She flung herself at him; he caught her, staggered back a step before he got his balance. Arms around him, she hugged him ferociously. “Thank God you’re all right!”
For a frozen moment, he simply stood as the world about him tilted and swung, then he closed his arms more definitely around her, tightened them. Laying his cheek against her hair, he closed his eyes and breathed in, let the subtle fragrance of her slide through him. Let the feel of her in his arms claim him. With all his other missions, he’d never had anyone waiting for him, anyone eager to see him, to anchor him and welcome him back into the normal world—to reassure him that he still belonged.
They stood locked tight, then, releasing him, she pushed back, reached up and framed his face, looked deep into his eyes, then stretched up and kissed him. Hard. Lips to lips, then she parted hers and drew him in; for uncounted heartbeats, they drowned—then she pulled back, and simply looked at him, her gaze devouring his face.
Penny sighed, reassured, relieved and so much more. Stepping back, she looked toward the maze. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Charles nodded. He took her hand and drew her on, back toward the house. “He’s been stopped.”
She glanced at him. “So no one else will die.”
He met her gaze, then nodded. He tightened his hold on her hand, she tightened her hold on his; looking ahead, they walked on.
Amberly was relieved; so were the staff. Dalziel disappeared, but was back in time for dinner; he was talking quietly to Amberly when Penny and Charles joined them in the drawing room.
Later, after a meal that, courtesy of Amberly and Penny, verged on the celebratory, Amberly invited them to view his secret collection. They’d earlier refused so if things had gone wrong, he would be protected by virtue of being the only one who knew how to open the priest hole.
It was similar to the one at Wallingham Hall, just a few feet larger. And filled with snuffboxes the like of which the three of them had never seen. Sitting in a chair while they admired the craftsmanship of the various styles represented, Amberly related how their “game” had started, how he and Penny’s father had worked out the mechanism of the scheme that had run for so long.
“But now he’s gone, and so is Granville.” As they left the priest hole, he nodded toward the contents. “I’ve been thinking, now it’s all over, that those should be put in a museum somewhere, perhaps with the pillboxes.”
He looked inquiringly at Penny.
She nodded. “I don’t think they should remain in the priest holes, either here or at Wallingham.”
Amberly smiled wryly. “I know Nicholas will agree with you—poor boy, this has all been such a worry to him.” He looked at Dalziel. “Do you think it might be possible to create a story to account for them that people would believe?”
Dalziel smiled. “I’m sure, if we put our minds to it, we’ll be able to come up with something. And”—he glanced at the snuffboxes—“I doubt any curator you offer the ‘Selborne collection’ to is going to ask too many questions.”
“Do you think so?”
Charles tugged Penny’s arm. They left Dalziel and Amberly discussing potential tales with which to allay any public concern.
“Without having to explain the whole unlikely past.” Charles shook his head. “He must have been a formidable adversary on the diplomatic front.”
Penny smiled and led the way down the corridor. They reached her room and went in. On arriving at the Grange, she’d puzzled the housekeeper by insisting she did not wish the maid assigned to her to wait on her at night; as Charles had yet to sleep in the bed in the room he’d been given, she assumed the housekeeper would by now have guessed why.
Undressing in the same room, being physically close, had come very easily to them both. Standing before the dressing table unpinning, then brushing out her long hair, she watched Charles in the mirror, watched him strip off his coat, then unknot and unwind his cravat. Unbuttoning his shirt, unlacing the cuffs, he drew it off over his head; clad only in trousers, he prowled absentmindedly to come up behind her—he looked up, and met her gaze. She felt the tug as he undid her laces.
She held his gaze as he did; her senses still alert, very much alive, she considered all she saw. He was taller than she by half a head—his hair was dark, black as the night, while in the faint candlelight hers held the silver of moonlight.
His shoulders and chest were broader than hers; she could see his body on either side of hers, a visual promise of his strength, of his ability to surround her with it.
Raising his hands, he pushed her loosened gown off her shoulders; she withdrew her arms and let it fall to the floor with a soft swoosh. The sound focused her mind, her eyes, on the contrasts revealed, on the steely muscles that flexed in his arms as he ran his palms down her arms—over the delicate skin, the subtle feminine curves.
She was slender, delicate, where he was broad, heavily muscled; she was pale to his dark, weak to his strong, yet she didn’t, never had, feared his strength; instead, she reveled in it.
Complementary, well matched. Equals, but not the same.
A pair, perfect foils each for the other.
Reaching out, she placed her brush on the table, quelled a shiver of anticipation as he shifted closer, as his hands slid around her and she felt his strength slowly, carefully engulf her. Easing back in his arms, she watched as he lowered his head, as he nuzzled her throat, then nudged her head aside so he could fasten his lips over the point where her pulse raced.
