How to Wed an Earl (14 page)

He felt as frustrated as a debutante who couldn’t get a confirmed bachelor to come up to scratch. Penelope was like a wild mare that had to be convinced, repeatedly, to trust him.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “Surely you are not concerned about my virtue?”

Miss Smythe snorted. “Hardly that, my lord.” She looked away, heaving a great sigh. “Penelope loves you. She wouldn’t contemplate something this risky otherwise.”

To his enormous disgust, his first reaction was pure joy. He shook the feeling off as ridiculous. It wasn’t joy he felt, but satisfaction. Things would be easier if Penelope loved him.

“What makes you think Penelope is in love with me?”

“She has
always
been in love with you,” Miss Smythe burst out, twisting her handkerchief into knots. “She used to write letters to you, did you know that? She was lonely with her father always gone and her mother depressed.” Miss Smythe sighed again. “Some girls write diaries, she wrote to
you
. You’ve been her confidante for as long as she could write until she turned eighteen and realized you would never come for her.”

Lucas’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “I didn’t know. She never sent me any correspondence.”

“She never meant to. She waited for you to either contact her or come for her. Until you did, the letters became her way of staving off the loneliness.”

He straightened. “I see.”

Miss Smythe glared at him. “At first I thought it was wonderful that you’ve finally arrived.” She shook her head, her hands gripping her handkerchief tighter. “But now she wants to have an affair with you. It’s not fair. Penelope deserves a proper marriage. You owe it to her.”

“I could not agree more.”

“I’ll have your word, my lord, that you won’t take advantage of my friend. If your intentions are — ”

“Honorable?” he provided. “Yes, they are. I came here to marry Penelope, and I intend to do so.” He registered the wariness in Miss Smythe’s expression. “I believe we both have the same goal here, Miss Smythe.”

“In all honesty, my lord, I’m not certain I can trust you.”

His jaw tightened. “If you cannot trust me, then trust your friend. She is bound to me by a contract, and she knows it. She has as much obligation to me as I do to her.”

“You are right, of course,” Miss Smythe admitted.

“It is obvious to me, however,” he continued, “that Penelope still needs some convincing. I trust you won’t interfere with my goal?”

Miss Smythe stood up. “If your goal is to marry Penelope, then you have my full support, my lord.”

“All will be well, Miss Smythe,” Lucas assured Penelope’s friend. He told the woman to send the carter’s bills to him, and then he left for Highfield Manor.

So Penelope planned to seduce him into having an affair, did she?
Lucas’s lips set into a grim line. She innocently thought to play bedtime games with him, and she approached her goal with the same recklessness she approached everything, from firing a pistol to attacking a man because of a donkey. Luckily, Lucas had absolutely no gentlemanly scruples when it came to getting what he wanted. It was time the nymph learned an important lesson.

And after she learned that lesson, she would be securely in his clutches.

Where does she think she’s going?
Lucas wondered, quietly following Penelope down the dark hallway.

It was the middle of the night and his fiancée was sneaking around like a burglar. If he hadn’t been right outside her bedchamber, torturing himself yet again with the fantasy of seeing her sleeping, he wouldn’t have heard the wood creak as she carefully opened the door and sneaked out into the hallway.

She was dressed all in black except for her cloak, which was trimmed in gold. When Penelope descended the servants’ staircase, Lucas strode back to his room and grabbed his greatcoat, then he went down the cantilever staircase the family used, stopping midway to wait for her to appear in the main hall.
It was a good thing he was still fully dressed
, he thought, when Penelope appeared from the east wing and rushed outside.

She lit a lantern, but the moon was bright, and its light was enough illumination to see the surroundings quite well. She would have seen him if she’d thought to turn around, but the nymph seemed too intent on her clandestine mission to be careful.

The exasperating little idiot
. She was entirely too sure of her safety. He had to restrain a powerful urge to march up to her and give her a lecture right there and then on the perils awaiting a well-bred lady tramping out of the house in the dead of night.

Penelope entered the barn, closing the door behind her. Lucas silently opened the barn door a crack to see inside. And there, sitting on an upturned barrel petting a sleeping Nelson, was a familiar face: David Maitland.

