Penelope wished her head would swim, that she would faint, anything-anything to make the present recede just a little from her consciousness. Anything to draw Nev’s attention away from the pitiful wreck of his former mistress. But she did not. She could not. She was not built that way. She stood there, cold in the afternoon sun, and watched her life unravel around her in perfect, precise detail.
In an instant Nev was at the bedside. “Oh, God,” he said in a low, terrible voice. “Is she-will she-?”
Penelope felt the knot climb in her throat-high enough to make her bite the inside of her lip to keep from screaming, not high enough to inconvenience anyone.
“I think she’ll pull through, my lord.” The nurse rose from her chair and bobbed a perfunctory curtsy. “But I couldn’t say for sure. She’s been sick an awful long time, more’n a week; don’t seem to know where she is half the time and burning up with fever. She really shouldn’t have traveled, but the air in London is so close this time of year, it might have killed her all on its lonesome. She’s lost too much blood.” The nurse made a clucking sound in the back of her throat. “That’s what comes of opposing nature.”
That was when the worst of it hit Penelope. Miss Wray was here because she had aborted an unwanted child. Nev’s unwanted child. She was seized with a horrifying thought-had Nev known? Had Miss Wray told him, that night at the theater? Had Nev concealed this from her? For the first time since they had entered the room, Penelope looked at Nev’s face. She could only see part of his crooked profile, because he was turned away from her to look down at Miss Wray. His face was gray.
Miss Wray shifted restlessly. “Nev,” she moaned.
Penelope froze, her eyes darting to the nurse.
The woman frowned. “She keeps saying ‘never.’ Who knows what’s going on in her head? I hope she isn’t scared, poor thing.”
The danger was over for the moment, but Penelope could not enjoy the reprieve. Of course the nurse had no idea. But the Baileys would surely recognize the name. Someone would, anyway. Soon everyone at Loweston would know that the new Lord Bedlow had had his mistress brought to Loweston under his wife’s nose. Then the neighbors would find out, and everyone would know; everyone would look at her with pity or thinly veiled contempt. It would be confirmation of everything-that Nev didn’t care about her, that the new Lady Bedlow was a citified fool who couldn’t see what was before her eyes.
Miss Wray tried to push away her blanket. “Nev.” Nev swallowed convulsively and balled his hands into fists.
Penelope blinked; the horror receded a little. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” she said to the nurse.
“Oh, begging your pardon, your ladyship, it’s Rawley.”
“We appreciate your coming all this way, Rawley. I hope you will explain to the Baileys what is required for Miss Wr-” Penelope stopped, panicking a little.
“Miss Raeburn,” the nurse prompted her.
“Yes, of course,” she said gratefully. “Miss Raeburn’s care. And I hope you will oblige us by looking at Jack Bailey’s leg before you go. Lord Bedlow can sit with the patient for a few minutes, if you will step into the other room.”
“Certainly, your ladyship.” Rawley stepped back to let Penelope leave the room ahead of her. “Just call me if you see any change, my lord.”
Penelope didn’t look back; she couldn’t and still keep her wits about her sufficiently to get them all through the next ten minutes without a scandal.
Mr. Bailey was still grumbling that his leg was fine, but Mrs. Bailey, face set, said to Rawley, “Please, if you could look-”
“It’s what her ladyship was just asking me to do. Sit down, Mr. Bailey.”
Mr. Bailey sat reluctantly on one of the rush-bottomed chairs. Penelope sank down on the other and tried to think what to do. They could hardly send the girl away, not when she was so ill; to be moved again might kill her. Nor could they ask someone else to nurse her who might not recognize Nev’s nickname or whom Penelope could trust; the secret the disappointed Baileys and their friends would create in explanation would no doubt be worse than the truth.
She could find no solution but to try to brazen it out, and take the scandal and humiliation with grace when it came. Penelope had lived with pitying, contemptuous glances all her life. She could do it again. Since Miss Wray-Penelope was still thinking of her by her stage name-was so sick, at least there could be no suggestion that Nev was carrying on with her in his home, which might have injured Louisa’s reputation.
