When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Nev ’s back was to her and he was speaking to Captain Trelawney, who wore a large red nightcap. “ ‘Is something wrong?’ ” Nev mimicked. “Are my wife and I the only ones who heard the repeated sounds of gunfire?”
“Oh, that.” Trelawney smothered a yawn. “Don’t worry about that. It’s only the poachers and your gamekeepers.”
“Shooting each other?” There was an edge in Nev ’s voice that Penelope had never heard. “And this is a common occurrence?”
“Well, not precisely common. Once or twice a month, maybe.”
“Let me be sure I understand you. There are Englishmen shooting at each other out there, on my land, and you’re telling me not to worry about it.”
“Usually they don’t hit each other in the dark.” Trelawney seemed oblivious to the dangerous note in Nev ’s voice. Penelope thought he might be drunk.
“How many gamekeepers do I employ?” Nev asked, quietly.
“Eleven, my lord. It takes that many to keep the buggers away.”
“They do not seem to be keeping the buggers away at all.”
“Well, many a man would rather poach than earn an honest living,” Trelawney said philosophically. “Would you like me to install traps? Spring guns, maybe, like Sir Jasper has.”
Penelope flinched.
“No, I would not like you to install traps,” Nev said with cold fury. “Your effrontery is appalling. Loweston is in a disastrous state. I do not doubt that my father is chiefly responsible, but you have done nothing to help. You were content to sit in your office, drink, and keep shoddy records while everything fell to pieces around you. Tonight my wife and I are roused from our bed by gunfire, and you tell me not to worry, because it is only the unconscionable war you have launched against people who cannot make an honest living because of our mismanagement? How dare you?”
Trelawney sniggered. “So you finally managed to tear her away from those account books? No wonder you’re so angry.”
Nev seemed to grow another three inches. “I ought to have you horsewhipped for that. I want you gone by morning. Get out of my sight.”
Trelawney opened his mouth, shut it, shrugged, and left.
Penelope stood at the bottom of the stairs. For the first time, she had seen the centuries of inherited power, the iron hand without the velvet glove. Of course, she had seen her father angry-she had seen him berate men under him at the brewery-but her father was a big man. Trelawney could have broken Nev over his knee, but Nev had never considered that. His instinctive authority was something else entirely. He had never doubted that he would be obeyed. It was intimidating and unfathomable-yet also, if she were honest, a little thrilling.
He turned around and saw her, and the aristocratic command crumbled. “I shouldn’t have done that, should I? Now we haven’t got a steward at all.”
“He wasn’t very good. We’ll hire a new one.”
“But he knew Loweston.”
It was undeniable, but Penelope couldn’t be sorry the man was gone. “We can inquire locally, and I’ll send an advertisement to the London papers. We may find someone familiar with this part of the country, at least.”
Nev went to the window and peered out toward where the shots had been fired. Then he looked around the room. Penelope followed his gaze, seeing the missing furniture and the discolored rectangles on the wall where paintings were missing. He did not look at her. “You’re tired. Go to bed.”
She couldn’t move, for a moment. “Don’t you-aren’t you coming?”
“Evidently not,” he said, a little bitterly. “I’ll sleep in Trelawney’s office. Wouldn’t want him making off with half our records.”
It was a good idea, and yet Penelope felt unreasonably disappointed. She thought of offering to go with him, but she couldn’t quite find the courage. Only a few minutes ago, she had felt so close to him, but now he was a stranger again. Besides, Trelawney’s sofa wasn’t big enough for two. “All right,” she said meekly, and went upstairs to sleep alone.
Nev awoke to sunlight in his eyes and a crick in his neck. He staggered upstairs to be shaved and dressed. He couldn’t hear anything from Penelope’s room.
Last night came flooding back, all that soft fair skin in the firelight. She had been so afraid of losing control. And yet she was formed for passion-she had responded to his lightest touch. She had been so sweetly amazed at her own pleasure. Nev began to see why some men liked virgins.
