They clattered into the Abbey stable yard in the small hours. Again Charles waved his stableman back to his bed. Catching the mare’s reins, he led both horses in and turned them into their stalls.
Penny went to unsaddle, only then realized she was shaking. It was, apparently, one thing to speculate and wonder, even to acknowledge and investigate, but quite another to find a recently murdered henchman along with indisputable proof of her father and brother’s complicity in treason.
Her mind felt battered, oddly detached. Dragging in a breath, she held it, and forced her hands to work, to unsaddle the mare and rub her down.
Charles glanced her way, but said nothing.
When he finished with his horse, he came to help her, without a word taking over rubbing the mare down. She relinquished the task, checked the feed and water, then leaned against the side of the stall and waited.
He’d left the tangle of signal flags on top of the stall wall. From amid the jumble, the Selborne crest mocked her. She turned away.
Charles came out of the stall, shut the door, picked up the flags, with his other hand took hers. They walked up to the house and entered through the garden door; in the front hall, he tugged her away from the stairs. “Come into the library.”
She went, too exhausted even to wonder why. He towed her across the room, paused beside his desk to thrust the signal flags into a drawer, then towed her farther—to the tantalus.
Releasing her, he poured two glasses of brandy. Catching one of her hands, he lifted it and pressed one glass into it. “Drink.”
She stared at the glass. “I don’t drink brandy.”
He sipped his own drink, met her gaze. “Would you prefer I tip it down your throat?”
She stared at him through the shadows, wondered if he was bluffing…realized, rather dizzyingly, that he wasn’t. She sipped. Pulled a face. “It’s ghastly.”
Nose wrinkling, she held the glass away.
He shifted nearer.
Eyes flaring, she whipped the glass back to her lips, and sipped.
He stood there, a foot away, sipping his own drink, watching her until she’d drained the glass.
“Good.” He took it from her, put both glasses down, then took her hand again.
She was getting rather tired of being towed, but on the other hand, it meant she didn’t have to think.
Her acquiescence worried Charles. He knew what she believed, knew it was eating at her. He didn’t like seeing her in this state; she seemed so internally fragile, as if something inside might shatter at any moment. He’d always seen her as someone he should protect; for that very reason, he couldn’t utter the platitudes he might have used to calm another. He couldn’t offer her false hope.
He would send a rider to London tomorrow; although there shouldn’t have been any contact with the French that Dalziel hadn’t known about, hadn’t, indeed, been in charge of, it was possible there had been something going on that Dalziel hadn’t got wind of.
A long shot, but a possibility, one he needed checked.
Meanwhile, Penny’s state of mind was only one of his worries, and potentially the easiest to address.
His state of mind was even more uncertain.
He pulled her to a halt in the gallery, in front of a window so the moonlight, now fading, spilled in and lit her face. He studied it as, surprised, she blinked up at him.
Foreseeing the battle looming, he hissed out a frustrated breath. Releasing her, he raked a hand through his hair. “I’m no longer sure it’s a wise idea for you to go back to Wallingham Hall.”
Her attention abruptly refocused; she frowned as she followed his train of thought. “You mean because Gimby was murdered?” Her frown grew more definite. “You think Nicholas did it.”
“Other than you and me, who else has been asking after Granville’s associates?”
“Why?”
“To stop us learning whatever Gimby knew—whatever he presumably learned from Gimby before he killed him.”
Slowly, she nodded; her gaze went past him—he couldn’t see her eyes, couldn’t imagine what she was thinking.
Reaching out, he caught her chin and turned her face back to him. “You should remain here. We can set up a closer watch on Nicholas—”
“No.” She lifted her chin from his hand, but kept her eyes on his. “We agreed. If I’m there, I can keep a much more comprehensive eye on him, and you can visit freely as well. The more we’re about, the more likely he’ll grow rattled—”
“And what happens if, growing rattled, he decides perhaps you know too much?”
He thought she paled, but her gaze didn’t waver. If anything, her chin set more mulishly.
“Charles, there are two very good, very powerful and compelling reasons why I should return to Wallingham. The first is because keeping a close eye on Nicholas, especially if he was the one who killed Gimby, is vital. We need to know what Nicholas is doing, and I’m the person best able to learn that from inside the Hall, which also gives you a reason for visiting often and generally being around. Moreover, there’s the fact it was my father and brother who were running secrets to the French. It’s my family’s honor that’s been besmirched—”
“It’s not up to you to make restitution.” Hands on his hips, he loomed over her. “You don’t have to do that. No one would expect—”
“I don’t care what anyone else expects!” She didn’t budge an inch. “It’s what I expect, and it’s what I’ll do.”
