Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The coach was old but clean, and the kitchen had packed a hamper sufficient to feed the entire troop of yeoman warders guarding the Tower of London. Anybody observing the trunks piled on the roof and the boot would assume another toff was sending his luggage on to London.

And yet, Penelope dreaded to begin her journey.

"In you go," Lucien said as a porter handed another hamper up to John Coachman on the box. "You'll be in Town before dawn."

The hour approached midnight, the perfect time to depart for London if one had the luxury of traveling when the roads were least crowded.

Nothing about the situation felt perfect to Penelope. "I will miss you." She stood close enough to Lucien that she could smell his lavender shaving soap, close enough that she could have leaned against him and reprised her tears from earlier in the day. "I'll miss all of you."

Lucien took her gently in his arms. "The elders were magnificent, weren't they? They've had Dashiel in their sights since he came home from Spain, and they've been discreet about it. "

"I thought I was looking after them, and the whole time… I've underestimated our family, Lucien."

"As have I, but isn't family supposed to look after one another, Pen? Family isn't like Tommie's squire renting acres to the tenants. We're to muddle on more like a herd of goats. This one excels at opening gates. That one has the keenest hearing."

"Goats, Lucien?"

"They're clever and resourceful."

"If we're reduced to discussing the merits of caprines, it's time I was on my way."

Lucien's embrace became more snug. "Go straight to St. Didier, before anybody knows you're in Town. Once you've delivered your report, then and only then do you roll into the Lynnfield House mews."

"Where Wren and Phoebe will soon join me, and Purdy, too, though she will play least in sight for a time. I know the plan, Lucien." Lark would follow with Tommie, Tabitha, and the marchioness on Monday. The older ladies would travel up on Sunday, violating every dictate of genteel propriety and making swifter progress than they would on any other day of the week.

Lucien spoke near her ear. "And you know I will not fail you."

This time. The words hung silently in the air, and Penelope's heart nearly broke. "I won't fail you either. Lure Sir Dashiel to Town and have him arrested for debt. Strip him of his magistrate's honors and cover him in disgrace. We shall marry, and the elders will be safe."

The plan was sound, though not exactly satisfying. The elders had approved, though, and had been fiercely willing to take on their assigned roles. The marchioness and Tabitha had been kept in the dark by design.

Lucien kissed Penelope on the mouth, then stepped back and produced a bound book from inside the coach.

"Some light reading in the event you can't sleep. It's a first edition, so please look after it for me."

Evelina, Mrs. Burney's most successful novel. "Our old friend?"

"I was so busy using it to decode our missives, I never actually read it. We can remedy the oversight now, in our separate venues."

Penelope took the book from him. "Is this a race?"

"It's a gift." His expression by the flickering torchlight was oddly solemn. "Be safe, Pen, and please be in London when I've finished my assignment here."

Ah. So Penelope wasn't the only one thinking of previous partings. "It's hard, isn't it?" she said, leaning against him, the book in her hand. "To be left behind?"

" Mae'n uffern ." It's hell.

Their next kiss was desperate, passionate, and too brief, and then Penelope was sitting in the old coach, clutching her novel, and knowing she must not look back, must not wave, must not call farewell as the horses lifted from the trot to the canter. How in the name of all that was heroic had Lucien had the fortitude to ride away all those years ago? The courage and determination?

His heart must have fractured anew with each passing mile, and all the while, he'd believed Penelope had sent him on his way alone .

She set aside the book, intent on finding a handkerchief. A slim sheet of fragile foolscap drifted from between the pages onto the floor of the coach. The paper was slightly yellowed and covered in familiar writing.

By the light of the coach lamp, Penelope peered at the date, then whirled around to open the slot that let her see the stable yard growing smaller in the coach's wake. Lucien stood beneath a torch, still and alone, and then he lifted one hand and blew her a kiss.

Before she could thump on the coach roof to stop the blasted vehicle, Lucien had slipped into the darkness.

"He found the letter," she murmured, closing the slot and turning up the lamp. "That wretched, wonderful man, after all these years…" He'd found it and, in typical Lucien fashion, had made sure she'd have privacy when she decoded his previous farewell to her.

The amenities in the old coach included a traveling desk. Word by word, Penelope translated numbers into words, words into sentences, and sentences into sentiments.

