Penelope watched in disbelief as the dowager Lady Bedlow’s servants carted away a sofa, an ormolu clock, a painting of two shepherdesses, a small table, and-well, most of the other furniture Penelope remembered seeing in the parlor. The morning room and the master bedrooms had already been despoiled the night before.
“How much furniture can she fit in the Dower House?” Nev asked, bemused. “I’ve been there, and it’s just not that big.”
Penelope couldn’t help laughing. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything she wishes to take. Were you fond of those things?”
“Not particularly. But we can’t afford to replace any of them, can we?”
“No, but we can’t afford to entertain either, so who’s to know?”
Nev grinned. “It’s clear you’ve never lived in the country. The servants will tell everyone in the neighborhood by tonight.”
Penelope felt a slight pang. She so wanted to make a good impression in the neighborhood. On the other hand, she reminded herself, people would hardly like her more for a show of vulgar wealth. “If those things make her happy, I don’t mind. I’ve never liked Fragonard, anyway.”
“Who?”
Penelope felt another, greater pang. Her mother would have recognized the name. So would Edward. “The man who painted those shepherdesses. I’ve always preferred Boucher.” She realized he wouldn’t recognize that name either, and flushed.
“What are you doing today?” he asked.
“I’m going to visit the laborers.” Penelope tried not to sound as nervous as she felt. “Isn’t the lady of the manor supposed to do that? They always do in books.”
Nev looked uneasy. “I suppose so-who are you taking with you?”
Penelope did not quite like the idea of venturing into those rough cottages. She couldn’t shake the image of the lean, grim men in the fields. She had told herself not to be fanciful, that none of them would dare lay a finger on Lady Bedlow, but at Nev ’s evident concern her fears flooded back. “I thought I might take one of the grooms, to drive the cart.”
“Take Jack.”
She nodded. “Is there anything I should take with me, do you think? Or would that seem like charity and offend people?”
“I don’t know. Shall we send to my mother and ask her?”
Penelope hesitated. In a moment, she knew, she would say yes, because it was the sensible thing to do. But a tiny, foolish part of her did not want Lady Bedlow to know how unequipped Penelope was to be a countess.
“Here, how’s this? We won’t take anything with us this time, but we’ll note what people need and go back in a few days. That is-would you like me to go with you?”
She looked up, unable to keep the relief off her face. “Yes, but not if you have other things to attend to.”
“Nothing that can’t wait.” His slight hesitation told her he hadn’t had any plans at all.
Penelope realized quickly enough that even if she had filled every corner of the cart with food, it would not have made up what these people lacked. The cottages were tiny, ramshackle, and threadbare. A straw pallet, a kettle, and perhaps a table with a chair or two were the usual furnishings; fuel for a fire at which to boil the kettle was a rare luxury.
Some of the laborers seemed embarrassed by their poverty; others sat with an air of grim satisfaction, seeming to say, Look, and see how I live! Penelope did not know what to say or what to ask; she tried not to look too obviously at the privation. Nev seemed able to make polite conversation-to ask about children and histories and employment, and get, sometimes, something more than respectful monosyllables. Penelope tried to at least commit names to memory, but each lean, prematurely weathered face seemed to blend into the next.
One, however, stood out: Aggie Cusher. She was a young woman, even rather pretty, despite straggly blonde hair, a lined face, and a few missing teeth. She wore a bright satin ribbon in her hair, and it looked as out of place in that cottage as a golden saltcellar would have. A skinny blonde girl of eight or nine, in a dress several sizes too small for her, pounded oats at the table; an unhealthy-looking child, perhaps two-and-a-half years old, played in the corner.
“Welcome, my lady, my lord, Mrs. Joe Cusher at your service-that is, I’m Agnes,” the young woman said softly enough, and bobbed a curtsy, but there was an indefinable air of hostility about her.
“What a lovely ribbon,” Penelope offered.
“Thank you.” Agnes almost smiled, glancing at the little girl.
The girl paused in her pounding. “I gave it to her. I earned the money myself.”
“I’m sure your mother is very proud of your hard work.” To Penelope’s surprise, a shadow passed across Agnes’s face at these unexceptionable words.
“I work for Mr. Kedge,” the little girl said.
“And does Joe work for Mr. Kedge too?” Penelope asked. It was a rhetorical question, to fill the strangely awkward silence; they were on land leased to Tom Kedge.