“Good evening, cousin. Thank you for agreeing to meet me here.” Maitland peered around Penelope’s shoulder. “I trust you didn’t tell anyone I’m here?”

Penelope approached the young man, shoving the hood of her cloak off her head as she did so. “David,” Lucas heard the smile in her voice. “It’s nice of you to visit.” She looked around the barn. “No one else is with you?”

“Father doesn’t know I’m here. I have been staying at the inn, which is why I asked you not to tell anyone of my presence. Have you talked to Ravenstone?”

“Yes, he is staying at Highfield Manor.” She began tapping her toe. “David, I am glad to see you have grown up well. And that you still like to play hide and seek.”

Maitland grinned and stood up, taking Penelope’s hands in his. “You haven’t changed much, Penelope. Once again, you’ve chosen to hide in the most obvious place, and I have found you with little effort.” His grin faded as his attractive face took on a serious look. “I’ve come to warn you, cousin. Stay away from Raving Ravenstone. He is dangerous.”

Lucas felt a chill in his gut. He watched Penelope yank her hands from Maitland’s grip. “Do not call my fiancé by that dreadful name, David,” she warned.

“Confound it,” Maitland muttered. “What tale has he spun around you? There are things about him you do not know. You are not safe with him.”

Her voice was as final as death. “He wouldn’t harm a pheasant. There is nothing about him I don’t know.”

“Penelope, Uncle Edmund is the reason Ravenstone’s father is dead.”

Lucas stilled. Penelope was about to discover the truth about him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He lost the ability to breathe.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he heard her say. “Lucas’s father died in a hunting accident.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Maitland gripped Penelope’s shoulders. “There are even rumors Ravenstone himself killed his father. Considering his mother’s unstable disposition, no one would be surprised if Lucas Drake did kill his father.”

“Rubbish,” Penelope struggled ineffectually to free herself from Maitland’s grip. “One would only have to look at Ravenstone to know that’s nothing but gossip spread by someone who is jealous of him and his achievements.”

“Ravenstone’s father killed himself after Uncle Edmund’s visit.”

“
What?
”

“It’s true,” Maitland said with an emphatic nod. “Uncle Edmund wanted out of the betrothal contract, and Ravenstone’s father killed himself after Uncle told him the news.”

Lucas felt as if something died within him as he waited for her reaction. A keening sense of loss and regret reverberated from the coldest, darkest part of his soul.

“Well,” Penelope finally said. “That certainly explains his comment about coming here sooner if he’d known he would be welcome.”

Maitland shook her. “Did you
listen
to me, cousin? You don’t know all there is to know about that man, and you would do well to stay away from him.”

Penelope laid her hand on top of one of Maitland’s. “I heard you, David, but you’re wrong. I understand Ravenstone well. I assure you he isn’t dangerous. Not to me.”

Penelope’s cousin let go of her as if she’d burned him. “He’s here for revenge, I tell you! I believe he is out to seduce you and leave you ruined.”

First Miss Smythe and now Maitland. What was it with these people thinking Lucas intended anything other than having Penelope at the altar as soon as possible?

“Rubbish,” she said once more. “If he wanted to ruin me, he’d have done it by now. He’s here to marry me, David.”

“I have already tried to explain that is not the case, but you won’t listen.” Maitland grabbed Penelope’s arm. “This is for your own good, cousin.”

Penelope tried to twist free. “What are you doing?”

“I am taking you away from here. Your stepfather obviously does not know the danger Ravenstone presents. Do not fret, cousin, everything will be fine.”

“David, please — ”

Lucas opened the barn door and stepped in. “Good evening, Maitland,” he said in a bored drawl, watching the other man’s face pale. “Fancy seeing you here.”

• • •

Penelope whirled to see Lucas standing by the barn door. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and his aristocratic features held a forbidding expression. She had no idea how to convince David that Lucas posed no threat when he stood there looking downright menacing.

“Lucas!” she said brightly. “How nice of you to join us.” She took advantage of David’s momentary shock to set herself free from his grasp and walk toward her betrothed. “I see that you’ve met my cousin before.”