Please come with me… I'm begging you, Pen… I love you and always will…

The letter filled her with joy and regret—how Lucien must have suffered to think she'd been indifferent to his pleas—and with determination. If she had to haul Lucien bodily to the Hebrides, they would have a future together, and Dashiel Ingraham would rue the day he'd attempted to meddle with that dream.

Lucien made his way to the orchard by the light of a waning moon. The notion of going back to a house without Penelope in it… He sat on the low stone wall, feeling empty and exhausted, though Penelope hadn't been gone but five minutes.

Watching the coach sway down the carriageway had been hard. Knowing he'd once again failed to give Penelope the words I love you was harder.

"I'll tell her when I get to London." Lucien was rehearsing that moment when he realized he wasn't alone. A hint of lavender wafted on the night air, along with a subtler scent bringing to mind lush meadows and quiet woods.

"Uncle, show yourself."

Malcolm emerged from the shadows, not so much as a cravat pin showing in the darkness. He bowed slightly and gestured to the stone wall.

"Of course you may join me, though I'm poor company at the moment. Pen has decamped for London." Uncle doubtless knew that, just as he knew so much that nobody attributed to him.

Malcolm squeezed his shoulder and perched beside him.

"I found the letter," Lucien went on. "Purdy had it. She's kept it all these years. Thought I might be communicating with smugglers, allowing them to use Lynnfield as a storage depot on the route to London. Your sister is a fanciful creature."

A fanciful creature so homesick for Wales that as a young girl, she'd reasoned she might be sent back there if she only behaved badly enough. Stealing had become a habit, though, and a comfort once Purdy had realized she'd never be sent back to Wales, even if she purloined the crown jewels. The whole tale had come out between sniffles and apologies, and Lucien had found himself patting Purdy's hand and feeling sorry for her.

"I want to go to London right now," Lucien said softly. "Purdy is still homesick for Wales. I am homesick for my Penelope, and she's not been gone a quarter hour."

Malcolm made a motion with both hands like the flapping of bird wings.

"Yes, I sent pigeons with her. St. Didier has some too. If all goes well, I will be in London by sunset on Sunday, Sir Dashiel hot on my heels, and the birds won't be necessary."

Malcolm shook a fist in the direction of the Roost. Ire and loathing gave the gesture more than theatrical power.

"Sir Dashiel beat you, didn't he?" Lucien murmured. "You were on foot, he was on horseback, and he took his riding crop to you."

Malcolm shrugged.

"It happens regularly?"

He held up four fingers.

"Malcolm, why not pull the blighter from the saddle and beat the stuffing out of him? In a fair fight, you're bigger, smarter, and far more fit."

Malcolm took out a penknife and scratched a word into the dirt at their feet. Drwg.

"Evil," Lucien said. "Bad, wicked." The import of Malcolm's opinion took a moment to sink in. "If you struck him and there were no witnesses, he could claim he was the victim of an assault and insist he'd been defending himself against a violent madman. He's been plotting to send you off for some time, then."

Malcolm nodded.

"He's told you as much?"

Malcolm stuck his chin in the air and curled his lip.

"Bragged of it to you." Lucien recalled Penelope telling him that Dashiel had insisted that even his prospective wife address him by his honorific unless he was rutting on her . "He's even worse than I suspected."

Malcolm nodded, and a moment later, he rose and scuffed out the scratchings in the dirt with his bootheel.

"I'll come with you if you're going back to the manor." Lucien stood as well, still missing Penelope, but comforted too. Even Malcolm in his silences and wanderings had been keeping watch over Lynnfield and over Penelope. "I will not like leaving you here when I go up to Town on Sunday, Malcolm."

Theo would stay behind as well, because somebody had to keep an eye on Dashiel. Phoebe, Wren, and Purdy would leave for Town directly after services, which Purdy would miss due to the same severe megrim that had kept her from attending the assembly.

If Sir Dashiel cherished a prayer of marrying Penelope before summer, he'd need to pursue her to London posthaste. Penelope's conference with St. Didier would ensure that Dashiel's creditors knew of his insolvency, his lack of marital prospects, and his expected arrival in London.

"The wheels of justice cannot grind quickly enough," Lucien said as the manor house loomed against a starry sky. "I vow, Malcolm, I feel as if I'm once again back at war."

Malcolm stopped him with a hand on his arm, pulled him into a hug, thumped him on the back, and then resumed walking.

