In for a Penny (4 page)

“Mama,” Penelope snapped, “I am not sweet on Lord Bedlow.”

“Then why are you blushing like a bonfire? I never saw you look like that after half an hour in Edward’s company.”

Penelope raised a hand to her flaming cheeks. “I’m merely a touch discomposed.”

“He didn’t do anything he oughtn’t, did he?”

“Of course not,” Penelope said reflexively. And then, because she hated lying to her mother, “He did kiss me.”

Mrs. Brown was silent a moment. “And did you like it?”

“Mama!”

Mrs. Brown folded her arms. “Don’t you ‘Mama’ me. You’re asking me to let my baby girl marry a man she’s spoken to twice, who’s only after her money, and I am not going to even
think
about it if you didn’t like the way he kissed you.”

“Mama!” But her mother was implacably silent. “I liked it,” she said very, very quietly.

Mrs. Brown nodded.

“And—and he isn’t
only
after my money.” Penelope hoped it was the truth. “That is—he was
mainly
after it, and he wouldn’t have offered for me without it, of course, but—he said he wouldn’t have asked me if he didn’t think we could rub along tolerably well together. And he likes Arne.”

Mrs. Brown’s face softened—a little. “That composer you’re always on about? What a coincidence.” She sighed. “He did seem a nice boy.” After a few more moments’ frowning thought, she said, heavily, “I’ll speak to your father. We shan’t be too hasty, but there’s no harm in talking to the boy, I suppose.”

Nev’s heart was pounding as he and his father’s man of business waited on the Browns’ steps at five to eleven the following morning. He was sure, perfectly sure, that Miss Brown would have thought it all over and realized what a poor bargain she was getting.

He did not feel much reassured when they were ushered into Mr. Brown’s study and found the brewer and a dapper young clerk in earnest consultation over a ledger so heavy it made Nev’s eyes ache just looking at it.

The face Mr. Brown turned on him was not particularly friendly. “Well, you’ve ensnared my daughter, so I suppose there’s nothing I can do about that.” He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “If I refused the dowry you’d skip off readily enough, but the girl says to me, ‘Didn’t you teach me that once you’ve shaken hands on a deal, there’s no turning back?’ And bless me if I didn’t. Has your man here got an accounting of your debts?”

Nev breathed an inward sigh of relief. Miss Brown had kept her word. “Yes, sir, and the mortgage papers too.”

Mr. Brown looked them over with an expert eye. “Well, the list’s honest, at least,” he said with some surprise.

Nev stiffened. “Certainly. Wait a moment—how the deuce did you know that?”

For the first time, Mr. Brown’s eyes twinkled a bit. “I asked a few questions. Do you think a man gets to be as rich as I am without being able to do a little thing like investigate a fellow’s debts?”

Nev had never considered the matter. “I suppose not, sir.”

Mr. Brown was looking at the total again. “Do you know, considering how much it’s going to cost me to dig you out of this hole you’ve got yourself into, I wonder if I ought not to ask you to change your name.”

“Er—change my name, sir?”

Mr. Brown nodded. “When my friend Lewis married his
daughter to an impoverished nob like yourself, he made the fellow change his name to Lewis. And
he
was a dook.” Mr. Brown looked at his clerk. “The Browns of Loweston. It has a nice ring, don’t it?”

Nev stared.

“Indeed, sir. But I believe the fad these days is for hyphenation.” The clerk turned to Nev, eyes glowing with enthusiasm. “Which do you like better, my lord? Brown-Ambrey or Ambrey-Brown? I should think Ambrey-Brown, myself. Very euphonious.”

Nev tried to imagine his mother’s face if he told her he was changing his name to Ambrey-Brown.

Mr. Brown and his clerk burst out laughing. “Naw, I’m only teasing you, m’boy.” Mr. Brown clapped Nev on the back, almost knocking him over. “Imagine an earl named Brown!” The brewer laughed harder. The clerk grinned at Nev.

Nev knew a good prank when he saw one. He grinned good-naturedly back. “My congratulations. I was utterly taken in.” He laughed. “My mother would have had
spasms
.” He laughed harder.

Mr. Brown looked approving.