“He did.” Agnes’s gaze flicked to Nev for a moment.
“Oh, I’m sorry-are you a widow?” Penelope asked.
“Joe ain’t dead,” Agnes flashed.
The boy in the corner looked up. “Papa went to ’Stralia,” he said, very clearly.
I should have seen that coming, Penelope thought, angry with herself. “Do you do all right on your own?” It was a foolish question. Agnes was alive, but for any other definition of “all right” she very clearly wasn’t. And there was no answer that wasn’t humiliating.
Nev went into the corner and sat down across from the sallow little boy. He pulled something from his pocket and spoke to him in a low tone. Penelope forced herself not to strain to hear what he was saying and listen to Agnes.
“I do all right,” Agnes said. “I have help from friends in the village. My brother sends me money from America when he can, and my daughter, Josie-” Tears glimmered in Agnes’s eyes. “I’d like to keep her at home”-Josie rolled her eyes-“but we used to spin for the woolen manufacturers in Norwich, and since the mill opened up there’s no more of that work.”
“Are you able to get help from the parish?” Penelope asked.
Agnes’s face twisted. “No, my lady. I’ve lived here ten years, but Mr. Snively says I haven’t got a settlement. Mr. Snively says I’d have to go home to Harwich and go on the parish there.”
“We’d have a settlement if you married Aaron,” Josie said.
Agnes turned bright red. “Don’t make me slap you, Josie Cusher! I’m already married to your father, in case you’d forgotten.”
“Aaron-” the little girl began to insist.
“Does Mr. Snively decide who gets poor relief?” Penelope broke in.
Agnes looked at once relieved and disgusted. “He’s the head of the Poor Authority, isn’t he?”
Penelope’s eyebrows rose. Mr. Snively hadn’t mentioned that. “I’m sorry. I’m new here, and there are a lot of things I don’t know. I hope you will be patient with me. I mean to help you and the other people here, if I can.”
Agnes’s gaze dwelt almost insultingly on Penelope’s fine clothes and smooth hands. Penelope’s gown was plain, but it was neat and clean and new. Agnes’s dress was none of those things; it was ragged and threadbare and dirty-not even patched, because the fabric was too thin to hold stitches.
“If you wished to go to Harwich, I daresay we could pay your coach fare,” Penelope tried.
“How would Joe find me then?”
“Couldn’t you write to him?”
Agnes looked almost pitying. “I don’t know how to write.”
“I could write it for you,” Penelope offered.
Agnes sighed. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t know where to send it-he don’t have a proper address, like.” She paused. “’Tisn’t like for you, your ladyship. Joe and I don’t write to each other. Joe did send me word once or twice, at the beginning-but he had to pay someone to have it writ, and then he’d to pay to send it, and then I’d to pay to get it and find someone who could read it back to me. A year ago, a letter came, and I hadn’t the sixpence to pay the postage.”
Penelope’s eyes widened. “But-”
Agnes shrugged, hard-faced, but Penelope saw real grief in her eyes. “The baby was sick.”
Penelope wanted to ask more, to clamor Wasn’t there anything you could have done? The thought of the unclaimed letter filled her with-it wasn’t quite frustration, and it wasn’t quite anger. It was more like a restless need to do something. Penelope had always believed that if you put your mind to it, worked hard, and didn’t whine, there was no reason you shouldn’t solve nearly any problem. She was beginning to realize that she had never had such huge, hopeless problems as this woman.
There was an unexpected sound in the tiny cottage-the little boy giggled. “Do it again!”
Nev reached forward and pulled a shining sixpence from behind the boy’s ear. He clapped and reached for it, but Nev twirled his hand and it disappeared. Penelope’s heart sank-but she had misjudged Nev. “Look in your pocket,” he said.
The boy did-and there was the sixpence! His eyes went round-and then he closed his fist on it, and put it behind his back. “It’s gone,” he said, slyly.
“Kit, give Lord Bedlow back his sixpence,” Agnes said in a low voice.
Nev looked startled. “He can keep it.”
“I couldn’t-” Agnes stopped herself. “Thank you.” Penelope had always supposed that pride was the one thing that could not be taken from you; now she saw she had been wrong. “Say thank you, Kit,” Agnes said, almost desperately.
But Kit could not say thank you. He could only stare at his fist, and then at Nev. Josie too was staring. Nev shifted awkwardly.
