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“How do you know?”
“It was the way you said ‘lecture,’” she explained.
He gazed at her as if she was an exotic creature herself. The hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “Well, I don’t, as a rule. I’d rather be doing than listening. But the joint outing was the point. The three of us went, and heard the fellow, and agreed that it had been a dashed informative talk. And then they said they had to go. I’d arranged dinner, which they knew quite well. But they said that an important engagement had come up, a man they had to meet.”
“More important than—” Penelope broke off.
“Important as opposed to not important at all. That was my impression. It was necessary for them to dine with this person. And entirelyunnecessary to do so with their son.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t believe they said. Which was typical. If they mentioned a name, I don’t recall. I was annoyed.”
“I expect so!” How could anyone treat him that way? Penelope wondered. Let alone his parents. How could they not want to spend as much time with him as possible? She’d only known him a short time, and she wanted that.
“People don’t call it cruel when others are simply…absent,” he added in an emptily even voice.
Penelope nodded. “My mother’s illness made her selfish in later years. She was in pain and had no patience for other people.”
“Pain is a terrible burden. One can’t help but sympathize. But my parents were not in pain.” Whitfield’s jaw tightened. He looked away. The fingers of his right hand, resting on the desktop next to Penelope’s left, tapped the wood in a nervous rhythm. The sound somehow felt like the drag of retreating waves, pulling everything in their path out to sea.
Penelope leaned over and put an arm around him. Whitfield went still, like a man in the presence of some rare and breathtaking animal, who doesn’t dare move for fear it will bound away. Then, slowly, he bent his head until the side rested against hers.
Temple to temple, shoulder to shoulder, they sat for several minutes. Penelope felt his chest rise and fall under her arm, along with a sense of kinship unmatched in her life till now. Gradually, his muscles eased.
The atmosphere in the room shifted. Penelope’s hand on his coat sleeve went from comfort to caress.
He turned a little toward her. “We can’t—”
She put her other arm around his neck and pulled him closer.
He kissed her. Or she kissed him. Both, Penelope decided, while she could still think. What did it matter?
His arms slipped around her. She melted against him. Her heart pounded as the kisses multiplied in urgent bliss.
And then his hands closed on her waist and moved her away from him. He scooted his chair back to increase the distance.
“No,” said Penelope.
“Yes,” said Daniel. His breath caught on a laugh. “There’s a reversal.” He was aching with desire, grasping the tatters of control.
Miss Pendleton—Penelope—watched him. Her blue eyes were soft with longing. Her breath, coming fast, made the rise and fall of her bosom entrancing.
“You should go.” If she stayed… She couldn’t stay. He wouldn’t be able to resist her. “I can’t be answerable,” murmured some pompous part of him.
She gave him a startling smile. “And if I don’t wish you to be?”
“What?”
“Answerable.”
“What?” he asked again. Didn’t she understand that his good intentions were hanging by a thread? He wanted her so much.
The inexplicable Miss Pendleton laughed. “May I take these with me?” she asked. Her hand—the one that had caressed the back of his neck moments ago—was now resting on his mother’s notebooks. “Perhaps I can decipher them.”
Daniel frowned at the notebooks. His mother had cared for them as if they were the most precious things in her life. Far more precious than a son, for example. Miss Pendleton could throw them in the refuse heap for all he cared. “All right.”
“I’ll keep them safe.”
