“Does it help?”
“Aye.” He had no other answer. “Aye.” He tried to ease his breathing. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t, really. I saw you and thought—” She shook her head. “Just luck, I suppose.”
Just luck. The same sort of luck that had preserved his life instead of his arm. The same luck that had brought him to Warwickshire when he might have stayed in London. The very luck that had brought her to the library, so he might talk and drink and walk and dance and fall in love with her.
He pulled her down onto his lap. “Just so.” He kissed her in the knowledge that he was the luckiest man in the world.
“We’ll do it again with the mirrors, whenever you feel the need,” she suggested between kisses.
“Aye,” he agreed. “But I can think of a few other things we might be able to do with some mirrors.” Because when he looked down at just the right angle, her perfectly round breasts were just there, served up as soft and steamy as a fresh pot of porridge. “Pease Porridge Sweet.”
“Dear Beech.” She kissed him back. “I do wish you wou—”
He didn’t wait to find out what she wished, because a door opened and shut below before footsteps could be heard on the stair—Martins was back.
He lifted his bride-to-be off his lap and set her onto her bare feet. “Come, Pease Porridge. Make an honest duke out of me.”
She smiled up at him. “I should like nothing more.”
“Indeed.” A chilly voice came from the open door. “I am quite sure you would.”
CHAPTER 14
HIS MOTHER WASTED no time on politeness. “For God’s sake, Marcus. Have you lost your mind? What on Earth do you think you are doing?”
He found a banyan to pass to Penelope, so she might cover her shift. As for himself, perhaps it was past time his mother saw him as he really was, and not as she wanted him to be. He held the linen wrap in place and stood. “No, Mother, I have not. I have found my heart.”
“Don’t talk such romantic nonsense—your brother never did.” His mother, the soon-to-be Dowager Duchess of Warwick, turned away, as if she didn’t know where to look—certainly not at him. “But I expected more from you.”
“More than what?” Marcus damned both his embarrassment and his fury and stood where he was—if his mother couldn’t bear to look upon him, she could remove herself to a more proper distance.
Which she did, retreating to the other side of the dressing room door while Pease Porridge headed out the other.
“Such behavior,” his mother was saying. “Acting like the veriest green boy and not the Duke of Warwick. Chasing after the first passable face that throws herself at you.”
Marcus’s anger made it difficult to see straight, let alone speak with any clarity. “Do not speak of Miss Pease like that. She is my betrothed and will be my wife.”
“Never. The Duke of Warwick needs must make an alliance of family and fortune—a marriage that will bolster the Warwick fortunes and fame, rather than tarnish or diminish them.”
“I have spent enough times with the books to know that the estate is not on the brink of financial collapse.” Marcus tried to counter with logic instead of anger. “And I am sure Miss Pease has a dowry, but if she does not—”
He looked to Penelope to confirm this statement, but she had sensibly ducked out of the line of his mother’s fire.
“Of course, she does not,” his mother insisted. “Sir Harold took it off of her when she tried to ruin poor Caius—added her portion to the youngest daughter’s to try and marry her off in the wake of the scandal.”
“A scandal that would never have occurred if you’d let poor Miss Pease cry off quietly.”
“Poor Miss Pease? Have you lost your mind?” his mother asked for the second time. “None of this would have happened—Caius would still be alive, if that fool girl hadn’t gotten it into her head to refuse him. If he had married and had a wife to act as she ought and keep him as he ought, he’d still be alive.”
“He would not—he would be dead from the venereal disease that caused his mistress to murder him, and like as not, he’d have passed the bloody pox on to poor Miss Pease. And she’d be dying as well.”
“How do you know she hasn’t already got it?”
Something more furiously cold than anger slid under his skin. “I will not dignify your question with an answer, Mother. Suffice me to say that I am a man experienced of the world, and I know what is right and true and valuable in it.”
His mother was not persuaded. “She trapped you into this!” she accused. “Threw herself at you. This is her revenge. She’ll do anything to degrade the House of Warwick. She’s not worthy of—”
“Enough. Devil take your suspicions, Mother. If you must know, I threw myself at her—threw myself upon her mercy.”
His mother drew back in hauteur. “Do not swear at me. I only want to protect you.”
Marcus lit the match to his slow temper and let the cannonball fly. “Then you are nearly ten years too late to do that.”
His mother gasped in affront, or hurt, but Marcus had done battle with more than the French—he had faced his own fears, and he would press his advantage while he could. “Your care has always been for the House of Warwick, not for me. But I am a man now, Mama.” He even went so far as to use her preferred address to soften the blow. “And I am Duke of Warwick. I will act and marry as I see fit.”
“You wouldn’t dare defy me in this, Marcus!” his mother fumed. “Such a marriage would be an unmitigated disaster. I refuse to stand by and watch such wanton destruction of our good name.”
“Then I should advise you, Mama,” he counseled, “to go home to London.”
He stomped out of the room and went to find his bride-to-be—his Pease Porridge, his savior. Only to find that she had abandoned him.
She had broken her pledge and was gone.
CHAPTER 15
TARNISH. Diminish. That fool girl. She’ll do anything.
She’s not worthy.
They were the last words Penelope heard before she shut the door to keep from having to hear any more. But they were enough.
Enough to tell her that her lovely idyll with Beech was at an end. Enough to remind her that she deserved no better. More than enough to send her snatching up her clothes and running for home.
Penelope had the small presence of mind to wrap herself in the fur rug from the carriage as a ward against the frigid chill of the morning, but she didn’t have far to walk—her father’s carriage was already waiting in the snow-swept courtyard.
Penelope did not question how the empty coach came to be there, but simply climbed aboard, let her tears fall hot down her cold cheeks, and let them take her where they would—which turned out to be Hayholm Mote, a lovely moated medieval house tucked away in the countryside some ways up the Avon, where the great aunt she had never before met, Lady Sarah Pease, lived in quiet comfort with her cats.
“Poor lamb, you look like you’ve had a time of it,” Lady Sarah welcomed her with glad smiles and warm understanding. “Get this cup of tea into you, then tell your Aunt Sarah what happened, love.”
Her compassion was so unexpected that Penelope had no reserve. “I’ve made a proper mess of things, my lady. I’m sure my father—”
“Oh, fathers!” The lady waved her lace at the general notion of fathers. “What do they know of daughters’ love.” She patted the chair beside her. “Now, I do know bare outlines of your scandal—though I admire your ambition, and your taste. Caius Beecham, no less!” She patted Penelope’s hand in approval. “His death was unexpected, I suppose, but by the look of your poor face, I can’t help but think that you must have loved that lovely bastard very much to still be so brokenhearted.”