A smile curved her lips. She knew beyond question that she was the only woman who had ever interacted with him as she did, as she always had—close with no barriers, inside his mask, dealing with the real man rather than the persona he showed to the world. Seeing his vulnerabilities as well as his strengths, being allowed to know of them and ease them.
There was no other man she had ever wanted, ever needed to be with. Only him.
She could feel the tension still thrumming through him, not so much the aftermath of the day’s events as a sense the episode had yet to be laid to rest.
Her smile deepening, she turned into his arms.
Charles had no idea what she meant to do when she insisted on taking the reins. But he yielded, let her do as she wished with his body, with his heart, with his soul. He’d given her all three long ago; it was a relief to be able to consign them so simply into her keeping. Into her care.
Hours later, lying on his back, sated, exhausted, and at peace beside her in the rumpled bed, he acknowledged how different this was to the end of any previous mission. This time, thanks to her, he’d reached a completion that had never before been his; he’d traveled full circle from initiating protectiveness to final conclusion, and she’d welcomed him back, guided him back—absolved him. She’d acted as his anchor, his guardian and mentor in the personal sense; he’d never before had that connection, had someone not just acknowledging but personifying the link between his mission and those he sought to protect.
He glanced down at her, slumped, boneless, beside him. Accepted wisdom held that a lady’s life revolved about her lord’s; with them, he knew beyond doubt that his life would always and forever revolve about her. His place would be wherever she was, his bed would always be hers, not the other way around, no matter what society thought.
She stirred; after a moment, she lifted her head, glanced at his face, then shifted over him, leaning her forearms on his chest so she could study his eyes.
He studied hers, but could read little beyond a certain satisfaction, a certain decisiveness. “What?”
Her lips lifted. “Can we go directly back to Lostwithiel rather than going via London?”
He blinked. “Yes. Why?”
She held his gaze. “If we’re going to get married, then there’s a lot we need to organize, and if we announce our engagement in London, you know what will happen—we’ll be expected to make a social event of it, attend all the right balls and allow the major hostesses to dictate to us. We’ll be placing
ourselves in your and my sisters’ and our mamas’ hands, and much as we love them, it’ll be so much easier if we keep the reins in our hands—”
He shut her up in the only way he could—he kissed her. Kept kissing her until she was floundering as much as he was. She was racing impulsively ahead again. Raising his hands, he cradled her face, aware to his bones of the simple honesty behind the kiss, of the unalloyed sweetness of what they now shared.
Drawing back, he looked at her, with his thumbs brushed wisps of her hair aside, met her bright eyes. Took a moment to wallow in the light that lit them, in the warmth he could feel even through the shadows.
His mind was still reeling. “I don’t understand. I haven’t yet given you what you want, or at least you don’t know I have—I haven’t yet told you I love you, or sworn undying love forever more.”
A wise man would have hidden his surprise, seized her acceptance, and kept his mouth shut, but…he frowned. “I thought, being you, that you’d at least demand a red rose and me on my knees.” He’d been anticipating doing something rather more flamboyant when the time came; strangely, he now felt cheated of his moment.
She blinked at him. “A red rose…on your knees?” She looked faintly stunned, as if he’d told her something new.
He frowned more definitely. “I haven’t yet shouted it from the steeple—that can be rectified—but you know I love you, that I always have.”
She frowned back. “You haven’t always loved me—you didn’t years ago.”
He stared at her. Felt his muscles harden, tried to keep them relaxed. “I’ve loved you for forever.”
At his flat tones, her frown grew more direful; she pushed up from his chest. “You didn’t. Not before.”
Jaw setting, he came up on his elbows. “I’ve loved you—only you—since I was sixteen! What the devil did you imagine that episode in the barn was about? How did you think it came about? Just because you decided?”
“That was lust!” Face-to-face, eye to eye, she dared him to deny it.
“Of course it was lust!” He heard his roar and fought to lower his voice. “Good God—I was twenty and you were sixteen. Of course it was lust, but it wasn’t only lust. I never would have accepted your invitation if I hadn’t been in love with you!”
He glared at her. How could she not have known, not have seen that? “Dammit, woman, you’re my mother’s goddaughter, my godmother’s stepdaughter! What the hell do you think—”
Penny flung herself at him, covered his lips with hers, and let all the emotion that had suddenly welled and was now sweeping her away pour through her, let it flow unrestrained through her into him. Let him see, taste—know.
His hands closed on her sides; the kiss deepened, ignited their fire, fanned it until passion rose full and deep and swirled around and through them.
He gripped and tried halfheartedly, as if he thought he should, to ease her back. She dragged her lips half an inch from his, dragged in enough breath to say, “Shut up—just love me.”
Twitching the sheet from between them, she straddled him. Set her lips to his, met him when he surged and claimed her mouth, sighed through the kiss when his hands closed around her hips and he eased her back and down, then thrust up, in, and filled her. Her nerves slowly unraveled as she took him into her body, sheathed him to the hilt; her senses exulted.