It was not Nev’s fault. Even if he had known his mistress was carrying his child and had kept it from her, it was certainly because he had thought it would hurt her. It was painfully evident from his reaction that he had not known their invalid would be Miss Wray. Nev was sorry and worried for his mistress, and when he had had time to compose himself he would be sorry and worried for Penelope. She could not add to his burden by unreasonable complaints or recriminations. She could not even wish that Nev cared less for Miss Wray’s danger; it would make him a lesser man.
No, there was no use blaming anyone. It was no one’s fault that Penelope was miserable, and so no one but her should suffer because of it. There was no use being angry, no use crying, no use doing anything but making the best of it.
Penelope felt robbed: cheated of her anger and her sorrow.
A low groan made her look up. Rawley had unwrapped Jack Bailey’s leg. It looked awful-red and swollen and raw, and not entirely straight. There were two ghastly holes near the knee, as well: one on each side. Penelope could not imagine what they might be. Rawley must have been equally puzzled, because Jack was saying, “I fell on the pitchfork, don’t you know.” Penelope swallowed and didn’t let herself look away. You have little enough to complain of, she told herself.
“Mrs. Bailey,” Penelope said when the leg was wrapped up again, a nauseating eternity later.
Mrs. Bailey turned to look at her, looking drawn and apprehensive. “Yes, Lady Bedlow?”
“I-please take good care of Miss Raeburn.”
Mrs. Bailey nodded. “Her mother knew yours, is that right? Was she a friend of your’n?”
Penelope recoiled inwardly at the suggestion-at the idea that someone might look at a piece of Covent Garden ware and think she was Penelope’s friend, that she was like Penelope. “No, but-” She did not know what to say. She only knew that she could not bear it if Miss Wray died; it would be, somehow, too much injustice all at once, and Nev would be so miserable. “And take care of Jack’s leg, please. If you need anything at all-if anyone needs anything-please let us know. I-I couldn’t bear it if anyone died, and I might have prevented it.” She felt near tears.
Mrs. Bailey laughed a little. “I wish we’d had you when my Rosie took sick.”
Penelope’s throat closed. She had met the Bailey children, and none of them were named Rosie. There was so much pain, everywhere, and there was nothing to do to fight back, there was nothing anyone could do but bear it.
“Here now,” Mrs. Bailey said, “don’t take on so. Let’s get Lord Bedlow to take you home.”
Nev drove silently, without looking at her, his hands white-knuckled on the reins. Penelope did not quite trust herself to speak anyway. They arrived at the house, and Nev handed the cart over to a groom. He offered Penelope his arm to climb the steps and opened the door for her, and all that time he did not turn to her. There was a tension to him that Penelope didn’t understand. He took her hand and pulled her up the stairs after him and into her room. Shutting the door behind him, he finally, finally turned to look at her.
Before she could even catch a glimpse of his face he was crushing her to him, his arms around her. Despite all her misgivings and her fears, she relaxed against him. Her sense of hopelessness receded, melting into his warmth. A small, petty part of her could not help a fierce joy that whatever he might feel for Miss Wray, it was she, Penelope, who was his wife, and she to whom he turned for comfort.
“Oh, God, Penelope,” he said against her hair in a broken voice. “If that were you-if-”
She pulled away a little, surprised, and he kissed her fiercely and did not stop. She let everything burn away, all the bitterness and worries-they were consumed in a great rush of fire. She kissed him back with everything that was in her, her hands gripping his shoulders hard enough to hurt; she was his wife, she was his, she wanted him, that was all that mattered.
He pressed hot, urgent kisses on her neck and shoulders. “I need to see you.”
Shaking, she turned around and let him unbutton her gown with hasty, fumbling fingers. She did not think, at that moment, that she would have cared if he ripped the gown apart; damn the expense, damn the embarrassment of lying to the dressmaker about what had happened.
She was wearing her most intricate set of stays, with a double row of laces down the back. He cursed, low in his throat, and Penelope said, barely able to get the words out, “Penknife-my desk-”
He paused for a moment, and then he snatched up the knife and cut the laces. Her corset fell away in three panels, she tore off her shift, and she was naked.