At the end of it he was ushered in to see Miss Brown again. She did not look as if she had slept well, but her expression was composed as she invited him to sit. “Have you and my father arranged everything to your satisfaction?”

“Indeed,” he said. “I have copies of the settlements right here. They aren’t signed yet—he said he and your mother want to get to know me a little better before they make their decision, and I’m invited to dinner this evening—”

“Yes, I know. Can I see them?”

He didn’t know how to refuse her, so he handed them over. To his surprise, she sat down at the little writing desk and began reading them methodically.

She was only on the third page when she gave a little cry of distress. “Oh, you have let Papa tie up over half the money in my jointure! I’m sure you could have talked him down to seventy-five thousand if you’d tried.”

He frowned at her. “It seemed fair. The money is his, after all.”

“Yes, but that is what you are marrying me for, and it seems a deal too bad if you must go to all the trouble and not get what you need!” She looked daggers at the contract. “And see here, if I die without heirs that whole portion reverts to my parents! Oh, I
knew
I should have insisted on being there when you drew these up!”

Unexpectedly, Nev felt a surge of protectiveness, mingled unpleasantly with guilt. Miss Brown deserved better than to be married for her money. “Morbid little thing, ain’t you? But I’ve no intention of letting you die without heirs.” He favored her with a lascivious smile. Nev’s lascivious smile had been known to attract Cyprians from as far as fifty feet away.

Miss Brown smiled back distractedly. “How on earth did your seat come to be mortgaged? Aren’t those usually tied up in a settlement of some sort?”

“Entails have to be renewed every other generation.” Damn it to Hell, she was sure to think him the worst sort of fool. “And they can be broken. When I turned twenty-one, my father told me he wanted to sell a tract of land we had no need for, to fund an annuity for me until I inherited and a portion for my younger sister. We would break the old entail and draw up a new one that didn’t include that land.” He looked away. “As you have collected, I’m not much good with documents.”

Miss Brown’s jaw dropped. “He told you that you were merely breaking the entail to sell a small piece of land—and then he mortgaged the family seat without your knowledge?”

“I know it sounds fantastic. I know I ought to have read
the new entail more closely. But there were pages and pages, with the most dashed tiny printing you ever saw, and I—”
I was in a hurry to meet my friends, get roaring drunk, and gamble away some money
, he didn’t say. Her pitying expression made him feel faintly ill.

She straightened her shoulders. “No matter. In the future you shall have me to read over such things for you.”

That odd combination of protectiveness and guilt rose in him again. “I really will try to make you happy,” he said, not knowing what else he could offer her.

To his surprise, she flushed. “Actually, I—I made a list. Of—of terms. I thought some things were best agreed on right away, while you can still change your mind.”

Fat chance of me changing my mind
, he thought with a flash of resentment. He needed that money. But—“you made a
list
?”

She flushed harder. “It’s a habit of mine. So that I am sure not to forget things.”

“All right,” he said blankly.

She pulled a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer, with a column of neat writing down the side. She frowned at it. Her blush was working its way under the neckline of her gown. Nev wondered how far it extended. He pictured it sweeping over the curve of her breasts and darkening her nipples…

He struggled to focus on her voice.

“I suppose there is but one,” she was saying. “I am very fond of my parents, my lord. I could not be mistress in a home in which they were not welcome. I don’t mean you must entertain them with your friends, but just that they might visit me, and perhaps have dinner with us every so often when we dine
en famille
.” Miss Brown met his gaze squarely. “I won’t have my mother hurt. I know she drops her h’s, but if she should ever get so much as a hint that you despise her for it—”

Nev’s eyes widened. “Gad no! A petty rogue I should be, to take her money and condescend to her. I can’t answer for my family, I’m afraid. My mother can be—difficult.”

She bit her lip. “I understand that one cannot choose one’s relations or always control their behavior as one would like. But I must have, at least, your word that you will do your best to make her civil.”

“You have it.” He was relieved to have got off so lightly. Then it dawned on him that there was a whole column of writing on that sheet. “Wait a moment! That can’t be all you’ve got there.”

