Nev knew just how they must look-damp, muddy, disheveled, lost to all sense of propriety. Too young and ramshackle to be the Earl and Countess of Bedlow. He felt as if what they had been doing was branded across their faces. He remembered what his mother had said when they were merely kissing in the breakfast room. He straightened. She wasn’t going to say anything to Penelope. Not now.
But he should have known she wouldn’t, not in front of Sir Jasper. She just gave a brittle laugh and said in a reasonable facsimile of indulgent motherhood, “Go on, get out of those wet things before you catch cold! I’ll order up more tea.”
They escaped gratefully up the stairs. “Newlyweds,” Sir Jasper said with a chuckle.
Sir Jasper expected to be kept waiting for a good long while. It had been quite obvious what the new earl and his common little bride had been doing during the storm.
He could hardly pretend to be astonished. The late Lord Bedlow had had the same red-blooded rakish streak-likable enough, but without his wife to keep him in check, he could easily have become unfit for polite society. The son had always had a taste for low company too; until a week ago Sir Jasper wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him without the steward’s boy at his shoulder. And in town, he’d taken his mistress everywhere. No sense of propriety.
In retrospect, it was predictable that the new earl would prefer whoring himself out to a Cit to accepting Sir Jasper’s honorable offer for his sister. And he hadn’t even the wits to make a decent settlement: Sir Jasper bribed at least one copy-clerk in every office with which he did business, and since the late Lord Bedlow-and by extension, the new one-used Sir Jasper’s man of business, it had been simple enough to get a copy of the new marriage settlements and find out that most of the money was tied up until the new Lady Bedlow had produced an heir. It might seem sneaking, almost beneath him, but it had been Sir Jasper’s duty. He needed to know how matters stood in his district-particularly as his future wife’s family was involved.
Sir Jasper smiled at Lady Louisa, who was tugging absentmindedly on a long red-brown curl as she gazed out the window. There was still plenty of time to get her brother’s consent to their union, and plenty of other ways to try if he proved intractable.
He was surprised when the young couple came back after a mere twenty minutes, damp but otherwise presentable. The wife must be a businesslike little thing. She looked it now, cold and straight as a rail, as if she hadn’t been giggling and spreading her legs half an hour before.
After he’d pretended to be delighted to meet her, Sir Jasper said, “I rode over to ask if there was any news of the poachers, but we ought not to bore the ladies-”
The countess stiffened even further. So that offended her, did it? She probably wasn’t content until she’d stuck her freckled little nose into everything.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bedlow said. “I have no news.”
“Have you been making inquiries among your people?”
“No.” Bedlow sounded every bit as happy-go-lucky and negligent as his father. If only he proved as easy to influence! “When I hire a new steward, I’m sure he will do so.”
Sir Jasper resigned himself to once again doing all the work of keeping the peace in the district. “I heard you had fired a number of your gamekeepers as well.”
“They were an unconscionable expense,” Bedlow said. “They didn’t seem to be solving the problem. And I dislike the idea of men shooting at each other in my woods.”
Sir Jasper frowned. “You would prefer them to wander about with their guns, unhindered, making free with your game?”
Bedlow flushed, looking like a whipped schoolboy.
“Pardon me if I speak warmly, but it seems to me we must make these folk understand what is due a gentleman. Besides,” Sir Jasper added, chuckling, “I know you are not a great sportsman, but Loweston has some of the thickest coveys of great bustards in the neighborhood.”
Louisa, loyal girl, flew to her brother’s defense. “Nate does not care for that! I do not like men wandering about with guns either, but they poach because they are hungry!”
Sir Jasper couldn’t help smiling. She was so young and eager. “Perhaps that was once true,” he explained. “An honest man may, in desperate straits, steal a bird or two to feed his children. But when a man paints his face black, takes up a gun, and joins with his drinking companions in a desperate gang, he is merely seeking to make easy money at his betters’ expense.”