She couldn’t think, and neither could he. Good; he could wonder why she’d agreed to marry him without the assurance she’d always insisted she had to have later. He didn’t need to hear that she couldn’t now imagine a future apart from him, that the thought of not being with him, there to meet his need, was a fate she couldn’t bear even to contemplate.
To be needed that much, that deeply, that exclusively—what woman wouldn’t give her heart for that? But he would work out her feelings for himself soon enough; he didn’t need to have her spell them out for him.
Closing her eyes, she rose above him, and he filled her, savored her, went with her.
The world closed in, and there was just her and him and the dance that held them, empowered them, enthralled them. And the emotion that rose, higher and more powerful than ever before, and at the last engulfed them, fused them and left them, two halves of a sundered coin at last together and whole.
Dawn broke over a world that had altered, at least for them. Charles lay on his back idly playing with strands of her hair, in some dislocated part of his mind aware that that was something he’d done years ago.
He knew she was awake, like him savoring the changes, the subtle shifts in their landscape.
Eventually, he drew a deep breath, and softly said, “I didn’t know what love was all those years ago—I knew what I felt, that you were special in ways no other was, but at twenty, I knew very little of love.” He hesitated, then went on; he’d always imagined the words would be hard to find, yet they came readily enough to his tongue. “What I feel for you now is immeasurably more than what I was even capable of feeling then. Back then, I wasn’t even sure what it was I felt for you, so when it seemed you’d had enough—that you didn’t want me and whatever it was anymore—I let it go. I told myself that if that’s what you wanted, then it was probably for the best.”
Penny heard the distant note in his voice, knew he was remembering what was essentially a past hurt she, unwittingly, had inflicted on him.
“I didn’t know,” she murmured, then sighed. “I suppose I didn’t understand well enough either, certainly wasn’t sure enough, although I told myself I was.” She listened to his heart beating steadily beneath her cheek. “Perhaps, in truth, it was for the best. If we’d attempted to cling to what we had then…”
Lifting her head, she looked into his face, into the dark gaze that, as always, seemed to embrace her. “If we’d done something about it then, got engaged before you left or some such thing, then you wouldn’t have become a spy, wouldn’t now be who you are.” She paused, then added, “You wouldn’t have become the man I love now.”
“And you wouldn’t have been who you are now, either. You’re stronger, more independent, more certain of what you want.” His lips twisted wryly. “More challenging than you would have been if we’d married years ago.”
She arched her brows haughtily, but replied, “Very likely. Perhaps those years were the price for what we have now.”
“And for what we’ll have in the future.” He held her gaze. “We’ve paid fate’s price.”
“Indeed. And now we have the prize.” Her smile dawned, glorious and sure; she settled back down in his arms. “From now on, we get to enjoy the fruit borne on the tree of our past.”
He chuckled, closed his arms about her, and sank deeper into the pillows. The fruit of the tree of their past. Love evolved and grown and acknowledged between them, the pleasure of having the other in their arms, the anticipation of an unclouded future—it might have taken thirteen years, but few were as lucky as they.
Penny would have been perfectly happy with a small ceremony with a select group of guests. Instead, Charles insisted on a huge wedding with a cast of hundreds and a guest list that in reality had no end.
Everyone in the district was invited, and everyone came. She’d known she commanded a certain level of acquaintance, of loyalty thoughout the surrounding area, and that, of course, Charles did, too; what neither had appreciated until they came out of the church and saw the gathered multitude, was that combined, their acquaintance covered most of those within riding distance and droves from farther afield, too.
It was bedlam, but wonderful. Once she’d realized and dragged enough from him to confirm just why he’d wanted such a public affair, she’d acquiesced with good grace, indeed, had thrown herself into making his vision come true. What lady wouldn’t have, given he’d wanted their wedding to be a very public declaration of not just their union, but of what he felt for her—his version of shouting his love from the steeple?
She could only love him all the more, until her heart felt literally like it was overflo
wing, for making such a grand, dramatic, so-very-Charles-like gesture, yet it wasn’t the organization, the numbers, the sheer scope of the performance that carried the banner of his feelings, but the light that shone in his midnight blue eyes, the way his awareness so rarely strayed from her, the quality implied in the way he touched her, held her hand, kept her close. By his decree, they were now closer than they’d ever been.
Happier than she sometimes felt they’d any right to be.
She’d learned simply to accept it, that this, between them, was meant to be.
From the early-morning rush, through the ceremony at the church, through the wedding breakfast and on through the extended celebrations, the day was perfect.
“Can you imagine anything daring to be otherwise with my mother and Elaine, your sisters and mine, my sisters-in-law and Amberly and Nicholas all supervising?” Charles arched a brow at her. “Even I’m cowed.”