When he walked into the breakfast room, she was watching the door with sparkling eyes and a nervous smile-she must have heard his footsteps in the hall. She had bathed, and her still-damp hair was more elaborately arranged than usual. Parts were braided and parts were bound and it all somehow became a sleek brown knot at the crown of her head. He wanted to drag her upstairs and take down her hair and get her out of her gown.
“Good morning,” he said.
“G-good morning.” She met his eyes with a shy smile, blushing all over. “How-how did you sleep? Here-come and sit down, I’ll pour you coffee.”
She put the right amount of sugar in his coffee without having to ask, and Nev got a very uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach.
She was radiant and happy because she had never experienced the peak of pleasure before. When Nev had discovered he could do it to himself the summer he turned twelve, he had spent nearly three days in his room with the door locked. But poor, innocent Penelope didn’t realize that’s all it was. She thought there was something special about him.
Nev knew perfectly well that there wasn’t. If she had married Edward, she would be looking at him right now as if he had hung the moon. The thought made him queasy. He had taken everything from her and given her only this one thing she could get from any man who took her fancy, and she was smiling gratefully at him and doing her hair up pretty. Nev did not like virgins.
Her bright face dimmed. “Is-is everything all right?”
“Of course,” he said hastily, and could think of nothing else to say. “What-what are you doing today?”
“I haven’t quite decided.” She looked at him hopefully. When he didn’t reply, she sighed and said, “I suppose I’ll write that advertisement for the papers. I’m writing to my parents as well. I’ll ask my father for advice, and I made sketches of a few of the paintings in your family’s collection for my mother, and-”
“Do you miss them very much?”
She looked away and nodded. “It’s all right. I’m used to it. I went away to school, you know.”
Nev suspected it was a deal worse than school. At school she must have had a few friends at least, and the security that she would be home on holiday soon enough. And she had been in London. “Would you like to go up to London next week to interview stewards? You could see your parents, and perhaps we could go to a concert…”
“Really?” Then her face fell. “But-could we? It’s so far, and we’ve only been here a week and a half, and there’s so much to do-”
“Of course. Unless we interview applicants in person, how can we know we aren’t getting another Trelawney?”
She nodded. “You’re right, it’s only sense.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “I’ll book us a room in a hotel.”
Nev swallowed hard.
Penelope fled the breakfast room for her bedchamber, knowing she had made an utter fool of herself. But the moment Nev had walked into the room and met her eyes, every inch of her skin had seemed to wake up.
She stood at her writing desk, gripping the edges of the account books, trying to ground herself in charges and discharges and debits, but it was no use. Even just his eyes on hers had felt so-so intimate, somehow. This, she knew now, was why she had married him. This pull he exercised on her body without her consent.
She closed her eyes and relived that startling explosion of pleasure. She wanted it again. It was making her foolish, and weak. She’d had Molly do her hair up nicely. The maid had probably known she was trying pitifully to impress her own husband. Penelope wanted to tear it down and redo it in her usual simple style, but she refused to be melodramatic about this. Besides, he would notice when he saw her again, and that would make it worse. Instead she went into her dressing room and splashed water on her face.
The Hogarth engravings hung in a neat row by the mirror. She wasn’t sure why she’d put them there. To punish herself for what she’d done to Edward, she suspected. She looked at them now, slowly and carefully. It was like a toothache or a scab; poking at it was both painful and irresistible.
Yes, she told herself, she had married someone entirely unsuited to her because of her base urges. Yes, she was as much a slave to her own body as any slatternly shopgirl. Yes, Nev had seen it, and it had given him a disgust of her. How could he help it? He was a gentleman, through and through.
Worst of all, though, was that he had seen her happiness. He knew that she had thought-that she had allowed herself to hope that last night had meant as much to him as it had to her. Had meant something. His look of distaste and embarrassment was engraved on her memory.
It was a bitter pill, but Penelope had swallowed bitter pills before. There was nothing for it but to put a brave face on things and muddle along. Nev was trying to be kind. Next week she would see her mother. Nev was taking her to London.
She had better write to that hotel and book a room. Despite everything, Penelope couldn’t help smiling.
“I heard you turned off Captain Trelawney,” Mrs. Kedge said.
