Chapter 6
6
Penny tried to turn quietly in her bed, but the boards creaked.
‘Penny!’ Molly thumped a pillow over her head. ‘It’s the middle of the night. Please, let a girl rest!’
‘Sorry, Molly.’ Penny whispered, knowing they both needed to be up in a few short hours. But sleep eluded her. She couldn’t stop thinking about Lord Renquist’s meeting with the duchess. It had to mean something. She just couldn’t puzzle out what. When Lady Winterbourne left, the marquess had no visible wounds. There was no blood on the carpet, nor any dead bodies littering the hall, so she must not have found him guilty… yet. But surely the duchess felt he might be responsible for something nefarious, or she wouldn’t have dropped in for an unannounced spot of whiskey. Unless the two of them were conspiring together.
That makes no sense. I know the duchess is working to destroy this group of men.
Slipping quietly out of bed, Penny grabbed her wrapper from the peg and tiptoed to the door, wincing as it creaked open. While she’d been lying to Renquist the night before about wanting a glass of warm milk to help her sleep, perhaps it would help her tonight. As she crept down the servants’ hall, feeling her way in the darkness, a haunting melody drifted through the walls.
Fear coursed through Penny as she stood still as death, holding her breath.
Ghosts are playing the piano.
She shook her head. She was being nonsensical. Ghosts clanked in the hallway with chains or scratched on the window. The angry ones banged pots and pans around. Sometimes, they moaned. They didn’t play pianos in the middle of the night.
Without thought or reason, her feet followed the echoing notes. She pushed open the discreet servants’ door to the foyer, padded through the entry with its marble floors and panelled walls, and snuck down the main hallway until she stood outside the library. The door was open and buttery light from a lamp illuminated a small circle around the piano. Lord Renquist sat at the stool, bent over the ivory keys as he coaxed a resonant song from the instrument. He was still dressed in his breeches, but his coat, waistcoat and cravat were gone. His shirt was untucked, sleeves rolled past his elbows. The marquess had thick forearms dusted in golden hair that caught the lamplight. Penny was mesmerised by the shift and flex of muscles in those arms as his fingers danced over the keys.
Lord William Renquist plays the piano?
Monsters didn’t create such beautifully desolate refrains. As she drew closer, his music wrapped around her like a web, holding her steady when she should turn and flee. His eyes were closed, his head cocked as if he were listening to something just beyond the vibration of the piano strings. She felt like a thief, stealing something infinitely precious. Watching someone as powerful and predatory as the Marquess of Stoneway in such a raw, unguarded moment.
She should retreat into the shadows, the places designated for the servants. Hidden and inconsequential. But she didn’t want to do that. Music was a luxury rarely enjoyed by the likes of Penny Smith, and she wasn’t about to squander this unexpected gift.
Besides, Lord Renquist didn’t know she was listening. She was causing no harm by lingering, watching, sinking into the ebbs and flows of his melancholy melody. And she could disappear back into the darkness in a heartbeat if she feared detection. But first, she would let the reverberations of sound spin and spiral around her, infiltrating the dark spaces in her heart and transporting her soul to a place of mist and shadows.
She took a tentative step closer, seduced by the beauty and pain etched on the marquess’ face. He was lost in the music, caught in yellow light, and she ached to join him there. But even in the madness of the moment, she knew it was impossible. They existed in different worlds. Separate planes that only intersected for moments of utility.
Without warning, the music stopped. Lord Renquist turned. He was a man accustomed to darkness, and he saw her there hovering on the edge where the light didn’t quite reach. Penny forgot to scuttle away. His shirt was unbuttoned, and she was caught by the fascinating ridges of his chest peeking out from the V of silk, so vastly different from her own anatomy. Her breath came fast and harsh, her skin stretched hot and tight. She could feel the blood coursing through her veins, pulsing with the race of her heartbeat. Trapped in his sharp gaze, she didn’t know whether she wanted to escape or draw closer.
‘Miss Smith.’ His low voice, so gravelled it could have been a growl, created a low hum in her belly.
