The Romantic (6 page)

Dante took his leave. Julian began to follow.

“Not yet, you don’t,” Laclere said, stopping him.

Laclere still sat at the desk, his gaze on a pen that he handled absently. Julian waited, counting on their long friendship to spare him an interrogation that would get too pointed.

“I did not miss the look Glasbury gave you when he entered,” Laclere said.

“Nor did I.”

“She is no longer in Naples, is she?”

Julian did not answer.

Laclere leaned back in his chair. “Years ago you told me that you got him to release Pen because he had bigger secrets than most men. Secrets that, I assume, he would not want exposed if he or she sought a divorce.”

“Did I say that? How indiscreet of me.”

“It appears the years have dulled his appreciation of my sister’s consideration for his reputation.”

“It would seem that
something
has.”

“Yet you were silent while he was here. You did not point out that she holds those aces.”

“I try not to threaten men when there are witnesses present.”

“I trust that you will find a private way to remind him of the cost if the world knows whatever it is that Pen has on him.”

“I will attend to it very soon.”

Julian began to leave, so he could attend to it immediately.

Laclere’s voice caught him at the door. “If you should have communication with my sister, please tell her that I am always here for her. We all are. She is not to worry that we care a fig for whatever Glasbury threatens or tries. Let her know that the earl really would need an army to take her from us.”

“I am sure that she knows all that.”

Laclere looked at him. A pause stretched into an eloquent silence. Julian hoped nothing passing between them would be put into words.

“Julian, if for some reason my sister cannot or will not turn to us for aid, I trust that you will do all that you can for her.”

“I always have, Vergil.”

Mr. Hampton’s house was proving a very comfortable sanctuary. Penelope did not mind her seclusion at all. Mrs. Tuttle saw to her comfort in the morning, then appeared every hour or so to inquire if anything was needed. Other than a few books from the library, Pen asked for nothing.

Her trunks had arrived during the night, and she poked through the small one for her letters and papers. Sitting by the window that looked down on a nice garden, she studied a long document that had arrived in Naples before she left.

It was to be a pamphlet criticizing the legal position of married women. She and several other ladies had contributed to this work during the last year. Now, with the recent passage of the bill ending slavery in the colonies, the time was ripe for their treatise to go to print. The country and Parliament were in a mood of reform. It was time to emancipate the last human chattel on British lands.

Married women.

She carefully read this most recent draft, penning in a few changes. They would wait until the new year before publishing it. They wanted the country to digest the recent bill before raising this issue. She had intended to return in late fall and see to its final preparation. Now she could ensure its completion more quickly.

Unless she had to flee the country, of course. She hoped that Mr. Hampton was correct that she would not need to. She wanted very much to see this project through. Her name as an author would give it weight. It was also the only worthwhile thing she had done with her life.

A knock on her door in the afternoon distracted her from her work. She tucked the document away and opened the door to find Mr. Hampton.

“Is there news?” she asked.

“Yes. May I come in? I apologize, but we can hardly go down to the library or drawing room for a conversation.”

No, they could not. She bid him enter, and they sat in two green-patterned chairs near the window.

He appeared indifferent to the location of this conversation, but she could not entirely ignore that he was in her bedchamber, with the door closed.

His back was to the bed itself but she could see it plainly behind him, bright and happy with its jonquil drapery. She had slept in that bed last night, and now this man was here. It was a silly reaction to have, but she suddenly remembered the sensation of his hand on hers last night. The sparkling vitality that she had felt when he kissed her through her glove returned and danced all through her.

“The news?” she prompted, forcing herself to look only at him and not see that bed. Except there it was, just looming in the background, provoking some alarming curiosities about Mr. Hampton and how he made love, or whether he ever did at all.

If he did, with whom? And if he did not, what a shame, because she could not deny that there was something exciting about his dark good looks and mysterious silence and—

“Glasbury called on Laclere,” he said, interrupting her sudden speculation on what he looked like without his coats and shirt. “He also arranged to have Dante and the Dowager Baroness Mardenford present. He demanded to know which of them had you as a guest. He dared to try and have Laclere’s house searched for you.”

“Vergil must have been ready to call him out on that. And poor Charlotte. It was very ignoble of him to try and browbeat her.”

“I think that Lady Mardenford is well equipped to deal
with the earl, madame. He was fortunate that she did not browbeat
him,
most literally, with her parasol.”

She giggled at the image of that. “See, I was correct. They did not have to lie for me, because they do not know I am in England.”

“That is true. They did not have to lie.”

“Did you?”

“It did not come to that.”

“But it will, now that the earl knows I am here. Eventually he will ask you where to find me.”

“As your solicitor, I am under no obligation to answer. Quite the opposite.”

His tone made her heart heavy. He looked very serious. Too serious. And thoughtful.

The bed disappeared, as did her foolish, wanton musings. “He will find me. If he was so bold as to try and search my brother’s house, he will not give up easily. Even if I hide forever in this room, he will eventually learn I am here.”

“I called on him to remind him of a few things he seems to have forgotten. He either was not at home or would not receive me. However, I will have that conversation with him very soon. That will end his pursuit.”

“It will not make a difference. He has forgotten nothing. He merely does not worry about exposure anymore.”

She abruptly got up and turned to the window. She scanned the space below, even though her mind knew that a private garden would not hold any danger for her.