News traveled fast in the country. Nev sighed and looked instinctively for Penelope, but she was across the churchyard, talking to the Cushers. “Yes,” he said. “I didn’t like the way he was handling the poaching problem.”
“Good for you,” Mrs. Kedge said. “I always thought he was too soft by far. Poachers are like rats. The only way to get rid of ’em is to exterminate them all, or they’ll be back. Trelawney never struck me as much of a terrier, and those gamekeepers he hired-I heard they even had one of the poachers caught in a trap, and yet his fellows managed to get him free and get all away, every last one of them! Bungling, I call it.”
Nev drew back, disconcerted. “You are very bitter against the poachers.”
“It’s these men from London.” The farmer’s wife shuddered comfortably. “Murderers and thieves, all of them, who’ve made town too hot to hold them. Then they come up here, and they work on our boys with their promises of easy money…”
“Then-you don’t think the men poach because they’re hungry?”
“Not on your life, my lord!-meaning no disrespect. The folk here poach because they hate hard work. They’d rather take eight shillings for stealing your hare than for a week’s honest labor.”
Nev privately thought that was understandable. But he could not have armed men running about the home woods. “Do you know who they are?”
Mrs. Kedge looked discomfited for the first time. “Of course not! No one knows who they are.” In her tone Nev heard clearly, Everyone knows who they are, and smothered a groan.
“The poachers aren’t so bad, really,” Josie told Penelope. “And they are hungry.” She darted an angry glance at Mrs. Kedge, whose cheerily grim monologue could be heard all across the churchyard. “They’ve got family who are hungry!”
“Hush, Josie!” Agnes said.
Penelope got the distinct impression that Josie also knew exactly who the poachers were. But asking a little girl to tattle on her friends seemed monstrous. Penelope sighed. “I’m sure they do.”
Josie eyed Penelope. “You’ve been to school, haven’t you?”
She nodded.
“Do you think God has chosen me to be lowly because he knew my soul needed the guidance of my betters?”
Agnes grabbed her daughter’s hand. “We’re going, Josie. Good day, my lady.”
Penelope’s heart went out to the little girl. “Please stay.”
Josie was quoting directly from Mr. Snively’s sermon, which had been on the text, Be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience’s sake. Nev had rolled his eyes so much through Mr. Snively’s many references to Nev ’s “wise governance” and “benevolent authority” that Penelope had half feared they would stick.
And Agnes Cusher had no choice but to bring her child to church to be insulted, because Tom Kedge made all his people go. For the first time, Penelope wondered whether Loweston’s people really would riot. They had reason to be angry. Even now Agnes was giving her a sullen, trapped glare.
Penelope did not know what would be the best answer to help Josie navigate her world. She did not know the best answer to prevent a breach with the vicar, who, though out of earshot, would very likely have her words repeated to him by a dozen eager tongues.
But she knew the only answer she could give. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Really?” Josie asked.
Penelope nodded. “My parents were as poor as yours when they were born, you know.”
“Really?” Josie’s eyes were wide as saucers. “You mean-you’re the same as me?”
The other girls at school had thought they were better than she was. Penelope believed it too, in some small part of herself, and always had. For a moment a hot rebellious spark inside her almost wanted the laborers to rise up and demand what was theirs. “I don’t know why God makes some people rich and some poor. We have to believe He knows best. But I’m sure of this: no one’s soul is any higher.”
Josie did not look as if she could quite bring herself to believe this good news. “But Mr. Snively said that lords are the king’s angels. Angels are higher than regular people, aren’t they?”
Penelope bit her lip. Josie had been listening carefully. Penelope was not sure she could quote that particular lengthy metaphor about the divinely granted rights of the peerage, and here this child had been brooding over it.
She looked across the churchyard at Nev. He did look like an angel to her-the sunlight cast a halo in his cinnamon hair. But how did he look to his people? Would they think he was pleased by Snively’s groveling?
Was Nev in danger?
Someone, people Josie knew, had been prowling around the Grange a few nights ago, armed and desperate. Something had to be done; someone had to keep them all safe. Maybe a firm hand was the answer; Penelope did not know. But she looked Josie in the eye and said, “We are all the same on the inside.”
