“So here you are, an affront, barricaded behind a chest of drawers,” Beech concluded in that steady, smooth baritone as deep and rich as the liquor. “Might I venture if that precaution is to keep you from being imposed upon by idiot chaps eager to keep you ruined?”
“Why, Beech.” Penelope felt the brandy’s warmth spread all the way to her toes. “How extraordinarily perceptive you are.”
He deflected her praise. “Human nature is the same on a ship as it is in a ballroom.”
“Is it? That brings to mind all sorts of interesting questions I should love to ask. But the problem is that it is February, and the St. Valentine’s poems have begun. I can normally endure them—the poems as well as the idiot chaps who send them—but my present circumstance seems to have brought out the absolute worst in the county’s bachelors.”
The horrible doggerel was nearly enough to make her eager for the escape of exile. Nearly—she supposed the post could still reach her in Backwater-By-Nowhere.
“St. Valentine’s Day poems?” Beech’s dark scowl scoured his forehead. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Poor Beech. You—”
“—have been away,” he finished for her. “So it seems.”
“Poor Beech,” she said again.
“I’m not sure I like being called that—it smacks of helplessness.” He put down his drink. “And I assure you, despite present appearances, I am not helpless.”
“I never meant to imply so,” she agreed. He looked too vital, too real for helplessness. “You’re only too good—too honest and open—for your own good.”
“I am flattered you should think so,” he said. “I’ve seen too much of the world to wish to be anything other than honest. There is no hiding from the truth.”
He touched his empty sleeve again in that strangely reassuring gesture, as if he needed to remind himself that his arm was indeed gone.
“Brave Beech, then.”
And she was Ruined Penelope Pease, who was now too far beyond the pale to ever marry, and though she had become inordinately skilled at ignoring the proverbial elephant in any room, she was damned tired of it.
So, she looked Beech in the eye. “Tell me what happened to your arm.”
CHAPTER 4
FOR A FRAUGHT MOMENT Penelope feared she had overstepped the mark—his eyes went still over the rim of his brandy glass.
“I lost it, of course,” he said with such offhand grace that she wondered if she were making too much of the injury. But then, his mouth curved into a wry smile. “Brava. Do you know you are the very first person I’ve encountered since my return who has had the”—he hesitated for the barest second, as if he might have been about to say something else before he settled upon—“temerity to speak of my alteration.”
She wasn’t sure whether she was meant to be chastened or affronted. But she felt affronted—for him. “It seems a rather stupid thing not to notice that where you once had two arms hanging from your rather fine shoulders, you now have but one. And I keep track of my friends.” What few she had left. Which made her rather anxious to keep the one fate had been kind enough to provide for her this evening. “I read the newspapers, and know what ships you’ve been on, when you’ve been in battles, and when you’ve been mentioned in dispatches. Especially when you were counted as grievously injured.”
“How flattering.”
“Yes, well.” Penelope felt heat suffuse her cheeks. But she wanted to be done with cynicism—Beech of all people deserved honest admiration for his sacrifice. “You were listed at the Battle of Pirano, when you were first lieutenant on Victorious. I’m afraid I lost track of you for a while, until you were posted as Commander out of the squadron at Malta.”
“Devil take me.” His smile lasted only a moment. “You are well-informed.”
“People talk.” And she still listened—even when what she heard wasn’t entirely flattering. “And heroes are talked about everywhere.”
“I’m no hero.” He looked at her from under his brows. “But it was the Battle of Pirano, in the Adriatic Sea. Glorious, sunny day with a good wind. And I was the first lieutenant on Victorious, in charge of sailing the ship while the captain ordered the battle.” Beech ran his good hand through his hair as if he needed to settle his brain before speaking of what she knew must have been an unspeakable trauma. “We engaged in close battle with the French seventy-four, Rivoli, raking her to bloody splinters until we truly were victorious. But as battles go, we both inflicted casualties and took them. And as you see, I was one of those casualties.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then took a deep drink of his brandy before he added, “Lucky for me, I was not one of the fatalities. And thankfully the loss has been no real impediment to my career—I can give orders as effectively with one arm as with two.”
“Very sensible of the navy.” And so like Beech to make so little out of so great an injury. “Indeed, we should be the poorer as a nation—and perhaps not even be a sovereign nation—if we had not had Admiral Nelson, damaged as he was, to lead us.”
“Aye.” The scowl came back to mar Marcus’s sun-swept handsomeness. “But I am no longer a commander, and I fear my appearance in the ballroom shall prove a great impediment to my new career now.”
She did not follow his logic. “I should think you could give orders as efficiently as a duke with one arm as with two.”
“True.” He acknowledged her point. “But the business of being a duke is not only giving orders. It is, according to my mother, getting a wife.”
Wife. The word slid under her skin like a wayward thorn—a piercing, misplaced hurt.
She would never marry now, but Beech would have to.
Penelope swallowed the realization like bitter medicine and set herself to being cheerful. For his sake, if not for hers. “Come now, Beech. You are a hero, no matter what you say. You could arrange for some girl to fall in love with you in an evening, if you wanted.” Though she prayed God he did not. “You have but to smile.”
For the longest moment he stared at her over the rim of his glass, before the hint of that wry smile brewed at the corner of his mouth, “Why, Pease Porridge, do you mean to tell me you think I’m handsome?”
“Do have a look at yourself in a mirror, Beech.” She hid her embarrassment behind sarcasm, though it made a wretched fan—her face had gone hot. “Though you could do with a good barbering if you hope to please the bright young things in the ballroom.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the unsullied girls with spotless gowns and unstained reputations who made themselves available to be married, damn them. “On second thought, damn the bright young things. Keep the beard—it gives you a dashing, piratical air.”
“Must be the terrifying combination of the arm—or what’s left of it—and the beard for piratical. Perhaps I should employ a parrot, so I might amuse as well as frighten.”
“Oh, I should like that.” Beech had always been able to make her laugh. “But you are as you always were, Beech—witty and fun and as handsome as the day is long. You’re the same man at four and twenty that you were at four and ten—kind to your core.”
“Hardly,” he demurred. “If the last ten years have taught me anything, it is that I was certainly not a man at ten and four. But I thank you for the compliment.”