She remembered the first time she had stood before him naked. She’d been nervous, and he had looked her up and down and smiled and touched her, oh so gently. This was nothing like that. He swept her with his gaze, once, and then he bent and took one of her breasts in his mouth, sucking hard. She cried out-she couldn’t help it-and he bore her back until she fetched up against the bed. Taking hold of her waist, he pushed her down so that she sat on the edge of the mattress and he knelt between her spread legs, his hands firm around her buttocks. There was nothing else, no warning, no gentleness, before he dipped his head between her legs and sucked her center of sensation into his mouth.
She had never imagined anything so shocking. It felt-it felt hot and urgent and indescribable. Nev’s cinnamon hair brushed the inside of her thighs and his tongue teased her there and it was faster and hotter than anything she had ever felt. Then Nev jerked her forward with his hands and thrust his tongue inside her.
Penelope braced herself on the bed and let her head fall back. Nothing existed but white-hot pleasure. She moaned and pleaded and said words she had barely been aware she knew. And then, faster than she had thought possible, she was racked with waves of pleasure so intense they were almost painful.
For a minute afterward, she simply sat there with her eyes closed, feeling Nev’s grip on her loosen. She did not quite want to look at him. What had happened was too intense-it seemed wrong to look and speak as if everything were ordinary. She was afraid he would look unchanged. But finally she opened her eyes and looked down.
Nev met her gaze for a long moment; she did not know how to read his expression, but the tension of earlier was eased. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head against her thigh, his thumbs tracing small circles on her skin. “Penelope,” he murmured.
Tears pricked Penelope’s eyes. She put a hand on his head, running her fingers through his hair. He tilted his head against her palm like a tired puppy. “I love your hair,” she said softly.
He smiled with his eyes closed, his same familiar small pleased smile.
“Let me-you didn’t take your pleasure.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He meant to be considerate, but it stung her. He had turned the world over for her, and he did not want her to give him anything in return. He had possessed her-branded her as his with his mouth and his hands. All he had to do was touch her, and tiny fires sprang up under his fingers. She wanted to do that for him. She wanted to render him incapable of chivalrous consideration. “It matters to me. Teach me to do something new for you. Please. There must be something-something like what you just did for me.”
“That-” He sounded as if he were having difficulty speaking. “That isn’t something you ask a lady to do.”
That would have stopped her, once; but now she rebelled. “I’m not a lady.” She felt the familiar sting of it-but she felt something else too. She wasn’t a lady; she could not control her base urges when Nev touched her, she could not keep herself from moaning and writhing and spreading her legs. But Nev liked her pleasure, and there was something he wanted that he could not have asked a lady for.
“Penelope-”
“I’m not. Nev-please, when it comes out that Miss Wray is here, everyone will know-everyone will say that I-that you-that I can’t satisfy you. I don’t want it to be true, I want-”
“Penelope, please, don’t ever do anything for me because you think you have to. I-” He reached up and cupped her breast. “You satisfy me,” he said intently.
She smiled, but she persisted. “Would it feel as good if I did it for you? Used my-my mouth-?”
He swallowed. Penelope saw sudden heat in his eyes before he closed them, trying to hide it from her. He nodded, once.
“Then let me-please-”
He pressed his lips together and nodded again. “Penelope-” His voice was thick. “Promise me that if you find it distasteful at all, you won’t do it again.”
“I promise.”
Nev stood. Penelope could see his masculinity straining against his breeches. “Kneel down.”
Nev watched Penelope get up off the bed and kneel in front of him, her expression triumphant but nervous. This was a bad idea, too intense, too much to ask, too much-but there was nothing to be done about it, because Penelope on her knees in front of him was the most irresistibly erotic thing he had ever seen. Her hair was still in its neat coil, and the bright sun that came through the gap in the curtains made a stripe across her stomach and thighs, and Penelope, proper Penelope, was going to suck him in the middle of the afternoon. Nev could no more have stopped this than he could have stopped an avalanche.
Amy, pale and wasted, flashed through his mind. Guilt smote him, that he was teaching his wife new sexual tricks while Amy might be dying a mile off. And yet the thought seemed far away. It could not begin to drown his utter focus on Penelope’s kneeling form. When had familiar, comfortable desire become this furious hunger?