“I hate that man,” Nev said with suppressed fury, as they walked the short distance from church to the Grange. “How could he talk to them that way and expect me to be flattered?”
“Your father must have had a reason for giving him the living,” Penelope said without conviction.
“It was supposed to be Percy’s,” Nev said bitterly. “My father always intended it for Percy.”
“What happened?”
“Percy would have made a terrible parson. But my father thought Percy could just collect the money, give a sermon every now and again, and be set for life. He didn’t understand that Percy couldn’t do that.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s just as well now.”
“And when Percy refused the living?”
“My father had a friend who had just married Snively’s cousin, and Snively was willing to toady to him and make a fourth at whist. My father looked no further.”
Penelope tried to remember if Nev had ever said anything good about the last Lord Bedlow. “Forgive me if this is impertinent, but-did you like your father?”
“Of course it’s not impertinent,” he flashed. “You’re my wife!”
She shrank back a little, but it was clear that his anger wasn’t directed at her.
“I don’t want us to be like that, Penelope. That’s how my parents always were. Like strangers who just happened to have spent twenty-five years together. If my mother ever asked what he had done when he was out, he told her that what a gentleman did when he was not at home had nothing to do with his wife.”
Penelope thought of her own parents. If her father had ever told her mother that anything he did had nothing to do with her, Mrs. Brown would have thrown the teapot at his head. And it would have been a vulgar display and Penelope would have been mortified, but-it seemed like the right response, somehow.
“And then he spent her jointure,” Nev said, “and he got himself shot. I daresay he would have thought that had nothing to do with her either.”
“Do you miss him?”
Nev shrugged. “It was impossible not to like him. But-that’s all he was: charming. Likable. You couldn’t rely on him.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to meet her eyes. “I don’t want to be like that, Penelope.”
It was exactly how she had pegged him, from the first moment they met, but she found herself saying, “ Nev, listen to me. No one trained you for this. Neither of us know what to do, and I wish to God one of us did, but-you’re here. You haven’t gone off to the Continent to live well on little money and left someone else to do the hard work.” She smiled at him. “I plan to rely on you for a good long time.”
He opened his mouth to answer her, and it began to rain-lightly at first, then harder. Within a minute it was pouring, and Penelope was half soaked. Nev stripped off his coat and put it around her. “I can’t even keep you out of the rain.”
“Yes, I blame you for the weather.”
He smiled, finally.
“Is there anywhere nearby we can take shelter?”
“The folly isn’t far off. Do you mind running for it?”
They pelted up a hill through the rain, Penelope holding up her skirts and hugging Nev ’s coat around her. When the folly came into view, she stopped running and stared. “Oh, my Lord.”
It sat on an outcrop of rock at the top of the hill: a round, squat tower with the roof gone from the upper floor. A broken wall and a great arch sprouted out of its side and straggled down the hill. It was much larger than she had expected-thirty feet high, at least. It was absurd and enormous and the most adorable thing she had ever seen.
“Come on!” Nev urged, and they ran the rest of the way. He held open a wooden door in the side of the round tower for her, then followed her in and slammed the door.
Penelope felt breathless and alive. She couldn’t remember the last time she had sprinted anywhere. She turned to look at Nev, knowing she was smiling idiotically, and her mouth went dry.
His hair was damp and curling over his forehead, and his shirt was plastered to his shoulders and arms. She could see the color of his skin through the white linen. She had always thought boxing and fencing were frivolous occupations for men with nothing better to do, but she would never criticize them again, because Nev ’s muscles were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. An image of him naked flashed into her mind.
Feeling suddenly feverish, she took off his coat and set it on the flight of stairs that curved along the wall behind her. Her wet clothes clung to her like a firm caress and her corset pressed against her breasts.
“I always loved this tower,” Nev said. “I wonder how much bread for his tenants my grandfather could have bought with the money.”
“I don’t care.” Penelope felt not at all her usual sensible self. “I like it.”
He turned and smiled at her. “Do you really?”
