Chapter Fourteen

Standing in Ben and Julia’s powder blue drawing room, Harry normally would have felt very uncomfortable.  At the very least, the delicate hues of soft blue and white would have normally made him itch.  He wasn’t much for feminine décor and preferred a darker, more jewel-toned look.  However, when he saw Penny enter the room on Marcus’ arm, he forgot everything else but her.

In a single word, she was exquisite.  Oh, he’d always thought her lovely but this evening, wearing a cream and gold gown that seemed to mold itself to her luscious curves, she was breathtaking beyond compare.  He was also instantly hard with desire.

“You might want to put your eyes back in your head, my friend.”  Nick was far too entertained by enjoying himself at Harry’s expense.  “She will still be here well after the dessert course, you know.”

“I am merely enjoying looking at a beautiful woman.”  Harry did his best to sound indignant, but he thought he rather sounded like an idiot schoolboy instead.

Nick paused as if eyeing her critically.  “If you like that sort of woman, I suppose she is fine enough.”  When Harry bristled, the duke simply laughed.  “Ah, I have you there, my friend!”  He gestured around the room.  “Relax.  We are a private group this evening, and there is no one here out to snatch your beloved from beneath your nose.”

“She is not my beloved,” Harry answered without thinking.

“So you say,” Nick scoffed, clearly not believing anything Harry said, especially when it came to Penny.  “My eyes tell me otherwise.  As does your tongue which is positively salivating over her.”  He gave Harry a little push.  “Go on.  Talk to her.  You know you want to.  You are six and thirty, and I should not have to tell you this.”

Once more, Harry felt more like a schoolboy rather than a renowned Bow Street Runner, but damn it all!  That was precisely how he was acting – like he was nine again and had first glimpsed the naked curve of a woman’s breast.  He was acting as if he was not a grown man who had bedded a lovely woman a time or two.  Which he had.  And he hadn’t even bedded Penny yet.  But he wanted to, and the very fact that she had agreed to attend this dinner party in his honor hinted that perhaps she felt the same.

Even after bringing her to release last night, Harry still wasn’t quite certain where he stood with her.  There was physical attraction, yes, but was there more?  He thought so, or at least he was beginning to and now?  Well, now he wanted a bit more, at least for as long as she was willing to indulge him.

He was under no illusion that what they shared – whatever it was – could be forever.  Too much stood in their way, but he was also afraid that, whatever he did feel for her, he would never feel it for another woman again.  He wasn’t even certain he was capable of anything more than feeling protective of a woman.  After all, that was all he had ever known.

But if someone could change his mind?  It might well be the vision in cream and gold and bedecked in diamonds before him.

When he wasn’t moving fast enough to suit Nick, the duke gave Harry a none-too-subtle push in the back, sending Harry stumbling into the center of the room.  When he finally managed to gather himself, he straightened his jacket and approached Penny.  There was little else he could do.

“My lady.  It is lovely to see you this evening.”  Harry looked around the room because he was afraid that if he looked down at Penny, all he would see were her delectable breasts which were threatening to spill out of her gown.  “I was unaware that you were invited.”

Penny inclined her head.  “You may thank Julia and Eliza.  I would not be here if not for them and their insistence.”  She paused.  “Harry.  We are among friend here, aren’t we?”

“We are.”  Once more, Harry felt foolish.  How did that seem to happen so often in this woman’s company?  “So Julia and Eliza are responsible for your attendance tonight?  Remind me to thank them later.”

“My very own fairy godmothers,” Penny replied.  “Or as near as I am likely to ever come.”  She fingered her reticule.  “And I understand congratulations are in order.  Heir to Viscount Westerly.  That is impressive.”  She didn’t mention her own feelings about the gentleman, he noticed, though given the reports on his desk that morning, he could guess she was not favorably inclined towards the man.  He was in cahoots with her uncle, after all.

Harry shook his head.  “Not so much as you might think, and it hasn’t officially happened yet.”  He glanced at Nick.  “Though I have no reason to believe it won’t.  What Nick wants, Nick gets.  Even from my wretched bastard of a father.”  He wanted to make certain Penny understood that he held no great love for the man who had sired him.  Not even if he had been conceived in love, as his mother had always said.

“And Lord Candlewood wants the viscountcy for you.”  There was a question in Penny’s lovely eyes.

“He does, though I have no idea why.”  Really, Harry had no bloody clue.

“I do.”  She made a face as if to say that he was being deliberately dense.

“You do?”  Well, Harry wished someone would finally tell him why Nick was pushing so hard for this recognition and pulling all of the necessary strings to see it done.