“They form into gangs because they know if they are captured you will transport them,” Lady Louisa said. She really was pretty when she was angry. He suspected she was passionate too; it would be a nice change from his first wife. Mary had been a dear girl, but she had never much enjoyed their conjugal intimacy.
“Louisa,” the young earl said. He needn’t have worried. Sir Jasper had had his eye on Louisa for too long to be discouraged by a few wrongheaded notions.
“I only wish they were as afraid of me as you claim,” he told her ruefully.
“You must admit, Sir Jasper, that corn is ruinously high,” Bedlow said, putting a restraining hand on his sister’s arm. “I spoke to the baker, and-”
“It is difficult, I know.” Sir Jasper hoped his impatience didn’t show in his voice. “But we all have to make sacrifices for the security of our great nation. Dependence on foreign corn would be far more ruinous than the present state of affairs.”
The young countess looked surprised. “Why?”
“If we allowed the importation of cheap foreign corn to bring down prices, not only would we be turning our backs on English farmers, but in another war the French would have only to stop the grain supply to place us in the most difficult position.”
“I’ve read that the real rivals in corn production are British companies in the colonies,” Louisa said. “Not so patriotic after all, really.”
Sir Jasper knew where he had heard that argument before. “My dear, I think you have been reading the radical newspapers,” he said with some amusement.
Louisa tugged at her earlobe. She had always done that when she was embarrassed, ever since she was a child.
“Aaron Smith and some of the other men tell me,” Bedlow said, “that our own corn cannot be sold advantageously because of the poor condition of the roads. I was hoping we might work with you to better them. God knows there are men who’d be glad of the work, and Jeb Tyler has some experience in that line-”
“Helen Spratt’s husband too,” the Cit said. “What was his name? Harry? He did something with roads on the Continent, during the War.”
They knew the laborers’ names already. Sir Jasper was startled. The late Lord Bedlow had never learned any of their names. “They exaggerate, I assure you. The idle wretches merely wish to be paid. Road crews are a breeding ground for sedition.”
“You don’t really think-” The girl cut herself off.
“You were not in Norfolk during the riots in ’16,” he reminded the couple. “I assure you, the men of this district showed themselves to be desperate characters, ready to murder us all in our beds if they could.”
The dowager countess’s gaze flicked to her children. “You think there is danger of a recurrence?”
“I would like to think there is not,” Sir Jasper said. “I have no wish to alarm you, madam. I am perhaps overcautious, but I was in France in ’89 and I remember all too well the atrocities that were committed.”
The dowager’s eyes widened. “But you couldn’t have been more than a boy!”
“I was seven, madam. I watched from an upstairs window as an old man was dragged from his carriage and hanged from a lamppost.” He could still feel the summer heat on his skin, the stink of the dirty river and unwashed humanity in his nostrils, the shouts of the mob echoing in his ears. Even the women had been ugly and furious, shrieking for blood like animals, their breasts dried up and sagging under their rags. The shadow of the jerking corpse had never entirely lifted from his face.
Did he catch a flash of sympathy in Louisa’s eyes? He would never know what she would have said, because the little Cit exclaimed, “Oh, how dreadful for you!”
Sir Jasper shook his head, and everything faded but the heat. And that was only July in the country, the bright sun and the clean, earthy smell of grass and horses. “I beg your pardon, my lady. I see I have upset you. I promise you we should have warning of any disturbance in time for you to remove to London.”
That did not seem to comfort her or Louisa; he was sorry he had spoken of it.
The moment he was gone, Lady Bedlow turned to her daughter. “Louisa, you were intolerably rude to Sir Jasper. He will think you pert.”
“I do not care what he thinks me, so long as he stops ogling my bosom. Does he think I don’t notice?”
“I hate it when they do that,” Penelope commiserated. Nev jerked his eyes away from her neckline guiltily. As if she could feel it, she glanced at him and smiled, blushing.
