Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Uncle Malcolm and Uncle Theo played cribbage by the parlor windows. Aunt Purdy plied her needle in a wing chair near the fire, and Cousin Lark wandered through a Beethoven slow movement at the keyboard. Tommie read a fashion magazine while doing justice to the brandy.
To Penelope's eye, the tableau offered another typical evening in the family parlor except for Lucien at the desk in the corner, his attention on some budget or ledger that required frequent use of the abacus.
"You should at least pretend to read, Penelope," the marchioness said, quietly enough that Lark's music would hide her words from the rest of the room. "Lucien won't move until he's satisfied that his numbers tally to the farthing."
"They might be Aunt Phoebe's numbers. Lucien asked her to put her mind to enlivening the plantings at the front of the manor and along the drive. She disappeared back to the dower house with Aunt Wren in tow."
The marchioness's knitting needles slowed. "Enliven the plantings? Those flower beds haven't changed since Capability Brown was a sapling. Salvia, daisies, climbing roses… very pretty, very reliable . I don't suppose you've given any thought to the grounds at Raven's Roost? Sir Dashiel is a conscientious farmer, for all he doesn't put much stock in his estate's presentation."
Presentation, as her ladyship referred to it, cost money. "What has Sir Dashiel to do with anything?" And when had her ladyship developed the habit of introducing him into any and every casual discussion?
"You rode out to meet him this morning, Penny. I was young once. I do understand." She smiled at her knitting and rearranged the yarn on her needle. "You and Sir Dashiel will suit. Have no fear in that regard. He's a man of the land, a former officer. Others have loftier titles, true, but he's a dependable, known quantity, and you have never been impressed with Town life."
An earl's daughter could look much higher than a mere baronet, but her ladyship had a point. Sir Dashiel was loyal to his acres, well liked, and… and what? Handsome? The neighborhood Adonis, to hear the marchioness tell it.
His looks hardly mattered. He'd served on the Peninsula for less than two years, and the baronetcy had been his grandfather's accomplishment for some bit of daring during the American war.
When had everybody, Sir Dashiel included, begun assuming he and Penelope would make a match?
"Dashiel has grown presuming to the point of arrogance," she said. "Somebody told him about that old betrothal between Lucien and me, and he brought it up today when he interrupted my ride."
The marchioness started on a new row. She had aged well, blond hair turning flaxen, figure still handsome. Like Penelope, she had funds of her own. Unlike Penelope, she longed for Town and a livelier social life. She'd make the trip to London in a few weeks, when the Season was in full swing, buy out the shops, reap a harvest of gossip, then return to Kent exhausted and in much better spirits for having enjoyed her preferred diversions.
The abacus clicked with an irregular rhythm, Uncle Malcolm threw a fresh square of peat on the fire, and Lark launched into a lively scherzo.
What do I want? What did Lucien want? Why come home now? Why come home at all? And yet, Penelope admitted that his arrival was timely.
Sir Dashiel had insinuated himself into the role of suitor, and Penelope had allowed him to. She hadn't precisely encouraged him, but neither had she objected. She, too, had begun, all unaware, to assume that she'd eventually give Dashiel leave to pay his addresses.
Gracious saints.
"You've invited Sir Dashiel to Sunday supper," the marchioness observed. "You must be sure Vicar joins us next week. We will parade all the local beauties under Lucien's nose, though Tabby Ingraham isn't out yet. In my day, we didn't let that bother us. A girl looked over the prospects from the first possible moment."
"Sir Dashiel mostly invited himself, and he's usually the first to insist on observing protocol."
"The highest sticklers can often be found canoodling behind the privet hedge. Mark me on this. Ride out with Sir Dashiel if you please, but if he suggests you dismount to admire the view, expect mischief to follow. Delightful mischief, viewed in a certain light."
Penelope had experienced Sir Dashiel's brand of mischief—a kiss to the cheek, lips brushing her knuckles, a hand lingering on hers when she took his arm.
Nonsense, all of it. She could not dismiss Lucien's little gesture in the conservatory—a kiss to her palm—quite as easily. She and Lucien had kissed before, years ago, and assured each other they were conducting experiments in the name of curiosity, then they'd laughed about the results.
