He fetched himself another drink. “Well clear of trouble? But wasn’t there some stupid talk of you marrying my late, unlamented brother?”

She nearly choked on the brandy, but when she recovered her aplomb, she shot him what he could only describe as a sharp, cutty-eyed glance. “Dear Beech, you have been away.”

“Aye.” He distinctly remembered his mother had written about an engagement between Pease Porridge and his older brother Caius, if only because the news had given him such an awful, riveting pang that had stayed with him, lodged deep in his chest like a broken rib.

“There was talk, but it was quickly dismissed.”

And just like that, the pain was healed, and he could breathe again. “Glad to hear it.”

“Ha!” she scoffed. “You’d be the first of your family to feel so.”

Something in her tone told Marcus he was clearly not in possession of all the facts. “Enlighten me, Pease Porridge.”

She laughed, but by the time she answered, the twinkling warmth in her eyes had hardened into studied nonchalance. “Did no one write to tell you all the gory details? That I made the unforgivable mistake of daring to decline the engagement that was so thoughtfully and hastily arranged for the Duke of Warwick and me? That I refused to marry your brother, and was that instant and forevermore declared entirely unsuitable?”

The flush of satisfaction—she had refused Caius!—quickly burned itself out. Such childish triumph was beneath him with his brother cold in his grave.

Still. “Unsuitable for being smart enough to say no to my blaggard of a brother?” Such a choice only raised her up in his estimation. “Hardly.”

“Kind Beech. You have been away a very long time, haven’t you?” Penelope Pease took another deep drink, before she met his eye. “It’s like this, Beech. I’m ruined, you see. Utterly and completely ruined.”




CHAPTER 3




“THE DEVIL YOU SAY!”

Penelope could tell by the scowl on Marcus Beecham’s delightfully scruffy face that he did not believe her.

“Come now,” Beech continued in his lovely low baritone. “Don’t distress me with such nonsense.”

It was kind of him, if naive. She wouldn’t have expected that of a naval man—especially one so obviously aware of how unfair, unkind and harsh life could be. “I wish I were, Beech. I wish—” So many things. Things she couldn’t say to dear Beech, who seemed to have come back to her from the dead—certainly his family had made no mention of him for years. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here, and that’s what matters.”

“Pease Porridge.” His tone brooked no change of conversation. “What don’t I know?”

How strange—or refreshing, she was not sure which—that he didn’t know the whole of her very short, but ultimately sordid, affair with his now-deceased brother.

Lord, but they grew them fine, these Beecham boys. They were so alike physically—tall and strong-boned with piercing grey-green eyes—she might be forgiven for her imprudent infatuation. Beech was all tanned, naval robustness, even with that empty sleeve, where Caius had been a paler, more citified version of handsome.

But even a blind woman could tell that Marcus Beecham had become everything his devilishly good-looking older brother had not been—upstanding, honest and forthright. Too good for the likes of her. “All you need to know is that I am ruined, and you are meant to stay well clear of me.”

“Devil take me if I will.” His tanned face was marred only by that ferociously lovely scowl—and that interesting little scar on his forehead. “You’re the first friendly face I’ve seen since I put a foot on land, and I’ll not abandon a friend to the foul winds of rumor.”

“Kind Beech.” He would be such a man.

If only she had had been patient. If only she had been prudent. If only.

But there was no way to put spilt milk back into the pail. “Sorry, Beech, but I’m afraid I’ll soon be abandoning you. I’m being sent to the hinterlands—banished to some Backwater-By-Nowhere as companion to a maiden aunty in punishment for my sins—whilst my parents try to launch my younger sister, Susanne, off.”

“Like a ship of war, ready to go into battle?” he chuckled.

“Indeed.” Penelope found her own smile to mirror his. “In light of my scandal, they feel they must wage a campaign to find sweet Susanne a husband. And until they depart for London, I am meant to be as quiet and invisible as a mouse, which is why I made for my lonely bolt hole here this evening.”

“Lonely?”

“I beg your pardon, Beech. I meant to be alone, but that does not mean that I am not delighted to have the unexpected pleasure of your company. Lord, but it has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“A lifetime—Caius’s lifetime, at the very least.” Beech knocked back another drink of brandy. “Which is damned ironic, considering I was meant to be the expendable one.”

Such a thought was not to be borne. “Not expendable, Beech. Never that. Out of sight, perhaps, but never out of mind, surely.”

“Out of mind until they had use of me,” he scoffed. “My mother, and the lawyers and secretaries she has set nipping at my heels like a pack of rat terriers.”

“Poor Beech, to discover yourself a duke,” she teased.

“Aye, well…” One side of Beech’s lovely mouth curved up in a rueful smile. “I know there are a thousand men—nay, a hundred thousand—who should love to be standing in my well-polished boots, but…” He let the thought trail away as he absently touched the empty sleeve of his coat where it was sewn under his lapel. “I daresay I’ll be happier once I settle into my duties and escape society’s demands. At least in the country I can get a fresh breath of winter air. I was like to suffocate in that ballroom.”

To Penelope, leaving society was exile, not escape. This winter, and every one thereafter, would be spent as a companion to a relative she had never met, in some frozen corner of the countryside where she would doubtless spend the coming years being made to stop up drafts.

Such a bleak prospect was enough to prompt sarcasm. “I should recommend getting yourself ruined if you want to escape society entirely, Beech. Though I daresay a fellow as handsome as you got himself good and ruined a long time ago.”

“I beg your pardon?” His tone was incredulous enough to remind Penelope that Beech had done nothing to earn her spleen.

