and this is an outing you suggested yourself. You can tell me what schemes you and Theo are hatching up."

Lucien scowled over her shoulder at his desk blotter, which was littered with ledgers, sketches, foolscap covered in jottings, and brass paperweights in the shape of dragons.

"I ought to propose," he said. "If we are to make this journey to a destination which you have assured I will never get out of my mind, I should propose. I was working on a speech, complete with topics in order of their importance—your comfort, the good of the household, the stability of the realm, my sanity—and supporting arguments for each one. I owe you that, and a ring, and my personal pledge, but how does one word a pledge of heart and hand without sounding medieval? I sound medieval maundering on about it."

Lucien flustered and casting about for order was a rare and adorable sight. "We are betrothed, sir. A proposal would be redundant."

His brows twitched, and he peered down at her. "So we are. Betrothed. Engaged to be married and entitled to all the blessings attendant thereto."

His smile eased a knot in Penelope's chest. Watching Tabitha count the hours until she departed for London, seeing a new sparkle in the girl's eyes, Penelope had felt bewildered.

Why didn't I ever feel like that? Except she did feel like that when Lucien tugged her into the warming pantry and stole a hug and a kiss, or when he squeezed her hand beneath the dinner table. She felt giddy and special and happy when he smiled at her across the family parlor, and she felt positively delighted when he turned a page of his book and managed to brush her arm in the process.

The emotions—excitement, glee, satisfaction, and, that most daunting of all, hope—had filled her imagination both waking and sleeping. Going to Finbury had become a replacement, cure, and reward for all the times she had instead gone up to London.

Reluctantly, dutifully alone despite the marchioness's chattering company.

"We are engaged," Penelope said, "and I will expect you out front in ten minutes. I've told Tommie my plans, and he will make our excuses if we're not back by supper."

"By supper? Are we to tryst or indulge in a two-person orgy?"

"Why not both?"

She left Lucien looking intrigued and distracted in his study, though, in fact, he was out on the front steps, dignity at the ready, in less than five minutes.

Lucien grappled with the revelation that Penelope expected lovemaking of him, and not merely the pretty kind, with words and caresses and tender embraces. He was learning her preferences in that regard. She didn't like to be rushed, and she needed intermissions to plot her counterstrategies, which was fortunate. Lucien needed intermissions to recover his wits.

But now Penelope expected the carnal kind of lovemaking, too, with trust, pleasure, and intimacy and—she deserved nothing less—exhausted satisfaction.

Lucien watched Lynnfield's stately park from the carriage window and asked himself impossible questions: Where to start? What to say? Chess was no help. Espionage was no guide. The clamorings of lust felt ridiculous in the stately traveling coach.

Ridiculous, not impossible.

"Have I spoiled everything?" Penelope asked, taking off her bonnet and putting it on the opposite seat. "Are you trying to work out some sort of retraction, Lucien?"

"I'm trying to work out a seduction. One hasn't much practice, and five minutes is apparently insufficient notice to prepare me for the challenge." He looped an arm around Pen's shoulders, for his own comfort and to prevent her from leaping out of the coach on a sudden change of mind. "I sound like a curate trying to explain why his sermon on forgiveness lacked inspiration."

"You sound like you want to get this right, and so do I, but, Lucien, might we consider this outing in the nature of a rehearsal? A practice debate?"

She tossed her gloves into the crown of her bonnet. Lucien's top hat sat beside her bonnet, his gloves drooping over the brim. The image of the two hats, side by side, struck him as inordinately touching.

Prosaic and profound.

"You suggest we needn't write poetry for the ages, but merely some entertaining verse?" A tempting approach, though not good enough for his Pen.

"Something like that. What did Theo wring your ear about at such length?" Penelope took possession of Lucien's hand. The result was a sort of circular embrace, his arm around her shoulders, his free hand in hers.

Comfy, particularly when Penelope slouched against him and rested her head on his shoulder.

"I have been racking my brain regarding a constructive application of Uncle Theo's gifts. He's charming, practical, well liked, well educated when sober, and doesn't judge his fellow creatures harshly."

"He's patience itself with the ladies, Tommie, and Uncle Malcolm. Theo would have made a good vicar."

Penelope this close bore the fragrance of roses. Whenever Lucien encountered the aroma lately, he was thrown off stride. For years, that scent had presaged terrible homesickness, regret, confusion, and even anger. Now, the aroma was soothing and reassuring.

I am not halfway across the Continent, possibly never to see her again. I am home. In the next instant, the thought reached its logical progression: Penelope is my home.

Her elbow delivered a glancing blow to his ribs as she rearranged herself at his side, and even that soft blow, reminiscent of its sharper, youthful predecessors, pleased Lucien.