Lucien's conclusion, offered with dancing eyes, had been: The business might benefit from practice. He'd been a rascal, in his subtle, bookish way. The whole undertaking had been awkward, sweet, and tempting from Penelope's perspective .
Uncle Malcolm put the cards and cribbage board away. Uncle Theo was refilling his glass at the sideboard.
"I do believe I have read enough for the nonce," Penelope said, rising. "Uncle Malcolm, would you light me up to my room?"
Malcolm slid the cards and the cribbage board into the drawer assigned to their keeping and nodded. He lit a carrying candle from the candelabrum on the desk and gestured to the door. He often saw Penny to her apartment, his company restful and undemanding. The small gallantry also spared Malcolm from watching Theo make his nightly slide into inebriation, though Uncle Theo's version of excess was simply to grow quieter and quieter until he nodded off.
Lucien did not so much as look up from his ciphering as Penelope offered her good-nights. The house was chilly, though all the sconces were lit for a change in deference to Lucien's return.
"Are you glad to have Lucien back?" Penelope asked as she and Malcolm climbed the main staircase.
Malcolm nodded and cocked his head. Are you?
"I am as well. Lucien livens things up. He's given me some things to think about." He'd planned their elopement, for pity's sake. Both of them too young to marry without the consent of guardians, and Lucien hadn't even intended that they marry. Not immediately, perhaps not ever. "He and I are still engaged, technically."
Malcolm offered no reply, but then, his world was circumscribed by which birds, blooms, and butterflies were in the area and whether Aunt Purdy had helped herself to his field glasses again. He read in several languages and had a deft hand with a botanical sketch.
"Malcolm, are you happy?"
Penelope wasn't in the habit of interrogating him—Malcolm was a private, dignified fellow—but of all the elders, she considered him the closest to an ally.
Malcolm stopped outside the door of Lucien's apartment and tapped on the carving. A nature scene of a cascading cataract, the pool at its base—the lynn, in older parlance—and the trees and beasts gathered about the water. The lion and the lamb, a biblical allusion, along with bears, wolves, and various birds and livestock.
Malcolm glossed a finger over the nightingale high up in an oak and then touched that finger to Penelope's forehead. He nodded and smiled, then offered Penelope his arm again.
What was that about? "Sometimes, Malcolm, I wish you would just give me a few words. Purdy says you talked as a child, and you went silent only when you left Wales as a youth. I would love to hear your voice, even if you insisted on keeping to Welsh. Without Lucien on hand, mine has grown rusty."
One's native tongue should never grow rusty, and yet, the elders were nearly scandalized to be overheard in Welsh. Penelope suspected that Phoebe, Wren, and Lark remained in the dower house in part for greater privacy so they need not watch their language, as it were.
Uncle Malcolm stopped again, this time outside of his own chambers. Penelope had rarely been invited inside and knew not to touch or move anything without Malcolm's permission. She waited in the corridor until Malcolm emerged from his sitting room, a book in his hands. He held the book to his chest for a moment, then offered it to her.
"The Salmau Can . Malcolm, are you lending this to me?"
Malcolm nodded bashfully and touched the tip of his index finger to his lips.
The book was a psalter translated into metric Welsh. "I'm to say the verses?"
Malcolm made a sweeping, operatic gesture with his right arm.
"Or sing them, in Welsh, of course. Thank you, Malcolm. I will take the best care of this loan. You are so thoughtful."
He bowed and disappeared again, a silent elf of tallish human proportions.
"Good night, Uncle," Penelope murmured, taking the psalter, which looked like it well might be two centuries old, to the nearest alcove. She sat beneath the sconces, candlelight flickering over the pages.
" Yr Arglwydd yw fy Mugail; ni bydd eisiau arnaf…" She was still reading when the nearest sconce began to sputter. She rose stiffly and made her way to her rooms. How often had Malcolm thumbed through these pages, and did he ever sing the verses to himself? So much silence for one man, and yet, he appeared happy and content.