He wondered if he should have undressed to make this easier for her. That didn’t matter either; he couldn’t wait. “Unbutton my breeches. Er, please.” She gave him an amused glance and reached for the flap of his breeches, and with every slide of button through buttonhole Nev’s arousal built. He watched her small, capable hands as she unbuttoned his breeches and his drawers as if she had done it a hundred times, although she never had-always before they had been in their nightclothes, with the exception of that first time in the folly, and then he had dealt with his clothing himself. Then, her hand casually resting at the base of his cock, she looked up at him for further guidance. She looked nervous, but Nev thought she was a little eager too.
He licked his lips. “Take the tip into your mouth.” It came out as a hoarse whisper. She obeyed him. Her hot, wet mouth that he had kissed so many times closed around him, and he almost came just from that. She didn’t move, her tongue pressed patiently against the underside of his cock, and finally the thought pierced Nev’s pleasure-shrouded mind that she was waiting for further instructions. He cleared his throat. “Just-just take it further in and then out, and keep your mouth tight around it.” He wasn’t going to last long enough for her to need more instructions than that.
Penelope gripped him tighter with her hand, took him in deep-and promptly pulled off, gagging.
He winced. “Sorry, I should have said-”
“I suppose it will take practice.” She gave him an impish grin, and then her mouth closed back around him. Nev grabbed the bedpost to keep his knees from buckling.
This time she didn’t try to take in more than a few inches; she moved slowly and carefully up and down him, her mouth and hand hot and close. After a few passes like that, she increased her tempo slightly. Nev watched her in fascination, still barely able to believe this was happening. Soon she tried swirling her tongue, awkwardly; he moaned, and he didn’t know how but he could feel her attention sharpen. He could feel her making mental notes on his reactions. It will take practice. The idea of her practicing this with the same thoroughness and devotion she had given to ledgers and the piano pushed him to the edge.
“Penelope!” He had meant it as a warning, but it sounded instead like a plea, or a declaration, and by the time he realized she wasn’t pulling off he could no longer form words. He gripped the bedpost hard enough to hurt and spent himself in Penelope’s mouth. Pleasure rolled over him, so intense he thought he might black out. She stopped moving, but she didn’t draw back. Instead, she struggled to swallow. Not until his muscles relaxed did she pull off, coughing a little, some of his seed dripping down her chin.
Nev had never, not once, seen Penelope let anything drip down her chin. If she ate a peach she cut it up first. “Get up here.”
She stood, weaving a little. He kissed her gently, amazed by the taste of himself on her tongue, and then pulled out a handkerchief and began cleaning her mouth and chin.
She flushed. “I can do it.”
“I know. Let me.” She sighed and tilted up her face. He felt a flash of something-Penelope seemed haloed for an instant in perfect beauty, and he felt a sharp, unsettling pang as if someone had plucked one of his heartstrings, hard, and found it out of tune. It wasn’t like affection or lust-those he knew; it was something entirely unfamiliar.
“Is something wrong?”
He realized he had stopped moving, his thumb at the corner of her mouth. “Not at all.” He tried to smile. The feeling was gone now, but it had left something in its wake-a sort of lifting up, a yearning toward something undefined. He had sometimes felt like this when he heard the opening chords of a favorite piece of music. He had read a poem, once, that almost described it: a shaping and a sense of things beyond us.
That was how he felt when he looked at Penelope just now. As if something were happening to the two of them, just beyond the reach of his understanding. “Thank you. I think that was the most marvelous thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She looked away. “No Spanish coin.” She spoke low enough he hardly heard it.
His hand dropped away from her face. “It’s not. It never has been. Why don’t you believe me?”
“Perhaps because I’ve seen your mistress,” Penelope said dryly, and then looked as if she wanted to cut her tongue out.
How had he forgotten Amy?
“What did you mean?” she asked. “When you said, ‘If that had been you-’ ”
It took him a moment to remember what she meant, and a moment longer to frame an answer that made any sense. He started refastening his clothes. “I just-you know how one gets the strangest thoughts when someone is sick, and I thought-her mother knew your mother when they were children. What if you were the actress and she were the heiress? Then you would be lying there-” The idea was too unthinkable even to say.