Yet some still-wounded piece of her tattered pride prompted her on. “But, of course, chaps aren’t accounted ruined whenever they indulge in…shall we call it ungentlemanly behavior, are they? Because my unladylike behavior—being caught alone with your brother, to be specific—is how I was ruined.”

He looked slightly stunned. “You went apart with Caius? Willingly?”

“I have to admit so, yes. Very willingly. Enthusiastically, even.” She gave Beech that much of the truth. She had been a fool for a handsome face so very much like Beech’s, and the late Duke of Warwick had been irresistible to her—all brooding, dark delight that she had learned nearly too late was the sort of self-loathing that poisons everything and everyone it touches.

She had only just missed it touching her.

Still, she had been poisoned, and everything that had made her life comfortable, everything she had recklessly taken for granted—her good name and her family’s regard and protection—was gone in an evening.

“He fooled you, then.” Beech’s scowl loomed across his brow like a thundercloud. “He always did like having his way, and he never did care who he hurt while he got it.”

Dear, clever Beech, to see so clearly, and yet, still not see all.

“Alas, Beech, I was the one who kissed him,” she admitted.

Penelope could not tell if the look in his eyes was pity or disappointment. Either way, it was more than she could stomach. “What about you? Have you never kissed anyone, Beech?”

Her question took him aback for only the briefest moment. “Indeed, I have,” he confirmed without a trace of rancor. “And enjoyed it. Immensely. Great stuff kissing, when properly done—amicably and with the right person.”

Something within her—something ridiculously, miserably hopeful—sparked to life. Properly done, indeed.

She attempted to douse the ember by taking another drink. But the brandy only seemed to loosen her tongue. “Be glad you are not a woman, Beech, else you’d be ruined for such enthusiasm.” Lord, but it felt good to say what she’d been thinking, to let the words loose upon the world. She propped her feet upon the fireplace bumper. “Utterly ruined—your very existence treated as an affront to all well-bred behavior.”

Gracious but she was airing out all sorts of her dirty linen this evening—even she could hear the bitterness in her tone. But Beech had been a loyal friend in their long-ago youth—before he had gone away to the Navy and she had been fool enough to turn her reckless fancy to kissing handsome men—and he deserved the truth. The whole truth, and not what she had been admitting out of some idiotic mixture of resentment and pride.

“So here you are, an affront, barricaded behind a chest of drawers,” Beech concluded in that steady, smooth baritone as deep and rich as the liquor. “Might I venture if that precaution is to keep you from being imposed upon by idiot chaps eager to keep you ruined?”

“Why, Beech.” Penelope felt the brandy’s warmth spread all the way to her toes. “How extraordinarily perceptive you are.”

He deflected her praise. “Human nature is the same on a ship as it is in a ballroom.”

“Is it? That brings to mind all sorts of interesting questions I should love to ask. But the problem is that it is February, and the St. Valentine’s poems have begun. I can normally endure them—the poems as well as the idiot chaps who send them—but my present circumstance seems to have brought out the absolute worst in the county’s bachelors.”

The horrible doggerel was nearly enough to make her eager for the escape of exile. Nearly—she supposed the post could still reach her in Backwater-By-Nowhere.

“St. Valentine’s Day poems?” Beech’s dark scowl scoured his forehead. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Poor Beech. You—”

“—have been away,” he finished for her. “So it seems.”

“Poor Beech,” she said again.

“I’m not sure I like being called that—it smacks of helplessness.” He put down his drink. “And I assure you, despite present appearances, I am not helpless.”

“I never meant to imply so,” she agreed. He looked too vital, too real for helplessness. “You’re only too good—too honest and open—for your own good.”

“I am flattered you should think so,” he said. “I’ve seen too much of the world to wish to be anything other than honest. There is no hiding from the truth.”

He touched his empty sleeve again in that strangely reassuring gesture, as if he needed to remind himself that his arm was indeed gone.

“Brave Beech, then.”

And she was Ruined Penelope Pease, who was now too far beyond the pale to ever marry, and though she had become inordinately skilled at ignoring the proverbial elephant in any room, she was damned tired of it.

So, she looked Beech in the eye. “Tell me what happened to your arm.”




CHAPTER 4




FOR A FRAUGHT MOMENT Penelope feared she had overstepped the mark—his eyes went still over the rim of his brandy glass.

“I lost it, of course,” he said with such offhand grace that she wondered if she were making too much of the injury. But then, his mouth curved into a wry smile. “Brava. Do you know you are the very first person I’ve encountered since my return who has had the”—he hesitated for the barest second, as if he might have been about to say something else before he settled upon—“temerity to speak of my alteration.”

She wasn’t sure whether she was meant to be chastened or affronted. But she felt affronted—for him. “It seems a rather stupid thing not to notice that where you once had two arms hanging from your rather fine shoulders, you now have but one. And I keep track of my friends.” What few she had left. Which made her rather anxious to keep the one fate had been kind enough to provide for her this evening. “I read the newspapers, and know what ships you’ve been on, when you’ve been in battles, and when you’ve been mentioned in dispatches. Especially when you were counted as grievously injured.”

“How flattering.”

“Yes, well.” Penelope felt heat suffuse her cheeks. But she wanted to be done with cynicism—Beech of all people deserved honest admiration for his sacrifice. “You were listed at the Battle of Pirano, when you were first lieutenant on Victorious. I’m afraid I lost track of you for a while, until you were posted as Commander out of the squadron at Malta.”