Penelope was still musing on that conundrum when she opened the door to her sitting room and found Lucien asleep on the sofa, wrapped in her favorite old merino shawl.
Lucien was aware of Penelope's presence before he opened his eyes—before he was fully awake, in fact. She brought the scent of roses with her, old-fashioned and sweet. Even her shawl bore a lingering hint of her fragrance.
"Lucien, what on earth are you doing here?"
He sat up. She had a book—she'd been pretending to read some herbal in the family parlor—and she looked prickly, tired, and dear.
"I was waiting for you, and now my patience has been rewarded. Sit with me, please?"
Ten years ago, she would have settled beside him without hesitation and certainly without asking his permission.
She took the wing chair near the hearth. "I should open the door, except that would let out all the heat."
Lucien rose and draped the shawl around her shoulders. He'd lit the fire before he'd dozed off, though a footman should have come by and seen to that amenity.
"We are old friends," he said. "Old somethings, at any rate, and relatives. Please don't let decorum come between us now, Pen."
She gathered the shawl around her, toed off her slippers, and tucked up her feet. "Not decorum, Lucien, propriety. We are no longer children. "
"Neither are we strangers. I saw Sir Dashiel intercept you on horseback this morning. Is he a problem?"
Pen arranged her skirts over her toes, a degree of modesty she'd never have bothered with earlier in life.
"You think because you claim to have left me a note all those years ago that I am in charity with you, Lucien. I am trying to be, but adjusting my perspective will take time. You were still gone, and I still had no idea where or why. Eventually, the solicitors let us know that you were racketing about the Continent and sending home objets d'art and the occasional painting. The note condoling me on Henry's death was something, I suppose."
"The earl died defending his country, and you deserve to be proud of him." Lucien could tell her that much, because any man who died in uniform was presumed to have ended his days as a hero. Henry had, in fact, expired without getting off a shot, ambushed on a dusty farm lane along with most of the men in his patrol.
"Henry was an idiot," Penelope said, perhaps the first negative word she'd ever uttered about her older brother. "No heir, barely of age himself, but by then, I was betrothed to you and thus off his hands, wasn't I?"
"Henry wanted to be off Lynnfield's hands, Pen. Young men are acolytes of pride and pigheadedness, and he wasn't simply a young man, he was a peer. Earl of Carweneth. Young peers are doubly clueless. Witness, my scheme to spirit you away to freedom."
She peered at him in the gloom. "That was your plan, wasn't it? To gain freedom for us both. Bold creature."
Her tone held a hint of relenting, perhaps even affection, but Lucien's present task did not involve dwelling on the past.
"Tell me about Sir Dashiel."
"What is there to tell? You've known him longer than I have. Conscientious about his acres, served loyally in uniform, baronet, attentive to his younger sister, and…"
"Pen? "
"And not bad looking, though I suspect he deems himself handsomer than he is."
"You could never abide a weak chin."
She hid a smile under the guise of rearranging her shawl. "Dashiel might have convinced himself that he and I have an understanding."
Ballocks to that. " Do you have an understanding?"
"Why should it matter to you?"
While dozing, Lucien had pondered this conversation, and he'd been prepared for that salvo. "Who do you suppose will negotiate your settlements, Pen, if you favor Sir Dashiel with your hand?" Which, by the by, she could not legally do as long as she was betrothed to Lucien.
"Oh." More tucking and fussing and scooting about. "I can't foresee that any negotiations will be needed in the immediate future."
Not good enough. "He watched you," Lucien said, rising and poking some air into the fire. "When you rode out. I was in the orchard, where I'd been told I could find Mr. Osian, and I saw Ingraham perched up on the ridge, surveilling you as you enjoyed a solitary gallop."
"Surveilling?"
Wrong word. Too military. Savoring too strongly of espionage. "He waited until you'd cleared as many fences as you pleased, then intercepted you."
"Dash is polite, in the usual course. He could hardly have galloped down the slope and challenged me to a race."
How many times had Lucien raced her, on foot, on horseback, through a book? "You should be aware that Sir Dashiel's reputation in the military was less than pristine."
