Stephanie Laurens: A Lady of His Own

Half an hour later, a groom drove a light gig from the stables to the front steps. Another groom followed, leading Penny’s horse.

Charles shifted until he could see the front steps. Penny appeared, followed by two other ladies of similar age, vaguely familiar. The Essington brothers’ wives? They climbed into the gig. Penny was assisted back into her saddle. He went to fetch Domino.

He reached the junction of the Essington lane and the Fowey road in time to confirm that the ladies were, indeed, on their way south. Presumably to Fowey, presumably shopping.

Charles sat atop Domino and debated. At this point, Penny was his surest and most immediate link to the situation he’d been sent to investigate.

She was concerned enough to follow men about the countryside at night, concerned enough to refuse to tell him what she’d discovered, not without thinking and considering carefully first. Yet there she was, blithely going off to indulge in a morning’s shopping with such concerns unresolved, circling her head.

She might be female, but he’d grown up with four sisters; he wasn’t that gullible.

Penny stayed with Millie and Julia Essington for the first hour and a half of their prearranged foray through Fowey’s shops—two milliners, the haberdasherer’s, the old glove-maker’s, and two drapers. As they left the second draper’s establishment, she halted on the pavement. “I must pay my duty call—why don’t you two go on to the apothecary’s, then I’ll meet you at the Pelican for lunch?”

She’d warned them before they set out that morning that one of the retired servants from Wallingham had fallen gravely ill and she felt honor-bound to call.

“Right-oh!” Julia, rosy-cheeked and forever sunny-tempered, linked her arm in Millie’s.

Quieter and more sensitive, Millie fixed Penny with an inquiring gaze. “If you’re sure you don’t need support? We wouldn’t mind coming with you, truly.”

“No—there’s no need, I assure you.” She smiled. “There’s no question of them dying, not yet.” She’d managed not to mention any name; both Millie and Julia were local landowners’ daughters, had married and continued to live locally—it was perfectly possible anyone she might mention would have relatives working at Essington Manor.

“I won’t be long.” She stepped back. “I’ll join you at the Pelican.”

“Very well.”

“We’ll order for you, shall we?”

“Yes, do, if I’m not there before you.”

With an easy smile, she left the sisters and crossed the cobbled street. She followed it slowly uphill, then, hearing the distant tinkle she’d been listening for, she paused and glanced back. Millie and Julia were just stepping into the apothecary’s tiny shop.

Penny walked on, then turned right down the next lane.

She knew the streets of Fowey well. Tacking down this lane, then that, she descended to the harbor, then angled up into the tiny lanes leading to the oldest cottages perched above one arm of the wharves. Although protected from the prevailing winds, the small cottages were packed cheek by jowl as if by huddling they could better maintain their precarious grip on the cliff side. The poorest section of the town, the cottages housed the fishermen and their families, forming the principal nest of the local smuggling fraternity.

Penny entered a passageway little wider than the runnel that ran down its center. Halfway up the steep climb, she halted. Settling her habit’s train more securely on her arm, she knocked imperiously on a thick wooden door.

She waited, then knocked again. At this hour, in this neighborhood, there were few people about. She’d checked the harbor; the fleet was out. It was the perfect time to call on Mother Gibbs.

The door finally cracked open an inch or two. A bloodshot eye peered through the gap. Then Penny heard a snort, and the door was opened wide.

“Well, Miss Finery, and what can I do for you?”

Penny left Mother Gibbs’s residence half an hour later, no wiser yet, but, she hoped, one step nearer to uncovering the truth. The door closed behind her with a soft thud. She walked quickly down the steep passageway; she would have to hurry to get back to the Pelican Inn, up on the High Street in the better part of town, in reasonable time.

Reaching the end of the passage, she swung around the corner.

Straight into a wall of muscle and bone.

He caught her in one arm, steadied her against him. Not trapping her, yet…she couldn’t move.

Couldn’t even blink as she stared into his eyes, mere inches away. In daylight, they were an intense dark blue, but it was the intelligence she knew resided behind them that had her mentally reeling.

That, and the fact she’d stopped breathing. She couldn’t get her lungs to work. Not with the hard length of him against the front of her.

Had he seen? Did he know?

“Yes, I saw which house you left. Yes, I know whose house it is. Yes, I remember what goes on in there.” His gaze had grown so sharp it was a wonder she wasn’t bleeding. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing in the most notorious fishermen’s brothel in Fowey?”

Damn! She realized her hands were lying boneless against his chest. She pushed back, dragged in a breath as he let her go and she stepped back.

Having air between them was a very good thing. Her lungs expanded; her head steadied. Grabbing up her skirt, she stepped past him. “No.”

He exhaled through his teeth. “Penny.” He reached out and manacled her wrist.

She halted and looked down at his long tanned fingers wrapped about her slender bones. “Don’t.”

He sighed again and let her go. She started walking, then recalled the Essingtons and walked faster. He kept pace easily.

“What could you possibly want from Mother Gibbs?”

She glanced briefly at him. “Information.”

A good enough answer to appease him, for all of six strides. “What did you learn?”

“Nothing yet.”

Another few steps. “How on earth did you—Lady Penelope Selborne of Wallingham Hall—make Mother Gibbs’s acquaintance?”

She debated asking him how he—now Earl of Lostwithiel—knew of Mother Gibbs, but his response might be more than she wanted to know. “I met her through Granville.”

He stopped. “ What? ”

“No—I don’t mean he introduced me.” She kept walking; in two strides he was again by her side.

“You’re not, I sincerely hope, going to tell me that Granville was so mullet-brained he frequented her establishment?”

Mullet-brained? Perhaps he hadn’t met Mother Gibbs by way of her trade. “Not precisely.”

Silence for another three steps. “Educate me—how does one imprecisely frequent a brothel?”

She sighed. “He didn’t actually enter the place—he grew enamored of one of her girls and took to mooning about, following the poor girl and buying her trinkets, that sort of thing. When he started propping up the wall in the passageway, languishing—for all I know serenading—Mother Gibbs said enough. She sent word to me through our workers and the servants. We met in a field and she explained how Granville’s behavior was severely disrupting her business. The local fisherlads didn’t fancy slipping through her door with the local earl’s son looking on.”

He muttered a derogatory appellation, then more clearly said, “I can see her point. So what did you do?”

“I talked to Granville, of course.”

She felt his glance. “And he listened?”

“Regardless of what else he was, Granville wasn’t stupid.”

“You mean he understood what would happen if you mentioned his habits to his mother.”

Looking ahead, she smiled tightly. “As I said, he wasn’t stupid. He saw that point quite quickly.”