Eight

Nev missed the city. It was dark now, and in London he would have been out with his friends or spending the evening with Amy. The sounds of bustle and life and other people would have been outside the window. If he’d liked, he could have gone to a concert. He wanted music with a pain like homesickness. Even the songs of the nightingales, which he had loved as a boy, did not comfort him.

The only sounds of real, human life were the rustlings from the next room. Nev was ashamed to see Penelope; ashamed that he had brought her here to face a thousand impossible burdens he was totally unequipped to bear. And he was tired of making polite conversation with a stranger who was somehow also his wife and who had already witnessed some of the least proud moments of his life.

But anything was better than standing alone in his father’s room, looking into his father’s mirror, and wishing there were some of his father’s brandy in the decanter. He knocked at the connecting door, and at her soft invitation, he opened it.

He was unprepared for the wave of longing that went through him at the sight of her. She was sitting cross-legged in bed, a stack of heavy ledgers in front of her and a branch of candles on the night table. She looked up and smiled at him. Her night rail enveloped her almost completely, but she had rolled up the sleeves to reveal slender forearms and hands, and he could see one bare foot peeking out from under her crossed legs. Her hair was not yet braided for the night, but it was out of its daytime knot and tied back with a black satin ribbon. The end of the ribbon was almost, but not quite, disappearing into her night rail’s prim neckline. Nev swallowed. The month since he had last slept with a woman seemed like a very, very long time.

Damnation, she was his wife! Why did it seem so wrong to untie the ribbon, lay her back on the bed, and make love to her?

She looked so young, and he had seen her frowning worriedly in the brief instant before she looked up at him. A worry caused by the sorry state of his affairs.

As his silence stretched, her smile grew uncertain. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, of course,” he lied. “How are the books?”

“It’s too early to tell.” She turned back to the books and absentmindedly ran the end of her quill over her mouth in a way that might have been designed to drive Nev crazy, but in reality had nothing to do with him. “Can you look at something for me?”

He wasn’t sure what useful knowledge he could possibly impart, but at the moment he was willing to seize any excuse to cross the room and sit on the edge of her bed. “Yes?”

“There are several different handwritings in these. This one”-she pointed to an illegible scrawl-“is Captain Trelawney’s. There are two before that, though, and they alternate. It’s generally this one, but every so often, this one shows up.”

She pushed the ledger toward him. He looked where she pointed, at the two neat hands-and recognition slammed into him like a runaway horse. “The more frequent one is our late steward, Mr. Garrett’s,” he said slowly. “The other is his son Percy’s.” It was Percy’s bookkeeping hand, fine and precise as an accountant’s. His ordinary hand was larger, more slanting, and much, much harder to read.

Her brow wrinkled. “Percy Garrett. That name sounds familiar.”

He reached out and took the pen from her. She gave it up without a struggle, but when he began to tickle her ear with it, she shrieked and leaped sideways.

“Ticklish, are you?” He had intended to distract her and himself, and he succeeded. A few moments later he could think of nothing but Penelope, wriggling and giggling and showing intriguing flashes of limb as she struggled to escape. Finally she went on the attack, seizing his hand and trying to wrest the quill away. He leaned back, misjudged, and fell sideways onto the bed. Penelope overbalanced and sprawled on top of him.

They both stilled. Nev could plainly feel the soft give of her breasts and the curve of her hip through her night rail. She shifted, letting go of the pen. Nev didn’t dare move for fear she would feel his erection. Her hair had come loose; it brushed his face as she pushed herself upright. He sat up, and she edged away, laughing, holding up her hands as if she thought he would start tickling her again.

He put the pen down. It would be so easy to slide after her and kiss her. He knew she would let him. And then he would take off that oversized night rail, and then-then he would take her virginity. What if he hurt her? There would be no more tickling and giggling then. She would shy away when he touched her.

“Good night, Penelope.” And then, because he couldn’t help himself, he reached out and ran a lock of her hair through his fingers. It was smooth and warm and silky, and he almost gave in to his desire after all.

“Good night, Nev. ” She smiled shyly at him. He let go of her hair and went back to his own room.

Lying in bed, he listened to the scritch-scritch-scritch of Penelope’s quill. There was something comforting about it.

The following day Nev rode over to pay a call on Sir Jasper. He would have liked to bring Penelope, but he couldn’t think of an excuse, and it would have looked odd anyway. Sir Jasper had not bothered inviting a female relative to be his hostess since his wife’s death. If Nev had dragged Penelope along, Sir Jasper would have known at once that it was because Nev didn’t know what he was doing on his own.

As an adult Nev had seen Sir Jasper only rarely, in town; he had never been impressed by him. But here in Greygloss’s beautiful, well-kept entrance hall, after a ride through Greygloss’s prosperous home farm and rich, sweeping lawns, it was different. The baronet even looked different, the very picture of a country landowner in well-cut riding clothes, his dark hair graying at the temples. He wrung Nev ’s hand in a very friendly way, though, and Nev tried to feel heartened.

“I’m glad to see you,” Sir Jasper said. “There are a number of things I’ve been meaning to speak to you about. But it would be a shame to waste such a fine day indoors, and I daresay Lady Bedlow would like a fine quail for dinner.”

Nev had never done much shooting. Percy wasn’t legally eligible to hunt game, and leaving him behind, or worse yet asking him to beat the bushes like a servant, had been unthinkable. Wandering about with Sir Jasper killing birds and talking about the estate sounded unutterably dreary, but he plastered on a smile and agreed.

It turned out that Sir Jasper did, in fact, have a number of things he’d been meaning to speak to Nev about: the insidiousness of poachers, the importance of a firm hand, various people in the district who were not to be trusted, and details of crop rotations and planting potatoes and drainage that Nev knew he would have forgotten by the afternoon. It didn’t help Nev ’s mood that, unpracticed with the long fowling pieces, he failed to shoot a single bird.

“Have you thought about becoming a justice of the peace?” The baronet seemed to be slowing down after an hour of solid advice. “There are a number of offenses that cannot be tried by one magistrate sitting alone, and it would be invaluable to have two in the district. Your father was considering it, but alas he never found the time before his death…”

Nev doubted that his father had seriously been considering anything which sounded like so very much work. He didn’t relish the idea himself. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said honestly. “But I will think about it now.”

Sir Jasper looked at his face and laughed. “But enough of business! Is your family returning to the neighborhood soon?”

“Any day now.”

Sir Jasper smiled. “Wonderful. It will be a pleasure to see your charming mother again-and of course Lady Louisa.” He paused meaningfully.