As she and Nev were leaving, Penelope heard Agnes say, with a catch in her voice, “Tomorrow we’ll go into town and buy some real bread. Would you like that?”
“Can we buy some bacon too?” Kit asked.
“Not this time, sweetheart.”
Penelope thought of her own generous helping of bacon at breakfast that morning. Nev must have been thinking the same thing. “Tell Cook to send them some bacon.”
“Can we?” Penelope wanted to, but-“It wouldn’t be fair, unless we sent them all bacon.” She did not know how to talk about Agnes’s indefinable anger. Would a gift of food trample the woman’s pride too far?
“Then we’ll send them all bacon.”
“But we can’t afford it. Not until New Year’s, at least.”
“It seems ridiculous to say we can’t afford something, after seeing that home,” Nev said stubbornly. “We’ll stop eating bacon ourselves and send them that-”
She was touched-she hated being the parsimonious, logical one. But her accountant’s mind could do no other. “ Nev, we’re two people; we don’t eat much bacon to begin with. And the servants eat what we leave. If we don’t eat bacon, they can’t eat bacon. There must be other things we ought to spend the money on first. I don’t know-plows, or something.”
“Couldn’t we-” Nev lapsed into frustrated silence, and Penelope would have given up a lot more than bacon to take that hopeless look off his face.
“Never mind. We’ll send Kit some bacon.”
One look at his buoyant grin, and Penelope went up in a blaze. So this was passion.
Did it mean she was common? Gentlemen felt passion, of course. But ladies weren’t supposed to or weren’t supposed to give in to it. Immoderate feeling of any sort was to be shunned. Just because one enjoyed eating cake, that didn’t mean one should eat cake with every meal, or one became fat and slothful and a slave to one’s desires. It was all too easy to see how it might happen-she would have let Nev do anything to her, anything at all, right there on the breakfast table.
Control, restraint, elegance-they were all synonymous with that indefinable something that made you gentry and not common. Excess was wearing bright colors and crying in public and talking too loud and eating in big bites and all the things that Penelope had trained herself never, ever to do, ever since her first day at Miss Mardling’s. This was just one more thing to add to the list. I am just as good as that stuck-up Lady Bedlow, she told herself. My parents are worth a hundred of her. I will not give her justification to sneer at me and call me common. I will be a lady if it kills me.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Nev tilted his head, pondering. “There’s a pun there, I’m sure of it.” He flashed her another grin and her breath caught in her throat.
It might really kill her.
That evening Lady Bedlow and Louisa were expected at the Grange for dinner. I would invite you to the Dower House, but I’m afraid I can’t afford to provide the kind of fare that your bride must be accustomed to, Lady Bedlow had said.
Nev watched his family walk in, feeling unexpectedly and uncomfortably as if he were ranged with Penelope against them.
“Are you settling in nicely at the Dower House?” Penelope asked.
“Oh, nicely enough,” his mother said. “It’s hard to make a new place home after so many years…and I’m afraid it’s smaller than what Louisa is accustomed to, of course-”
“We’re settling in wonderfully.” But even Louisa spoke to Nev, not Penelope. “How are you doing, Nate? How are things here?”
Penelope, her attentive gaze still on his family, gave a tiny sigh and tried to look as if she hadn’t noticed. Nev reached out and grabbed her hand. “Penelope and I are doing fine, Louisa. Things have been difficult here, but I daresay we shall come about soon enough.”
Louisa looked hurt, though she still did not look at Penelope. But several minutes later, when they were seated at table, she asked Nev, “Have things been difficult? Is there-is there anything I can do?”
Lady Bedlow tsked. “Don’t be silly, Louisa. What could you possibly do? It is not a woman’s place to deal with money matters outside her household accounts.”
Louisa’s face burned. “Men do not seem to manage the business so well that I could do much worse.”
Penelope made a soft choking noise, as if she were trying not to laugh, and Nev felt a little more charitable toward Louisa. “I quite agree,” he said. “I am all at sea when it comes to accounts. Thank God Penelope knows what she is about.”
“Of course you are all at sea.” Tears filled Lady Bedlow’s eyes. “Your father always dealt with all that. If only he were here-”
Louisa visibly tensed with irritation, and Nev felt impatient himself. Did she not remember where Lord Bedlow’s management had gotten them all? He handed his mother his handkerchief. “Please, Mama, don’t take on so-”
“Thank you, Nev. ” She smiled mistily at him. “My children are so good to me. I know I’m a dreadful trial to Louisa.” She waited.
