Stephanie Laurens - A Lady of His Own

She was the only offspring of the late Earl of Wallingham’s first marriage; her mother had died when she was very young. Her father had remarried and sired one son and three daughters by his second wife Elaine, a kindly, good-hearted lady—his godmother as a matter of fact. She’d taken Penny under her wing; they’d grown to be not so much mother and daughter as close friends.

The earl had died five years ago; Penny’s half brother Granville had succeeded to the title. A sole male with a doting mother and four sisters, Granville had always been spoiled, tumbling from one scrape into the next with nary a thought for anyone or anything beyond immediate gratification.

He’d last met Granville when he’d returned home in ’14; Granville had still been reckless and wild. Then had come Waterloo. Fired by the prevailing patriotic frenzy, Granville had shut his ears to his mother’s and sisters’ pleas and joined one of the regiments. He’d fallen somewhere on that bloody plain.

The title and estate had passed to a distant cousin, the Marquess of Amberly, an older gentleman who had assured Elaine and her daughters that they could continue to live as they always had at Wallingham Hall. Amberly had been close to the previous earl, Penny’s father, and had been Granville’s guardian prior to Granville attaining his majority.

And thus the freedom to get himself killed, leaving his mother and sisters, if far from destitute, then without immediate protectors.

That, Charles decided, opening his eyes and starting to pace again, was what bothered him most. Here was Penny already involved in God knew what, and there wasn’t any male in any position to watch over her. Except him.

How she’d feel about that he didn’t know.

At the back of his mind hovered a lowering suspicion over why she hadn’t been eager to marry, why no gentleman had managed to persuade her to the altar, but how she now thought of him, how she now viewed him, he didn’t know and couldn’t guess.

She’d be prickly almost certainly, but prickly-yet-willing-to-join-forces, or prickly-and-wanting-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-him? With ladies like her, it wasn’t easy, or safe, to guess.

He did know how he felt about her — that had been an unwelcome surprise. He’d thought thirteen years would have dulled his bewitchment, but it hadn’t. Not in the least.

Since he’d left to join the army, he’d seen her a few times in ’14, and then again over the past six months, but always at a distance with family, both his and hers, all around. Nothing remotely private. Tonight, he’d come upon her unexpectedly alone in his house, and desire had come raging back. Had caught him, snared him, sunk its talons deep.

And shaken him.

Regardless, it was unlikely there was anything he could do to ease the ache. She’d finished with him thirteen years ago—cut him off; he knew better than to hold his breath hoping she’d change her mind. She was, always had been, unbelievably stubborn.

They would have to set that part of their past aside. They couldn’t entirely ignore it—it still affected both of them too intensely—but they could, if they had to, work around it.

They’d need to. Whatever was going on, that matter he’d been sent to investigate and that she, it seemed, had already discovered, was potentially too dangerous, too threatening to people as yet unknown, to treat as anything other than a battlefield. Once he knew more, he’d try to separate her from it. He didn’t waste a second considering if she, herself, was in any way involved on the wrong side of the ledger; she wouldn’t be, not Penny.

She was on the same side he was, but didn’t yet trust him. She had to be protecting someone, but who?

He no longer knew enough about her or her friends to guess.

How long before she decided to tell him? Who knew? But they didn’t have a lot of time. Now he was there, things would start happening; that was his mission, to stir things up and deal with what rose out of the mire.

If she wouldn’t tell him, he’d have to learn her secret some other way.

He strode along the ramparts for half an hour more, then returned to his room, fell into bed, and, surprisingly, slept.

CHAPTER 2

HE AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND OF HOOFbeats. Not on the gravel drive circling the house, but farther away, not nearing but retreating.

He’d left the French doors to his balcony open, a very un-English act, but in Toulouse he’d grown accustomed to open windows at night.

Fortuitous. Rolling from the bed, he stretched and strolled across the room. Naked, he stood in the balcony doorway watching Penny, garbed in a gold riding habit, steadily canter away. If the doors hadn’t been open, he’d never have heard her; she’d left from the stables, a good distance from the house. Sidesaddle on a roan, she was unhurriedly heading south.

To Fowey? Or her home? Or somewhere else?

Five minutes later, he strode into the kitchen.

“My lord!” Mrs. Slattery was shocked to see him. “We’re just starting your breakfast—I had no idea—”

“My fault entirely.” He smiled charmingly. “I forgot I wanted to ride early this morning. If there’s any coffee? And perhaps a pastry or two?”

In between muttering dire warnings over what was sure to befall gentlemen who didn’t start their day by sitting down to a proper breakfast, contemptuously dismissing his proffered excuse that he’d grown accustomed to French ways—“Well, you’re a proper English earl now, so you’ll need to forget such heathenish habits”—Mrs. Slattery provided him with a mug of strong coffee and three pastries.

He demolished one pastry, gulped down the coffee, scooped up the remaining pastries, planted a quick kiss on Mrs. Slattery’s cheek, eliciting a squawk and a “Get along with you, young master—m’lord, I mean,” and was out of the back door striding toward the stables ten minutes behind Penny.

Fifteen minutes by the time he swung Domino, his gray hunter, out of the stable yard and set out in her wake.

He hadn’t had the big gray out since early March; Domino was ready to run, fighting to stretch out even before he loosened the reins. The instant they left the drive for the lush green of the paddock rising to the low escarpment, he let the gelding have his head. They thundered up, then flew.

Leaning low, he let Domino run, riding hands and knees, scanning ahead as they sped southwest. Penny, sidesaddle and believing herself unobserved, would stay on the lanes, a longer and slower route. He went across country, trusting he’d read her direction correctly, then he saw her, still some way ahead, crossing the bridge over the Fowey outside the village of Lostwithiel, a mile above where the river opened into the estuary. Smiling, he eased Domino back; he clattered across the bridge five minutes later.

Returning to the high ground, from a distance he continued to track her. Fowey, her home, or somewhere else, all were still possible. But then she passed the mouth of the lane leading west to Wallingham Hall, remaining on the wider lane that veered south, following the estuary’s west bank all the way to the town of Fowey at the estuary mouth.

But the town was still some way on; there were other places she might go. The morning was sunny and fine, perfect for riding. She kept to her steady pace; on the ridge above and behind, he matched her.

Then she slowed her roan and turned east into a narrow lane. Descending from the ridge, he followed; the lane led to Essington Manor. She rode, unconcerned and unaware, to the front steps. He drew away and circled the manor, finding a vantage point within the surrounding woods from where he could see both the forecourt and the stable yard. A groom led Penny’s horse to the stables. Charles dismounted, tethered Domino in a nearby clearing, then returned to keep watch.