A Rogue by Any Other Name

Page 10

 

  It would be Tommy.

  She braced herself against the cold, ducking her face into her cloak and pulling her hood low over her brow. Well-bred ladies did not take walks in the dead of night, she knew, but all of Surrey was asleep, it was miles to the nearest neighbor, and the bitter cold matched her bitter irritation at the events of the day.

  It was not fair that a broken engagement from the distant past made for such a challenging present. One would think that eight years would have made London forget the legendary autumn of 1823, but instead, Penelope was plagued with her history. In ballrooms, the whispers remained; in ladies’ salons, the fans still fluttered like hummingbird wings, hiding the quiet conversations of which she caught snippets now and then—hushed speculation about what she’d done to lose the interest of her duke, or about why she thought herself high enough to turn down the other offers.

  It wasn’t that she thought highly of herself, of course.

  It was that she thought highly of the promise of more.

  Of a life filled with more than the husband she’d been trained to expect would be fond of her but not love her, and the child or two who she’d always assumed would love her but not know her.

  Was that too much to ask?

  Apparently.

  She marched up a snowy rise, pausing briefly on the crest of the ridge, looking down toward the blackness of the lake below, the lake that marked the edge of Needham and Bourne lands . . . or, former Bourne lands. And, as she stood, staring into the darkness, thinking on her future, she realized just how little she wanted a quiet life of pastel colors and quadrilles and tepid lemonade.

  She wanted more.

  The word whispered through her thoughts on a wave of sadness.

  More.

  More than she would have, it turned out.

  More than she ever should have dreamed.

  It wasn’t that she was unhappy with her existence. It was luxurious, really. She was well kept and well fed and wanted for very little. She had a family that was, for the most part, tolerable, and friends with whom she could spend an afternoon now and then. And, when it came right down to it, her days weren’t that much different now than they would be if she were married to Tommy.

  Why did it make her so sad to think of marrying Tommy, then?

  After all, he was kind, generous, had a modicum of good humor and a warm smile. He was not so handsome as to attract attention and not so clever as to intimidate.

  Those all seemed like suitable characteristics.

  She imagined taking his hand and allowing him to escort her to a ball, to the theatre, to dinner. She imagined dancing with him. Smiling up at him. She imagined the feel of his hand in hers.

  It was—

  It was clammy.

  There was no reason to believe that Tommy would have moist hands, of course, indeed, he likely had warm, perfectly dry hands. Penelope wiped her gloved palm on her skirts nonetheless. Weren’t husbands supposed to have strong, firm hands? Especially in fantasy?

  Why didn’t Tommy?

  He was a good friend. It wasn’t very kind of her to imagine him with clammy hands. He deserved better.

  She took a deep breath, enjoying the sting of the frigid air, closed her eyes, and tried again . . . tried her very best to imagine being Lady Thomas Alles.

  She smiled up at her husband. Lovingly.

  He smiled down at her. “Let’s make a go of it, shall we?”

  She opened her eyes.

  Drat.

  She trudged down the rise toward the icy lake.

  She would marry Tommy.

  For her own good.

  For the good of her sisters.

  Except, it didn’t seem at all good. Not really.

  Nevertheless. It was what eldest daughters of good breeding did.

  They did as they were told.

  Even if they absolutely didn’t want to.

  Even if they wanted more.

  And that was when she saw the light in the distance, in the copse of trees at the far edge of the lake.

  She stopped, squinting into the darkness, ignoring the biting wind on her cheeks. Perhaps she’d imagined it. Perhaps it had been the moon glinting off the snow.

  A reasonable possibility, if not for the falling snow blocking the moon from view.

  The light flickered again, and Penelope gasped, taking one step back, eyes going wide as it moved quickly through the trees.

  She squinted into the darkness leaning forward without moving her feet, fixated on the place where a faint yellow light flickered in the woods, as though the inch or two would make it easier to see the source of the light.

  “There’s someone . . . ” she whispered, the words trailing off in the cold silence.

  Someone was there.

  It could have been a servant, but it seemed unlikely. Needham servants had no reason to be by the lake in the dead of night, and it had been years since the last of the servants had left Falconwell. After they’d gone, the contents of the estate had been collected and the enormous stone structure had been left empty and unloved. No one had been to the house in years.

  She had to do something.

  It could be anything. A fire. A trespasser. A ghost.

  Well, likely not the latter.

  But it was quite possible that it was a trespasser—soon to be intruder—ready to lay siege to Falconwell. If it was, someone had to do something. After all, intruders simply could not be allowed to take up residence inside the estate of the Marquess of Bourne.

  If the man himself was not going to secure his estate, it seemed the task fell to Penelope. She had an equal investment in Falconwell at this point, did she not? If the manor house was taken over by pirates or brigands, that would certainly impact the value of her dowry, would it not?

  Not that she had been excited about the prospect of using her dowry.

  Nonetheless, it was a matter of principle.

  The light flickered again.

  It did not seem that there were very many brigands out there, unless they had come ill equipped with light sources.

  Come to think of it, it was unlikely that either pirates or brigands were planning to take up residence in Falconwell, what with the ocean being rather far away.

  Nevertheless.

  Someone was there.

  The question remained as to who.

  And why.

  But there was one thing of which Penelope was certain. Eldest daughters of good breeding did not inspect strange lights in the middle of the night.

  That would be decidedly too adventurous.

  It would be more.

  And that made the decision for her, really.

  She’d said she wanted more, and more had come.

  The universe worked in marvelous ways, did it not?

  She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and moved forward, excitement propelling her to a large cluster of holly bushes at the edge of the lake before she registered the stupidity of her actions.

  She was outside.

  In the middle of the night.

  In the bitter cold.

  Headed toward any number of nefarious, questionable creatures.

  And no one knew where she was.

  Suddenly, marriage to Tommy did not seem so very bad.

  Not when it was very possible that she was about to be murdered by inland pirates.

  She heard the crunch of snow nearby, and she stopped short, lifting her lantern high and peering into the darkness beyond the holly, toward the woods where she’d seen the earlier light.

  Now, she saw nothing.

  Nothing but falling snow and a shadow that could easily have been that of a rabid bear.

  “What nonsense,” she whispered to herself, the sound of her voice in the darkness a comfort. “There are no bears in Surrey. ”