There was a pause, and then Louisa said reluctantly, “Of course you aren’t, Mama.”
Nev, meeting Penelope’s mirthful eyes across the table, had to smother a smile. But Lady Bedlow beamed.
Louisa turned to Nev. “Would it be terribly improper for us to have a house party?” She sounded rather as if the world depended on his answer. “It will be unbearable here all summer and winter, else.”
Nev thought about feeding a dozen greedy mouths and entertaining a dozen jaded minds. “I don’t think we can afford a house party, Louisa. Perhaps one of your friends will invite you.” He tried to look apologetic.
“I’m sure I don’t know who Nate would invite that would be suitable company for you, Louisa,” Lady Bedlow said. “Of course it’s only a matter of time before Mr. Garrett’s son is lording it over me in my own home.”
Nev didn’t want to talk about it, not with his mother, but she was sure to find out eventually. “I won’t be inviting Percy or Thirkell, Mama. I told them that now I had responsibilities, I couldn’t-”
“Oh, Nate, you finally cut the connection!” His mother gave his hand a congratulatory pat; he held himself carefully still. “I’m so glad! That boy has always been a bad influence on you, ever since Bedlow hired his father.”
Louisa tapped her fork irritably against the edge of her plate. “Lord, Mama, I don’t know why you’re so hard on Percy. I always thought it was Nate who was a bad influence on him!”
Lady Bedlow put her nose in the air. “Unequal friendships never end well. It gave poor Percy aspirations above his station. How could he help but go wild?”
“I didn’t cut the connection, Mama. I just-” Nev stopped. He could protest that it hadn’t been an unequal friendship. Percy hadn’t been a bad influence on him, and he hadn’t been a bad influence on Percy. They egged each other on, that was all. But what was the use? That was how everyone would see it. That was how everyone had always seen it: Lord Nevinstoke and his low friend. Nev knew he had done the right thing, but he felt ashamed anyway-especially when he caught Penelope’s curious, sympathetic glance. “I wish Mr. Garrett were still alive,” he confessed, as a sort of compromise. “I didn’t much take to Captain Trelawney.”
“Oh, I never liked him either,” Lady Bedlow said. “There is something overfamiliar about him. He acted quite as if he were your father’s equal and not his servant.”
Nev sighed. “I’m not sure he realizes how bad things are for our people. Penelope and I visited some of the cottages today, and the families seemed really in distress. And so many men out of work or gone.”
“Yes.” It was nearly the first thing Penelope had said all evening. “Do either of you know why Joe Cusher was transported?”
Louisa, reaching for a roll, drew her hand back. “Joe Cusher was one of the ringleaders in that riot three years ago,” she said tightly. “The vandals fired the barn with Papa’s threshing machine in it. We thought they would fire the house too. Sir Jasper and his friend sentenced him to transportation, of course. Agnes Cusher spat at my feet the next time I saw her. The way she looked at me-” She shivered.
“Louisa!” Lady Bedlow’s curls trembled anxiously. “You know I don’t like to talk about that time.”
Louisa opened her mouth, then closed it again with a tiny, frustrated sigh. “Yes, Mama.”
For perhaps another quarter of an hour, there was polite, strained conversation such as Nev never remembered when his father was alive. Then Lady Bedlow cleared her throat. “Penelope, dear, don’t you think it’s time we left Nate to his port?”
Penelope flushed. “Of course. How remiss of me.” She stood.
Nev stood too. “Let’s all go together. I’ve given up port.”
“Why, Nate,” Louisa said, laughing at him, “marriage has certainly changed you! Has Penelope converted you to Methodism too?”
Nev frowned. “Penelope isn’t a Methodist, Louisa.” The sudden, horrible thought struck him that perhaps she was, and he had just made a fool of himself. No-he would know, wouldn’t he?
He looked at Penelope. She remained perfectly civil despite his family’s rudeness; she would not say or do anything to make Nev feel her discomfort. And yet she could not feign ease or gaiety. She looked quiet and shut off. It inspired a curious tenderness in him.
Lady Bedlow led the way unthinkingly to the parlor, and her look of consternation when she realized all the furniture was gone brought a glimmer of amusement back to Penelope’s face. She met Nev ’s eyes, and the two of them were hard-pressed to stifle their laughter. The evening suddenly seemed much less dire.