Memories tried to force themselves into her mind. Ugly, old ones that she had learned long ago to deny. Explicit scenes flickered that showed the slide into degradation she had lived the first years of her marriage. She had
been so ignorant that she had not even known it was not normal, even if it was shocking.

Then the earl went too far, and she realized the hell she had bargained for. It had not been the pleasure that the earl took in perversity that had gotten her free, however. When she went to Mr. Hampton for advice, he had asked questions that revealed bigger secrets, more damning than anything that Glasbury did with a wife.

Mr. Hampton had been so enigmatic at that meeting. She had turned to him because he was an old friend, and because he knew the law, and because if she had confided in her brothers one of them might have killed Anthony. Mr. Hampton had been all she had hoped, steady and sober and unemotional, but she had not missed the fire in his eyes that spoke his disgust of what he heard.

Fortunately, he had understood the significance of her evidence in ways she had not. He had used that, ruthlessly she suspected, to negotiate with the earl. He had gotten her free.

Now she felt that freedom slipping away. The earl would get her back, and this time there would be no escape. She would be at his mercy, and the anger of the years would drive him this time.

She began shaking inside. The trembles affected her soul and heart and eventually her body. They weakened her so much that her composure broke.

She turned away so that Mr. Hampton would not see her tears. She had given the poor man enough trouble without expecting him to deal with that, too. She fought to calm the panic that threatened to send her raving.

He was suddenly standing right behind her. She could
feel his warmth. His proximity distracted her enough that her emotions did not entirely overwhelm her.

His hands came to rest on her shoulders. That should have astonished her, but instead she savored their strength and the way they steadied her.

He turned her to face him. Barely touching her face, but touching it all the same, he tilted her head up so he looked in her eyes. “I said that I would not permit the earl to force your return. I meant that, dear lady.”

The expression in his face mesmerized her. As he looked down and made his promise, she saw the youth she had known years ago. The boy she had played with was talking to the girl she had been. Both of those people had been lost to the world when they matured, as had their easy friendship. Now, for a brief respite, it was all back again, and the reasons for her trust were rawly alive between them.

The realization moved her so much that she could not contain her emotion. She closed her eyes but the tears flowed anyway, snaking down her cheeks.

Did he reach for her, or did she move to him? Suddenly she was in his comforting embrace. She welcomed the intimacy. They were old friends, after all.

It felt wonderful to be held. His arms reassured her as much as his words had.

“The earl has now warned off your family. I expect him to soon turn his attention to me. You may not be safe here. I think that it would be best if you left London,” he said, as she nestled against him and drank in his support and warmth. “I have a property on the Essex coast and want to take you there early tomorrow. It is isolated, and I have to warn you that it is also fairly rustic. For a day or
two you will have to be alone there, until I can make other arrangements. Do you think that you can bear that, and the lack of servants or comforts?”

She nodded. She could bear anything if it meant not living as though she sensed the earl behind her every moment.

She found her senses, and grew starkly conscious of their touching bodies. Feeling herself flush, she stepped back and out of his arms.

He did not look discomfitted at all, but then Mr. Hampton never did. “I must go to my chambers for a few hours now. I will wake you before dawn so that we can be off. Is that agreeable to you, madame?”

“Yes, Mr. Hampton. That is agreeable.”

chapter
5

R
ustic
described the cottage very well. Heading up a low rise in the land, Julian aimed the curricle for a small, isolated stone house. Nothing but the sky hung behind it, and only some outbuildings and the sound of the surf surrounded it.

They had left Russell Square silently in the dark hours of morning, long before Julian’s household had risen. Even Batkin and Mrs. Tuttle were not told she was leaving.

“Do you own this house?” she asked, as he handed her down from the curricle.

“I bought it some years ago when I first established myself.”

“Did you seek a retreat from your life in the city and the social obligations forced on you?”

“I only thought of it as having a home on the coast. I have always enjoyed the sea.”

“Maybe that is in your blood. After all, one of your uncles was an officer in the navy, and you even thought of a career in it yourself. Do you ever regret not doing that?”

“I do not believe in regrets over the past. They are very pointless. The few that I do harbor have nothing to do with how I employ myself.”

The house was simple but appealing. A sitting room and a small, densely stocked library faced the sea, and they entered through a kitchen garden and door. A small dining room and one bedchamber made up the rest of the ground floor.

While Julian went back out to carry in some provisions he had brought, she strolled through rooms with exposed beamed ceilings and whitewashed plastered walls. The furnishings were simple and spare, but not crude.

“It is very charming,” she called to him when she heard his step in the kitchen. “Do you never have servants here?”

“No.”

“Not even Batkin?”

“Not even Batkin.”

He would have silence then. Only the sounds of the sea and the winds would be his company. The house had not been closed, so he did not come here only in the summer. It would not surprise her to learn that he deliberately traveled here when a storm was brewing so he could experience nature at its most primitive.

She retraced her steps to the sitting room where Mr. Hampton was building a fire. As she watched him, she considered why she felt she knew the attraction of this house to him.

It came from the past. She remembered one summer when he was visiting Laclere Park and a terrific storm blew in. She had found him in the library right at the window, watching it, almost entranced. He had abruptly
left her there; then, she had seen him walking outside, right into the turbulence as if the excitement of the fury had drawn him into itself.