"You are right. I am not at war. I was alone then and didn't much care if I lived or died. I have family now, and I very much want to live. That makes a difference."

Malcolm cuffed him once on the shoulder and strode ahead, and Lucien let him go. I love you once again remained unspoken, but not unacknowledged. That was something.

"I thought London gentlemen slept until noon," Penelope said, taking in the appointments in St. Didier's breakfast parlor. The room looked out over a small back garden beginning to fill with light and already awash in birdsong. A cracked window let in a breeze that fluttered the lace curtains, and the sideboard was brightened by a bouquet of red and yellow tulips.

The overall effect of the room was pleasant, but the lone place setting at the head of the table struck an off note. Such a room was meant for chatter and good cheer rather than a solitary plate of eggs served with a side dish of financial news.

"Some London gents do sleep until noon," St. Didier said. "Tea or coffee, my lady? Or do you prefer chocolate?"

Penelope would have preferred that Lucien was with her, that she hadn't spent the night jostling about alone in an old coach with the sweetest love letter ever penned by the hand of man, and with memories so dear they'd brought her to tears all over again.

"Strong China black if you have it," she said as St. Didier held her chair. "And some buttered toast wouldn't go amiss."

St. Didier filled her a plate at the sideboard, with modest servings of omelet, sliced ham, and buttered toast. He put a trio of cherry tarts on a second plate and brought her both. A tea cup and saucer followed—buttercups adorning both—along with a pristine linen table napkin.

"The China black is in the pot decorated with buttercups. The gunpowder is in the pot covered with violets." He rummaged in the sideboard as he spoke, then passed Penelope a handful of cutlery and took his place at the head of the table. "I was half expecting you this morning. You or Lord Lynnfield."

Penelope poured herself a steaming cup, and the aroma alone helped revive her. "Why now?"

"Because your local assembly looms at hand, and betrothals are usually announced at such gatherings, unless the countryside has changed a great deal in a short time. Jam?" He set something like a miniature epergne by her plate, except that the three small jam pots did not sit on tiered shelves, but rather, occupied a frame that made it possible to move all three jam jars at the same time.

Penelope chose strawberry. "Lucien will attend, as will our elders, and they will make my excuses. Is there anything more restorative in all of creation than jam and buttered toast with a cup of hot tea?"

St. Didier sipped his own tea, also China black. "Good company," he said, saluting with his cup and offering Penelope a surprisingly charming smile. "Good company can be very restorative. You would not have recognized the Lucien Pritchard I met here in London."

"All serious and busy? Thinking too hard and seeing every pothole in every plan?"

"Exactly, and incapable of simply admitting he was worried, if lecturing his pet duke would serve instead. Huntleigh owes his former majordomo a great deal. How is the omelet?"

Penelope hadn't thought she'd had much of an appetite, but one bite of cheesy eggs and she was glad St. Didier had put them on her plate.

"Hot," she said. "Marvelously hot. One grows so accustomed to cold and tepid offerings that one forgets what a pleasure hot food is."

"My lady has the gift of speaking metaphorically as well as literally."

The wretched man added a dab of extra butter to his toast and took a bite, as if he hadn't just offered an insight into Penelope's life since Lucien had left for the Continent.

"You are forward in your observations, sir," Penelope said. "If this weren't the best breakfast I've had in ages, I'd douse you over the head with my tea."

"Having consumed a few tepid meals myself, I know the look of one mending and making do, my lady. That Lord Lynnfield has put the fire back in your eyes, and that you have similarly inspired him to hurling epistolary thunderbolts, warms an old bachelor's heart."

St. Didier looked to be about thirty, and yet, he did have the air of one who had seen and suffered much. As if hot breakfasts and fresh flowers were statements rather than amenities.

"You've read Lucien's letter?"

"While you were freshening up. I'm to alert Sir Dashiel's creditors to the baronet's impending arrival in Town and keep a close eye on your ladyship. If possible, I'm also to arrange invitations for you and keep Sir Dashiel in my sights once he comes to London."

Penelope had finished her eggs and started on her ham. Not too salty, not too smoky. "You are only one man. How can you accomplish all that when we have mere days to put Lucien's scheme into place?" Lucien's scheme, but refined by the counsel he'd sought from Penelope and the elders.

