“Beech, you can’t be serious.” She gaped at him. “And anyway, tomorrow it’s going to snow.” She turned to the darkened window. “See, it has already begun to fall.”

Now that he had made up his mind, he would allow no obstacles to block his path. “Snow or no snow, I mean what I say. I always mean what I say.”

But she was unsure—of him, surely, and probably of herself. “Beech. We dare not.”

“Why not?” He set himself to convince her. “Where is the girl who never refused a dare? Where is my old friend, the girl who went first, jumping off the old bridge into the Avon that summer afternoon?”

“That girl was thirteen and a monstrous hoyden.”

“Nothing about you was monstrous. You were magnificent—daring and bold and everything I admired.”

“That was a long time ago.” Her low voice was full of emotion he could not quite fathom. “We aren’t children now. We can’t jump off bridges or go rushing out into the snow.”

“Why not? What are you afraid of?”

“Afraid it will make everything worse,” she whispered.

“How? I thought you were about to be banished to the hinterlands? How much worse could it be?”

That put the wind back in her sails—the color rose in her cheeks. “You have a point.”

“Don’t go to the maiden auntie,” he pled. “Come away with me into the dark and snow and make me happy—as happy as I promise to make you. Please.” He wanted it so badly he ached.

He ached for her affection. He ached for her simple kind touch.

So, to convince her he meant every word, he kissed her. But what began in persuasion, soon became something more, something hungrier and more assertive. A hunger they shared—her lips, her lovely, plush, bow-shaped lips—pressed into his again and again as if she could not get enough of kissing him.

Marcus had never thought of himself as an impulsive man—his youthful brashness had been thoroughly trained out of him by the Royal Navy. But the feel of her delicately boned fingers combing through his beard fired more than his imagination—he felt the heat and promise of her touch like a brand.

So, he angled her mouth for a deeper kiss.

She met him without hesitation. Her tongue stroked and licked at him, kindling the fire between them with each blissful touch. She folded herself into his embrace and everything within him, every nerve, every fiber of his being, was reaching out to her with heat and urgency. He left her lips to kiss his way down her neck, to taste the sweet slide of her skin while she angled her head in response, granting him tacit access while her hands raked through his old-fashioned queue, pulling away the carefully wrapped ribbon.

“Lord, Beech. Even your hair smells divine.”

She smelled of velvet and winter irises, chilly and fresh, and he wanted to gather her in like a bouquet.

But it was she who gathered him, her hands at his coat, parting the buttons and pushing it wide across his chest. Her palm sliding through the narrow slit at the throat of his shirt beneath his stock to lie flat against his skin. Her mouth at his nape, putting her lips and teeth to the sensitive tendon at the side of his neck until he was bowing his head to let her have her way with him.

Until he felt her explore the line of his shoulder, and curve down around his shoulder to his upper arm. Or rather what was left of it.

“No.” His voice was a fog of strangled desperation—and the relief when she ceased her exploration was so profound it nearly unmanned him. Nearly. Because there was some noise above, at the top of the stair that started them into flight. “Come.”

They plummeted toward the bottom of the stair, hand in hand in a breathless race, like the children they once had been.

“Left here,” she directed, navigating the narrow turnings. “And then left again for the door that leads to the stable path.”

In the darkness of the passage Marcus paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Ready?” If she went with him now, she would be doing more than crossing a threshold.

She drew in a deep breath before she nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

He pushed open the door to the cold night air and held fast to her hand as they flew across the bitterly cold cobbled courtyard of the stable block. The night wind lashed at them, sending Pease Porridge’s velvet skirts and plain petticoats whipping against her legs, making him regret he had not thought to retrieve his heavy sea cloak from the footmen—she was like to perish in so insubstantial a gown.

But there were his carriage and coachmen in the yard, already putting the blanketed horses back into harness, mindful that he had instructed them that he would be no longer than an hour and a half at the ball.

Yet what an astonishingly productive, life-changing hour and a half it had been—he had barricaded himself in a room, made a public spectacle of himself dancing a waltz, throttled and threatened a toad of a man, asked a lass to marry him, and was attempting to carry off an elopement.

Devil take him, but if he wasn’t in love, he didn’t know what he was.

“There are fur rugs inside.” He held the coach door for his already shivering duchess-to-be. “Get yourself under the fur.”

She clambered in, but still he held her hand.

“Penelope.” Marcus said her name aloud for the first time because he wanted her to know he was serious, and because he had been wanting to say it, longing even, to taste her name like tart sloe wine upon his tongue. “You may trust that I will take care of you, and I will always do everything in my power to do what’s right.”

“Of course you will,” she answered. “Just as I will take care of you.”

“Is that a yes?”

Her smile warmed him far more than any raging bonfire could. And just like that, the cobbled courtyard seemed to move beneath his feet, like the deck of a ship rising and falling upon the sea. He was upended—as dizzy as the young midshipman he had once been. And twice as exhilarated.

“Another successful cutting out expedition, Commander?” Penelope held his hand fast. As if she would never let go.

“Aye.” This was what Marcus loved and had lived for—the excitement of action and command. This was what he missed. All he had needed was Penelope Pease by his side—excitement and adventure seemed to follow her wherever she went. “Worried?”

She gifted him with a rueful smile. “I’d be a fool not to be.”

