“When did he arrive?”
“Last night? I’ve not seen him until just now in the salon.”
She exhaled. “I’m going to my room.”
“We will talk again. Now.”
“No. There is nothing to say, Theo.”
“You love me. There is that to say. I love you. There is that too to say over and over.”
“I cannot give you what you need in a wife, Theo. I never have been qualified. Now we know after three husbands, that the most important requirement is none I can provide.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.” She went wearily toward the stairs.
“We are not done,” he called after her.
She paused and spun to gaze at him with sorrow swimming in her eyes. “Of a certainty, this time we are.”
Chapter 7
Penn ordered a quick bath for herself. She hated to be such a nuisance to servants on Christmas morning, but she wished to soak her aching body. Would that she could drown the ache within her heart.
She had been so selfish to accept Theo as her lover. She’d led him on, deluded him and she was ashamed of herself.
As she submerged herself in the copper tub, she admitted another truth. Affection was addictive. Once enjoyed, once given, tenderness blossomed in a person’s soul like a daring rose. The euphoria was bliss. The need for more, for the promise of more tomorrow and tomorrow, could consume one’s willpower. And destroy logic and all else in its path. Like opium.
She rose from the tub, the waters cascading in her haste. She had to leave here.
* * *
Theo knocked lightly on Penn’s bedroom door. Again, she did not open for him. She’d not gone to church this morning with the other guests. Nor had she appeared at breakfast. He worried about her.
He exhaled. She must talk to him soon. Theo had learned long ago from dealings with so many that an argument required an immediate bout of quiet discussion lest the views of opponents harden and crack. He did not want to fight with Penn. He wanted resolution, acton!
Hell.If she didn’t open the next time he came here, he’d ask Simms for a key to the lock.Well, Christ.That was a rude plan.
He shook his head and headed for the downstairs salon. His father had sent a note via Simms that he wished to talk, and there was no time like the present to confront their disagreement over Penn.
Truth was, he and his father had argued only twice in their lives. Once was when he’d been offered his first opportunity to go to Russia to negotiate with Czar Alexander. Adept at the Russian language, Theo was welcomed by the British delegation. He’d gone twice more in the past two years, once to meet with Alexander in Paris after Napoleon’s first abdication in April eighteen-fourteen and then most recently after the Allies’ victory at Waterloo. The other time that Theo and his father had argued was the first. When he was nineteen, he went home to Yorkshire and his father’s main seat to ask for permission to marry a young lady he’d met at a house party. That lady was Penn. That argument had not gone in Theo’s favor. To his everlasting sorrow.
This meeting, Theo vowed, would be different. He stiffened his spine, pulled taut the points of his coat, rapped twice and entered.
“Sir,” Theo nodded and closed the door behind him. He strode forward. His father, George Frederick Maitland Henley, was a devilishly handsome fellow. His eyes were a brilliant shade of turquoise and could freeze one in one’s tracks. That was not his sire’s only devastating quality. He was tall, broad shouldered, with ink black hair that only in the past decade had taken on the silver that denoted him as the elder of the two of them. But his father had one other quality that signified his importance to Theo: He was usually prudent in his decisions. That prudence rarely differed from social convention. It had made his father wealthy, revered and imperious. Few fought with Harlow. They had not the logic or the stamina.
Today, Theo brought both to this argument. And his father would not like it.
“I have little time, Father.” He trained a hot gaze on Harlow. “Upbraid me if you wish, but make it short. I wish to simply say the obvious.”
“Will you sit, Theo?”
“No.” He was abrupt. Few were with the Duke of Harlow. “I will tell you what you need to know. I came here of my own accord. In fact, I was so bold as to invite myself to the Countess of Marsden’s Christmas party. She did not invite me. You must not upbraid her for something she did not do.”
“So I have learned. I’ve held my tongue on that rebuke.”
Theo nodded. “I invited myself and hoped the Countess would accept me. I learned from friends that Penelope would be here. This year, alone as I was at home and free of my mourning obligations, I decided to come if the Countess would have me.”