“I’m fine, Nev, I’m right here.” Penelope leaned her face against his shoulder, and the idea that someday he might not be able to reach out and touch her was almost a physical pain. “I’m so sorry about Miss Wray.”
“She didn’t tell me. She must have thought I wouldn’t be any use.”
There was a pause; Nev wondered if Penelope was silently agreeing with Amy. “There’s no use blaming yourself,” she said. “We won’t know why she didn’t tell you until she’s well enough to talk.”
If she’s ever well enough to talk. He knew they were both thinking it. “I never realized how much she didn’t tell me. I was with her for a year, I saw her every day-I even told myself we were friends. And I never troubled to find out.” Now he might never have the chance to ask. Everything that Amy had felt and thought and never told him might be gone forever. He looked down at Penelope’s closed expression. “And you-there’s so much you don’t tell me. I never know what’s going on in there. I don’t know how to reach you.”
That, he thought, was why he had needed to pleasure her, to see her gasping and flushed and hear her prayers and curses-to prove to himself that in that way at least he could get to her, in that way she opened herself to him completely.
A minute passed, and she hadn’t answered him; he could tell she was thinking over what he had said and that she wouldn’t voice her thoughts aloud.
“See, you’re doing it right now,” he said with something like despair. “Damn pennies; I’d give a hundred pounds for your thoughts right now.”
“A hundred pounds is a lot of money.”
“I know that.” He did, and it was a hard-won knowledge. A hundred pounds was plows and horses and seed and food for his people’s children. He would still give it, to hear Penelope’s thoughts.
“I-” she began, and stopped. “I’m not keeping secrets. I just don’t see why you should have to listen to my complaints when none of this is your fault.”
It was all his fault; Penelope was too generous, as always. As she had been at the Baileys’. “You left me alone with her.” He had been so grateful to be left alone to promise Amy that now, finally, he would take care of her. So grateful that Penelope was there to shoulder part of the burden. So weakly, selfishly grateful.
“You were hardly going to ravish her in the state she was in. Besides, I didn’t want a scandal, and you would have created one if you were in that nurse’s presence one moment longer.”
In anyone else, he would have said they were trying to be cruel, trying to give him a set-down. With Penelope-well, perhaps it was partly that. But not all. “You just won’t admit you did it to be kind,” he said. “You don’t want anyone to know how softhearted you are, but it’s in everything you do. Penelope-”
“Please don’t. Do you think a compliment from you can give me any pleasure when your mistress is here? It’s cruel of you to say it, when you know I want it to be true.”
“It is true! What do I have to do to convince you?”
“Don’t. You said it yourself; if things were different, I would be lying there and Miss Wray would be here, and you would be saying these things to her. There’s nothing special about me, nothing at all.”
She seemed so sure, and she was cleverer than he. But he said, “You’re wrong.” He knew it. “Penelope, you’re-”
She ignored him. “And then when the Baileys work out she’s saying ‘Nev,’ and not ‘never,’ everyone will know she’s here, and that she lost your child, and they’ll pity me-God! Do you think a single one of them will believe that you find anything special about me? That I gave you the most marvelous experience of your life?”
Nev felt sick. He had wanted her thoughts; now he had them, and he did not know what to do. He had been too distraught to think about the consequences of Amy’s delirium, but now he realized that Penelope was right. They were about to be the subject of a major scandal. And Penelope was right too, about what her role in it would be-the dull wife, losing her husband’s interest after a month of marriage and too stupid to know it. The thought of it made Nev furious, the thought of people looking at Penelope like they knew her. Of people not realizing how wonderful she was.
He ignored his pang of disappointment that Penelope was worried because of the scandal; of course she wasn’t jealous, it had nothing to do with him. It was unjust for him to want anything else, not now. Even insisting that she believe him, trying to tell her how much he had missed her these last few weeks, seemed suddenly selfish, a plea for a forgiveness he didn’t deserve.
There was nothing he could say except, “I’m sorry, Penelope. I’m so sorry.”