Lucas kept his attention on David. “Yes, we have met. Your cousin attended Oxford with me.”

David finally seemed to shake off his stupor. “Exactly what are you planning, Ravenstone? If you have a problem with the Maitlands, you come to me. Penelope knows nothing about whatever you think my family has done to yours.”

Lucas shoved away from the barn door. “I believe you’re the one who owes me an explanation, Maitland, as you’re the one who was about to spirit off my fiancée.”

“I will not let you ruin Penelope.”

“No one is spiriting me off, and no one is trying to ruin me,” she assured the men.
Gracious, they are discussing me as if I were not right here in front of them. It’s insulting.

David inclined his head and leaned on a wooden column. “Is that true, Ravenstone?”

Lucas shrugged. “You heard the lady.”

“Then why you are living here with her stepfamily, and there haven’t been any announcements in the papers of an impending marriage?”

“That’s my fault,” she admitted. “I have yet to agree to marry Lucas.”

“You have yet to
agree
?” David rounded on her. “So that is the reason for the delay. Penelope, the man is living in your house. You’d better marry him as soon as possible or you will be — ”

“Ruined,” she provided. “Yes, I know. But, David, there’s no reason to worry. Lucas and I are only taking the time to get to know each other before making such an irrevocable step.”

“You have obviously taken leave of your senses!” David roared. He turned back to Lucas. “I’m giving you one week to marry Penelope. If you haven’t done so by then, I swear I will hunt you down and make you walk down that aisle.” He marched toward her fiancé. “You will not ruin my cousin, even if I have to put a pistol to your head to ensure it.”

At the mention of a pistol, Lucas threw his head and shouted with laughter. “I am more than willing to walk down that aisle, as long as you don’t let Penelope hold the pistol.”

Now that comment was uncalled for! Why did he bring up the shooting incident now? For that matter, why were they discussing their nuptials in a barn in the dead of night?
“If you men are through discussing my future without consulting me,” she said with all the dignity she could muster, “I am going back to the manor.”

David made for the door. “I’ll return to the inn.” He sent Lucas a speaking look. “I will be back in a week’s time to see how things are progressing around here.”

“See that you do,” Lucas taunted.

There was a long, awkward silence after David left. Finally, Penelope straightened and made for the door. “Well, I am going to bed.”

“You have some explaining to do, Penelope,” Lucas said quietly.

“How much of it did you hear?”

“Not much,” he replied. “Snippets.”

“Snippets of everything, most probably,” she muttered. “Why do you always sneak up on people like that? Were you spying on me?”

He ignored that question. “Your time is running out, nymph. You’ll soon have to decide whether or not you want to marry me.”

Lucas held the barn door for her, and she stepped out onto the night. There were faint sounds of crickets, and the balmy breeze cooled her face. They walked together in silence under the stars for a few minutes, lost in their own thoughts.

“I apologize for David’s actions,” she finally said. “He doesn’t realize we have an understanding.”

“Do we have an understanding?” Lucas asked, his voice harsh. “You’ve made me dangle from your fingertips for days. You were on the verge of losing your house, and still you did not give me the answer I seek.” He put out his hands to halt her. “Does the notion of being married to
Raving
Ravenstone scare you so?”

She stopped walking. “Stop calling yourself that! Anyone who takes the time to observe you will see that you are a man possessed of ironclad self-control.”

“Why do you know so much about me, nymph?”

The question flustered her. She scrambled for a way to answer him without revealing how naive she had been of the ways of the world. “It’s as Papa told you that first night. You were a hobby of mine for a good few years, Lucas. I was trained to be a good wife, and good wives know all about their husbands.”

It seemed so long ago now when she’d written him letters, hoping against hope he would someday come for her. She knew now it wasn’t his fault that it took him so long to fetch her. Just as it wasn’t his fault she was in love with him.

Penelope let out a resigned sigh. It was the truth, and she was honest enough to admit it. In fact, she was almost convinced her scheme to use his name to fend off creditors was probably her way of trying to get through to him one last time, for it was impossible to deny her message:
See me. Notice me. Remember me.
Why else did the thought of never seeing him again scare her so?