Читать книгу The Historical Collection - Stephanie Laurens - Страница 20

To make her story plausible, Penny decided she might as well pick some wildflowers while she waited for the men to repair the carriage wheel.

So that was how she passed the next quarter hour: Picking wildflowers, standing in sunny places in a futile attempt to dry her frock, keeping an eye out for Hubert, and thinking about Gabriel’s tongue on her nipple.

Licking. Swirling. Sucking.

Sigh.

Other ladies—and no doubt a good many gentlemen—would view their tangled, passionate interlude as a mistake. Penny? Never. She had not an inkling of regret.

She felt awake. Alive.

And rather proud of herself, really.

She’d never dreamed she would feel such raw, carnal sensations. Her friends had marriages where love and desire were intertwined—two strands in a tightly braided cord. But Penny had always believed it couldn’t be that way for her. The chance had been stolen from her long ago, when she was too young to even understand what she’d lost.

But today …

She thought of the way he’d paused when she touched his hand. When she hadn’t known whether she wished to drag his touch higher, or push it away. But he hadn’t made any judgments or pressed to satisfy his own desire—he’d merely waited for her to decide. It was a revelation.

After packing up the picnic things—the ants wanted her sandwiches, even if Gabriel didn’t—she cast a final look at the riverbank, scanning the reeds for any sign of a sleek brown otter.

Nothing.

If Hubert had wanted to return to her, she supposed he would have done so. Perhaps Gabriel was right. He was pursuing the life he was born to have. A life that didn’t include Penny.

Farewell, Hubert. I wish you many happy years.

As she turned back toward the carriage, her bare feet squelched in her boots. She’d retrieved her stockings, but there seemed no point in putting them on when her wet skirts would immediately soak them through.

Penny was no wheelwright, but as she returned to the coach, even she could see that the carriage wheel had not yet been repaired. Her first hint was that it was lying on the side of the road.

“It’s the bit that connects it to the axle that’s broken.” Gabriel swiped at his brow with his forearm. “This could take hours to mend.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“The two of us will walk ahead to the village,” he said. “We’ll wait on the carriage at the inn.”

“Why can’t we wait here?”

“I can’t take you home looking like that.” He swept a glance down her muddied, grass-stained frock. “We both need to wash.”

“I can bathe at home.”

“And you could do with a lie-down.”

“If you’re so concerned about my fatigue, why do you want me to walk two miles to the inn?”

“Because. I’m. Famished.”

Penny blinked at him.

“There. Are you happy? I couldn’t choke down enough of your miserable sandwiches. I need to eat something. Something that once had a face.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a horrid way of putting it.”

“You asked. I tried to spare your feelings this time. Give me credit for that much.”

“Go on by yourself, then. I can wait here.”

“I’m not leaving you stranded on the side of the road.”

“I wouldn’t be alone. I’d be with the coachman and smith.”

“You’re not as important to them as you are to me. I’m not leaving you here.” He picked up the birdcage and walked backward, in the direction of the village. “Just like you’re not letting me walk away with your deuced parrot.”

Impossible man.

The afternoon had grown warmer. Delilah, being a tropical bird, seemed to thrive in the heat. Penny did not. She was weary and thirsty, and growing testier by the moment. “I thought the village was only a mile or two.”

“It can’t be much farther now. Probably just after that bend in the road.”

“You said that two bends in the road ago. I thought the coach would have caught us by now. Perhaps they can’t mend it.”

“All the more reason to find the village. If worse comes to worst and the carriage can’t be mended, we can find other transportation. I can hire a—” He stopped in the road. “Fuck.”

His blasphemy sent Delilah into a titter. “Fancy a fuck, love? Ooh! Ooh! Yes! Pretty girl.”

“My coat,” he said. “I left it in the carriage.”

Penny paused and squinted at the cloudless sky and the cheerfully scorching sun. “I can’t imagine you’ll need it.”

“I don’t need the coat. I need the money that’s in it.” He set the birdcage on the ground and rubbed his face with both hands, cursing into them.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know. But one way or another, I’ll have you back in London by nightfall. You needn’t worry you’ll be ruined.”

“I’m not worried I’ll be ruined. I can’t be ruined.”

He lowered his voice, though there was no one but Delilah to hear. “If this is about earlier, by the river … There’s quite a gulf between what we did and the act of copulation. You haven’t lost your virtue.”

“For heaven’s sake, I understand how matters work between a man and a woman.” She wiped sweat from her brow. “I can’t be ruined because that would suggest I have prospects to ruin in the first place. I’m still unmarried, despite being an earl’s daughter, despite having a considerable dowry. No suitors are beating down my door.”