Belatedly, she took a halting step backward. But it was too late. Faster than she could track, he stood and strode toward her, catching her wrist, halting her retreat. Heat from his body seeped through the thin flannel of her wrapper and threadbare cotton nightdress. She should have pulled away, but she bowed closer, seeking his warmth, longing for something undefined.
‘I heard the music.’ It was a stupid, obvious thing to say. Penny’s brain stalled. The intensity of his stare shattered her wits.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ His breath fanned across her cheeks as he leaned closer and inhaled deeply. ‘God, you smell sweet.’
Her lungs seized right along with her heart. ‘I, umm…’ What does one say to that? ‘It’s just soap.’ Ah. Brilliant.
The blade of his nose tracked up her cheek before he buried it in her hair.
This shouldn’t be happening.
The Marquess of Stoneway, a man she suspected of hideous crimes, her enemy, her employer, was breathing her in like smoke from a cheroot. She should be horrified. But she wasn’t. She was enthralled.
Penny’s senses flamed to life. Sparklers crackled over her skin, bands of steel wrapped around her lungs, her nipples contracted into almost painfully sensitive buds, and her fingers tingled.
What is happening to me?
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ He said again. This time, the words rumbled against her scalp.
‘I couldn’t leave.’ The truth spilled from her lips unbidden. ‘I heard the music and saw you playing, and I couldn’t leave.’ But why she couldn’t leave remained a mystery. Whatever this was between them – the gossamer strands wrapping them together like spider threads, the magnetic force pulling her closer when she should have walked away – made no sense. He was an evil man, intent on harming the innocent.
Unless I’m wrong.
It was a staggering thought. One she couldn’t afford to entertain. It would destroy her purpose for being in his house, her hopes for freeing her mother, her dislike of the beautiful man. Besides, even if she was wrong about his crimes – and that was a big if – he was still a marquess.
And I am still just his maid.
This was impossibly forbidden. She was so far beneath him as to be insignificant. But the inevitability of the moment resonated in her bones like the ebb and flow of his song, the rise of the moon, the wind rustling in the newly budded cherry trees.
‘I play when I’m restless. When I can’t sleep. When my mind is troubled.’ He released her wrist, and she felt his fingers tracing up her arm, wrapping around the back of her neck, tangling in her curls, holding her steady.
‘What plagues your mind so late at night, my lord?’ She shouldn’t have asked. What would she do with his answer? And why did she wish to offer comfort to her enemy? Only, he didn’t seem like an enemy. He seemed lost, lonely, and achingly vulnerable.
‘Liam. My name is Liam.’ He brushed his lips against her temple, so soft, it could have been the wings of a moth. ‘Will you say it? Let me hear it from your lips?’
Liam .
She tasted his name on her tongue like honey drizzled with melting butter, but she wouldn’t dare repeat it. She shook her head but still leaned closer. Their bodies almost touched. Tracing her hand along the edge of his snow-white shirt, she wasn’t bold enough to test the texture of his skin.
‘You would deny me such a small pleasure? Hearing my name on your lips?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Her voice grew husky as her fingers grew brave, breeching the boundary of his shirt to skate along warm flesh.
He hissed in a breath, his voice growing even deeper. ‘Of course. It’s only right. Do you always do what is right?’
Rarely.
‘I try, my lord.’ Her hand retreated back to his shirt, and she pressed it flat over his heart. The wild thumping beneath her palm matched her own heartbeat.
His thumb grazed her ear as he whispered into the delicate shell. ‘We must all try, mustn’t we? I find myself wrestling the demons of my past tonight, Miss Smith.’
She didn’t miss the emphasis he put on her name.
Why would an evil man wrestle his devils? Wouldn’t he embrace them?
‘What fiends lurk in those shadowed halls?’ she wondered aloud.
‘My brother died a few months ago.’ The words ripped from his mouth, taking with them some of her composure. She knew this but hadn’t thought Reynard’s death would affect the marquess. Evil men weren’t supposed to care about people. They were lone entities existing only to be feared or punished.
But I’m not scared of Liam.
And in this moment, she didn’t want to punish him. Which was perplexing.
