'Twas the Night Before Mischief (7 page)

She blinked in shock. “What?”

Darius cursed. He slammed the door shut the second they were both inside. Penelope's heart raced as she watched him pace to the window and back.

“You've no idea the murderous thoughts I've had since I saw you with him.” Darius dragged a hand through his hair, his expression set with anger. “And when your father told me where you'd gone, I couldn't get out of London fast enough. I couldn't get to
you
fast enough.”

Penelope pressed a hand to her chest. “Why?”

“Because you've gone and turned all my expectations of you upside down, and…and, Penelope, I
admire
that you're daring and reckless, that you did something no one would have anticipated, least of all me or your father. I'd always thought I liked you because you were quiet and obedient, but then when I discovered that you're…you're
defiant
, something just…snapped inside me. Snapped
open
.”

He shook his head, a wry grimace twisting his lips. “Ridiculous for someone like me, isn't it? But I remembered that day you told me you had all these emotions you couldn't define. And when I heard you'd run off, knowing you needed someone to untwist you, to open you and…and…oh,
hell
.”

Before Penelope could form one word or take one breath, he stalked toward her, his expression dark with intent. He grasped her shoulders, yanking her against him as his mouth crashed down on hers. A surge of energy crackled through Penelope, setting her nerves on fire. She parted her lips without hesitation and fell, swirling, into his kiss.

A thousand feelings flew like butterflies through her, wings beating in time with the rhythm of her pounding heart. She spread her hand over Darius's chest. His own heart beat as hard and fast as hers. He pressed one hand to her back, his grip inexorable as he deepened the intensity of his kiss. With his other hand, he fumbled for the bow holding her hair back, growling with frustration when the ribbon refused to yield.

Penelope pulled away from him with a gasp, but only long enough to divest herself of the ribbon. Darius tugged at the remaining pins holding her hair in place, his breath hissing out as he watched the brown curls tumble around her shoulders. A hot flush swept through Penelope, pooling into a delicious throb at the center of her body. She stepped into his arms again and melted against him. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and she squirmed a bit to ease the burgeoning ache.

“Ah, sweet girl, everything you are makes me want you.” Darius pressed a series of kisses against her jaw, up to her ear, sliding back down to her neck. “You are a Christmas present wrapped in pretty paper, filled with unexpected surprises.”

For all her dislike of Christmas, Penelope was charmed by the comparison. A present. She smiled, reaching up to run her fingers over his cheek.

“Kiss me again,” she whispered.

He lowered his mouth to hers, clenching his fingers into her hips. Their lower bodies pressed together, and Penelope's pulse surged as she felt the distinctive ridge of his erection clear through her skirts. Emboldened by the evidence of his need, she slid her hand down his strong chest to the bulge in his trousers.

Darius groaned. His body tensed. He gripped her shoulders again as if to ease her away.

“No.” Penelope pushed closer, knowing they would never have a chance like this again. Knowing that her brief moment of freedom was almost over, that she had only the here and now. With him.

She grasped his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. Desire brewed hot in his eyes, but she sensed the restraint beginning to coil through him.

“Stop thinking,” she whispered. “Darius, for once in your life, please stop thinking and just…just be. Be with me. Please.”

She knew he wanted to surrender, and for one breathless moment she thought he might. Then his hands tightened on her shoulders and he pushed himself away from her.

Cool air swept into the space between them, contrasting with the hot rush of shame that filled Penelope's chest. She backed away, her face flaming.

What must he…?

“I'm sorry.” Darius muttered a curse, dragging a hand down his face. “I'm…you just
do
something to me, Penelope. I don't know what it is.”

“I do something to you?” She could hardly believe what she was hearing. “May I remind you that
three
times now you've kissed me? Three times! Four, if you count compressing and releasing your lips upon my neck. But I'm the one who does something to you?”

“I mean…” His throat worked with a swallow. “You have the oddest effect on me. You incite me to be different, someone I've never been before. The man I've always been would never seize a woman like that with the intention of kissing her senseless.”

“But has that man taken into account that the woman might like being seized and kissed senseless? That she might even secretly
hope
for it?”

