Sweet Deception (44 page)

Hell and hell again. Gabriel made to follow. He was head of the family now, much as he didn’t relish the role. It was his duty to head off any potential scene that might spoil his cousin’s wedding ball.

Gabriel slowed as Edward made an abrupt turn, in the opposite direction from his wife, and pushed out a set of French doors into the night instead.

He watched his brother’s departure with frustrated sadness. How things had changed, for all of them.

“Lord Bromwich?”

Gabriel jerked as a gloved hand slid over his forearm and gripped him lightly. He fisted his own hands before he even realized what he was doing.

“Oh—I—” A nervous laugh bubbled from Lady Penelope’s lips, making her seem younger than her twenty years. Her pale green eyes widened at whatever she saw upon his face and her hand fell away from his arm.

Wariness crept into her expression, darkening her eyes much as a quick-moving storm cloud shaded spring grass into a deeper hue.

And that made him feel much older than his own seven and twenty.

He forced a smile, even as he forced muscles tensed to strike into relaxation. “Lady Penelope, forgive me. I—” What could he say?
I’m sorry that I nearly just planted you a facer?
Ever since the wars, he didn’t do well with the unexpected. “I was deep in thought and…didn’t hear your approach.”

“Of course,” she murmured, and to Gabriel’s surprise, she placed her hand on his arm once again. “And I startled
you,” she continued, nodding thoughtfully. “How insensitive of me. Forgive
me
, my lord. I shall endeavor not to take you by surprise again.”

Gabriel felt his brow knitting over the bridge of his nose. He didn’t know Lady Penelope well. Was she mocking him? Or was she simply being polite? Because she couldn’t possibly understand how the long years spent fighting on the battlefields of Europe had changed him, could she? He’d never spoken of it.

“Now, however,” she said brightly, her bow-shaped lips spreading in a smile that seemed to burst through any cloud that still lingered over them, “I do believe you are meant to stand up with me for this dance.”

Gabriel blinked rapidly at her sudden change in countenance. He couldn’t help but draw in a sharp, deep breath, quite dazzled by it. How could a simple smile dispel the remaining tension in his limbs? But it had, and more than that, it filled his chest with something…warm. Something pleasant. Something he was afraid to name.

He was saved from trying as Lady Penelope tugged at him. “The dancers are already lined up.” Her blond head, with ringlets adorned by yellow violas, tipped toward the top of the room as she looked up at him expectantly.

Of course. As head of his family, he was to partner his cousin’s bride as she led the next dance.
That
was why she’d approached him. Gabriel shook off the strange sense of connection he’d felt with her, and hastened his step to follow.

Unease curdled in his stomach as they reached the head of the line. Gabriel generally avoided dancing. In fact, he made it a point to steer clear of ballrooms altogether. Since his return, it all just seemed too…close. Too many people jostling about for space. Too much noise. As far from and yet more like a battlefield than he felt comfortable with.

Not to mention it had been years since he’d last danced. He knew nothing of the current steps.

But he hadn’t been able to refuse his place at a family wedding. A fine sheen of sweat chilled the back of his neck. All he had to do was make it through this one dance, and then he could retire for the evening.

As they took their place perpendicular to the split line of dancers, Lady Penelope slipped her hand in his and raised their joined arms.

Time to gird your loins, old man.

The strains of violins filled the air first, joined almost immediately by the notes of a pianoforte in a lively tune he didn’t recognize. All he could tell was that it was in three-quarters time.

Gabriel did his best not to grimace, waiting to see what dance his partner would choose. He hoped it was something simple that he could easily emulate without making an arse of himself.

A flute piped up in merry accompaniment, signaling the start of the dancing.

Lady Penelope squeezed his hand. “Never fear, my lord,” she whispered. “’Twill be over in a trice.”

Before Gabriel could reply, she flashed her smile at him once more, and bent her torso away from him. Then she turned in a vaguely familiar step. When she grasped both of his hands and pulled him into the move, his body went easily, willingly, as if his muscles remembered the dance from long ago.

