The Earl Takes a Lover (6 page)

“It's going to rain again. Take the carriage.” He frowned as an errant drop hit his outstretched hand.

“Does everyone always do exactly as you say? Doesn't it become dreadfully tedious?”

“Yes,” he said. “It does.”

“Then I'm going to walk and it will do us both good.” The smile she gave him turned his knees to water.

He motioned to the footman, who jumped down obligingly from his perch at the back of the carriage and waited, an unwieldy bird stranded at the gate. “I'll send the carriage round to the other side of the Park in case you have need of it.”

It was time to go, but still she lingered on the step, the afternoon's slanting rays giving way to evening. “You try all your life to be good, and then—”

“And then?” he prompted.

She only shook her head in mute apology. “My mind is a sieve at the moment.” But her body was singing a song of its own creation, lighter than air. She turned to go and he spoke from behind her.

“Who are you, Pen Montague?”

At the top of the steps she looked back and shrugged. “Half my mother. Half my father.” And turning, she went down them.

He watched her go. A fine mist was falling, but she had thrown back the hood of her woolen cloak. She hadn't found enough pins; he could see her hair coming uncoiled as she walked. She reminded him of an old tale his Nan used to tell him in the nursery, about a girl in the forest and a wolf. And if she was the girl in the red-hooded cloak, that meant he was the wolf. And he couldn't for the life of him remember what happened in the story after the wolf caught the girl, because the wolf always caught the girl. That was what made the story memorable. Did he keep her? Did he let her go? Or did he stand in the doorway of his grandmother's house on a Tuesday afternoon and watch her walking away through the trees?

Pen walked, her hair falling down. The tears filled her eyes and she let them fall. There was no one to see. The light was going. Ahead of her on the path, a man waved.

Standing at the top of his stairs, the carriage waiting below for his instruction, Robin's belly tied itself into a hard knot. His chest seemed to shrink back, pressing on his heart. Penelope had disappeared into the trees; the simmering dread flared into panic. “Wait,” he said to his driver. He patted his waistcoat pockets, a man needing something he doesn't have. He wore not cravat, no coat, no hat or cloak. “Around the park,” he said, and plunged down the steps. He sat white knuckled in the carriage. One voice said,
Nothing happens in a park in broad daylight
—though it was, in truth, no longer day.
It's murky in the trees,
another voice said. Footpads lined the paths, waiting for lonely passersby after dark—though it was, in truth, not yet dark.
Please,
he prayed.
Please be wrong.
The fear made him sweat. At the west corner of the park, where the road narrowed, a dray incorrectly loaded had overturned. The horses, placid in the face of disaster, stood patiently as they were cut from the harness. Robin exited the carriage. A light rain had begun; the fat, pattering drops hit his bare head. “Come round when you're clear,” he shouted up to Lubb, who touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgment. Robin paused to get his bearings, or hers, rather: where she had entered the park and where she would come out. He began to run. He left the path, crossed an open space and ducked into a line of trees. The rain falling on the leaves made the sound of an irregular heartbeat. Pen was on the other side, hood pulled up, talking to a coster who had let go the handles and was pointing at something in his cart. “Pen!” Robin shouted her name, an alarum. She whirled at the sound, throwing her hood back, worry vivid in her face.

“Have you ill news?” she asked when he reached her. Robin could see through the haze of his own relief that her concern was for Pru.

“That all depends,” he said menacingly, “on what this bloke is up to.” The coster, only an old man who made his meager living selling vegetables and other sundries from his cart, took an uncertain step backward. Pen studied Robin's face in the gloaming. He looked completely undone. She put a hand on his arm, both comfort and restraint.

“It's only a basket of kittens. He can't feed them. They'll be drowned unless he can put them off on someone.”

“It's going to pour,” Robin said. He was still eyeing the man, as if the notion of pulling him limb from limb might take. “Do you want them?” He gestured to the mewling kittens, each one trying to get under the others to avoid the rain now beginning to fall in earnest. At Pen's brisk nod, he plucked a few stray coins from his pocket, pulled her hood up with the other hand and leaned over to scoop up the kittens. The coster smiled. He was missing all but two of his front teeth and his gums looked less than promising, but Pen smiled back warmly and thanked him. Lubb was waiting with the carriage, already in his oilskins. Robin gave him the direction for Pru's house. “You'll stay there?” he asked, once they were inside. “You'll not go on tonight?” he pressed, though the very notion was ridiculous. No one in their right mind would set out on a two-day journey at night in the rain. Pen assured him for the second time that she was staying put and wouldn't leave on the morrow unless the rain cleared. Robin lit the carriage lamp and rummaged for a blanket to cover Pen's legs. She was staring at him strangely, little wonder. “I was worried,” he said. All of his body parts had resumed their normal proportions; the relief was making him nauseous. Pen stroked the kittens, telling them she had milk and a warm spot by the fire at home. “I don't want to lose you.” Robin spoke abruptly. She was safe. He had been wrong. But, “I'm afraid to lose you,” were the next words out his mouth, followed by, “Please don't leave me—I'll make it right between us,” and “Tell me what you want.” Finally, as her eyes opened wider and wider yet she did not speak, “Pen—
say
something.”