"Lord Lynnfield had me laying groundwork from the moment I returned to London," St. Didier said. "Then too, Sir Dashiel has been trespassing on the patience of his London creditors for years, and very skillfully. My job will be in the nature of removing the last cotter pin holding the floodgate closed. He's put it about that you have accepted his proposal, by the way, and done so without precisely committing himself."

"In case a better heiress comes along?"

"In case he's accused of fraud outright. If he makes no clear promises, then he's simply a debtor obligated to pay. If he trades in falsehoods to secure goods, then the situation becomes more serious."

Some part of Penelope did not want Dashiel in any more serious trouble. She simply wanted him to leave her in peace. Another part of her knew Dashiel had earned all the retribution coming his way.

"The baronet is badly off," she said. "He's all but forcing me to the altar, he's taken his sisters' dowry funds, and he insists his hunters be fashionably skinny. That makes no sense when it's spring, and no true huntsman begrudges his horses spring grass after a winter of galloping over fences. Dashiel simply lacks adequate grazing and must conserve what he does have for the farm stock." Theo, steward-in-training, had put that much together.

"Were you truly considering marrying this pusillanimous poseur?"

Penelope barely knew St. Didier, but she'd trusted him to find Lucien and to deal with him discreetly. Her confidences were safe with St. Didier, and she'd pondered his question at length herself.

"I was entertaining the notion of marriage to Sir Dashiel in the theoretical sense. If I married him, would he be sufficiently grateful to have my money that he'd treat me decently? If I married him, would I have the independence that I lacked at Lynnfield, or would I be trading one set of obligations for another?"

"Or simply adding obligations? You never considered him as a man?"

The question brought Penelope up short as she reached for a cherry tart. "No. He is polite enough, clean about his person, but I… There was no attraction, if that's what you're too polite to ask. None." Lighting upon that conclusion pleased her inordinately and made her sad.

"One surmised as much, and at the same time, dispatching me to have Lynnfield execute legal documents was all but guaranteed to send his lordship pelting for home."

The tart was luscious. Warm, flaky, sweet, and pungent. "Because?"

"Huntleigh and I have shared a few brandies late at night. The entire time Lucien Pritchard, as he was known at the time, spent in Huntleigh's household—years, my lady—the man never so much as looked at another woman, despite many a lady casting sighs in his direction. His lordship is smitten, and thank heavens he has the brains to finally admit it to the one person to whom the news matters most. More tarts?"

He admitted it to me years ago, in writing. To hear Lucien say the words would have been lovely, though. "These will do. They are quite good. "

"My grandmother's recipe. The Scots know their way around a sweet."

"Your grandmother is Scottish? You seem so… so…"

"English? My mother certainly was, vehemently so, for all the good it did her. More tea?"

St. Didier was a gracious host, his hospitality effortless and informal, and yet, Penelope sensed that questions about St. Didier's lost loves and romantic compromises would meet with vague poetical quotes or platitudes about the weather.

She finished the meal in better spirits than she'd started it, despite the fact that breakfasting alone with a bachelor was the stuff of hopeless scandal. That Sir Dashiel was abusing his office as justice of the peace, had stolen from his own sisters, and was scheming against the elders, Penelope herself, and Lucien put a friendly meal of ham and eggs in a more acceptable light.

"Now you will sleep," St. Didier said when Penelope had finished a second cup of tea. "It's a mistake to neglect the victuals after a forced march, though tempting. I sent your coach to Lynnfield House without you and will lend you mine for the last leg of your journey."

"But—"

"My conveyances are all unmarked by crests or flourishes, and I change teams regularly so my horses aren't recognizable either. My coachman will set you down in the mews, and you will wear the hood of your cloak pulled up as you hurry into the house, ready to put right all that baggage her ladyship sent up in the less commodious vehicle."

Lucien had the same ability to think up plausible stories on the spot. Penelope was too tired to join in the game.

"Very well, I will enjoy a brief nap once I reach Lynnfield House." Three hours was brief, in some contexts. "While you do what?"

"I will appoint watchers at the turnpikes leading to Kent and Surrey, and make the rounds of the places gentlemen stay when they don't want in-laws or creditors to know they're in London. You're sure you won't take some of those tarts with you?"

Penelope helped herself to one more and rose without assistance. "You are a bad influence, sir."