“Penny—”
“No!” She fixed her eyes, glittering belligrently, on his. “Just tell me one thing—if you were in my shoes, wouldn’t you feel, and do, the same?”
His jaw set so hard he thought it would crack. Lips tightly compressed, he made no answer.
She nodded. “Exactly. So I’ll go to Wallingham in the morning as arranged.”
“What was your second oh-so-compelling reason?” If he could find any weakness, he’d exploit it.
She thought, then thought some more. He simply waited.
Eventually, her eyes steady on his, she said, “Because you were right. It’s not at all wise for me to stay under the same roof as you. You are a far greater threat to me than Nicholas is likely to be.”
He looked down into her stormy gray eyes, drank in the directness, the blatant honesty in her gaze, and felt the inevitable reaction to her words—to her admission—rise through him. He clenched his hands tight on his hips. Slowly said, “I would much rather you were at risk from me than from any other man. I, at least, am not interested in murdering you.”
But what you could do to my heart would hurt even more. Penny held back the words, forced herself to take a long slow breath before saying, “Nevertheless, I’ll leave for Wallingham in the morning.”
She went to step back.
He swore, and reached for her.
She’d been watching, but was far too slow; he grabbed her, jerked her to him, then his lips came down on hers.
CHAPTER
8
CHARLES TRAPPED HER AGAINST HIM, CRUSHED HIS LIPS TO hers, surged into her mouth and laid claim.
It was the stupidest thing he could have done, an approach doomed to fail before he’d begun. He knew it, and couldn’t stop. Couldn’t rein in the primal instinct that had slipped its leash, that insisted he should simply claim her and be done with it. That if he did he’d be able to command her, to impose his will on her and keep her safe.
The compulsive, driving need to keep her safe, given teeth and claws by the discoveries of the past days, was more than powerful enough to make him lose his head.
Penny’s defenses vaporized beneath his onslaught, beneath that hard, fast, scorching kiss—hard enough to knock her wits from her head, fast enough to send them whirling. Scorching enough to cinder any resistance.
It was totally unfair. That he could so simply stop her thoughts, capture her awareness so utterly…
His arms locked around her and he pulled her flush against him. Heat to burnin
g heat, breasts to chest, hips to hard thighs.
She gasped through the kiss, burned, ached. Any second, the last shred of her will would catch alight, and she’d be swept away. She gave up the fight to think, and just reacted. Raising both hands, she grabbed his head, speared her fingers through the silky tumble of his black locks, and gripped.
And kissed him back.
Poured every ounce of her frustrated emotions into the act. Pressed her lips to his, mouth to mouth, sent her tongue to tangle with his in a wild, pagan, wholly uninhibited dance.
And for the first time in their lives, in this arena, she knew she’d shocked him. Rocked him enough to have him hesitate, then scramble to follow her lead, to regain the reins, to wrest control back again.
She didn’t want to give it up.
In seconds, the exchange became a heated duel; initially, she held the upper hand. They were more evenly matched than they had been years ago, yet he was still a master and she a mere apprentice. Step by step, inch by inch, he reclaimed the ascendancy, reclaimed her senses. Dragged each down into a languorous sea of wanting. Of needing. Of having to have more.
She felt his arms ease, and his hands slide down, over her back, down over her hips to grip her bottom; he drew her closer still, molding her to him, suggestively provoking, evoking again that never-forgotten heat.
He rocked against her, and the heat spread. Wildfire down her veins, blossoming beneath her skin. Melting her bones, sapping her will…
Deliberately, she dropped her guard, let everything she’d held back, all that had grown, all that had been pent-up for thirteen years with nowhere to go, well and pour through her. Held him to the kiss and let it pour into him.
And felt him pause, then shudder. Felt the change in him, muscles tensing, locking, steeling against the tide.
She gloried, exulted—and sent the tide raging. She wanted so much more than he’d ever offered to give, and for once he was, if not helpless, then uncertain.
Charles couldn’t find solid ground. She’d cut it from under him; the only thing his senses could find that was real was her, and the desire that flamed between them, hotter, more powerful, more intense, frighteningly more potent than it had been before—so much more than he’d ever felt before. It—she—was passion and desire, heat and longing incarnate in a dimension he’d never before explored. She’d rocketed them into it, then set them both adrift…he had no idea how to return to the real world.
And no real wish to do so.
She was fuel to his fire; he needed her under his hands, under him. At that moment, he needed to be inside her more than he needed to breathe.
But not here.
The warning came in a fleeting instant of lucidity; this was madness and he knew it. But he couldn’t stop; he was helpless to draw back from her.
She pressed closer, arms twining about his neck; he couldn’t resist her lure, couldn’t resist slanting his mouth over hers and taking the kiss deeper. Whirling them both into deeper waters yet, to where the currents ran strong, to where the tug of desire became a tangible force, pulling them under.