Darius pivoted away from her and stalked to the windows, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“You should not be that woman for me,” he said, his voice tense. “You cannot be. I told your father that I would return you safely to London. He trusts me to do exactly as I have promised.”

Her
father
. Of course.

Disappointment stabbed through Penelope. She knew her attempt to elope had been foolish, but she'd also learned more in the past fortnight than she'd ever learned in her entire life. One of those things was that men like Darius Hall didn't change.

He would always be ruled by his head rather than his heart, or even his desires. If he ever felt anything similar to what she did, he would bury it beneath his definitions and practical thoughts. And so he would never truly understand all that she had tried to tell him about longing and freedom because he would never allow himself to feel any of it.

“Yet you didn't come after me because of my father, did you?” she asked. “You came for
me
.”

He turned to face her again, and in that moment she saw the truth flash across his usually unreadable features. And this time, she was the one who closed the distance between them. She was the one who reached up to take his face in her hands and draw him toward her.

She felt his surrender in the instant before their mouths met again. A surge of energy crackled around them. Her heart expanded, filling with more emotions than it seemed capable of containing. Knowing she had to be bolder than she'd ever been before, Penelope reached to unfasten the buttons of his coat and shirt. A combination of excitement and nervousness wound through her.

When Darius slid his shirt off his shoulders to the floor, Penelope could only stare at him.
Beautiful.
His broad shoulders sloped downward to powerful arms and a chest rigid with muscle.

“Can I touch you?” she asked.

He gave a hoarse laugh. “You can do anything you want with me.”

Penelope's hand shook a bit as she smoothed her palm against his abdomen, delighting in the sensation of his taut, hair-roughened skin over all those hard slopes and planes. She moved lower to where the line of hair disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers. Darius twitched a little, as if her touch were stretching his control to breaking point. He grasped her wrist, but this time she knew it was not to stop their explorations.

Instead he brought her hand back up to the middle of his chest as he reached for her bodice. Excitement, happiness, arousal—all swept through her blood like millions of churning ocean waves. Without a single fumble, Darius divested her of her dress, petticoats, and corset, his eyes darkening to midnight as every article of clothing fell to the floor. Then she was in nothing but her shift, and as she stepped back into his arms, she thought it should be odd that she wasn't trembling with nervousness.

But she knew she had no reason to be nervous. Not with Darius Hall, the man with whom she'd been acquainted for years but was just now truly beginning to
know
.

Their lips met again as he guided her back toward the bed, lowering her gently before he pulled off his trousers and tossed them aside. Penelope gasped at the first full contact of his powerful body against hers, their nakedness separated only by the thin material of her shift and his drawers. His erection throbbed against her thigh, sending a wild jolt of heat through her.

“Oh, please…” The ache inside her expanded in circles, like a pebble dropped into a lake. She knew she wanted something, longed for it, for him, but she didn't know what she was supposed to do next.

In the next thirty seconds, she realized she didn't have to know. All she had to do was
feel
. Darius lowered his head, his thick hair brushing her neck as he captured her taut nipple between his lips, dampening the cotton of her shift with the swirls of his tongue. Penelope gasped, arching upward as electricity crackled clear down to her toes.

Instinctively, she ran her hands over his chest again, down to the hardness pressing against her. Cupping him in her palm, she stroked her fingers experimentally over the long shaft. His low groan assured her she was doing everything right.

She hooked her fingers into his drawers to tug them off, her heart careening at the sight of his stiff flesh. Before she could touch him, however, he pulled her shift over her head and bared her body to the heat of his gaze. Penelope flushed, unnerved at being fully naked in front of a man, but then she remembered that this was
Darius
, and he was looking at her with such lust and admiration that her tension waned.

“Open me,” she whispered, stroking her palm over his jaw.

He gave a muffled laugh as he pressed a series of kisses over her breasts. “I couldn't stop now if the world ceased spinning.”

He slid his hands down to her thighs, the glide of his palms leaving delicious little shocks in their wake. When he pressed his hands between her legs, Penelope arched upward as if she were a flower blooming in the heat of the sun. Arousal spooled through her, a craving for something she could not name and yet knew that only Darius could provide.