“It is trying, I agree,” Lady Bedlow said, “but it is a trial we women must bear. You could do a deal worse, and even if you do not marry him, his notice will do you a world of good in the neighborhood. Nev, tell her!”
Three pairs of eyes turned on Nev. This was part of responsibility, he told himself. “I’m not saying you should marry the fellow, Louisa, but it wouldn’t hurt you to be civil. He’s our nearest neighbor, and it won’t do to start a feud.”
Louisa stared at him.
In the old days, he would have laughed and told her he would shoot anyone who so much as glanced at her bosom, and they both knew it. But he had not known how important Sir Jasper was to the district then.
Nev and Penelope were off to London, feeling like boys cutting lecture. At least Nev did-it was that same mixture of guilt and conspiratorial triumph. They had left Davies and Penelope’s maid at Loweston; it was just the two of them. Nev drove, and Penelope sat next to him in the box. It was sunny and bright and for a few days there would be no tenants or home farm or paupers.
He gave Bruenor and Gareth their head, faster and faster until the coach was flying down the road. Penelope laughed and took off her bonnet, throwing her head back, and Nev was distracted when he took a turn. They almost hit a cart.
At once Nev was swamped with guilt. Penelope could have been hurt. He slowed the carriage and told himself that her disappointed countenance just meant he was corrupting her.
Penelope sat behind her father’s desk with Nev, interviewing would-be stewards. The first candidate was an idiot. The second seemed competent but thought “Thou Shalt Not Poach” was one of the Commandments.
The third was a tall, dark-haired young man who looked vaguely familiar. He entered the room, said, “Good morning,” and stopped abruptly, turning a dull red. Penelope was beginning to really worry about where she had seen him before when she realized he was looking at Nev, not her. She glanced at her husband, and her eyes widened. His face was bloodless.
“Percy,” he said, in a strangled voice. Everything slotted into place, and Penelope remembered where she had seen the young man before: next to Nev on the night they had met and again that night at Vauxhall.
“I’m sorry. I must have had the wrong address.” Percy bowed and turned to leave.
Penelope watched Nev’s face change. “Wait!” she cried out impulsively.
Percy turned slowly, pasting an expression of polite interest on his flushed face. “Yes?”
Penelope felt her ears turning red. It was what she deserved for meddling, but she forged ahead. “Mr. Garrett, isn’t it? I’m Lady Bedlow.” She came around the desk and held out her hand, so that he would be obliged to take it and it would be a few moments more before he could leave the room.
“Honored.” His bow was graceful enough-and shallow to the point of rudeness. Penelope wasn’t offended. She could feel his hand shaking under hers.
“Won’t you sit down?”
“I don’t think I ought.” He glanced at Nev.
Penelope didn’t dare look. “Please.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at,” Percy said in a tightly controlled voice, “but-”
“Penelope, let him go.” Nev sounded almost desperate.
There was no point pretending to be genteel any longer. She said sharply to Percy, “I’m not playing at anything. I’m interviewing an applicant for the position of steward at Loweston. I’m prepared to pay five hundred pounds per annum-in advance. Can you walk away from an offer like that without at least sitting down?” She knew he couldn’t. It was far too much money. It was what her father had always deplored-financial recklessness.
“Penelope-”
“Loweston can’t afford five hundred pounds per annum to a steward,” Percy said. “Not with the lesser estates sold off and a jointure to pay.”
Well, it was good to know the money wouldn’t go entirely to waste. Percy knew what he was about. “It’s my father’s money.”
Percy flashed her a look of intense dislike. “Then, no. I can’t walk away from an offer like that.” He pulled out a chair and sat down.
She wanted to protest that this wasn’t her, that she wasn’t the coarse, flashy Cit he thought her. But who would that fool? Of course she was.
“Penelope, don’t.” Nev’s voice was like a lash.
Penelope finally turned to look at him. He looked angry and betrayed, and his eyes kept straying to Percy. “Come and talk to me in the hall,” she said softly.