Rubbing her hand up and down his chest, less to explore and more to comfort, Penny wondered what kind of monster had a heart to bleed for his brother. She opened her mouth to say something – a trite condolence – but he saved her from her ineptitude.
‘Don’t offer me comfort, Miss Smith. I don’t need it. I did not mourn him.’ His hand trailed from her ear, down her neck, over her shoulder, bumping along her ribs and landing on her hip where his fingers gripped her like a drowning man gripped a piece of flotsam.
Liar. You are in great need of softness. You are grieving him even now, lost in your sadness.
‘I met your brother.’ It was a truth he could easily discover, so she might as well own it.
He pulled back, catching her in his amber gaze. ‘Did you?’
She cleared her throat and pushed out her chin. Her hand stilled on his chest. ‘He was a guest at the last house where I worked. I only saw him once or twice. You share the same features.’
‘Rumours running through the beau monde would say we share much more than just our hair and eyes. My brother was not a good man.’
‘Are you?’ She held her breath, dreading his answer.
‘I want to be.’ It was a brutal confession that fed the flame of doubt in Penny’s belly. Because evil men also rarely hoped to be good men. They already thought they were or believed themselves exempt from such judgments entirely.
She spread her hand wide on his chest. Her callused fingers caught on the fine silk of his shirt.
‘Is evil inevitable, do you think?’ Liam’s chest rumbled against her hand as he spoke. ‘A curse as unavoidable as love or death or fate?’
Tension ran through him. She felt it against her palm pressed over his heart, in the tips of his fingers digging into her hip, and through the rumbling timbre of his voice as it stroked along her senses.
‘Are you asking for me to be honest again?’
His lips tilted in a smile, but his eyes were swirling pools of pain. ‘Always.’
Penny indulged temptation, running her hand up his chest to his granite shoulder, down the ridged sinews of his bicep to land on his bare forearm. ‘I don’t think evil is inevitable. But I do think you mourn your brother. Sometimes, it is not the person we grieve, but the hope we hold for them to become a different version of themselves. A better one. It’s the phantom person we mourn. And our chance of ever knowing that person dies with them. We are left with the finality of letting those dreams disappear. I think you grieve the loss of what could have been between brothers if Reynard had been a different man.’ Penny understood that kind of grief. She often wondered how changed her life would have been if her father hadn’t died a broken vagrant. If the dreams she once nurtured for a fictional father had manifested into a real one. But his death ended those fantasies.
Liam’s free hand tangled in her hair, wrapping around her neck, and pulling her closer. His lips brushed against her cheek. ‘Yes.’ It was a simple admission. And it cost him much. She knew it from the tremble of his body, the raw ache in his voice, the nearly painful flex of his fingers on her hip.
Slowly, like the tide rising on the shore or a candle melting into a hot wax puddle, he turned his head. When their lips were a breath apart, he paused. ‘Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to stop and I will.’
But the words wouldn’t form. Instead, she pushed up on her toes, closing the distance between them, pressing her mouth against his. She offered him comfort in its most tangible form. Because he was hurt. And alone. And breaking her heart with his sorrow. A soft brush of her lips against his, a mingling of breath, a glimpse of something cataclysmically beautiful. And then it was gone.
He stepped back, severing their connection. Whatever spell held them in its thrall shattered like glass on stone. His amber eyes hardened in the flickering candlelight and narrowed.
‘Why are you here, Miss Smith?’
He asked the question as if they hadn’t just kissed. As if he hadn’t shown her the jagged pieces of his shattered heart. As if the moment were nothing but a dream. He was like a wounded animal backed into a corner. When she offered to tend his wounds, he responded with hostility. Penny lowered her gaze, drawing her wrapper around her like it could protect her from his rejection. The need thrumming in her veins mocked her. The hunger aching in empty spaces lower than her belly, but just as desperate for something , echoed endlessly. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Insomnia seems to plague you. Were you looking for a story to read? You can borrow anything you wish from the library.’ He took another measured step backward.
Frustration and anger bubbled from her chest and erupted in a harsh laugh. Why did she care that he rejected her? Why did it hurt? She suspected him of horrible crimes. He was responsible for her mother’s imprisonment. He was the enemy. And she was the biggest fool of all to succumb to his charms so easily, then be hurt when he treated her like what she was: a servant.