The right wheel of the carriage hit an enormous rut in the road and bounced out. Robin cursed. The basket of kittens turned over and mayhem reigned while Pen found them all and put them back in. “It's all right, Robin,” she said, her voice pitched to be heard above the rain on the carriage roof. “It will be all right.”

He reached down and lifted her onto his lap. “Will it?” he said raggedly into her hair. “Will it? Because the only way it will be all right is if I can see you and talk to you and touch you and take you to my bed.”

She had only lately left his bed, but it was like being given a second chance at life to have her arms around him again. She would have him. She had not thought to marry; she had her own income and there was no one to force her. To have it denied her did not seem such a loss. But like any woman, she had conditions. “It must remain between us. No one is to know.” Especially not Pru, but she did not say it.

“Yes.” He agreed instantly. Pen reached over and wedged the kittens into the corner, preventive measure for the next derangement in the road.

“I don't want your money.” This was a point of pride.

“Fine,” he said shortly. That was his own fault for mentioning the jewelry and the mistresses.

“No other women. I won't share you.” There was a flat finality in her voice that said this point was non-negotiable.

“Idiot,” he said, kissing her. “I don't want any other woman. That's the whole problem here.”

Pen was too happy to take umbrage at this insult. “If you take a wife,” she continued relentlessly, “or if you begin to court for one, it's over.”

“I won't,” he said, so definitively that Pen laughed outright.

“You'll have to some time,” she said prosaically, though the thought of it was hurtful. But it was the way of the world—his world, at any rate.

Robin shook his head, as if the mere denial of the fact could change several hundred years of law and custom. The rain beat harder on the roof. The thought of reaching the house gave Pen no comfort, despite the worsening weather. Knowing she would see him again did not make it easier to let him go. She breathed in the scent of him. “I know you have to go,” she said softly. “But don't go. Don't go.” Robin kissed her full on the mouth. She made a sound of need and desperation, lost in the din.

“It's all right,” he whispered into her mouth and that, too, was lost. The carriage swung in a wide arc, wheels bouncing over the rough edge of the roadway. A groom darted out from the security of the stable and began to help unharness the horses, no questions asked. Robin and Pen dashed from the yard to the side door of the house. With a preternatural instinct for arrivals, Lucy flung the door open and they ran through it, shedding water as they came.

“Oh, miss!” Lucy exclaimed. “We was that worried about you, being out in this weather alone. And the fine gent'man has brought you home.” She dropped a curtsy to his lordship.

“Alone in the park,” Robin said, shaking water from his eyes. “That's where I found her.”

“The kittens!” Pen cried. Robin held her back and went himself, clasping the basket tight to his chest to keep the contents dry. Lucy's face lit with delight when they were revealed.

“It's allus good to have the mousers,” she said happily. The housekeeper, Mrs. John Elder, attracted by unusual noises in her domain, trundled in and set everyone to flying with a list of orders, which seemed to expand exponentially. The perfect excuse arrived and Robin annexed it on the spot.

“It's a risk to my coachman and horses to drive back in this weather. If you could accommodate us for the night, I would be in your debt.”

Mrs. Elder, who had worked in the house for close on to twenty-seven years, only said drily, “Never fear. I'll make up the rooms.” The anxiety that had been building in Robin at the thought of leaving Pen receded and he felt, without glancing at her, the same calm enter her. To risk gossip would be foolish. They would not share a bed tonight. But they would be under the same roof. It was enough. The room, a hive of activity moments before, lapsed into silence as everyone jumped to Mrs. Elder's bidding. Robin stood, a puddle forming around him on the limestone tiles.

Pen smiled at him. “Come stand near the fire,” she said. “The kittens like it.” Hungry as they were, the heat lulled them. They blinked sleepily as their heads drooped and their eyes went to slits.

Robin shook his head. “You're by the fire. And I can't be near you without touching you.”

“It's dark outside,” Pen said. “It's raining.” There was wonder in her voice. “You make everything new.”

The room would fill again. There would be dry clothes and milk for the kittens and hot food for Lubb, and supper and sherry in the drawing room after. They would be chaperoned through all of it. He would sleep alone, wishing she was in his arms. But before all of that happened, Robin went and stood by the fire and touched her.

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