"I hope Theo will make a decent steward," he said. "He knows the properties and tenants. As a youth, he thought he'd inherit land in Wales, and thus his interest in farming is of long standing."

"When he falls asleep in the family parlor, he's usually reading some pamphlet or other. The benefits of rutabagas for people seeking healthier bowels, or the ideal arrangement of the goodwife's spice garden. I confess those topics would put me to sleep."

Theo appeared to suffer the excesses of alcohol each evening, but it was possible, perhaps, that he was merely falling asleep at least some of the time.

"Those pamphlets fascinate him, and I'm considering making him an offer: If he can learn the stewardship of Lynnfield and its tenancies in the next year, I will deed him ten acres of forest or arable land per year. If he can competently execute his duties for five consecutive years, he can have his pick of the tenant properties, in addition to his fifty acres."

"That is diabolical, Lucien. You took the whole business of inebriation out of the picture."

"Many a London merchant overimbibes, but he's minding his shop the next morning lest his customers go elsewhere. Theo will sort out the drinking if he has meaningful challenges to deal with instead." A hope, not a certainty. Theo was owed the chance to pursue that hope, though, and the present steward had been grumbling about longing for his pension cottage for years.

"I like this idea," Penelope said as the coach swayed around a turn and the horses picked up speed. "A land steward is a gentleman's occupation. Theo is good at flattery. He never tells anybody what to do, he asks questions. ‘Are we trying to find a place for that portrait?' ‘What do you ladies think of a picnic luncheon on such a fine day?' Stewards need to be diplomats. I've been trying to diplomatically suggest that the marchioness hire a companion or an amanuensis when she's in London. "

A fine idea, though Lucien rather hoped the marchioness would remove to London altogether. She had acquired a subdued air that made him uneasy.

He discussed with Penelope the ideal lady's maid, as well as how to tactfully suggest to Tabitha that her ancient mare ought to be spared the trip to London. By inches and degrees, Lucien's anxiety about how to go forth into new territory with Penelope abated.

She was his home, and his task was simple: He was to become her home in return. Her fortress and refuge, her pleasure barge and summer cottage. The place she went for solace, joy, shelter, companionship, and safety. The words I love you came to mind, though he left them unspoken.

He would love her in fact and in bed, rather than natter on about his sentiments. He did love her. Passionately. Always had, always would.

"Are we there?" Penelope rose from dozing on Lucien's shoulder an hour later and rubbed at her eyes. "I vow sewing has exhausted me. You've never seen so many dresses taking shape so quickly. It's as if the aunties and Cousin Lark were waiting for the starting bell or something. Pretty dresses too. I do love this place."

She had raised the shade, and Finbury in all its modest glory sat on a slight rise at the end of a gently curving carriageway. No grand fountain, no strutting peacocks, but instead a lovely planting of Holland bulbs in bright reds and yellows against a backdrop of whitewashed stone. More tulips bloomed in pots on the terrace and its steps, giving the whole place an air of cheerful, tidy welcome. Three stories, fifteen windows across, the front door painted bright red, the shutters white, and the window boxes boasting more tulips.

"Conscientious gardeners," Lucien said as the coach came to a halt before the manor.

"Bulbs are easy." Penelope handed him his gloves, put his hat on his head, and adjusted the angle. "Smart gardeners, I should say, and somebody willing to invest in some beauty. What are you...? Oh."

Lucien had appropriated her bonnet and positioned it on her head. As he tied the ribbons in a loose bow, she beamed at him, and he knew exactly what she was thinking: So domestic and so dear, these little mutual courtesies.

He kissed her on the lips without allowing their millinery to bump, the better to inspire still more shared thoughts, and then passed her her gloves.

"The household is expecting us?" Lucien asked.

"I chose today because it's half day, but yes. We are expected. I explained that we would bring our own victuals and need no escort. I have popped in here from time to time over the years, when I wanted an excuse to get away from Lynnfield."

Lucien opened the coach door and flipped down the step. "Good. If nothing else, you reminded everybody at Lynnfield that you bide with them by your own choice." He climbed out and handed Pen down, his words a reminder to himself: Penelope had options. At any moment, she could swan up to London to buy out the shops or establish her own household in Mayfair.

A sobering thought.

"I want to kiss you," Penelope said, slipping her arm through his. "Instead, I will show you around the place, and when we've enjoyed a picnic in the deer park, I'll acquaint you with the hermit's grotto."

"Out of sight of the house, I trust?" What a talent for planning she had.

"Out of sight of everything and quite commodious. Come along, Lucien, and stop trying to concoct learned speeches in your head. You will be too busy kissing me back to utter a single word other than ‘please' or ‘more.'"