Penelope ceased her fussing and adopted the guileless expression Lucien positively hated. "Did he kill people, Lucien? Shoot them dead on the battlefield just like every soldier to take the king's shilling? Just like Henry doubtless did? "
Lucien replaced the poker in the hearth stand and sat cross-legged on the rug facing Penelope's chair. "Ingraham lasted less than two years in uniform—for the duration of a single campaign and two winter quarters, as it happened—because he was suspected of blackmailing his fellow officers. He got himself attached to the quartermaster's outfit and hid stores in the tents of anybody who crossed him. A word in the ear of the military police, and those enemies were facing a court-martial."
Penelope scowled at the fire. "Have you any proof of these accusations?"
"Somebody turned the tables on Captain Sir Dashiel Ingraham and secreted French lace under his pillow, or perhaps they found the lace Sir Dashiel had put there himself. The military police, who were beginning to smell foul play, were only too happy to report what they'd found."
" French lace?"
"The wives of several senior officers identified it as such. He was sent home with all possible haste, and nobody regretted his departure." Except possibly the French, who had at the very least traded lace for edible rations.
"Dash thinks himself clever, and he's not stupid, but he's…"
Lucien waited, though if Penelope took to defending a traitor…
"French lace is bad, isn't it?" Penelope asked, worrying a nail. "Worse than pilfering an extra blanket from the supply wagon."
"Much worse. The French were meagerly provisioned and expected to forage for their sustenance. Parts of Spain are desert, other parts mountainous, and foraging is difficult. Napoleon's rank and file would barter boots, brandy, anything for bread before you could say vive l'empereur ."
Penelope muttered something about privet hedges. "I have no understanding with Sir Dashiel."
Relief washed over Lucien, followed immediately by caution. "But?"
"But I might have been contemplating one in the abstract. You used to study a chess problem, then put it away and work on your translations. In some antechamber of your mind, you were still working on the chess problem, and when you woke up the next morning, you'd have a solution."
"An understanding with Sir Dashiel was forming in your mental antechamber?" Not good. Not good at all. Not quite disastrous either.
"By default, I suppose. At first, I resented being stashed away in the shires with her ladyship, but I've seen enough of Town to know I belong in the country. I've learned how to be useful here, how to go on, and I would miss the fresh air and greenery. A village market is a very different article from what happens in London, and a village assembly is very different from its Mayfair cousin."
Blessedly so. "Sir Dashiel could offer you a secure future among people you know and care for." Lucien avoided the word love out of habit. "He is the closest to an eligible in the surrounds, and he is interested. That doesn't obligate you to reciprocate, Pen. Why not hire a companion and retreat to Finbury? It's all of fifteen miles distant." Not quite easy visiting distance, but not the Antipodes either.
"Finbury? I hadn't thought of that. The tenants have been there forever, but I do own it."
She was too young to play the spinster, and she'd be bored witless at Finbury, which was a modest manor with a few well-run tenancies to its name. Self-supporting, though isolated by Kentish standards.
"Have you seen Finbury lately?" Lucien asked. "We could jaunt over there and look in on the place."
Penelope studied him from her perch in the wing chair, the limited light making her look very like her younger self in a severe mood, of which there had been many.
"We should not be having the discussion at this hour under these circumstances, my lord, but I don't seem to be insisting on the proprieties with you, do I?"
"One rejoices to agree with a lady. I have yet to hear an answer to my original question, though. Is Sir Dashiel a problem? "
"You did ask that question. You also issued the order, ‘Tell me about Sir Dashiel.'"
"My apologies." Never argue with a lady, especially when she was right and had a nearly faultless memory for conversations.
"Sir Dashiel likely has formed expectations," Penelope said, "that are at least premature and, at the worst, problematic. Let me ponder the situation, because I don't want you humiliating him with any marquess-of-the-manor highhandedness. Nothing is so tedious as ill will between neighbors, and Sir Dashiel is very aware that you outrank him by miles."
"You outrank him, Pen." Half her appeal to Ingraham doubtless lay in the fact that she was an earl's daughter. Her fortune was the other half. That Penelope was also whip-smart, independent of mind and spirit, pretty, and possessed of a good sense of humor was all likely outside Sir Dashiel's notice.