She wasn’t safe, and neither was he.
He raised his hands to her breasts, closed them and kneaded, then sent them racing, covetously tracing the sleek planes of her back, the globes of her bottom, the long sweeps of her thighs. He felt her breath hitch; he wanted her naked under his hands, under his mouth, now.
But not HERE!
Some remnant of his mind screamed the words, battling to remind him…they had to stop. Now. Before—
She framed his face again, pressed an incendiary kiss on his ravening lips—then abruptly pulled back and broke the kiss.
Thank God! Eyes closed, he hauled in a ragged breath, then opened his eyes.
Gasping, panting, holding his face between her hands, she stared at him; eyes wide, through the moon-washed dimness she searched his. They were both reeling. Both fighting to breathe, both struggling desperately to regain their wits, and some measure of control.
To hold against the fiery tide that surged around them.
Never in his life had he felt so swept away, been so helpless in the face of something stronger than he. Something beyond his will to contain or restrain.
He was acutely conscious of her slender body wrapped in his arms, plastered against the much harder length of his.
She was, too.
He saw her eyes widen, simultaneously saw her grasp on her wits firm.
She hauled in a huge breath, then pushed back in his arms.
“That”—her voice shook, but, eyes locked with his, she went on—“is why I’m leaving for Wallingham in the morning.”
He couldn’t argue. The last ten minutes had amply demonstrated how desperately urgent and necessary it was that she quit his roof.
She wrenched away—had to—he couldn’t, yet, get his arms to willingly let her go. He had to battle just to let her step away, to force himself to lose the feel of her body against his and not react—not grab her and pull her back.
Watching him, still struggling to breathe, she seemed to sense his fraught state; she swung on her heel and walked, albeit unsteadily, away.
He watched her go, watched her turn into the corridor; unmoving in the shadows, he listened to her footsteps fade, then heard the distant thud of her bedchamber door. Only then did he manage to drag in a full breath, to fill his chest, to feel some semblance of sanity return.
Never before had he felt like that, not with any other woman, not even with her long ago.
Eventually, when the thunder in his veins had subsided enough for him to hear himself think, he stirred, his body once more his own. Nevertheless, his strongest impulse was to follow her to her room. To her bed, or anywhere else she wished.
With one soft, succinct curse, he turned and headed for his apartments.
Tomorrow she’d be at Wallingham.
Tomorrow, thank God, would be another day.
Despite her earnest expectations, Penny wasn’t ready to leave the Abbey until late the next morning.
She’d had difficulty falling asleep, then had slept in. She had breakfast on a tray in her room the better to avoid Charles.
Her behavior the previous night had been a revelation. Until she’d lost her temper and stopped holding everything back, she hadn’t appreciated just how much she’d been concealing, bottled up inside her. Until that moment, she hadn’t fully understood how much she still felt for him, or more specifically the nature of what she felt for him.
That last had been a revelation indeed.
It was more, far more in every way, than before, and now he was home, spending more time close to her than he ever had, her feelings only seemed to be growing, burgeoning and extending in ways she hadn’t foreseen.
On the one hand she was appalled, on the other…fascinated.
Just as well she was going back to Wallingham.
Crunching on her toast, she replayed that last interlude; she couldn’t tell whether he’d seen what she had. In the past, he hadn’t been at all perceptive where she was concerned; she hoped and suspected that would still be the case. For all she knew, women habitually threw themselves at him; if he hadn’t realized that with her, such an act meant a great deal more, well and good. Bringing her unexpected feelings to his attention was the last thing she needed. That his attention in a sexual sense had fixed on her anyway was no surprise. It always had; it seemed it always would.
Her thoughts circled to her principal reason for returning to Wallingham—Nicholas, the investigation, and now Gimby’s murder. Her determination to do her part was set in stone; sober, committed, she drained her teacup and rose to dress.
It was only as she left her room properly gowned in her riding habit that she recalled Charles had planned to go that morning to report Gimby’s death to Lord Culver, the nearest magistrate. If she hurried, she might get away before he returned.
She whisked through the gallery and was pattering down the stairs before she looked ahead. br />
Charles stood in the center of the hall watching her rapid descent. She slowed. He was dressed in riding jacket, breeches, and boots; his hair was windblown, as if he’d just come in. So much for an easy escape.
He dismissed Filchett, with whom he’d been talking, and came to meet her as she stepped off the stairs. “Come into the library.”
Together they walked the few steps to the library door. He held it for her, and she went in, walking to one of the chairs before the fire. She turned and coolly faced him. She doubted he’d mention their interlude last night. If he didn’t, she certainly wouldn’t; the less he dwelled on it, the better.