“You want Louisa to live on two or three hundred a year? Why do you think I fought so hard to save Loweston and her dowry, if not so that she could make a good match and never have to worry about money again?” Nev remembered those few weeks before Penelope agreed to marry him-his grim visions of Louisa in shabby lodgings and a made-over dress, cajoling duns and hoarding tallow candle-ends, all her happy glow and piratical daydreams and enormous cherry-trimmed bonnets brushed away like the bloom on a butterfly’s wing. That was why he had worked so hard to save Loweston, for her and his mother.
And now through his own fault it was all for nothing. He should never have been such friends with Percy; he should never have let Penelope hire him. He should have seen Louisa was unhappy so she wouldn’t seize on this; he should have been paying attention and found out what was going on before Kedge. “That money was to find her a husband who could take care of her, not to go to some damn fortune hunter who-”
But that was the limit of Percy’s forbearance. “How dare you? You canting hypocrite!” he said through clenched teeth. “When a month before your marriage you were gossiping about your bride-to-be’s dowry with your mistress!”
Nev opened his mouth to make a hot retort-and saw Penelope standing in the doorway. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the frozen, humiliated look on her face.
“I-” she began, and stopped. “I heard that Mr. Kedge was gone and I wanted to know how it went. I-I’ll just be going-” Her voice broke, and she turned and fled down the corridor.
Nev ran to the doorway. “Penelope!” he shouted after her retreating back. “Penelope, wait!”
“Oh, God,” Percy said, aghast. “I didn’t see her, I never would have-I know the two of you-”
Nev turned back and looked at his best friend of almost fifteen years. “Get out of my house. Tonight. And don’t ever go near my sister again.” Then he ran after Penelope. He could hear her footsteps on the marble floor of the entrance hall a ways off. Then they stopped. He sprinted after her and stopped short in the doorway of the great hall.
She was wrapped up in the arms of a greatcoated stranger.
He walked towards them more slowly. “Penelope?”
She turned but didn’t quite disentangle herself from the stranger. Her face was streaked with tears, but underneath it was glowing. She smiled at him as if she couldn’t stop. “Lord Bedlow, may I present Edward Macaulay.”
Fifteen
Edward Macaulay had a broad, sensible, Scottish face, and broad, sensible, Scottish shoulders. His sandy hair was kept unfashionably short and brushed carefully back from his forehead, even though it was clear that had he allowed it to grow, it would have curled riotously in the best modern style without any prompting. He looked like a steady, dependable man, and Nev hated him on sight.
“How do you do?” Nev’s hand was more tanned and callused than it had ever been in his life; it looked like an indolent child’s clasped in Macaulay’s sturdy, ink-stained fingers.
“Very well, thank you.” Macaulay sounded downright hostile. “Yourself?” He looked Nev up and down with a scrutiny that was almost insolent.
“I’m well. Are you planning on staying long?” Wonderful. A minute into the conversation and he already sounded petty and childish.
“You’re staying at least a day or two, Edward, aren’t you?” Penelope’s eyes were fixed anxiously on Macaulay’s face.
Macaulay smiled familiarly down at her. “Since you ask me to, I am. I’ve brought your furniture too. It’s outside. There’s four carts of it. Penny, whatever did you want a great ugly chinoiserie settee for?”
“It was a joke,” Penelope muttered, glancing at Nev, and he remembered his suggestion that they get everything in gilt and bamboo. She had done something sweet and funny for him, and now that was spoiled too.
“Wonderful. Thank you,” Nev said, not meaning it in the slightest. “Then perhaps the housekeeper can show you to your room while I have a word with my wife.”
Edward didn’t move. Instead, he looked to Penelope for guidance. Nev gritted his teeth.
“Yes, Edward, do go,” she said. “You’re covered in dust, and you must be dying to wash and change. When you’re feeling more the thing, we can have a much more comfortable coze.”
“Dear Penelope,” Edward said fondly. “Always sensible.”
Nev knew he must have imagined the flash of annoyance that crossed Penelope’s face.
When Edward had been escorted from the room by the housekeeper, Penelope turned to Nev. She didn’t meet his eyes. “Well, what did Kedge say?”
“Penelope, please. What Percy said-”
“It’s quite all right. It’s natural that you should have-”
“It was that night at Vauxhall. Your name only came up because I couldn’t stop staring at you.”
“Nev, please don’t.”
“Damn it, no. Not this time. You were crying, you can’t tell me-”
“I can tell you whatever I please. Was crying not enough? Or won’t you be satisfied until I’ve also admitted that I’m a silly girl who is ashamed to be caught out daydreaming? Don’t tell me pretty lies just because I’ve made it obvious that I want to hear them. Being sensible and facing the truth is all I have.”
“Penelope, I wouldn’t lie to you. I didn’t realize it at the time, but from the moment I saw you, you made me want to see you again. Sometimes I think I could talk to you forever and never get tired of it. You’re all I have anymore, and somehow it’s enough-”
“Stop,” she said, and she sounded frightened.
“You wouldn’t leave me, Penelope, would you?” He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth; they were plaintive and selfish. And yet he waited for her answer without breathing.
“Leave you?” She looked really taken aback. “Why on earth would I leave you? Have you done something?”
“Nothing new. I just-Macaulay-”
Her face grew very cold. “So that’s what this is all about. You’re afraid I’ll leave you for Edward. Given that your most recent mistress is currently living a mile off, I’m inclined to say that Mr. Garrett was right and you are a hypocrite. Now tell me what the two of you were quarreling over this time.”
It all came flooding back, and Nev could not understand how he had forgotten. “He’s been meeting secretly with Louisa. Kedge knows, and he’s blackmailing us with it. Percy wants to marry her.”
To Nev’s relief, Penelope saw at once all the horror of their situation. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself. “Oh, God, how can Mr. Garrett have been so indiscreet? Do you plan to allow the match?”
“Certainly not. Louisa is seventeen. She’s too young to know her own mind.”
Penelope nodded doubtfully, and he remembered that she was nineteen and that her parents had let her make her own choice. Well, it had been unpardonably foolish of them-only see what had come of it. Only see how miserable she was. If he had had the keeping of her, Penelope would never have got within fifty feet of a wastrel like him.
“Then what are we going to do?” she asked. “If we don’t do something to scotch the scandal, Kedge will have the upper hand of us forever.”
“I don’t know. But I’m not going to sacrifice Louisa, not even for every laborer at Loweston.”
Unexpectedly, she smiled at him. “Well, we’ve got six months to work something out before the lease is up. I’ll think about it while I’m talking to Edward, and maybe tonight we can discuss it some more.”
“You’re going to tell Edward-”