Penny nodded.  “You are more than a friend to him.  You are like his brother and, if I have learned one thing in the last fortnight, it is that the Bloody Duke takes care of his family.  Or at least those he considers his family, blood or otherwise.  You said so yourself.  In your case, he sees an injustice and he seeks to correct it.  What Westerly did to your mother, a woman he once claimed to love, is abhorrent and forcing both of you from his home was even worse.  While Lord Candlewood cannot make Westerly pay in the way I suspect he would like, he can force the viscount’s hand in this matter.  Especially when the man has almost no other option.”

Strangely enough, Harry had never considered the situation in that manner, though now that Penny mentioned it, he did.  “I suspect you are right,” he replied as he offered her his arm when Julia’s butler arrived to call them all in to dinner.  

She smiled a bit and Harry felt his insides twist strangely.  “For what it is worth, I think the man is reprehensible.  He and my uncle are…friendly and Uncle Charles often seeks out Westerly’s advice.  That advice?  Well, it is often questionable.”

“I have heard that,” Harry agreed.  “Remember.  There is little that escapes Bow Street’s notice, even if nothing is done about such matters.  I am also well aware that there will be a great deal of, shall we say ‘repair work’ to be done to the viscountcy when I inherit, though Nick assures me he will be there to assist me.  It is all just so unexpected.”  He sighed, weary simply thinking about the matter.  “Still, the hows and the whys don’t really matter, I suppose.  In the end, the outcome is the same.”

“Which is?”  Harry felt Penny’s hand tighten just the slightest bit on his arm.

“That in the near future, I will have to resign my position as a Runner.”  He sighed again.  This wasn’t something he had ever considered, really, but then, hadn’t he just been thinking that he had been doing the very same thing for a very long time?  “I do nothing by half-measures, Penny, and if I am to be the viscount’s heir, then I will need to learn what is necessary to assume those duties in the future.”

Penny frowned.  “Could you not do both at the same time?  You enjoy your job.  Don’t you?”

“Not as much as I once did,” Harry confessed.  Then he gestured toward Julia who was laughing with her husband.  “Ben has offered to tutor me for now.  As have Marcus, Sebastian, Lachlan, and several other of my friends.  And Nick, of course, as I said.  For the most part, they were all born to that life, at least in some fashion.  I was not.  In fact, my early years were spent in Whitechapel before my mother and I relocated to Seldon Park.  However, they are all willing to share what they know, though I do suspect it will be a rather lengthy process.  And really, it is time for a change.  One cannot be a Runner forever.  There comes a time in every spy’s life that he loses his edge in one fashion or another.”

Together, they strolled into Julia and Ben’s expansive dining room while Penny appeared to contemplate his words.  “So you no longer enjoy investigation?  Being a Runner?”

“I still do.  Though again, not as much as I once did.”  For Harry, it was a rather complex situation.  “However, our world is changing.  Things that were once rather black and white to me now have innumerable shades of gray, and I find that I am having trouble discerning between them.  Good people do bad things for reasons often too horrific to mention.”

Harry was giving Penny an opportunity to open up to him.  He wasn’t sure if she would take it, or even if this was the most appropriate place for such a discussion, but it seemed like the thing to say just then.  They were speaking of the future, after all.

“That is true enough,” she allowed.  “Often times, people are horrified at what they must do, but feel as if they have no choice.  If they do not do terrible things, other, far more innocent people might end up paying the consequences.  There is no way for anyone to win in that situation.  Good or bad.  Right or wrong.”

Penny was talking about her cousin and her own impossible situation.  Harry knew that, but he said nothing, nor would he force Penny to confess, for he was just as guilty in that regard.  He should tell her that he knew about her uncle’s plans and how she had become mired in the middle of them.  But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that just yet.  Therefore, how could he fault her for withholding things from him, too?  He couldn’t.

“People are wretchedly complex,” Harry finally replied.  “More so now than before.”

“And this is an awfully complex conversation to have just before dinner,” Julia broke in as she shooed Harry over to the other side of the table so he could take his seat across from Penny.  “Now sit, Harry.  There are toasts to make and I know that Nick is absolutely famished.”

“Starving, actually!  I feel faint from hunger, damn your miserably tardy hide!” the duke called from his position farther down the table.  “Now sit your arse down, Harry, so we can begin eating!”

With that remark, the tension was broken and Harry allowed himself to be swept along with the jovial mood of the evening.  With each toast to his upcoming change in social status, he found himself relaxing more and more until he simply decided that it was best to let the worry over Penny’s ongoing deception go.  He knew the truth.  So did his friends.  In the end?  Well, he could not say what the end result would be, but he had to trust that Nick would come up with a way to extricate Penny from the mess her uncle had created.  He was the Bloody Duke, after all.

Across the table from him, Penny seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.  Here, away from the prying eyes of Society, he had a feeling that he was once more seeing the real Lady Penelope Marshwood and she was something of a revelation.