Penelope thought they were going to make it out of church without having to talk to Mr. Snively, but at the last moment he appeared from behind the pillar at the end of the family pew. “So I hear you have become as ministering angels and adopted a sick woman as your own charge.”
“Her mother works for my father,” she said, still startled by how fast news traveled in the country. “The poor woman was at her wits’ end. The London air, you know, is quite harmful to invalids.”
“ ‘The greatest of these is charity,’ ” said Mr. Snively. “And yet I fear that, as the guardian of your souls, it is my duty to remind you that the young woman in question is ill because she opposed God’s plan to make her a mother. Perhaps the danger to her body is but a shadow of the danger to her immortal soul, and so one may question whether in such a case-”
Penelope stared.
“Perhaps it would be more Christian to let her die, is that what you’re saying?” Nev demanded.
Mr. Snively shrank back. “No, no. I suppose your generous hearts have the right of it. Tell me, how is Jack Bailey?”
Nev did not answer, so Penelope said, “His leg looked dreadful to me. I do not see how he can work for at least a month if he wishes to be really healed. Do you think the parish might add to his allotment for that time?”
Mr. Snively frowned. “Alas, the parish is groaning under the relief that is already needed. His leg is very bad, you say?”
Penelope shuddered, remembering. “He not only broke the leg in falling from the ladder, he also fell on the pitchfork he was using to thatch the roof. His leg is quite frightening, with a gaping hole straight through-”
“There, there.” Mr. Snively smiled and patted her arm. Penelope hated his smile; it was like a snake’s. “Your ladyship must not distress herself. I consider it very ill-advised to have allowed you to see the wound at all. Your husband, I presume, did not condone such a thing.”
Nev had been with Miss Wray. “I assure you, I was not nearly so distressed as Mrs. Bailey!” Penelope instantly regretted her words. Whether they liked it or not, Mr. Snively would be their minister for a good many years. Unless someone brains him, she added to herself.
“We’re almost there,” Nev said. “Mama, try not to embarrass us in front of Sir Jasper. Nothing is more terrifying to a gentleman than a matchmaking mama.”
Lady Bedlow huffed indignantly. “Of course I wouldn’t have the ill breeding to-”
“And Louisa, try to be civil. Sir Jasper is our nearest neighbor.”
“Yes, my lord,” Louisa muttered.
The carriage rounded a corner, and Penelope gasped. At the top of a rolling hill, Greygloss lay enthroned in pastoral splendor. It was the largest house Penelope had ever seen: a Palladian manor with enormous symmetrical wings that stretched out from the gleaming white columns of the portico. She had thought the Grange gigantic, but the Grange would fit easily in one-half of Sir Jasper’s house. She leaned across Nev to get a closer look, and felt him sigh.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said.
Penelope thought quickly. “One of my father’s friends built himself a seat in Essex. He told me that these Neoclassical homes are almost impossible to get water to because they’re all at the top of a hill.”
Lady Bedlow sniffed. “What a very practical consideration.”
“Don’t provoke me, Mama,” Nev said mildly. “I can still cut down the Loweston oaks, you know. We could use the money.”
The ceiling of Sir Jasper’s entrance hall was impossibly lofty, comprising as it did two stories. The tiled marble floor gleamed, and the furnishings shone richly. It was beautiful and in exquisite taste, but Penelope thought the antiquated, Jacobean Grange was friendlier.
“Good afternoon.” Sir Jasper hurried toward them. “Welcome to my home.” Penelope thought he looked at Louisa when he said it. Certainly he held her hand in his a fraction longer than he should have.
Of course, he was obliged to escort Penelope in to dinner, but Lady Bedlow quickly sat on Penelope’s other side, hoping to leave Sir Jasper’s left for Louisa. Instead, Nev took that chair, talking to the baronet about hunting and looking so very unaware that his choice of seat had any implications whatsoever that Penelope knew he had done it on purpose. She was hard-pressed not to laugh at the look on Lady Bedlow’s face.
The food laid out for them was aggressively English-not a cream sauce or ragout in sight. “Forgive the simplicity of my table,” Sir Jasper said. “I find English cooking more healthful than French, but it must appear sadly plain compared with the efforts of your splendid chef.”