“And you, my darling girl, are no fool.” He gathered her close to his good side.

“Hardly, Beech—I seem to be a fool for you.” And then to prove it, she kissed him.

A kiss of such sweet promise and soft passion that the world fell away again, and he was nothing but aching pleasure. Nothing of hurt or pain or loss. Nothing that was not hers and hers alone.

Devil take him, but she was fine.




CHAPTER 8




PENELOPE PUT EVERY FEELING—EVERY thrill and every worry—into that kiss. Every inch of gratitude and wonder and exhilaration, until her body tingled, and she felt giddy and strange and afraid.

Because if running off with Beech wasn’t the most reckless, exhilarating thing she had ever done—and she had done any number reckless, exhilarating things in her life—she didn’t know what might be. Because this was not the Beech she remembered.

It was Caius Beecham who had been all rash, mad impulse, not his younger brother. Beech had always looked before he leaped, always wanted to make sure the water was deep enough before he took any plunge. He had been a cheerful, fun companion and a thoughtful, wry lad, but the years away had added something more—an experience that put him at a soaring distance. A sort of gravitas that set him well apart from the reckless rascals and heedless swells of her recent experience. A surety, a self-command that showed he truly did not care what others might think of him.

How steadfast. How ruinous.

Marrying Beech was the answer to all her problems, of course—she would be a bloody duchess. But she had been offered a duke before.

The real temptation wasn’t the dukedom. No, the real temptation was Beech himself. Even with only one arm, he was twice the man his brother had ever been, and three times the man of two-faced swells like Lord Maynard.

Lord, what must Beech have been like before he was injured? He had been sent away to sea before she had been grown-up enough to ever have the pleasure of so much as a country dance with him.

If only he had not been sent away.

If only she had not been lured in by the dark fascination of passion. If only.

Cold caution of the sort she had never felt that night she had closeted herself with his brother in the Warwick Court library gripped her in its icy fist now. That night, the flirtation with Caius had been a game—one that she was sure she could win. But she knew better now.

Knew that she did not want to play any sort of game with Marcus Beecham.

And, so, she asked, “Why, Beech? Tell me why.”

“Why we should marry?” He smiled at her as if he had ten reasons to hand. “Other than the obvious?”

Penelope felt heat blossom under her skin from the top of her forehead all the way down to the edge of her bodice. And lower. “Be serious, Beech.”

His eyes softened at the corners. “I know what is right and true and valuable in this world, my dear Pease Porridge,” he said in that low, sure, captainly way of his. “And I know my duty.”

Duty. It was as if the heel of his large leather sea boot had stepped directly upon her heart, so sharp and painful was her disappointment. It was as it had been before with Caius—Beech would marry her because he felt he ought to. Not because he wanted to.

“Beech.” Penelope could not entirely swallow down the bitter brew of her dismay. “I thank you for your candor, but I am quite firmly decided against being anyone’s duty.”

“Ah.” Her words seemed to strike him with force—his head tipped back—before he leaned closer. So close she could see the glint of his grey-green eyes, dark and piercing, regarding her with an intent that was as thrilling as it was mesmerizing. “Had you rather be my compulsion?”

Something darker and too needy for caution stirred within—a volatile mixture of pride and unadulterated want. “Lord, yes.”

Their lips seemed to meet with an elemental force, gravitating together as if both ends of the Earth had simultaneously tipped them into each other’s arms.

Yet once met, the second touch of his lips was less urgent, far more tentative. He slid his hand along the line of her jaw carefully, in the way a man raised a too-full glass to his lips—slowly so as not to spill. As if this were more than a mere tasting of flesh. As if he were offering his trust—his very self.

“Beech,” she said, because there was nothing else she could think to say, nothing that would communicate the riotous mixture of want and apology that made her feel hot and needy and unworthy all at the same time.

But his lips were smooth and taut above the soft brush of his beard, and he tasted of brandy—just wicked enough to entice. She wanted to drink him in, gulp him down, until she was intoxicated by the possibilities he promised.

She fisted her hands in his lapels, pulling him closer. Holding on to him the way a drowning woman clings to a lifeline.

He met her desperation with a merciful lack of reserve—slanting his mouth across hers and kissing her more deeply, searching with his lips and tongue, pushing his hand into the twisted arrangement of her hair, scattering the pins to the upholstery.

His thumb fanned along her cheek, and he kissed her with heat and abandon, drawing her out, thawing the chill of the winter night. Warming her in a way that nothing else ever had. Everything else faded, until there was nothing but the longing for the feel of his mouth on hers, and the pleasure so strong and sharp it nearly took her breath away.

Oh, Lord, how she loved kissing. Loved the give and take. Loved the sensual abandon. This was her true ruination—this hoydenish, hungry neediness. This unbecoming, unladylike affinity for passion.

Oh, how he kissed.

The rough texture of his whiskers rasped against her skin as he arched her head back to kiss down the curve of her throat. His teeth slid down her neck to worry and nip at the hollow at the base of her throat.

And all she wanted was for him to go lower. “Lord, Beech. Please.”

“Devil take me, Penelope,” he breathed against her skin.

The devil had clearly already taken them both. Because she did not care that they were in a freezing carriage, eloping to only Beech knew where. She did not care that she had abandoned everything she held dear—what was left of her good name and every last shred of her tattered reputation—to go away with him.