“No, I will not come and talk to you in the hall! He doesn’t want the position, and we don’t have the money, and I-let him go!”
Percy half rose from his chair, and Penelope remembered that crate from Paris and Edward’s angry letter. Percy was angry too. No doubt poor Nev had cast him aside as clumsily and cruelly as Penelope had Edward.
She did not always understand Nev; she knew that. But in his expression now, with blinding clarity, she recognized her own emotions as she had stared at the wreckage of her closest friendship.
No. Nev was not going to lose this, and there was no time-no time for gentleness or cajoling or anything that would have saved Nev’s pride. “I have the money,” she said. “And I don’t intend to see Loweston ruined for your sensibilities, not after I pulled you out of the River Tick.”
His face went blank with shock, and inwardly she shrank back-but there was no way out of this but forward. Her father had told her once that if you bullied a man into a deal, you’d better get the papers signed straightaway: give him time to think it over and he’d weasel out somehow.
He had also said that you should never expect to deal with that man again. Penelope didn’t think about that. “Do you think he can’t do it?”
“That’s not the point!”
“What else is the point? Do you think he can’t do it?”
“He can do it.”
“Do you think he’ll cheat us?” Penelope pressed him.
Percy sucked in his breath. She saw with surprise that he was not sure of Nev’s answer.
Nev heard it too. “No. He’d never cheat us.”
Penelope wanted to put her arms around him, but he would have pushed her away. “Then we have to hire him. It’s the responsible thing to do.”
Nev and Percy locked gazes. “Fine,” Nev said.
“When can I get my money?” Percy asked in a strained voice, as if he couldn’t wait to have this over with.
“If you stop by here tomorrow, my father will give you a bank draft,” Penelope said. “How soon can you be at Loweston?”
“Within a few days. Where do you want me to stay?”
“You’ll stay in the steward’s room, of course,” she said, pretending there had never been any question. Nev said nothing.
Percy got up and walked out; Nev abruptly started forward and followed him into the hall.
“Are you all right?” she heard him say in a low tone. “I know you never wanted to be a steward. If you need help-” His concern was clear through the stiffness, and Penelope was violently, nauseatingly jealous.
“You’re my employer, but that doesn’t give you the right to pry into my affairs,” Percy said.
“I’m not your employer. She is.”
Percy spoke so low she almost didn’t hear it. “Indeed. You traded us in for that?”
Penelope sat at her father’s desk, where she had once been so comfortable, and tried not to cry.
They still weren’t speaking when the Browns picked them up for the promised evening at the theater. By tacit agreement, they pretended cordiality in front of her parents, but Penelope’s laugh was brittle and her fingers were stiff on his arm. Nev had not realized how friendly, how almost comfortable he and Penelope had become together until now, when it was gone.
He thought she would have apologized given an opening, but he did not want to hear it. He did not understand what had happened that afternoon. He did not want to.
Of course it had been a shock to see Percy, a miserable shock, but oddly, it hadn’t been that which had lingered with him throughout the day. Rather, it had been the harshness of Penelope’s voice and the cold, insulting logic of her words.
He and Penelope didn’t know each other well; they had had to struggle to get along together. But they had been patient with each other. She had been patient with him-with his mother’s insults and his poor head for business and his ruined estate. And in that room, at that moment, it had seemed as if all at once she had lost patience, and all that had been left was someone who resented and despised him. I don’t intend to see Loweston ruined for your sensibilities, not after I pulled you out of the River Tick. Nev did not know how he would live for the rest of his life if Penelope thought of him like that.
He was barely listening to the play when a very familiar voice echoed through the theater. He looked at Rosalind, and sure enough, the actress was Amy.
His first anxious thought was whether the Browns would recognize her. They had seen her with him at Vauxhall-at least Penelope had. Would they say anything? Of course a lady or a gentleman wouldn’t, but the Browns might. Would Penelope think he had arranged this?