Louisa looked embarrassed for all of them. “Let’s go to the music room. Will you play for us, Nev?”
“Penelope plays better than I do,” he told her.
“Oh, but I want you to sing us ‘The Ballad of Captain Kidd’!”
“I-I know ‘The Ballad of Captain Kidd,’” Penelope offered.
“Really?” Louisa didn’t bother to hide her surprise, but at least she was looking at Penelope.
Penelope nodded shyly. Soon enough the young people were all singing “I’d a Bible in my hand / By my father’s great command / And I sunk it in the sand / When I sailed!” Lady Bedlow watched them with affection and faint disapproval; she had learned long ago that nothing got between her children and Captain Kidd.
Nev tried to remember the last time he had spent a pleasant evening singing with his family, and couldn’t. Louisa was glowing, and Nev felt guilty. He’d barely seen them these past few years since he left university. The last time he’d talked to Louisa, really talked to her about anything that mattered, she’d been in the schoolroom.
Her enthusiasm for pirates, however, seemed undiminished. And to Nev ’s surprise, Penelope sang with as much energy as any of them. Then it turned out that she knew “Mary Ambree” too, and Louisa was able to extract a promise to consider naming a daughter Mary (Louisa resented that her parents had callously deprived her of the chance to sing And foremost in battle was Mary Ambree and have it be about herself). By the time Penelope had sung several unfamiliar songs about girls joining the navy (Nev suspected they might be old broadsides), Louisa had mostly forgotten that she had sworn to detest her new sister-in-law eternally.
Lady Bedlow, however, had not forgotten. She kept up a steady stream of sighs and theatrical yawns, and after an hour, she said, “I’m very tired. Louisa, it’s time to go home.”
Nev was not at all tired. Singing always made him feel awake and alive and full of energy. When they were gone, he said, “Louisa was impressed. You know an awful lot of songs about sailor maids.”
Penelope reseated herself on the piano bench and smiled. “She wanted to run away to sea when she was younger, didn’t she?”
Nev laughed. “I think she still does. Did you ever? That is, you do know all the songs.”
“Of course I did.” There was a touch of self-mockery in Penelope’s smile now. “I think every girl has dreams like that, until she realizes how foolish it is to rebel against something she cannot change.”
“What do you mean?”
She traced a pattern on the smooth surface of the bench. “It’s like wanting to be a soprano: I can want it all I like, but it won’t make me anything other than a contralto. It’s entirely more sensible to stop repining.”
“You wanted to be a soprano?”
She flushed. “I know it’s foolish, but…it always seemed so ordinary, being a contralto. So common. Just what a Miss Brown would be. I was very young; I got over it. It’s the same with wishing for a man’s freedom. When I was a girl I loved these songs.” She paused, and glanced at him. “This one in particular.” She struck up and sang,
“A merchant did in Bristol dwell,
As many people knew full well;
He had a daughter of beauty bright
In whom he placed his heart’s delight.
He had no child but only she;
Her father loved her tenderly.
Many to court her thither came,
Gallants of worth, birth and fame.
Yet notwithstanding all their love,
A young ship’s carpenter did prove
To be the master of her heart,
She often said, ‘We’ll never part’-”
She stopped abruptly, eyes fixed on her still hands. “There’s about a hundred more verses. Her father sends the true love to sea. And the girl follows and becomes the surgeon’s mate, and heroically nurses him through an illness, and the father regrets his unkindness, and everything turns out wonderfully.”
She smiled crookedly and raised her eyes to his face. “It’s about a merchant’s daughter, you see, and she’s brave and noble and saves her true love. My first year at school, I was very unhappy. I thought about running off and volunteering for the navy all the time.”
None of which explained her remorseful look, but he could guess. She had imagined the ship’s carpenter as Edward. He didn’t know what to say; he only knew that he was sorry, and painfully, irrationally jealous. “Did you ever try it?”
She shook her head, smiling up at him. “Even as a silly little girl I knew enough to know that things like that only happen to beautiful merchants’ daughters.”
“Who told you you weren’t beautiful?” The idea was absurd, and yet it made him feel obscurely triumphant. Surely Edward had deserved to lose her, if he hadn’t even told her she was beautiful.
“Oh, please don’t. I have got a mirror.”