Penelope was unpleasantly reminded of one of her father’s friends, a Methodist who had given up all forms of meat. His elaborate explanation that no, he didn’t judge those who dined on animal flesh, only he found the mind was so much less clouded by carnality when fed on purely vegetable sustenance, had been delivered in precisely the same tone. “Not at all,” she said, smiling. “My father disliked French cooking. It will be quite like home to have some plain beef again.”
Until Sir Jasper’s face went blank, it did not even occur to her that he might not like to hear that Greygloss was quite like home to Penelope Bedlow, née Brown. She wasn’t usually so tactless. And she hadn’t even meant it. Greygloss was far too elegant to be anything like home. God, she wanted to be home. She wanted her mother’s horrible purple tablecloth and people who liked her.
“Your mother’s cook was splendid!” Just the sound of Nev’s voice made Penelope feel better. “I meant to ask her for the receipt for that calves’ feet jelly.” He tasted Sir Jasper’s jelly. “This is very good, but that had something extra in it-I’m terrible at guessing ingredients, but perhaps a spice of some sort?”
“I believe she uses oranges and limes instead of lemon juice,” Penelope said.
“Oh, is that all? We should ask Gaston to make it that way.”
“Won’t he be offended?” Penelope had not dared to ask Gaston to alter any of his recipes, both for fear that Nev liked them the way they were and because she had heard so very much about temperamental French chefs.
Louisa laughed. “Oh, no, not at all. He was forever altering receipts according to our preferences when we were younger. He even used to make me baked cheese in brioche with cheddar, though I know it went sore against the grain. Indeed,” she added, “I have always been so used to French cooking that I do not know how I could feel at home with any other kind.” She did not look at Sir Jasper when she said it, but a defiant note crept into her voice that made her meaning clear to everyone.
Lady Bedlow looked stricken, and Nev’s lips thinned. Penelope sighed inwardly and cast about for some small talk.
Sir Jasper blinked. Then he smiled. “You may find out differently someday. When I was your age I thought I should never feel at home without my collection of model frigates.”
Louisa’s face set rebelliously. Penelope found the image of Sir Jasper making model frigates rather charming; she wondered what Nev’s hobbies had been at seventeen. But she could have told Sir Jasper that it was the worst possible thing to say. No seventeen-year-old girl wanted to be told she was a child.
Lady Bedlow, evidently afraid that Louisa would say something unforgivable, rushed into speech. “Ah yes, being young can be such a trial, can’t it, Sir Jasper? Poor Louisa has been so dull in the country that I’m afraid it’s wearing on her nerves.”
Louisa audibly ground her teeth.
“She’s been begging her brother to host a house party, but-” Lady Bedlow stopped, probably not wanting to come out and say that Nev could not afford it. She gave a trilling laugh. “Well, I doubt his friends would be appropriate company for Louisa anyway.”
Nev set his jaw and didn’t say anything.
“There is nothing wrong with Nate’s friends, Mama!”
Penelope, who had been wanting to slap the dowager countess, was seized with a sudden affection for Louisa.
Nev looked taken aback. “Thank you, but-”
“Anyway, I don’t care about the house party anymore,” the girl said, still flushed. “I know that it’s an unnecessary expense. And it’s-it’s nice to simply do as I like. There’ll be plenty of time to see my friends in the autumn.”
Penelope was once again agreeably surprised. She had assumed, when Louisa had stopped complaining about the house party, that the girl had simply given up the cause as lost. It hadn’t occurred to her that Louisa might genuinely understand why it was impossible.
“That is very mature of you, Lady Louisa.” Sir Jasper looked even more pleased than Penelope felt. “However, there is no need to be so Spartan. I have been thinking of hosting a house party in a fortnight, and if you provide me with the names of a few of your friends I would be happy to invite them.”
Penelope smothered a groan; she would have wagered that Sir Jasper had had no such intention at all, and now there would be a house party, and she and Nev would have to go and pretend to like Sir Jasper’s friends.
Louisa did not even seem pleased; of course, there was nothing worse than a gift from someone you didn’t wish to be beholden to. “That is very kind of you,” she said, “but it really isn’t necessary.”