He had always known she was intelligent, but she was also witty and clever with her words, far more than he had given her credit for being.  At one point, she made everyone at the table, including Marcus – who was known to have mood swings toward the dour side on occasion – laugh uproariously at some observation about Lady Jersey and her tight hold upon vouchers for Almack’s.

Penny was also kind and extremely considerate, insisting on helping Diana, Lady Hallstone to the retiring room when the other woman felt faint.  While they were gone, Lachlan, Diana’s husband and the current Marquess of Hallstone, had confided to everyone that Diana had just discovered that she was with child and the effects of the babe now growing in her belly struck her at odd and unexpected times.  Penny, who had no way of knowing Diana’s complex history with childbirth had simply leaped to her feet the moment Diana had announced she was feeling ill and then assisted the woman back to the dining room before gently suggesting that perhaps it was time the couple headed home for the evening so Diana could rest.

In short, by the end of the meal, everyone around Julia’s table was utterly enchanted by Penny – including Harry himself.  Not that he hadn’t been before.  He had been.  He simply hadn’t wanted to admit it.

However, watching Penny associate with his friends tonight, he was finally able to see all of the remarkable lady hiding beneath the fear she wore like a cloak, so tightly wrapped around herself that one was never quite sure if the woman they saw was real or only what she wished people to see.

What worried Harry even more was that this woman captivated him even more than the Penny he had first met not so very long ago in Jane and Sebastian’s ballroom.  This woman was magic.  More than that, she was a woman Harry could see himself growing old with and that notion did more than worry Harry.  It terrified him.

For the first time in his life, Harry saw himself as more than a protector for a woman.  He saw himself as her lover.  Penny’s lover.  As her husband.  As the father of her children.  Those were thoughts he had never considered before.  Never allowed himself to consider, actually.  Always nothing more than a protector and only a protector.  But with Penny?  Harry believed he could be more.  He wanted to be more.

Which was why he wished this evening would end very, very soon, even though he was grateful to Julia for hosting this celebration in his honor.  Because Nick had been right earlier.  The best way for Harry to keep Penny for his own – and he had just come to the rather startling conclusion that he did very much want to keep her – was to seduce her.  To bed her.  Because he wanted to and because for the first time in his life, he could see a future that didn’t include Bow Street but did include a woman by his side.

This woman.  But only her.

Harry had no doubt that Nick would always have some sort of spy game or another for him to engage in.  That was a given.  But the long, tedious hours of hunting down suspects in the darkest, seediest parts of London or traveling to the outer reaches of Northumberland on nothing more than a slim hunch?  Those days would be over.

And for once, the idea of leaving that life behind didn’t bother him.  In fact, a part of him thought he might welcome the change.

And while Harry knew that most of elite Society would never truly accept him as one of their own – titled or not – his friends always would.  They already did.  So why not have a woman he desired by his side as he prepared to take on the newest chapter in his life?  There was no reason why not.  Especially when this – being together – was what they both wanted.

At least Harry assumed Penny still did.  Would she be here tonight if she didn’t?  He doubted it.  Otherwise, no young woman in her right mind would agree to dine with the Bloody Duke.  He was far too terrifying for most people to endure.  That Penny was here said that she either wasn’t afraid or she cared enough about Harry to put aside that fear.  Either way, she was here, by his side, and that was what mattered.

She was here for him.  Harry.  And no one else.  That was all Harry needed to know.

When the women retired to another room so that the men might enjoy their port while the women did, well whatever it was that women did during this time away from each other, Harry felt restless.  He had enjoyed the evening and the good-natured kidding about his upcoming elevation in position.  He had also enjoyed the time spent with his friends.  However, with each hour that passed, he was also keenly aware that the clock ticked one hour closer to Penny’s uncle arriving in London and possibly whisking her away.

According to Nick, Penny was still her uncle’s ward and thus, under his control.  She would also continue to be under the man’s thumb until she reached her majority next year.  The only way for her to be free was to wed, most likely by special license.  Or a trip to Gretna if it could be managed.

If Charles Marshwood wanted to take Penny away from Harry, he could and there wouldn’t be a damnable thing that Harry could do about it.  Which wouldn’t do.  It just wouldn’t do at all.

He needed to see her.  Now.  He needed to make certain that she was amenable to meeting later.  Maybe even so they could finish what they had begun last evening.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.”  Harry rose from the chair he had been reclining in while the chatter swirled around him.  “I suddenly find myself in need of some fresh air.”

Harry saw Ben roll his eyes and watched as Marcus once more suppressed a snicker.  Well, he was glad someone was finding his unease amusing.  Again.