He supposed she wasn’t beautiful, not like the women he had had before. She was just a pretty girl; but Nev thought, suddenly, that those other women hadn’t been any prettier. They had painted their lips crimson and done up their hair and swept into rooms knowing that men’s heads would turn. That was all. Penelope was pretty and she had a sweet voice and the candlelight turned her skin an impossible gold, and Nev realized that he’d been wanting to kiss her all day.
He was just reassuring her, he told himself. Reassuring her, and making her forget about Edward. That was all; it would go no further than that. He sat on the bench beside her. “I think you’re beautiful,” he whispered, and kissed her.
She let him, and when he stopped she sighed softly and leaned against him. He could barely keep from deflowering her right there on the piano bench.
“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment, though,” she said. “You told me you would never feed me Spanish coin.”
“I’m not.” If she looked at the front of his breeches, she would see just how English his coin was, but of course a gentleman couldn’t say a thing like that to his wife.
She shrugged and went back to their previous conversation. “Besides, they have to press men for the navy; no one volunteers. So it seemed like I probably wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Nev wrapped his arms around her. “You were a very practical girl.”
She stiffened, but before she could speak, he bent and kissed her neck. She sighed again, a resigned little sound, and gave up on whatever she had been going to say. He thought of Penelope as a girl, miserable and excluded at some fancy finishing school, weighing the pros and cons of running off to join the navy. She had probably made a list. He was abruptly, fiercely glad that she hadn’t been practical about marrying him.
Penelope leaned back against her husband. His arms were warm around her. For a moment she wished she weren’t so very practical and unfeminine, so she would know how to make him mean the things he had said, about her being beautiful. She wished, almost, that she were fool enough to take him at his word. But if he saw that she believed him, and it had been only a polite fiction-she shivered in humiliation at the mere thought.
“Penelope-I want-that is, I know I said I wouldn’t touch you, and I won’t, if you ask me not to.” She could feel his breath on her neck. “I won’t do anything that might hurt, not yet. But I want to make you feel good. Will you let me do that?”
It was like his proposal all over again. There was that note of wistfulness in his voice, and part of Penelope wanted to say yes to whatever he asked. “I-” she stammered.
If she said nothing, it would only be another kind of consent. She would forget herself when he touched her, and she would tell herself she had never agreed, he made her feel like that and there was nothing she could do-
If this was going to happen, Penelope intended to take responsibility. She pressed back against him. “Yes. I will.” It felt like an echo of her marriage vows.
Nev ’s hands tightened on her arms. “Thank you. Come upstairs with me.” She followed him up the stairs, the shivery knot in her stomach growing with every step.
At last they were in her room. “Change into your night things,” Nev said. “I’ll start a fire in my room.”
“We don’t need a fire. It’s a waste of fuel, it’s summer-”
“Just this once,” he said, and left her.
Penelope could not help blushing the entire time Molly was helping her, as if Molly somehow knew what was about to happen. By the time she stepped into Nev ’s room in her night rail and dressing gown, she was so overheated that the fire he had lit in the grate made her begin to sweat. She could not look at Nev.
“Take off your robe and come here,” he commanded gently.
Her hands trembled as she undid the knot and slid the dressing gown off her shoulders. She wished her night rail were more attractive.
It didn’t matter for long. Nev reached down and grasped her hem. He pulled it up slowly, and every inch of flesh tingled as air hit it. Then she was standing naked, and Nev took a step back to look at her.
How many women had he looked at like this? What did he see? She was thin and drab and brown; her bosom was disappointingly small. She fought not to try to cover herself with her hands-it would only make her feel more foolish.
“Mm,” Nev hummed, low in his throat. “Definitely worth the wait.”
She flushed with pleasure. He put his hands on her hips-his hands on her bare skin burned her like a brand-and guided her to the bed. “Lie down.”
She obeyed him. The soft down coverlet under her bare skin was the most hedonistic thing she had ever felt. A moment later Nev was hovering half over her, his leg between her thighs. Penelope felt herself tightening in response.
“Tell me if I do anything you don’t like.”
She nodded.
He settled down and kissed her. She followed his lead, more easily this time for having a small bit of practice. His hand, which had rested on her hip, began to move up. She closed her eyes and followed its progress desperately. Last time, he had touched her breast and-yes, there it was, his hand settling over the curve of her left breast. There was nothing between them, nothing at all. He squeezed gently a few times, and tiny waves of sensation ran all through her. He brushed her nipple with his thumb, and she almost jumped at the sharp shock of pleasure. She didn’t, though. This time, she was going to stay in control. She was not a common, wanton trollop.