“There is no way in hell that your unmarried state is due to a lack of interest.”

“Please, enlighten me as to the reason.”

“That’s simple. You’ve been hiding yourself, and you’re good at it. A master of camouflage.”

She laughed. “Camouflage?”

“That’s the only possible explanation. You’ve made a frock from the same silk covering the drawing room walls, trimmed it with cat hair and feathers. Then when gentlemen visit, you stand still and blend in.”

“You have a surprisingly vivid imagination.”

“What I have is experience.” He stopped in the road and turned to face her. “I’ve built a fortune by spotting things that are undervalued, dusting them off, and selling them at the proper price. I know a hidden treasure when I see one.”

“Oh.”

Looking away, he pushed his hand through his hair. “Not this again.”

“Not what again?”

“Every time I speak three words, you look as though you’re going to swoon into my arms.”

“I do not,” Penny objected, knowing very well that she probably did.

“You sigh like a fool, blush like a beet. Your eyes are the worst of it. They turn into these … these pools. Glassy blue pools with man-eating sharks beneath the surface.”

“I hope you’re not planning a career in poetry.”

“For the good of us both, you have to cease gazing at me.”

“Then you have to cease wooing me.”

“Wooing you.” He grimaced, as if the words were a pickled lemon on his tongue. “I don’t woo.”

“You do too woo.” She lowered her voice to match his gruff timbre. “‘I need you,’ ‘I’m not letting you go.’ A woman can’t help but go soft inside. Those sorts of declarations are unbearably romantic.”

“You know very well I don’t mean them that way.”

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “I suppose if I didn’t already, I would now.”

“Exactly. So don’t go swooning on me.”

“I assure you, you needn’t worry about that. If I did swoon, it would be from the heat.”

Pounding hoofbeats behind them announced the prospect of salvation. Penny turned, hoping to see the carriage.

It wasn’t Gabriel’s carriage, but it was the next best thing. A stagecoach, passing their way. Penny darted to the center of the road, waving her arms until the driver pulled his team to a stop.

“You’re a guardian angel,” Penny said. “Can we ride to the village?”

The driver looked them over warily, taking in their bedraggled attire. “In that state? You’d have to ride up top with the trunks.”

“We can do that.” Penny extended her hand to the driver. “Will you help me up?”

The driver didn’t take her hand. “Not so hasty. I need the fare in advance.”

“How much?” Gabriel asked.

“Let’s see.” The driver squinted. “Fare for the two of you, plus tuppence for the baggage—”

“Oh, this isn’t baggage.” Penny lifted the cage for him to see. “She’s a parrot.”

“Then that’s fare for two of you, plus thruppence for the parrot … A shilling, all told.”

Penny reached for her reticule.

She didn’t have her reticule.

Her reticule was back in the carriage. Along with Gabriel’s coat.

“Deuce it,” Gabriel said dramatically. “If only I had a shilling.”

She sighed.

“I was certain I had one here somewhere.” He made a show of patting all his pockets. “Oh, that’s right. Someone tossed it away.”

“Please,” Penny begged the driver. “Take pity on us. We’ve had an accident. It’s only to the next village.”

“Sorry, miss.” The driver flicked the reins, setting the horses in motion. “No fare, no ride.”

In silence, Penny and Gabriel watched the stagecoach travel down the road, until it rounded a curve and disappeared.

On they walked. There was simply nothing else to do.

“I always keep a shilling in my pocket,” Gabriel muttered after a few minutes of angry silence. “Always. Do you know why I always keep a shilling in my pocket? Because everything I am today, everything I’ve earned—it all started there. I was once worth a single shilling. Now I’m worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“Shall I produce the bank ledgers to prove it?”

“Ledgers are meaningless. I have a sum placed on me, you know. A dowry of forty thousand. And yet if I were to lose my virtue, some would deem me worthless.”

“You could never be worthless.”

“I could certainly drive down the price of your house. You never miss a chance to remind me.”

He shook his head. “That’s not the point.”

“Here is the point.” She stepped into his path, forcing him to meet her eyes. Man-eating sharks and all. “No one can be reduced to numbers in a ledger, or a stack of banknotes, or a single silver coin. We are humans, with souls and hearts and passion and love. Every last one of us is priceless. Even you.”

She set her frustration aside and took his face in her hands.

He needed to hear this. Everyone needed to hear it, including her. Perhaps that was why she spoke the words so often, to so many creatures. Simply to hear them echo back.

“Gabriel Duke. You are priceless.”