“Of course.”  Nick waved a hand at the door.  “Dreadfully stuffy in here.  You really need to do something about the ventilation, Ben.  Ghastly.  Just ghastly.”

In response, the other man simply snorted.

“If you will excuse me, then.”  Harry inclined his head.  “I shall just be a moment.”

“Take your time.”  Nick yawned, though it was more of an exaggerated yawn than an actual one.

“And give Lady Penny our best when you see her,” Ben called after him, bringing Harry up short.

“I am not…”

“You are.”  Ben gestured toward the door.  “We’re not daft, Harry.”  He shrugged.  “And besides, you deserve this.  God knows you deserve more than this, actually.”

“Go.”  That came from Marcus.  “And do not do anything that we wouldn’t do.”

Which was probably not the best advice to give Harry, as all of the men in this room had been extremely wicked in their own way at one point in time or another.  Particularly with women.  Especially the women they eventually married.

“I won’t even be ‘round to wake you in the morning,” Nick called after him as the other men erupted into laughter.  “Well, not too early anyway.  Remember Eliza’s rule about me not looking at naked women any longer!”

Closing the door behind him with a firm click, Harry could still hear the others chuckling at his expense.  It didn’t matter.  He was out of that room and free to seek out Penny.  If only he knew how to go about doing that without rousing the other women’s suspicions.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried for Penny was apparently having many of the same thoughts he was, and he very nearly tripped over her as he wandered down a hallway that he thought led to the yellow drawing room, the very place the ladies had retired to earlier.

“Penny!”  Harry tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.  He also kept his voice low, not wanting to alert the other ladies to his presence.  “What are you doing here?  Skulking about the halls?”

“I could ask you the same question, Harry.”  It was clear she was more amused than anything at the moment.  “And skulking?  Really?  Do you imagine that I skulk?”

“I think anyone can skulk if they put their mind to it,” he countered, his entire being suddenly feeling a good deal lighter.  “But never mind that.  Why are you not with the other ladies?”

Penny ran her tongue over her upper teeth, as if she was hesitant to say something.  “In truth?  I was bored,” she finally confessed.  “All of the women here tonight are absolutely delightful and something of a revelation to me.  I thoroughly enjoy their company and would very much like to count them as friends someday soon.”

“But?”  Harry knew there was one coming.  He could hear it.  He knew this woman so very well by now.

“But I could not stop thinking about you,” she sighed almost wistfully.  “Or how our time together is limited.  We both know that and have from the start.”

“Your uncle.”

“Once he knows I am not pursuing the man he selected for me, he will be here in London in a trice.”  Harry noticed Penny was careful not to mention Fullbridge’s name.  “I will be forced to return to Cumbria when that happens, make no mistake.  My uncle still controls my life until I reach my majority next year.”

Unknowingly, Penny had just confirmed what Harry already thought he knew.  “Then we should not waste time.”  Reaching out, he plucked at the small cap sleeve of her gown.  “You do look lovely this evening, sweetheart.  Exquisite, really.  I don’t think I told you before.”

“You did, actually, but thank you again.”  He was gratified that she still blushed, meaning that despite everything, she had still not lost her innocence.  Though if he had his way and she was agreeable, she would tonight.  “I don’t think anyone has ever said that I am exquisite.”

“They should have.”  Actually, Penny should have been showered with compliments for years, but again, Harry was glad she hadn’t been.  Otherwise, some other man would have snatched her up long ago.  “You deserve so much, Penny.  So much more than a man like me can give you.”

“I don’t want another man.”  She peered up at him earnestly and he could see the honesty shining in her eyes.  Funny how he could see the truth of her when he really looked.  “I want you, Harry, and no other.”

He shook his head.  “You shouldn’t.  I’m not the right man for you.”  For so many reasons, though he was hoping that one day soon, he could be.

“I don’t care.”  On this point, Penny seemed rather adamant.  “I want you, Harry.  Now.  The future will be what it will be, and I cannot control it any more than I can control the wind. But my present?  My time with you?  That is something I can control and I know what I want.”

“What?”  Harry needed her to say it just as much as he needed to hear it.  He needed her to be absolutely sure about this, for what they were about to do was irrevocable.  “What do you want my perfect, precious Penny?”

“You.”  Her lioness’ eyes were wide and clear when she met his.  “I want you, Harry Greer, and I am so very tired of waiting.  Very, very tired.”

“Then you shall have me, sweetheart.”

Then, before either of them could change their minds, Harry grabbed Penny’s hand and hurried her down the hallway toward the front door and his waiting carriage.  They wanted this.  Their time was quickly running out.  Therefore, there was no time like the present to take what they both wanted.

And Harry had a very empty house where they could indulge until their hearts were content without fear of anyone finding out.

It was perfect.  Just perfect.

Just as she was.