"High praise from you, my lady. I will also send a pigeon to his lordship, who is doubtless fretting about highwaymen and bandits and brothel-keeping abbesses. Lynnfield will appreciate knowing you have safely arrived in Town."

"John Coachman keeps a brace of pistols up on the box. I have my peashooter, and the grooms all carry knives."

St. Didier stopped at the parlor door. "Peashooter?"

Penelope swept through the doorway before him. "They are notoriously inaccurate, but they do fire bullets. I am a dead shot, though I've never taken down a living target."

"Remind me to be on my best behavior the next time I go calling at Lynnfield."

"One senses you are on your best behavior at all times, St. Didier. That must be tiring and a bit dull. One knows the look and so forth."

His brows rose, and he looked as if he was about to say something, then changed his mind. How satisfying to have had some version of the last word with a man who could put half of London under surveillance on any random spring morning.

"What's this?" St. Didier asked when he'd escorted Penelope to the foyer and helped her into her cloak. He'd also opened his own front door to her, meaning not a butler, footman, or chambermaid had seen Penelope pay her call.

"An empty brandy bottle," Penelope said, pulling on gloves. "Lucien asked me to give it to you so you could investigate its provenance."

St. Didier held the bottle up to the window and rotated it half a turn as he peered at the label. "Is this from his lordship's cellars?"

"From Sir Dashiel's. Lucien sampled the brandy when he paid a call and found the vintage far above what Dashiel ought to be able to afford. Lucien found that odd."

"This brandy is rare. I know that much," St. Didier said, putting the bottle back on the foyer's sideboard. "Rare even in France, but then, Sir Dashiel served in uniform, and some of those fellows acquired Continental tastes."

Penelope had eschewed a bonnet and instead pulled her cloak up over her head. "Lucien said the brandy was exquisite, some of the best he's ever come across. He suspects Sir Dashiel extorted it from some nabob, or stole it from the quartermaster's stores in Spain."

"I promise you, my lady, this bottle has never graced any quartermaster's stores. Royal cellars, perhaps, and then only for a princely sum. You are leaving out the back, as the saying goes."

The sun was coming up. Wheeled traffic was even at that moment clattering past St. Didier's front door.

"Out the back will do nicely," Penelope said, taking St. Didier's arm.

He led her through a house of a piece with the breakfast parlor—elegant, comfortable, spotless, and somehow lonely. Penelope stopped before a portrait of a red-haired beauty in Highland tartan.

"Who is she?"

"My grandmother. Left a trail of broken hearts wherever she went, if the stories are true."

The young lady was lovely, with blue eyes and a smile at once demure and mischievous. "One sees a resemblance."

"Cease needling me, your ladyship." St. Didier resumed his progress down the corridor. "Or I will not tell Cook to send you over a basket of tarts."

"Disguised as a satchel of documents, no doubt."

"Or a pair of boots returned from the cobbler's. Soon, you will know all my secrets."

Penelope let that bit of nonsense conclude the exchange, but as she waited with St. Didier in the alley for his team to be put to, she wrestled with the urge to hug him. The man was lonely and trying desperately to tell himself he was content.

She knew the look. Lucien would know it too .

"How will you track down a brandy that's reserved for royalty?" she asked as St. Didier's coach clattered up the cobbles. The vehicle was dark, not too large, and pulled by sturdy matched bays of about sixteen hands. Utterly unremarkable.

"I will pay a call on Xavier Fournier, a Frenchman well established here in London who trades in wine and spirits and does so without running afoul of the excisemen. He's something of a fairy godfather and watchdog over the émigré community, and if anybody knows the details of that brandy, he will."

"Lucien said the brandy was out of place—badly, badly out of place—at the Roost, and thus it piqued his curiosity. He had Dashiel's butler bring him the bottle on a whim." Though Lucien didn't have whims. He had inspirations.

"Perhaps Sir Dashiel extorted a case from some Spanish bandit. We might never know." St. Didier opened the coach door and offered Penelope his hand.

She kissed his cheek and nipped into the coach, shutting the door behind her. The shades were pulled down, but she could see through the crack between the leather and the glass that she'd surprised her host.

He stood alone in the morning gloom, smiling at the cobblestones and looking for all the world like his Scottish granny had in her prime. Irresistibly sweet and bent on mischief. Penelope hoped he looked that way more often in future, because when he did, he was gorgeous.