His mouth came down on hers again as he eased a finger inside her, opening her. Penelope wound her arms around his shoulders, trusting him with everything she had, all she was. She melted under the pressure of his kiss and his body, so lost in the sensation of him on top of her that any fear dissolved into the heat of their union. She pushed upward again instinctively. On a low groan, he pressed another finger into her, his thumb circling the tight knot in which all of her tension was centered.

She gasped, her hands flexing against his back as sensations washed in waves over her body. A riotous mixture of pleasure and slight discomfort wound through her as he paused, lifting himself on his elbow to look at her. His expression was set, his eyes burning as he searched her gaze.

“All right,” Penelope gasped, sliding her hands down his chest. “I'm…I want this.”

I want you.

There could be no words for this wild combination of urgency, longing, heat, and pleasure. When Darius touched the secret part of her core that Penelope hadn't known existed, explosions burst behind her eyelids and careened through her entire body. He captured her cry with his mouth, and even in the midst of the pleasure coursing through her, she reached for him and closed her hand around his shaft. A groan slipped from him to her as he followed her into the shattering bliss.

Darius rolled to the side, his chest heaving as he tugged her into the crook of his arm. Shivers rained through Penelope's blood. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder, enveloped in warmth and the dawning sense that she didn't want to be anywhere else. Ever.

He shifted, pulling her closer. He brushed his lips across her forehead. Stroked a hand down her back. The simple beauty of his gestures filled her heart with a thousand colors, sparkles, stars. And now Penelope knew the precise word for what she felt.

E
xhilaration.

Darius felt it every time he looked at Penelope. Just the sight of her gave him a surge of intense pleasure, joy, happiness. Never before had he found himself enjoying the sensations of his heart over the processes of his mind.

He couldn't stop looking at her as they took breakfast together the following morning and prepared for the day. He noticed all those poetic things about her that he'd never before noticed about another woman. The way loose strands of her glossy hair clung to her neck. The darker circle of blue around her irises. The perfect rosebud of her mouth. The blush pinkening her smooth cheeks.

He loved her. He loved the quiet girl she'd been and the daring, adventurous woman she had become. She made him want to be that way himself, to take risks and follow the path of his longings.

Darius thought with a hint of amusement that in some ways, he'd already done that. He'd followed Penelope more than once, and she was most certainly
his longing
.

After breakfast, he spent a couple of hours arranging transportation to Aberdeen, but his thoughts never strayed far from the blue-eyed young woman who radiated vitality. Who knew how to live.

He returned to the Caledonian Hotel after procuring tickets on a passenger coach that would leave in a half hour for the town of Keith. He'd rather been hoping to find a private coach, or at least one in which he and Penelope were the sole passengers, but as it turned out they were forced to share the coach with five other people. One of whom was a very large man who took up enough room for two.

Darius found himself crushed between the man and the door, with Penelope directly across from him. Amusement danced in her eyes as they got under way. Darius thought he would gladly bear the discomfort for days if he could spend the trip looking at her and being
exhilarated
.

They maintained the façade of being a married couple during the trip to Keith, where Darius purchased tickets on the railway to Aberdeen. The train would take them into the city, where they would transfer to another line in order to reach London. It wasn't until they stood on the platform waiting to board that Darius became aware of the unpleasant thoughts he had thus far kept at bay.

Each passing hour meant he was that much closer to bringing Penelope back to her father's house. He would have to
leave
her there.

Unless, of course, he asked her to marry him, and she agreed. As much as he wanted to do so, he knew he had to speak with her father first. Henry had trusted him to bring Penelope back safely, with the unspoken understanding that Darius would ensure Penelope's reputation and virtue remained intact.

Henry had
trusted
Darius not to do exactly what he'd done. The guilt of that knowledge grew with every step they took toward London.

“Well, this is much more pleasant than the coach.” Penelope settled into a seat in the first-class rail car. An older gentleman sat in the corner, and he gave them a nod of greeting before closing his eyes for a nap.