He moved down, following the line of her throat with his lips. I can do this, she thought, and then his mouth closed over her other nipple and she despaired. It was hot and wet and his hair was brushing her skin and suddenly he sucked, hard-she struggled not to cry out, not to buck under his mouth and hands.
He raised his head. “Is something wrong?”
She swallowed, opening her eyes. His blue eyes were fixed anxiously on her. What had she done? “Why-” Her voice cracked. Why wasn’t he touching her anymore? “Why would something be wrong?”
“Well-did that feel good, when I did that?”
She flushed. “Yes.”
“Then-you’re just being awfully still and quiet.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be?”
He sat up. “Why on earth would you be supposed to be?”
“I-I don’t know,” she said, mortified. “I didn’t want to give you a disgust of me. Ladies don’t give in to their base urges.”
“They don’t?”
Despite her embarrassment, she wanted to laugh at his confounded expression. “I don’t know. Do they?”
“I don’t know either. I’ve never done this with a lady before.” Nev thought for a moment. “Did you feel like moving, or making any noise?”
Penelope held herself very still. “Well…yes.”
He sighed in relief. “I’d really rather you did then. It lets me know I’m doing it right. Otherwise I start to worry.”
She wanted to make him happy. “All right.”
He started over, and this time she tried to relax and trust him. He went slow, so slow, and the heat built and built. His mouth was back on her breast, and she was so distracted that she didn’t notice his hand moving lower and lower-until he touched her, there, and she felt her whole body arch toward him. “Oh!”
He murmured against her breast in response, the hum doing very pleasant things to her nerve endings. His fingers moved over her, and his mouth teased her breast, hotter than she had ever thought anything could feel without scalding. It would have been hopeless to try to be still, anyway, not when she felt like this-she had never felt anything like this-had never known anyone could ever feel this good.
A thought came to her-this is how a violin feels. She was filled with sound, resonating to Nev ’s playing-trills and arpeggios, higher and higher, the tempo increasing until she vibrated under his hands-
Suddenly the pleasure was so strong she could hardly bear it. “Oh!” she cried out-she would break-she would die-and then the whole world rang with a crescendo of bright, pure pleasure.
Penelope shuddered, again and again-and then it was over and she was herself once more. She could hardly believe it. She lay there, trying to catch her breath, for a long moment. Finally she opened her eyes and turned to look at her husband. “Was that-was that supposed to happen?”
Nev grinned widely. “Yes.” He looked proud of himself. “It was, in fact, my intention.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Um…thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, that pleased note still in his voice.
“Can…can you feel that too?”
He nodded.
“Do you have to be inside me to feel it?”
“No. Hands and mouths work just fine.”
“Do you-do you want me to-”
“You don’t have to. This was for you. There’ll be plenty of time for me.”
Didn’t he want her to? “May I?” she asked, surprised by her own boldness.
He was very still. “Are you sure you wish to?”
She nodded, his uncertainty giving her courage. “Take off your clothes.”
He shuddered and fumbled at the tie to his dressing gown, looking nervous. He pulled off his nightshirt, and then he was naked. Penelope’s first impulse was to glance modestly away, but she made herself look. He did look like a painting or a sculpture-a Greek athlete, or a Jacques-Louis David hero. But he was real, and if she put out her hand his warm flesh would yield under her palm. The cinnamon-colored hair on his chest and legs was a surprise, but oddly exciting-intimate, somehow. And, she thought, finally bringing her mind to what she hadn’t had the courage to look at first, he wore no grape leaf. Between his legs, surrounded at its base by more cinnamon-colored hair, his erect male part bobbed.
It was larger than she had expected. She pushed the uncomfortable thought aside that one day soon that would have to fit inside her. Taking a deep breath, she reached out-
A sharp, crackling pop came from somewhere. Another followed it almost immediately.
Penelope met Nev ’s eyes, feeling suddenly cold and frightened. “That-that sounded like gunfire.” She drew back her hand.
“That was gunfire.” Nev swore. “Stay here, do you hear me?” He threw his dressing gown on over his nakedness and ran out, slamming the door behind him. “Lock it!” he called, his voice receding as he ran down the hall, his bare feet making hardly any noise at all.
Penelope sat there stupidly for a few moments, and then she pulled on her discarded nightclothes and ran after him.