“I do.” Her heart pounding, not knowing what demon possessed her, she sat on the end of a step, her legs dangling over the side of the staircase, and began stripping off her shoes and stockings. When she glanced up, he was watching her legs hungrily. Encouraged, she pulled the neckline of her dress away from her breasts and looked down it. “I think the black dye ran onto my shift. I hope it’s not ruined.”
Nev made a strangled noise.
She looked up. He was staring at her breasts, just as she had intended, but he hadn’t taken one step toward her.
“Just how much encouragement do you need?” Her nerves were singing. She couldn’t tell anymore what was fear and shame and what was her body waiting for his hands.
He started, as if he really hadn’t realized that’s what she was doing, and then he tugged her upright and his mouth was on hers and everything was perfect. When he pulled away she was dizzy and hot.
“You-you minx!”
No one had ever called Penelope anything even approaching a minx before. It was oddly gratifying. He ran his hands over her, proprietarily, and she arched to meet them, the curving stone of the staircase at the back of her thighs.
“You’re shivering,” he said against her neck. “I don’t want you to catch cold in those wet clothes.”
She was going to protest that she wasn’t cold at all, until she realized what he meant. She helped him remove her gown, and then she was standing there in nothing but her shift, stays, and petticoat, with mud on her hem and wet hair straggling down her cheek. Penelope knew how she must look, but Nev didn’t seem to mind and just then Penelope didn’t care about anything that wasn’t the look on Nev ’s face.
He traced a finger over her breast and stomach-only a few layers of damp linen between her skin and his. Penelope had read about flowers springing up under the feet of the goddess of Spring as the land awakened. That was how she felt-as if her body were awakening under Nev ’s trailing fingertip.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I-” She couldn’t say it. It was too forward.
“Yes?” Nev leaned down to nibble at her bare shoulder.
“I want you to make me a real wife to you,” she said quickly, and blushed.
She was afraid he would not take her meaning, but he froze, his hands spasming on her shoulders. “Here? Now?”
She flushed all over, desire swamped in a wave of shame. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-”
He tilted up her chin and looked into her eyes. “I want to. Very much. But I don’t want to you to think that-I want you to feel that I honor you. That I’m treating you as a lady of quality. I want your first time to be in a bed, not in an outbuilding with your clothes half on. I don’t know how to behave properly, but I know you deserve-better.”
Better than him, he meant. Somehow she knew it. She tilted her head, pressing her cheek against his hand. “I don’t know how to behave properly either. But you asked me what I wanted and I told you.”
He swallowed. “Penelope,” he said in a very low voice, “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
She was afraid he would hurt her too, but she was more afraid that he would never make her his. That he would lose interest. “We’ll work it out. Millions of people have done it before us, and none died.” She frowned. “At least, not that I’ve heard of.” He laughed a little at that, and she laid her hand against his chest. “Please, Nev. I want to.”
He drew in a shuddering breath. “Then we will.” He fastened the latch on the door. Then he took off his cravat and waistcoat and sat down, tugging off his muddy boots.
She found her nerves returning. “No one is likely to pass this way, are they?” Why hadn’t she asked that before?
He looked up at her. “I don’t think so. If anyone else was caught in the rain nearby, they’d be here by now. But if you want to just put everything back on and wait, it’s all right.”
Her heart was in her throat, but she shook her head.
He took his coat from the stair she had put it on and spread it on a lower one, at about waist height, and lifted her up to sit on it. Then he kissed her. His hand slid down and cupped her through her damp petticoats. She opened her mouth under his and closed her eyes. “Tell me if you want me to stop,” he whispered, and lifted the hem of her petticoat.
Cold air hit her wetness. She was exposed to Nev in broad daylight; it was shocking and Penelope felt her muscles tighten pleasurably just at the idea.
Nev slid his fingers over her opening. “I’ve hardly done anything and you’re already wet.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.” She could hear him smiling. “It’s very good.” He pressed the tip of one wet finger to the spot that had proven so sensitive last time. “Just relax.” He rubbed, and she let her legs fall open and tilted her head back and just felt.
She had known he would do it, but it still startled her when he pressed the tip of one finger to her opening and began to slide it inside. It hurt, and she sucked in her breath and tightened her muscles automatically.