Only a few steps in and he realized that was because they did. Lady Penelope had chosen a simple country dance, popular in years past, and one blessedly that he knew. Relief washed over him, his cold sweat breaking into a warm one as she pulled him into the energetic skips and turns that left him unable to think of anything but the dance.

Like a battalion of soldiers following their commander, the next set of dancers fell in behind them as they made their way down the line in the progressive dance, one pair after another, until all were stepping lively.

All in all, the dance took nearly half an hour to complete. Gabriel would have wagered he smiled more in that thirty-minute span than he had in the previous month. Blood coursed through his veins, exhilarating in a way he’d forgotten he could feel.

Perhaps he should take up dancing as a pastime. If it made him feel like this, it could well be the cure to all of his ills.

But was it the dancing? Or the dancing partner?

He glanced over at Lady Penelope as they stood across from each other, their part of the dance now finished. She grinned and clapped in time with the music, watching the other dancers finish their sets. But Gabriel couldn’t take his eyes from her.

Her face was flushed from exertion, her green eyes bright with merriment. Tiny ringlets of her blond hair had dampened with perspiration and now clung to her temples and nape. She was the quintessential picture of an English rose—all slight and pale and graceful, with delicate ankles and wrists, a patrician nose and dewy skin. Everything a young Englishwoman should be.

Everything he’d fought to preserve.

Why shouldn’t I seek my happiness?
he thought. There was more than one Lady Penelope in the world. Perhaps it was time he ventured out from his self-imposed exile and found a wife of his own. A lady a bit older than Michael’s bride, of course. And perhaps one not quite so…sunny. All that brightness might be a shock to his system all at once, accustomed to living in darkness as he was. But the point remained.

A spot of applause broke out as the last of the dancers came to a breathless stop. Gabriel broke his gaze away from his cousin’s wife and joined in.

Michael bounded over from his place in the line as the clapping died down. “Gad, Pen. Haven’t danced that one in an age.”

Damn, but Michael seemed like such a young pup. It
was hard to remember he was only two years Gabriel’s junior. Gabe had often envied the seemingly inexhaustible energy Michael exuded. His cousin never tired. With his typical exuberance, he threw an arm around his bride and brushed a kiss on her temple. “Were you feeling nostalgic, dearling?”

Lady Penelope returned her husband’s squeeze with a fond smile. “Indeed, I was,” she answered lightly, but her eyes met Gabriel’s.

And in that moment, Gabriel knew she’d chosen the dance specifically with him in mind. She’d sensed his distress, had correctly interpreted it for what it was and so had picked a dance he was likely to know. He marveled at her intuitiveness. And at her consideration.

Just as he realized that she hadn’t been mocking him before. Somehow, she’d understood. How, he couldn’t fathom. Perhaps someone else she knew suffered as he did? Her cousin had recently married the Earl of Stratford, a man who’d been grievously injured in the same battle Gabriel had been. Maybe Stratford experienced the same gnawing restlessness, the overvigilance, the insomnia…the nightmares. Reliving battles won and lost, night after night after night…

“Well, no more of that, my love,” Michael declared. “From this moment on, we only look forward.” He swiped a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing footman. The servant stopped, and thirsty dancers swarmed him for the rest of the libations as the poor man’s eyes widened comically.

Michael snagged a flute for his bride and another for Gabriel before raising his own in an impromptu toast. “To our future!” He touched his glass to Penelope’s, the crystal kiss ringing with a high-pitched
ting.

“To your future,” Gabriel agreed. His gaze strayed once again to Lady Penelope. “I wish you very happy.”

Michael gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder that tipped champagne over the rim of Gabe’s glass, splashing
his hand and wrist with the frigidly sticky stuff. His cousin followed that up with a half-squeeze that constituted affection amongst the males of the species, sloshing yet more liquor onto Gabriel’s shoes.

Lady Penelope simply murmured, “Thank you, Lord Bromwich.”

“Gabriel,” he insisted, for reasons he couldn’t define. At the dip of her brow, he tried anyway. “We’re family now,” he explained gruffly, kicking droplets of champagne from his feet.

“Then, thank you, Gabriel.”

