The Romantic (18 page)

He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, neither entering nor leaving. “We will arrive in Grossington this afternoon. I thought that we would call on Mrs. Kenworthy tomorrow, unless you would prefer to do it some other way.”

“There is no other way. For once, where Cleo is concerned, I should not be a coward.” She pushed to her feet. “I will go to my trunk, since the alternative is to wait a year for it to come to me.”

For once, where Cleo is concerned, I should not be a coward.

She was remembering things she did not want to remember. She admitted that as she strolled through a kitchen garden tucked behind the inn. Every mile closer to Cleo brought forth more images that engendered more guilt and humiliation.

She had been so ignorant. So unbelievably naive. When she had seen that isolated country house in Wiltshire filled with the dark-skinned servants, she had never suspected that they still lived in England like the slaves they had been in Jamaica.

She had not guessed that Glasbury kept that private estate so that he could indulge himself with those servants in ways no English servant would allow.

His ability to do so had probably protected her for a while. It had been a year before he began treating her like a slave, too.

At first the earl’s dictates had been mild, but his scathing anger made her fear displeasing him. He would order her to change her gown for dinner, then dislike her new choice and make her change again and again, each time heaping her with criticism about her inadequacies as a countess.

He found fault with everything, until she dreaded his presence and cringed at his approach. He isolated her from her friends. He said terrible things about her family and went into a rage if she had the temerity to object. When she did not become pregnant, he used that as a lash, too.

Her fear grew and her joy died. He liked what he was doing to her. He fed on the tremor in her voice, on her vain and anxious attempts to please him. For her efforts she received only more criticism, more demands, more rules.

Finally, when he had her cowed and childish and afraid to think, the punishments began.

She halted in her walk and stood there, immobile, as those memories finally broke through the barriers she had built around them.

The physical punishment had been the least of it. The rituals he demanded were what made it thoroughly degrading. He never just hit her. He let her wait, knowing what was coming, like a child preparing for a whipping.

Then he would arrive in her chamber and demand she strip naked and walk to him and lay herself across his lap so he could use his hand on her bottom.

It aroused him. It took her a long time to realize that. And the rituals got more creative, and more sexual. She winced at the memory of the first night he made her crawl to him and turn and raise her bottom to his strap until she was screaming. When he had her begging him to stop he had taken her like the submissive animal he had made her become.

She wiped the images from her mind. She forced them back into the shadows where she kept them. She had gotten off easy compared to little Cleo. Or at least she escaped before he dared go as far with her as he had with that girl.

A blue cloak appeared near the garden gate. Catherine spied her and gestured to indicate the carriage was ready to depart.

Pen marched to the inn’s yard, consumed by an unholy anger toward herself. She should not have been so docile. She should have confided in someone, no matter how humiliating the admissions would have been.

She should have seen sooner that she was not the only female in that household who cowered and shrank when his attention lit on her.

The activity of departure distracted her. Focusing on the confusion of carriages in the yard, she was able to block other, darker thoughts from her mind.

They would come, however. She did not doubt that they would. She would not be able to face Cleo and not face the past, too.

•••

The sun shone all the way to Grossington that afternoon, but it did not lighten Penelope’s mood. She had returned from her walk as preoccupied with her thoughts as when she had left. Even above on the box with the driver, Julian could sense her disquiet.

That night he stood by the window of his chamber, looking out on the silence. On the other side of the wall he could hear subtle movements. Floorboards creaked in a regular rhythm as feet trod them, back and forth.

She was remembering things, she had said.

He held the vigil with her, even though she would never know. For two hours he listened to her pace.

He takes pleasure in giving punishment.
Those were the words she had used that day while she looked resolutely at a corner in his chambers so that she would not see his reaction.

He guessed that she had spent weeks finding a way to say it without having to actually say much at all. It had been eloquent in its own way, however. She had not said
he beats me when he is drunk.
Her simple statement had alluded to much more.

It seemed the pacing would never stop. Finally he could no longer bear it. He stepped out of his chamber and lightly rapped on the door several feet from his own.

The door opened a crack. Pen stood there in her white nightdress and lace-trimmed cap, with a blue shawl wrapping her shoulders and breasts.

He looked in her eyes and knew that she would pace all night.

He pressed the door wider with his palm. In the
chamber’s darkness, he could see Catherine sleeping on a small bed against the wall.

He took Pen’s hand and pulled her out of the room and closed the door. Ignoring her resistance, he dragged her into his chamber.

chapter
13

S
he crossed her arms over the shawl and pressed her back against his door.

“Catherine says that if men accost her, they find her knee where they wear no armor.”

“If I accost you, I deserve the same.”

He walked away from her because he did want to touch her, very much. She looked lovely and womanly in her nightdress. He imagined plucking the bed cap off her head and her hair falling down.

“You have not been to sleep yet, Pen. The night is half gone.”

“You have not been to sleep, either.”

“I have been listening to you pace.”

“It happens sometimes that I cannot sleep.” She still hugged the door with her back, as if she feared him.

“There is a reason this time, however. I will go alone tomorrow.”

“You cannot spare me this, Julian. You have no shield that will protect me from this dragon.” She moved away
from the door. Her expression turned sad as she walked aimlessly about the chamber. “I was the mistress of that house. I was responsible. But I was blind.”