Nev froze, breathing hard.
Penelope knew that he would stop if he thought he was hurting her. She breathed deeply, forcing herself to open to him as much as she could. “I’m fine.”
Nev’s finger inched its way in. It felt odd, and uncomfortable, and a little wrong, and very intimate. But his thumb moved on her sensitive spot, and soon the finger inside her felt almost-almost good.
Then he slid another finger inside. It would have felt good, it did feel good for a second or two at a time, but she could not help wincing. There was a point at the opening of her passage, it seemed to her, that was narrower than the rest.
“It’s your maidenhead,” he said after a moment. “There’s nothing for it, Penelope. I’m going to break it, and it’s going to hurt. But after today it will be better, I promise.”
She opened her eyes and tried to sound confident. “All right.”
“You’re doing wonderfully,” he said softly, and kissed her. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, and for a moment the pain and the discomfort and the embarrassment didn’t matter at all.
He unbuttoned his breeches, taking hold of his hardness. “I don’t want to be in you too long.” She watched him pleasure himself, watched his hand jerk back and forth, and glanced at his face. He was looking at her spread legs and the neckline of her corset clinging to her breasts as if he couldn’t get enough of them. Penelope arched lazily, just to see, and he groaned.
“Will you-will you touch your breasts?”
She stilled, embarrassed. “I-”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think I can wait any longer.”
He pulled her forward until she was sitting right at the edge of the step. The tip of his hardness pressed against her. She had not known you could feel this physically close to another person.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered, and pushed forward.
Pain shot through her. She gritted her teeth.
He froze.
“Please. Just get it over with.”
He nodded and shoved forward hard.
She felt something tear, a little, and suddenly she was filled inside. It hurt, and it was uncomfortable, and she could see that when it didn’t hurt it would be incredible. Nev thrust a few times, shallowly. Then he brought his hand down and began touching that spot again.
It wasn’t that the pain went away, exactly-it was just that it was hard to concentrate on it when the pleasure was building and building, and even though she knew what was coming this time, it was still unbelievable when the explosion came. She felt herself convulsing around Nev, this time, drawing him deeper inside her, pressing up against him, not caring about the discomfort.
Nev thrust again, only a few more times, and relaxed all at once.
He pulled out immediately, his hand gentling on her hip. She was distantly conscious that it would hurt in a minute, although right now it just felt empty. “All right?”
She nodded. “Thank you, Nev.”
“Thank you,” he said, very seriously. Then he grinned. “I wonder how long before you’ll be up to doing it again.”
He still wanted to do it again. Penelope grinned back.
Eventually the rain stopped. Nev and Penelope walked back to the house. He had hold of Penelope’s hand and went slowly in case she was sore. His own damp clothes were becoming uncomfortable, but soon they would be home and could order baths. He let himself dwell on that thought-Penelope in her bath, clean and wet and naked. It was too soon to be inside her again, but maybe he could teach her a few other things.
He had never dreamed they were things you could teach your wife, but then he had never dreamed that prim little Penelope would take her stockings off and look up at him under her eyelashes and ask him to undress her and deflower her in the Gothic folly in the middle of a rainstorm. She had been amazing, and-he had never realized how different it would be, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wanted him, that she wasn’t expecting a diamond bracelet afterward. It was a heady drug.
She winced, stepping over a puddle. “Sore?” he asked.
She nodded. “It’s all right. It just-just reminds me of-” She stopped, blushing.
He squeezed her hand, knowing he was grinning like an idiot and unable to stop. She met his eye and smiled back, sheepishly, and then they were giggling. Nev hadn’t felt this good in months.
Penelope winced a little again, climbing the steps of the Grange, and Nev said, “Here-I didn’t do it the first time you crossed the threshold, so-” She made a startled noise when he picked her up, but she nestled against him and put her arms around his neck, and it wasn’t as awkward a position as he had always thought it would be.
He had to put her down for a moment to open the door, and then he almost dropped her getting through it, so they were laughing and tangled when Nev turned and saw, standing and watching them at the doorway of the Blue Salon, his mother, Louisa, and Sir Jasper.