Lucien stopped thinking of anything other than how much he loved his betrothed and how much he'd enjoy kissing her back until she couldn't utter even a single, delighted word.

Part of Penelope tried to uphold the tradition that said Lady Penelope Richard was a bustler, a woman who accomplished much in the course of a day. She toured the public rooms with the housekeeper, Lucien trailing behind them, and made pleasant noises about the lack of dust. She stood in the doorways of the guest rooms and complimented the housekeeper on the sparkling windows.

She flattered the butler regarding the thoroughness of his inventories and praised the first footman for the spotless hearths and gleaming andirons.

The whole time, she was also cursing the perception she herself had established. Why couldn't Lady Penelope have been an inveterate daydreamer? A hoyden? She wasted time admiring wainscoting that she could have spent being private with Lucien.

In bed.

Naked.

All the pleasures proving, to paraphrase old Mr. Marlowe, or at least beginning to explore.

"I do believe you've seen the lot of it, my lady," the housekeeper said when their little parade had returned to the foot of the main staircase. "I trust you're finding everything in order?" Mrs. Beadle was a grand specimen made more impressive by a starched and pristine mobcap atop her gray hair and a tinkling chain of keys dangling from her waist.

Old-school and proud of it.

"I'm impressed," Penelope said. "I don't believe we maintain Lynnfield to the standards you uphold here at Finbury."

"Grand manors are such a lot of work," the housekeeper replied, "begging his lordship's pardon, but they are. Finbury's the perfect size to make a gracious impression without beggaring the exchequer. Just the right age, too—a century and a half—to be done with the settling and shifting about without being cramped or dank. You will not find a more commodious nor better-kept dwelling in all of England, my lady."

A short speech, by Mrs. Beadle's standards. She was as loquacious as she was conscientious. A talented bustler. In her care, Finbury would be just as spotless and orderly ten years hence, whether or not Penelope ever saw the place again.

"Perhaps," Lucien said, "I might plead an empty belly, your ladyship, and request that picnic you promised me?"

Oh, thank heavens. "I am a bit peckish myself," Penelope said. "Mrs. Beadle, you have convinced me that the property continues to prosper, and we will leave you to enjoy your half day."

Lucien bowed, Mrs. Beadle curtseyed like a seventy-four gunner dipping in heavy seas, and Penelope all but dragged Lucien out onto the back terrace.

"The deer park is to the west of the parterres. Come along, Lucien. Finbury seems as if it has grown a dozen bedrooms, sixteen pantries, two cellars, and eight attics that I'd never seen before."

"Mrs. Beadle knows when she's in the presence of an expert. You are not merely the owner, you are Lady Penelope and essentially the house steward at Lynnfield."

Penelope stopped halfway down the terrace steps. "That's how you see me? As your house steward?"

"In the normal course, a house steward is remunerated for his services. I thus position you more as Lynnfield's guardian angel-at-large."

They passed through the garden at a sedate pace, Mrs. Beadle and her minions doubtless watching their progress and to blazes with half day.

"I prefer the title house steward," Penelope said. "That has dignity and respect. Guardian angels are ephemeral creatures too much given to virtue."

Lucien opened the door in the garden wall and held it for Penelope. When he closed it, and they stood outside the garden, they had privacy from the house, given the height of the wall and the roll of the land.

"Having second thoughts, Pen?"

"Not second thoughts, but thoughts." She gazed up at him and saw patience in his eyes and bottomless affection. "You would enjoy this picnic and happily escort me back to Lynnfield if I told you I'd changed my mind, wouldn't you?"

His smile was crooked. "I will politely escort you home if that's what you prefer, but I will ask for a moment on my own to admire the stables first."

"A moment on your... oh." She ought to be blushing, but the idea that Lucien's animal spirits clamored as loudly as her own pleased her.

"Let's find that picnic basket, my lady, and take it to the grotto, shall we?"

Splendid notion. "The picnic basket is under that leaning oak," Penelope said, dodging around Lucien to lead the charge. "It's the closest to the grotto, which lies below that swell."

Five minutes later, Lucien was peering around the "grotto," which Penelope had always thought of as more of a gatehouse built partially into the side of a small hill. The view from the flagstone terrace was lovely—the homewood in all its verdant spring glory across a sparkling stream, sunlight dappling the water, and wild irises adding dashes of yellow along the banks.

"Oh, to be a hermit," Lucien muttered. "I suppose it gets chilly in winter?"

"I had a parlor stove installed, and what passes for the kitchen has another hearth. Let's have a look."