She glanced at him, and with a jerky movement crumpled the paper. “Never mind. It was very late when I wrote this. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Now Nev was dying of curiosity. “Oh, no you don’t.” He made a grab for the paper. She snatched it back quick enough, but didn’t recognize the gesture for the feint it was. His other arm snaked around her and seized the fist that held the scrap of paper. Unfortunately, this brought her breasts in contact with his waistcoat, distracting him for the crucial moment it took her to spin round and try for escape. Nev narrowed his eyes and lunged.

A few seconds later she was pinned to his chest, his arm across her arms and stomach, and he was uncurling each clenched finger from around the note.

“Let me go!” she said in a low voice. That was a good sign. She didn’t want to call the house down upon him. Yes, that was good, because Nev didn’t want to let go of her. She was warm and small and fit beautifully against him, and besides, he had a very good view of her neckline from this angle. And she was breathing hard. Mmm. Unable to resist, he let his grip on her body relax and slid a hand up to cup her breast.

She drew in a sharp, startled breath and let go of the note. Catching it, Nev bent to kiss her neck. If he had calculated
right, she would tilt her head back and arch her body, and that would press her breast more firmly against his palm…

But Nev had calculated wrong, as usual. She jerked away from him as if he had the plague. “Of all the low-down, dirty tricks! Give it back!”

Nev sighed. “I don’t think I shall.” He straightened out the sheet of paper. She made one last attempt to snatch it back, but he held it over his head, and she was apparently too dignified—or too afraid for her virtue—to tussle for it.

Retreating to the window seat, she sat with her face averted. “You needn’t consider them binding. I told you I had reconsidered.” Her mouth was set in a cold little line.

For a moment he almost gave in. Then he realized what she was doing. “Oh, no. No feminine wiles. Trying to make me feel guilty, are you? Well, I won’t stand for it.” He held the paper in the light and read it.
1. No leaving me in the country while he gallivants about town.
His stomach clenched. That had been one of his father’s favorite tricks, leaving his wife and children in the country while he went up to town for a few days on business—and came back two weeks later. But he and Miss Brown would both be rusticating for a while. From what his solicitor had told him, Loweston was a wreck. He didn’t think Miss Brown would find that comforting.

2. Do not overspend our income.
“I assure you, I’m just as eager as you are to stay out of debt.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I know, my lord, but I am also aware you have been used to every luxury. Old habits are hard to break.”

In twenty-three years, he could not once remember refusing a dare—old habits were, indeed, hard to break. He straightened. “I can do it!”

A hint of a smile curved her lips. “If you say so.”

She would see. He could be a miser if he wished to. And yet…he was not sure how. He had always been a spendthrift;
he had only ever pursued amusements that cost money.

3. Don’t be ashamed of my parents.
They’d discussed that.
4. Don’t be ashamed of me.
He frowned. “Suspicious little thing, aren’t you? Do you imagine I’ll pretend I don’t know you at parties and make you walk ten paces behind me in the street?”

She paled a little, and he was startled to see he was near the truth. “I hardly know what I imagined, my lord. I asked you not to read that, but if my doubts were unworthy of you, I apologize.”

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about. You’re hardly vulgar.”

Her lips tightened. “They say what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh.”

Nev wished he knew who “they” were, so that he could wring the vipers’ necks. He didn’t know how to convince her. “The behavior of a gentleman’s wife reflects on him,” he tried at last. “Her honor is his honor. I cannot be ashamed of you without being ashamed of myself.”

“Have you never been ashamed of yourself, my lord?”

That drew him up short. Her list made it plain what she thought of him—that he was a rake and a ne’er-do-well with no more self-restraint or capacity for self-reflection than a newborn infant, who would spend her money on himself and despise her. Why would she think anything else? “Of course I have. Knowing what you do of me, can you doubt it?”

“The mere fact of wrongdoing does not in itself produce repentance. After all, you have done no more than a hundred young men of your rank—though with rather more imagination, which naturally produced more notoriety.”

He did not know what compelled him to continue, when it could hardly help his case. “You yourself saw me carousing the night of my own father’s death! Every feeling revolts—”

She started, and took a step toward him. “But you didn’t know he was dead!”

Nev’s father wouldn’t be dead for hours yet when Nev had seen Miss Brown, but somehow that wasn’t the point. “No. But I would have known sooner if I had been home. My little sister knew. She saw them bring in his shattered body.”