Darius sat beside Penelope, inhaling the sweet scent that filled the air around her. When he moved closer to her, he felt a pleasant settling inside, something he'd experienced during his visits to the Darlington home. The disquiet of his mind calmed, allowing him to breathe more easily.

Heart. Heat. Heaven.

“What if we didn't go back?” Penelope asked.

Her question made his heart leap. “Didn't go back?”

“Oh, I know we have to.” She gave a resigned shrug. “Even if you weren't responsible and trustworthy and all those things, I'm not so foolish that I'd run off with yet another man. At least, not so soon after being abandoned by the first one.”

Darius started to bristle. Penelope shot him a glance of sly amusement.

“I was just wondering
what if
we didn't go back to London?” she said.

“I'm not certain I understand the question.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course you don't because you can't imagine doing anything so reckless as running away. But
if you did
, where would you go? What would you do?”

“America. I would like to see the city called San Francisco. I understand there's a great deal of gold to be found there.”

“You would be lured by the prospect of gold?”

“Not the gold itself, but there are some interesting mining techniques being developed. Machines can now dislodge sediment using hydraulics and water pressure.”

He caught her smile. “What's so amusing?”

“I can imagine it, oddly enough,” she said. “You traveling through the wilds of California, studying mining equipment by day and definitions by night.”

Once upon a time, Darius might have found the thought appealing. He still did, but with a new qualification. It would be appealing only if Penelope Darlington were at his side.

“You do like adventure, don't you?” she asked. “Even when we were younger, you traveled often, bringing back various diagrams to show my father.”

“One doesn't need to live inside a room to learn. I prefer not to, in fact.”

“Neither do I.” She looked out the window. “The problem is that I have far less opportunity than you do to learn out in the world. You've always had the chance to escape, to go wherever you wanted, to find whatever it was you were seeking. Just as you'll do again when we reach London.”

Darius did not like the matter-of-fact tone to her voice. As if she simply knew she was right.

“And what shall you do?” he asked.

“Try to make amends. Attend my father's Christmas feast. Be Penelope the Paragon, more scrupulously than I've ever been before.”

And one day, Darius knew, she would marry a man of whom her father approved. A nice, young man, perhaps a barrister or a doctor. She would live with him in a tidy little house, bear children, and live a quiet, dutiful life.

A life that was entirely
un
-Penelope. A life that would negate her.

He tried to smother the thought—and the knowledge that he was partly responsible for setting her back on the path to such a life. He reached into his pocket and removed a bag of sweets that he'd gotten in Keith. He extended the open bag to Penelope.

She shook her head. “I don't like kisses.”

“And for the first time ever, I must accuse a lady of lying through her teeth.”

She smiled. “Sugarplums are also called kisses. You didn't know that?”

“I didn't know a kiss was called anything except a kiss.” Darius popped one of the candies into his mouth, enjoying the burst of cherry-flavored sugar. “But had I known one could purchase a bag of kisses, I'd have done so much sooner. Then I could just take one whenever I pleased.”

“You've got a softer heart than I'd known,” Penelope remarked. “I'd always thought your heart was…well, serious. Incapable of flights of fancy or believing in fairy stories.”

“Like falling in love with a mermaid?” Darius shook his head. “Much too impractical. Aside from the water and air issue, the logistics of lovemaking would be impossible to overcome.”

Penelope gave a hoot of laughter so sudden and unladylike that the man across from them jolted from his sleep with a mutter of disapproval.

Darius grinned. He thought, fancifully, that he could listen to Penelope's laughter for the rest of his days.

“
You
wouldn't have to concern yourself with logistics anyway,” she told him. “Because you would never engage in an act romantic or impulsive enough to lure a mermaid from the sea.”

Darius glanced at the elderly man and moved an inch closer to Penelope. He lowered his voice, his mouth close to her ear.

“I'm not interested in luring a mermaid,” he murmured. “I am interested in luring a woman with sugar-scented hair and skin that tastes of orange blossoms.”

She drew in a breath. “I believe you've already caught that woman.”

Have I?

When she turned his head to meet his gaze, he saw the certainty in her blue eyes…and the challenge. He might have caught her, but now he needed to prove himself worthy of keeping her.