“Yes, thank you, Gabriel,” Michael parroted before plucking the still full champagne flute from Lady Penelope’s fingers. “Now come, wife,” he said with an exaggerated waggle of his blond brows, as if he relished the word. Then his voice dropped to a low tone, infused with an intimacy that made Gabriel turn his head. “Let us away.”

“Let’s do,” Lady Penelope answered eagerly, and the happy couple hurried off together.

As he watched them depart, Gabriel was finally able to name that elusive feeling that had filled his chest when Lady Penelope had first smiled at him.

Hope.

Hope for
his
future.

Gabriel swallowed what little champagne remained in his glass, raising it in his own toast. “May it be as blissful as theirs.”

The West Midlands, February 1820
Two and one half years later, shortly after the death of Mad King George III

L
ady Penelope Bridgeman, Baroness Manton, alighted from the carriage, her sturdy black kid boots crunching gravel beneath them as she stepped onto the drive of Vickering Place.

At first glance, the seventeenth-century mansion looked like any other palatial spread. No fewer than a dozen chimney blocks jutted from the slate roof, each spouting puffs of smoke that spoke of toasty fires within, keeping the residents of the brown brick home warm in defiance of the chilly February winter.

Ivy strangled the west wing of the structure, as well as the walls leading up to the entrance of the main house. The vines were brownish green and barren now, but Penelope imagined they would be beautiful to behold come springtime. As would the large ornamental fountain that fronted the house when it was once again filled with water, as well as the acres upon acres of parkland that surrounded it when they were greened up and in bloom.

However, Penelope fervently hoped she would have no occasion to visit Vickering Place in the spring. Indeed, she wished she wasn’t here now.

The carved oak door was opened for her before she even gained the top step of the stoop.

“Lady Manton.” A thin man, clad in a serviceable black suit, greeted her by her name, though they had never met. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Visitors were likely regulated here, and expected well in advance.

“Mr. Allen, I presume?” she inquired, pulling her dark wool greatcoat tighter around her as a frigid wind nipped across her nape. She stamped her feet in an effort to warm them, her eyes shifting involuntarily over the man’s shoulder to the roaring fire she could see blazing from a hearth within.

“I am he,” Allen confirmed, stepping back into the doorway so that Penelope might enter. “Please do come in.”

She slid sideways past him, grateful for the blast of warmth as she crossed the threshold into a well-lit foyer. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the painted ceiling that arced high above, depicting fluffy clouds in a blue summer sky that faded into the throes of a brilliant sunset around the edges.

She hadn’t expected such a cheerful scene.

A woman’s desolate wail sliced through the hall, raising the hair on Penelope’s arms, even covered as they were with layers of wool and bombazine. The high-pitched cry was cut off abruptly, leaving only an eerie echo ricocheting off of the marble walls of the foyer.

Penelope shivered.
That
was more in line with her expectation of Vickering Place.

Mr. Allen, she noted, seemed unruffled by the noise, almost as if he hadn’t even noticed. One grew used to it, she supposed. Allen extended an arm to usher her into what appeared to be his office, and as Penelope took a seat in a plush armchair across from his stark, imposing
desk, she strove for a similar sangfroid even as her stomach churned with nerves.

“I’m afraid your journey may have been in vain, my lady,” Mr. Allen began, lowering himself stiffly into his own seat. “It seems his lordship has descended into a fit of mania this morning. When he gets like this, he can be very dangerous. I cannot, in good conscience, allow you near him. For your safety’s sake.”

Penelope winged a brow high at the subtle condescension in the director’s tone. She pursed her lips.

Allen, apparently misinterpreting the reason for her irritation, said defensively, “I
did
send a messenger to the White Horse, but he must have just missed you. I am sorry you had to come all this way.”

Penelope waved a dismissive hand. “Your man delivered the message in plenty of time. However—” However, what? She’d been a fool not to anticipate this sort of resistance. She’d gotten spoiled, working with her cousin Liliana, the Countess of Stratford, over the past year and a half treating ex-soldiers and their families. No one ever questioned Liliana because she was female, not anymore.