Sir Jasper smiled at her. “Oh, no, I insist.”
Despite Nev changing the subject to threshing machines (a heroic sacrifice), dinner dragged on interminably. Finally, the ladies left the gentlemen alone. Penelope did not know whether to long for Nev’s return or dread Sir Jasper’s, especially since the dowager countess spent the interim scolding Louisa for her treatment of the baronet.
“And you ought to be more careful to get enough sleep,” Lady Bedlow concluded her speech. “There are circles under your eyes.”
“Mama, there are not. Anyway, I sleep a good deal. It was only last night I couldn’t sleep. I’m sorry I woke you, but-”
“Oh, and you’ve spilled something on your sleeve!” Lady Bedlow spit into her handkerchief and rubbed at an invisible spot of food on the muslin. “You know what a light sleeper I am. If you must read in the middle of the night, you might at least bring your book to your room with you. I can see how you thought that Mr. Young’s book would help you sleep, however. How a daughter of mine ever turned out so clever, I do not know. I suppose it’s just as well; Sir Jasper told me he prefers a well-read girl.”
Louisa jerked her arm away. “I do not give-I do not care what Sir Jasper prefers!”
Penelope could not help thinking that her own vulgar family had never made such an awkward display. She thought of her mother’s endless matchmaking. It had irked her, of course, but-why hadn’t it bothered her the way Lady Bedlow’s bothered Louisa? The girl looked like a cornered fox. And there were shadows under her eyes.
When the gentlemen finally did return, Nev came at once to Penelope-Penelope took resigned note of how her heart jumped when he did-but his first words were, “Louisa looks miserable. What’s my mother been saying?”
“She is miserable,” Penelope whispered. “You had better go to her, or Sir Jasper will do it first, and I can’t answer for the consequences.”
It struck Penelope again, with a pang, how many more social graces Nev possessed than herself. Within two minutes he had maneuvered things so that Louisa was playing the harpsichord and she and Nev were singing a version of “No John No” that was a good deal less scandalous than the version Penelope had learned from her mother.
Sir Jasper came and sat by Penelope. “I have been hearing great things about your work to improve Loweston.”
Never had Penelope felt so undeserving of praise. She flushed. “I wish I could do ten times more. Our people have suffered from the conditions there far more than we ever could.”
“I saw your invalid today. It was very kind of you to take her in. Her mother is friends with yours, I collect?”
As afraid as Penelope was of what Sir Jasper might have guessed, her first thought was still to deny the more plausible explanation, the friendship between her mother and poor Mrs. Raeburn. She despised herself even as she said, “They knew each other a little growing up. Miss Raeburn’s mother works for my father now.” Never say ‘brewery.’
“Miss Raeburn must have worked very hard to rise from such a background to be one of the lights of the London stage.”
Penelope felt cold. “I am sure she did. I quite admired her in Twelfth Night.”
Sir Jasper frowned. He leaned toward her. “I should not say this, but I have been touched by your efforts for the district. I do not like to see you play the fool. Miss Raeburn’s name has been linked with your husband’s. I am morally certain they have been intimately connected.”
Penelope stared at him, wishing she had worn long sleeves and faintly wondering at his bringing up such a subject with her at all. I know, she wanted to scream. I know. What kind of idiot do you take me for? Of course, that would have been shocking; she had to pretend to have no knowledge of any such thing. She had to pray that Sir Jasper would be discreet. Yet she was damned if she would thank him for his officiousness. “What a gentleman does when he is not at home is nothing to do with his wife.”
Where had that sprung from? She sounded like an obedient little aristocratic wife, conniving at her own humiliation. What would she have said, if she had really not known? Probably the same thing. She was like that: a steady girl. The thought goaded her into an almost sarcastic, “But it was so very kind of you to pay her a visit. Did you know her in London too?”
“Oh, I wasn’t there to see her,” Sir Jasper said. “I must seem a regular old woman to you! No, that was my pretext, but I was there on quite another account. I had received word from your vicar that Jack Bailey’s injury matched that inflicted by a mantrap, and I wished to see if he might be any connection to your poaching gang before I called in the constable.” He smiled at her. “I daresay he has been taken up by now.”