Well, not the pretty part. He'd appreciate her good looks, the rotter.
"My honors are of the courtesy variety," she said. "Sir Dashiel can pass his baronetcy on to his son. You really should go, Lucien."
Yes, he really should. The conversation had produced insights rather than solutions, but before a fellow could devise a solution, he had to learn the problem's metes and bounds.
Lucien rose from the floor, not as easily as he once would have. "I apologize for intruding into your private apartment, but I couldn't find another opportunity to broach a difficult topic with you confidentially. If you see any need for me to intervene with Sir Dashiel, I am at your service. Otherwise, I leave the puzzle for you to solve in your own fashion."
"You don't like him, do you?"
"I don't respect him." Or trust him, or like him, or think him worthy to kiss Penelope's muddy hems.
"You haven't told me the whole of it, have you, Lucien? You heard things, rattling around on the Continent. You crossed paths with officers on leave and so forth."
"I did, but I will not slander a man with rumor when I have facts to present instead." Nor would he recite proof of that man's perfidy unnecessarily. The war was over. Lucien took up the poker again and banked the fire, then replaced the screen and offered Penelope his hand. "Off to bed with you."
She took his hand, and when she rose, she kept her fingers linked with his. "When you were traveling, you thought about me and about my refusal to come with you, and you came up with reasons why that was for the best, didn't you?"
"Endlessly."
"Until you convinced yourself the whole plan was foolish and you were actually relieved that I didn't go with you."
"I could never quite achieve relief, in fact, but I did try." With Penelope, only the truth would do.
"In the same fashion, I have tried to convince myself that Sir Dashiel is an acceptable suitor. I nearly succeeded. Something he said today, about not begrudging me my sentimental attachments, stayed with me. The marchioness favors such a match. She sings Dashiel's praises at every turn, but I am too willing to believe that he was ungentlemanly in uniform. My instinct has been at war with pragmatic arguments."
Lucien held very still. "Always a formidable battle."
"My reinforcements arrived in time. Good night, Lucien. I'm glad you're home, mostly." She kissed his cheek and slipped off to the bedroom, closing the door gently in her wake.
Lucien sank into the wing chair, still warm from Penelope's heat, and pondered a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
She could have married him. She very nearly did marry him. She still might marry him, in a weak moment in the middle of a weak year.
As Penelope moved quietly in the next room, Lucien pictured her unbraiding her hair and brushing it out. Masses of silky chestnut tresses that caught firelight and turned it to sunshine.
Focus, man. You've been solving the wrong problem .
He mentally probed around the edges of his hypothesis, turned it over and inside out. Tried thinking about it in French and then Welsh and came to the same conclusion from every direction.
The right problem was not how to stop Penelope from marrying Sir Dashiel, but rather, how to persuade her to marry Lucien. His conclusion had the feel of a theorem proved, quod erat demonstrandum . Correct, complete, and satisfying.
Curiously thrilling too.
When no more shadows flickered beneath Penelope's door, Lucien rose and took himself into the chilly corridor.
He had the sense he'd just lit upon a revelation dazzling to him but obvious to any passerby. He was prone to such moments, but no matter.
Penelope was in no way bound to Sir Dashiel—let there be rejoicing in the land—and Lucien was free to court her. He was so lost in thought that he almost missed Uncle Malcolm standing quietly in the shadows. Such was Malcolm's self-possession that even in a nightcap and dressing gown, he presented an imposing figure.
"I'm preparing to court her," Lucien said when Uncle looked ready to embark on the silent version of a stern lecture. "She hasn't given me permission to pay my addresses yet, but I'm preparing a siege that will make Wellington's efforts in Spain pale by comparison."
Uncle Malcolm shook a finger in Lucien's face, then grinned, smacked him hard on the shoulder, and withdrew into his apartment.
"Right," Lucien murmured to the closed door. "Make a proper job of it, or there will be dire consequences. Let the wooing begin."
He was hopeful that Penelope would know when and how to give Sir Dashiel his well-deserved congé and was even more hopeful that she'd do just that when the moment was right.