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“Getme home.”
“At once.” He started for the bell rope, then didn’t ring. Why draw more attention to their long tête-a-tête? “We’ll go to the stables. You have your gig?”
Miss Pendleton rose, her hands resting on the desktop as if for support. “And if I don’t wish to go?”
“You don’t understand—”
She cut him off with a gesture. “My understanding has never been in doubt, whatever else was suspected about me. I know very well what I mean when I say I would like to stay a while. Here. With you.”
Every fiber of his body leapt at the invitation in her blue eyes. If he touched her now, there would be no going back. “People will think—”
“Peoplehave thought I was a dupe or a liar or an outright traitor to my country. People are idiotic.”
“Some are,” he acknowledged.
“Quite a large proportion. I have decided to disregard them.”
“That is more easily said than done,” Daniel replied. “We live within society.” If he took what he wanted—what they both wanted?—she would be ostracized.
“I do not. I have no social position. All that is lost to me. So I can do as I please.” Her voice wavered slightly on the last word.
He had to turn away from the appeal in her face. It was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done. “Nonsense.” The word came out harsh.
Miss Pendleton stepped back.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ido not?”
“No, you don’t.” He wanted to mend matters, not bring further ruin upon her. “You are still a baronet’s daughter. What would your father, your mother think?”
She flinched as if he’d hit her.
Daniel’s hands reached out of their own accord. “Miss Pendleton.” He hadn’t meant to say that last bit. Emotion choked him.
She picked up the bonnet and shawl she’d tossed onto one pile of boxes and strode out the door.
Fourteen
Stomach knotted, eyes hot with humiliation, Penelope eased her gig through the gates and onto the lane that passed by Frithgerd, following a mounted stable boy holding a lantern. The head groom had insisted on sending this escort, saying milord wouldn’t like it if they let her go off on her own, and Penelope hadn’t been foolish enough to argue. She’d never driven alone at night. Fortunately the lane was familiar, and her horse steady. Reassured by the light ahead, he clopped placidly along. Unfortunately, that left her free to remember how Lord Whitfield had practically shoved her away. She’d offered herself to him, and he’d refused! Her cheeks burned. The look on his face… What had it been before he turned his back? Disapproval? Revulsion?
Penelope’s nails dug into her palms. Propriety! Men used the rules to manipulate others, and then ignored them when they became inconvenient. She’d thought Whitfield was different. She’d been feeling so close to him, after reading those letters together. She’d assumed he felt the same. Hadn’t she learned by now never to assume? Hadn’t a host of assumptions fallen about her ears over the last year? People she trusted had abandoned her. Rights she’d relied on had proven flimsy as wet paper. And now this man she’d come to care for—yes, she had to admit it—had turned away.Miss Pendletonhe had called her, as if that girl still existed, and yet he’d wanted to sneak her out of the house like a disreputable secret. Where had she gotten the ridiculous idea that she could ever have what she wanted?
The stable boy raised the lantern higher, illuminating the turn at her own road. Penelope guided the gig onto it.
What could she have? He’d taunted her with her birth. Yes, a baronet’s daughter was an acceptable, if not brilliant, match for him. But her brother’s disgrace had altered everything. Perhaps that was it. He’d realized that a connection to her would taint him as well. Society wouldn’t reject a viscount, but they would titter and whisper. And if he had any political ambitions… Penelope made a throwaway gesture. Her pride, trampled and tattered though it was, reared up and rejected that picture. He was right. No sort of liaison was possible. She would erase the idea from her mind.
Penelope blinked. She was not going to cry. She was done with tears. Determination, independence, anger—these were there to sustain her.
Rose Cottage appeared ahead, its stone walls pale in the light of a half-moon. Penelope drove her gig around to the barn, thanked the stable boy, and endured Foyle’s scold as she climbed down. Kitty gave her more of the same when she went inside, piqued that her mistress had gone visiting without her. Penelope promised never to do so again and escaped to her bedchamber. There, tossing down her shawl, pulling off her bonnet, she looked at the familiar furnishings, a bit large and grand for her new dwelling. She was lucky to have this refuge. Things might have gone so much worse for her. She ought to be grateful. She was. Yet it was so hard not to yearn for an impossible more.
* * *
In a cozy parlor at Frithgerd, at that moment, the Earl of Macklin was curious and restless. To a man used to the bustle of London society, or of large country house parties, the place seemed very quiet. His book didn’t hold his attention. Instead, he was staring at the open page, wondering what mysteries preoccupied his host and their pretty neighbor. Beyond the obvious, of course. Was he wrong to leave them so often alone? Miss Pendleton wasn’t his responsibility. Whitfield was his main concern. And she’d made it clear she didn’t want advice from him. Yet she excited his ready sympathies as well. Her situation was unusual, perhaps more than she knew.
Arthur sighed, closing his book. Interference didn’t come naturally to him. Among his family, he generally waited to be asked for aid before stepping in. His impulse to help a set of young men visited by grief had surprised him. He smiled. It had surprised everyone who knew anything about it and mystified countless others who didn’t. A duchess whose renowned summer house party he’d skipped this year was convinced he was concealing a scandalous intrigue. One old friend had asked if he was ill; another had posed oblique questions about financial reverses. Arthur’s “disappearance” from his customary haunts kept tongues wagging even now. On top of that, helping had proven more complicated than he’d imagined. Still, the transformation of his nephew in the spring had been extremely satisfying.
Buoyed by that thought, Arthur set his book aside and made his way to the estate office. He discovered Whitfield there on his own, hunched over the perennial litter of papers on his desk but not reading any of them. Arthur spoke his name twice, with no effect. Finally, he tapped the younger man on the shoulder. Whitfield lurched upright as if he’d been struck. “You were a thousand miles away,” said Arthur.