Nev was so tired of worrying. He looked at Amy, standing in the footlights reciting in her clear voice, and thought, A year ago I would have been here with Percy and Thirkell. Now there would be no celebration with Amy and his friends after the show. Instead, there would be more awkward small talk with his mother- and father-in-law, and then he and Penelope would go back to their hotel room and not speak to each other. Tomorrow he would go back to Loweston and not speak to Percy and watch people who depended on him starve by inches, and Penelope would watch it too and hate him. He stared at Amy, and was seized with such a violent longing for his old friends, his old life, that it almost choked him.
Penelope could barely believe it. She ought to have known, she ought to have prevented this somehow-but how could she have? She hadn’t even known the girl’s name (Amy Wray, her program told her). She looked at Nev. He was staring at Miss Wray with an expression of hopeless yearning. Penelope’s stomach twisted viciously.
She darted a glance at her parents; she could not bear it if they saw her humiliation. But her mother was absorbed in the play, and her father had settled in for a nap. Penelope was fiercely relieved that she hadn’t pointed out Nev and his mistress that night in Vauxhall. That night had seemed so far away the day before; now it was apparent that nothing had changed.
Every minute of the play was a torment. Penelope longed for it to end, and yet she could not bear to think that it would end, and she and Nev would go back to their room and not speak and not make love, and Nev would be silently longing for Miss Wray. Then, as if Hell felt it necessary to devise yet another torment for her, Miss Wray opened her mouth and a pure, lovely soprano came forth. Penelope thought she would cry. Penelope had told Nev she had got over wanting to be a soprano; it had been a lie.
After a moment, Penelope admitted that Miss Wray’s voice was not well trained, nor powerful enough to fill the house. The girl had an unfortunate tendency to embellish the melody, and she did it without real taste. In fact, Penelope noted with mean satisfaction, as the song went on, the actress’s voice lost body and she began to pause awkwardly to draw breath.
Penelope started forward-this was more than poor singing. The actress’s voice trilled high on the last line-and cut off abruptly. Miss Wray fell to the ground in a dead faint.
Nev shot to his feet, leaning over the balcony and craning his head out to try to see closer. Fortunately, people all over the theater were doing the same thing. Penelope hoped her mother had not heard him cry “Amy!” in tones of shock and fear as he rose.
“Can you see anything?” She was sorry for how cold she sounded-the result of trying too hard not to sound jealous.
He struggled gamely for nonchalance. “They’re carrying her offstage. I don’t think she’s woken up.”
“Then it should be a while before the performance starts again. Do you think you might fetch me some lemonade?”
His gaze shot to hers. Penelope nodded once. Gratitude flooded Nev’s face. She pressed her lips together. She would not cry. She blinked, and he was gone.
Mrs. Brown turned to her. “Well? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter.” Penelope tried to sound surprised. Onstage, someone was announcing an intermission.
“What are you and he quarreling about? You’ve barely spoken a word to each other all evening, and just now you took the first opportunity to send him away. Lord knows he looked happy enough to take it.”
“How do you know I didn’t just want lemonade?” Thank God her mother had no idea Nev had rushed off to his mistress’s side.
“Because I’m your mother. You can’t fake a smile and expect me to think everything’s roses, even if that works on that boy you married. Now tell me what’s wrong.”
Penelope could not talk about Nev and Miss Wray, and she did not want to talk about Mr. Garrett, so she began to tell her mother about Loweston. When she had got to the end of it all, had tried to explain about the Poor Authority and enclosures and Agnes Cusher and What Happened In ’16, she watched her mother, hoping that Mrs. Brown could tell her what to do.
“Oh, Penelope.” Her mother looked aghast. “I wish we could do something. I’m sure your father and I could pay to start a school for those poor children, if you’d like.”
Penelope stared. It seemed like such a tiny answer to such an enormous problem. “Mama, they cannot afford to send their children to school. They need the money the children earn.”
“But surely they could not be so selfish as to value a few pence a day over their children’s welfare!”