She took his hand and led him into the shadowed interior. No candles had been lit, but indirect light revealed a miniature parlor that looked out over the terrace. A kitchenish sort of room with table and chairs for dining sat behind the parlor and shared a flue with it. A narrow, tightly curved wooden staircase led from the parlor to a surprisingly airy bedroom above that also enjoyed a view across the river.

"This was built about three owners ago," Penelope said. "Follies and ruins and grottoes were all the rage back then. A great-uncle with bookish inclination used to retreat here, or so the family story went. My mother suspected less scholarly uses for the place."

"How fortunate." Lucien pushed open a bedroom window that had been merely cracked. "I'm not feeling very scholarly. You gave orders for the place to be aired?"

"Of course. Mildew is no sort of aphrodisiac." An unseductive observation. One could not housekeep and bustle one's way into a seduction, and Penelope very much wanted to seduce Lucien. Now that the moment was upon them—the four-poster took up a quarter of the room—awkwardness seized her by the heart.

Lucien strolled across the bedroom, all lazy grace and nonchalance, blast him. "You have made a study of aphrodisiacs?" He kept coming, until his arms were around her.

Penelope relaxed against him, glad for an excuse to hide her face against his chest. "I have, as it happens. The herbal is the province of the lady of the house. One wants to be informed."

"One absolutely does. Might one also want to be kissed?" He spoke near Penelope's ear, the scent of his lavender shaving soap tickling her nose.

"One abruptly wants the earth to swallow one whole. Lucien, I know I planned this outing and made my intentions very clear, but I'm not... That is, I don't know..."

He looped his arms loosely around her shoulders. "I don't know either, Pen. I'm not completely ignorant, but I don't know you in this new and wonderful way. I am nonetheless overjoyed to embark on this adventure with you."

Not quite a declaration of love, but reassuring. "Where do we start?"

He kissed her, and she understood that words were no longer the only useful means of communication. When Lucien moved closer, his body told her that desire had already taken hold of him, and the knowledge was a match to the dry tinder of Penelope's own longings.

For years, she'd known that despite time, distance, absence, and even anger, Lucien was the only possible lover for her. Then she'd grown weary and wavering, vaguely considering even the likes of Sir Dashiel Ingraham for a husband. All over again, the sense of having had a narrow escape clutched at Penelope's nerves.

Lucien is home to stay. She pressed against him, wanting greater closeness and wanting their dratted clothing off. When he began to deftly undo the buttons down the back of her dress—kissing her all the while—she freed her hands to go after his cravat.

Garments were loosened, then went sailing onto the chair by the hearth until the spring breeze tickled Penelope's shoulder blades, and Lucien stood before her in his shirt and breeches.

"In the race to shed clothing," he said, stepping back and undoing his last two shirt buttons, "you are lagging far behind, my lady. Allow me to assist you." He pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it onto the pile on the reading chair.

Penelope held up a hand. "Wait."

Lucien went still, his gaze growing guarded. "I'm waiting."

He was also breathing hard, shirtless, and no longer a youth. Lean muscles rippled across his chest and belly and roped his arms. He wasn't hirsute, but the hair on his chest was dark and—Penelope assayed a caress—crinkly.

"My lord will turn around, please."

He complied, making a slow circle, and Penelope was treated to more abundant muscle and male perfection. "What's this?" She traced a finger over a white, puckered line running from his left shoulder down over the left shoulder blade.

"Saber blow. Not deep. Itched like hell when it was healing. Fortunately, a competent medical man saw to it—a Frenchman flying British colors of all things."

Penelope hated that scar and hated even more the casual recounting Lucien offered. She spun him around, and though her dress gapped and Lucien was half naked, she yet mustered a lecture.

"No more of that, Lucien. No more sabers, no more riding off to war and calling it a grand tour. No more trading in art and espionage. You are mine now. I love you, and you will bide with me . "

He removed a nacre pin dangling behind her ear—a half dozen were doubtless scattered on the carpet. "I will bide with you. Right now, I'd like to bide naked with you in that bed, Penelope. Might I be your lady's maid?"

He hadn't returned her declaration outright, but he'd managed the part that mattered. His place was with her, and on that point he'd given her no argument.

"You shall be my lady's maid, and then you shall be my lover."

He moved around behind her, finished unbuttoning her dress, and made short work of her stays and stockings. When Penelope stood barefoot in her shift, she realized a great deal of her hesitance had fallen away.

They were betrothed. Lucien had never made any effort to rescind those promises, and he'd never admitted to so much as speculating about a future with another lady. What he hadn't said told her as much as what he had.

He was hers, and the look in his eyes said he intended in the next hour to prove that conclusion past any and all doubts.