“He made sure you were too frightened to see.”

“No, Julian, I covered my own eyes because what existed in front of them made no sense, and was so foreign to the world I knew.” She shot him a challenging look. “He did not want me unseeing at all. So one night when he punished Cleo, he forced me to witness it. I was horrified. Shocked. Both trembling and numb at the same time. I did not comprehend all of it yet, but I could not lie to myself after that. So I came to you.”

He had always guessed that one specific episode had driven her to the confidences in his chambers. There had been an initiation. A night when the earl had shown Pen what his pleasure really required. No doubt he had thought her fully broken by then.

He had been wrong. The soft, innocent bride had proven stronger than the earl expected.

“It was disgusting,” she muttered, speaking more to herself than to him. “I thought I had descended into hell.”

“You had.”

“My heart broke for her. But one thought stayed in my head and would not go away. A selfish one. That could be me, I thought. Someday, it
will
be me.”

She turned away. He knew she was crying. His heart clenched. He went to her and laid his hands on her shoulders. “You got her out, Pen.”

“You
got her out, Julian.” She turned, but did not pull away from his touch. “You guessed all of it, didn’t you? That imagination of yours could see it all, couldn’t it?”

Her eyes sparkled with the tears brimming in them. “You always knew what he did with her. And with me.”

“I do not dwell on what he did with you.” He brushed a tear off her cheek with his thumb. “You were only a victim. A sweet, kind girl who had been grabbed by the devil. I have wanted to kill Glasbury because of it, but it never once changed my thoughts about you.”

Her reaction almost broke his heart. She appeared grateful, skeptical, and terribly vulnerable. The old images of meeting Glasbury on a field of honor entered his head.

Thank God she had been strong. Thank God she had found the courage to leave. And thank God her experiences had not indeed ruined her, or left her a shell of a person as they had little Cleo.

His thumb still rested on her soft cheek. Her eyes still held confusion and sadness. The chamber pulsed with a raw intimacy provoked by her emotions.

“I should go,” she said.

“Will you sleep now?”

“Most likely not.”

“Then stay here. We will await the dawn together.”

“I should not.”

He could not bear the thought of her returning to her chamber and the memories. “If you are not alone, perhaps the dragon will stay in his lair.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Rest here in my arms. You will be back in your chamber before Catherine wakes.”

She did not agree, but she did not refuse, either. When he stepped backward toward the bed there was no real resistance in the body that he guided by the hand.

She looked at the bed for a long while.

“If I accost you, you can always follow Catherine’s advice about knees and no armor,” he said.

She giggled. The musical sound broke through the sadness and lifted the darkness.

She removed her shawl, folded it neatly, and placed it on a chair. The domesticity of the action entranced him.

“You will be sure to get me out before the servants are about?”

“I promise.”

She lifted the bedclothes and climbed in. “We keep doing things we should not, but you are right; I do not want to be alone with my thoughts tonight.”

There was an implicit trust in her movements as she settled into the bed. He was both flattered and amused. The images romping through his imagination were not at all trustworthy, but he expected he could survive the night. After a life of restraint a few more hours should be manageable.

She looked up from the pillow. “Do you intend to sit by the bed like a nurse?”

“No.”

“Do you plan on lying here in coats and collar?”

“No.” He slid off his frock coat and went to work on his neckwear.

He extinguished the lamp. The fire was down to embers, but it still gave some heat and hints of light.

“I think that you should remove your shirt.”

“Do you now? It might be wise if one of us is not dressed for bed. There are limits to any man’s chivalry.”

“Yes. Of course. Forgive me. You are always more sensible than I am, Julian.”

Sensible, was he?

He removed the damn shirt.

And turned to find her looking at him.

At least she did not appear to be thinking about Glasbury anymore.

He sat on the bed and pulled off his boots. Deciding not to be sensible in the least, he removed his trousers, threw them on the chair, and joined her under the blanket.

His body was already in a condition that would make the night a torture.

“I suppose this is very reckless and dangerous,” she said.

“You are in no danger from me.” That was not entirely true.

“That is not what I meant.” She turned on her side and propped her head on her hand. “This helps, not being alone. I am glad you will be with me tomorrow as well. I do not think I could do it otherwise.”

“You can do anything if you decide it is important. You have already proven that.”

“I have not, in truth. If you think about it, I have never had to act alone. Someone has always been there to help me. But I do not want to think or talk about that anymore tonight.”

“What would you prefer to speak of?”

She rose higher on her elbow. “How magical the firelight is. It makes a little glow along your edges, like one sees in paintings.” She reached out and traced a line along his nose, over his lips, and down his chin.

Desire began cutting through him.

Her feathery touch traced over his shoulder and onto the muscles of his chest. The blanket moved down with her hand.

“What are you doing, Pen?”

“You looked at me. I want to look at you. You are much more athletic than I expected. No doubt all that rowing explains it.” Her fingers ran over a rough edge on his left side. “What is this scar? It is very long.”

“I got it some years ago in Hampstead.”

“I did not realize that the swordplay of the Dueling Society was so dangerous.”

She referred to the group of Laclere’s friends who met at the chevalier’s house to practice with swords and pistols. Julian had been a part of that set since he was at university, and still met with them on occasion to continue the old camaraderie.