Penelope was not even sure anymore that a school would be in the children’s best interests. Would education bring them more than learning young how to bind wheat into sheaves or find the best grass seed? Their people needed jobs, not a school. But Penelope knew without saying it that her mother would never believe or understand that. Mrs. Brown’s greatest regret was that she had never been to school.
Being a landowner, Penelope realized, was different from being rich in the city. True, her mother felt herself in some way responsible for Mr. Brown’s employees; she was well-known at the brewery for her soft heart and willingness to help if one of the workers had family trouble or an expensive illness. But in London, Mrs. Brown could found a free day at the British Museum and trust that someone else would found a pauper’s kitchen, that if Mr. Brown did not give someone a job, they could find one elsewhere-and if they couldn’t, it was not her fault.
At Loweston, if a man who had lived there all his life could not find work, it was because Nev had not hired him. If a child starved it was because Nev and Penelope had not given her food. At Loweston, they were answerable for all those people.
Her mother didn’t understand, and Penelope would have to work things out on her own. She was a grown-up now.
Then Nev walked back in, and Penelope forgot all about Loweston. He looked pale and unhappy, but he had remembered to bring her a lemonade.
She wanted to ask after Miss Wray but was afraid she could not do it with sufficient nonchalance to fool her mother. Fortunately, it was the obvious question, so Mrs. Brown asked it for her. “Did you hear anything about that poor girl? How is she? Is she going to come back on?”
“She said-I heard that she told the manager she is fine.” Nev didn’t look at Penelope. “It was just the heat of the limelights, and she hadn’t eaten dinner, is the story that’s going about. They should recommence the play in a few minutes.”
Mrs. Brown clucked in concern. “Poor girl. She ought to take better care of herself. She looks familiar-where have I seen her before?”
Nev blinked, looking cornered and guilty. Penelope knew he was thinking the same thing she was-had her mother seen Miss Wray with Nev, that evening in Vauxhall?
“She was in that production of Twelfth Night we went to, Mama, you remember,” Penelope said.
“Oh, yes, of course. I do hope I’m not entering my dotage. It’s funny, though-I remember thinking at the time that I’d seen her somewhere before.”
The curtain went up and the play continued, but Penelope did not enjoy a moment of it. She could do nothing but watch Miss Wray for signs of a relapse and speculate as if by compulsion on what the actress had said to Nev, and what he had said to her.
They were silent on the carriage ride to the hotel, and though Nev wished it were a more comfortable silence he was glad of it.
He was sure that Amy was not fine. She hadn’t wanted him backstage, that much had been plain. He thought the only reason he had not been barred the door was because it had never occurred to her he might turn up. “I’m fine, Nev, truly.” She had frowned at herself in the mirror, repairing her thick stage makeup. “I didn’t eat dinner, that’s all, and the lights were hot. Please, go back to your father-in-law’s box. You wouldn’t want Lady Bedlow to think you’re breaking your promise.”
Despite his worry, the unfairness of that smote him. “Penelope said I might come and see how you did. And you shouldn’t have fainted just from missing dinner.”
“That was very generous of Penelope,” Amy had said viciously. “If you must know, I have a hangover. I was up late last night with my new protector.”
It wasn’t like Amy to drink the night before a performance. Nev had been opening his mouth to say so when some rakehell had burst in, a man Nev recognized as one of Percy’s pigeons in piquet. Amy had turned to him with a warm, reassuring smile-“Lord Bedlow was just leaving, Jack. I promise you, I’m quite all right”-and Nev had had no choice but to go.
She had talked to Jack just as she had always talked to Nev; he saw now that it was false. She had not felt warm or reassuring. He realized he had not seen Amy out of temper above once or twice, in the whole year he had kept her. She had never let him see anything she thought he might find unattractive. Probably she had not dared, for fear he would tire of her and stop paying her rent. And now something was wrong, very wrong, and he had not the slightest idea what it could be.
Instead of staying and shaking her and insisting on the truth, he’d had to go back to the Browns’ box and pretend that everything was fine, because to do anything else would have been scandalous and awkward, and humiliating for Penelope, and besides they needed to borrow money from the Browns.
He was still worrying as they pulled up at the hotel and went silently up the stairs.
He turned around to put down his gloves and his hat, and when he turned back Penelope was standing with her back to him. She was hugging herself, and her shoulders were shaking.
He knew what he would see even before he walked around to look at her face. She was crying-silent little heaves that she was trying desperately to control. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her eyes were screwed shut, but tears were leaking down her face nevertheless.
It shocked Nev deeply. He knew Penelope disliked displays of strong emotion, and it was so evident that she hated doing it that she must be miserable indeed to succumb.
“Penelope, what’s the matter?” He didn’t know if he should go to her. She hated that he was seeing her like this, he was sure of it.
Her eyes were dark and wet when she opened them. “I’m so sorry, Nev.” Her voice was rough with tears. “I’m all right-just tired. I tried not to-I didn’t want you to have to deal with a hysterical wife on top of everything.”
He thought of Amy saying she was all right and him not knowing how to tell if she were lying, and panic shot through him. “Penelope, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’ll be fine, truly.” Her tears were slowing now. “I’m just being foolish.” She sniffled and began searching her reticule for a handkerchief.
He gave her his, and thought about what to say while she was blowing her nose.
She spoke before he could, however. “Nev, I’m so sorry about this morning. I don’t know what came over me.”
Nev found that he wasn’t angry about it anymore. He didn’t understand what had happened, but it wasn’t important just then. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.” She reached up and began taking her hair down, as if she were just tired of the whole evening and wanted it to be over. He reached out idly and pulled out a pin, and she jerked away. “Don’t.”
Nev was appalled. She didn’t want him to touch her? “Penelope?”
She turned her face away. “I’m sorry. Just-not tonight. I’ll feel better tomorrow, but-not tonight. Just help me get my things off and let’s go to sleep. Please, Nev.”
He wanted to insist on an explanation, but he was terrified that she would say it was nothing to do with him. “Of course. Only-” He did not know how to say what he wanted to. “You know I want you to be happy, don’t you? You know that if you needed me to do anything, I would?”
She gave him a tired smile and nodded. “Thank you, Nev.”
So he changed into his night things while she unpinned her hair and took off her jewelry and her slippers and stockings. He unbuttoned her dress and unlaced her corset and didn’t let his hands stray even an inch, as much as he wanted to. They got into bed, and Penelope blew out the candle, and then she turned away from him and pulled the covers up to her chin.
Nev lay there in the dark. He didn’t wish Penelope were gone, and that he had his old life back. He just wished he knew why she was unhappy and that he could fix it.
It took Penelope a long time to fall asleep. She hated how unreasonable she was being. She hated that she had hurt Nev’s feelings-because they had been hurt, when she had asked him not to touch her. She wanted him to touch her. But she had found she couldn’t bear it, not then, not after he had been talking to Miss Wray, not when he was thinking about his former mistress.
It would have been the height of melodrama for Penelope to suppose herself the forsaken lover; she was still his wife, after all, and she had no reason to suppose he had been madly in love with Miss Wray. But that, somehow, was what stung; that probably Miss Wray had meant to Nev exactly what Penelope did. Nev had desired Miss Wray, and liked her. He was kind and did not want anyone to be unhappy. That was very likely all.
It would have been irrational to expect him to feel more for her after a fortnight of marriage, and Penelope knew it. It was irrational to ever expect him to feel more; she was hardly the sort to inspire a grand passion in anyone. She was ordinary-common. She had known it from the start. She thought grand passions were ridiculous, anyway. She hated that she wanted him to feel more, that she could not help wanting to be special.
And yet when he touched her, it felt so-affectionate. It felt like it meant something. And tonight she could not bear that it didn’t, and there was nothing to be done about it.