‘I have no use for books, my lord. I cannot read. Just a poor, illiterate maid. Your generosity is wasted on the likes of me. I shall take my leave.’
He moved like water over stones, deftly blocking her exit. ‘You can’t read?’
Penny clenched her jaw, refusing to answer his question. Refusing to repeat her embarrassing lack of education, although it perfectly highlighted how far apart they were even when standing in the same room. Instead of holding his gaze, she looked over his shoulder. The credenza next to the door caught her eye. She hadn’t dusted it the last time she was in the library. She made a note to remedy the error.
‘Do you want to learn?’
Whipping her focus back to him, she blinked in shock. ‘Do I want to learn?’ The arrogance of his question after such a humiliating admission of her own ineptitude was like lamp oil to a flame. ‘You mock me, sir. Even the thought is impossible.’
‘Nothing is impossible if you have the will to achieve it, Miss Smith.’
She shook her head. ‘Ah. So, my ignorance is reflective of a weak will. I could have learned to read; I just didn’t want it enough.’
‘That isn’t?—’
‘Don’t think I revel in my obvious deficits.’ She couldn’t bear to listen to this contradiction of a man any longer. ‘Every person longs for knowledge. Regardless of their station in life, no one rejoices in ignorance. But education is not for the working class. We have neither time nor funds to engage in such a luxury. Your question is cruel. Like holding a strawberry just out of reach to a starving person, and then assuming because they do not reach for it, they don’t want it.’
She hated how easily he unsettled her. Intensifying every emotion. Provoking her to unleash her sharp tongue, heedless of the repercussions she would surely face. Just as she was heedless of the consequences of kissing him. But the man was maddening. He triggered her on every level, making Penny forget her place, her subservient role, her lack of power. Liam swept her away in untamed emotions.
He refused to look away as the clock counted out one second, two, three. ‘I see. So, you do want strawberries.’
Penny clenched her teeth together. ‘You are impossible.’
‘Taking me to task once more, Miss Smith.’
Hellfire. He is going to dismiss me. Here. Now. In the middle of the night with no references and no chance of finding any more evidence against him. What if he doesn’t allow me to return to my room and pack my belongings? The letter will be lost. I’ll have thrown away everything because of my own stupid hubris.
Penny bit her lip as the weight of her choices descended. She refused to let the tears escape. ‘Do not ask me for honesty if you have no wish to hear it.’
Liam stepped closer, the lamplight reflecting in his azure eyes. What she saw staggered her.
Regret. Fear. Shame. The bleakness of a fallen angel.
‘I always want you to speak your mind to me, Miss Smith. Even if your words shake me to my core.’
‘Is that why you retreat from me? Because I say too much?’
‘I retreat because I fear I might lose control otherwise. So few dare to be honest with me. It is a rare and wondrous thing. But I am not used to someone stripping me bare so easily.’
Heat washed over Penny. ‘I would never s-strip you… that is, it is not my place to… I am just your maid, my lord.’
‘You are hardly just a maid.’ He took another tentative step closer. ‘You have been honest with me. Will you grant me the same allowance?’
She swallowed, not sure if she wanted to hear honesty from the marquess. But Penny Smith was no coward. She tipped her chin down, then up again.
He stole the thoughts from her head with his next words. ‘I think you are… fascinating, Miss Smith.’
‘I’m not. Fascinating. I’m just a maid who keeps forgetting her place. No more than that.’ The truth of her words pressed against her like thorns from a rose. Because she was no more than that. And she wasn’t just forgetting her place. She was forgetting her purpose, her mission.
What if I’m wrong? What if he isn’t a monster? Just a man?
It mattered not. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, he wasn’t for her. He would never be for her.
‘You are so much more than that.’ He reached toward her, but she stepped back.
She couldn’t afford to forget herself. Not again.
Anger or embarrassment flushed his cheeks. ‘Now I’ve been too honest.’ His small smile held no joy. ‘My breach of etiquette far exceeds your own. I took liberties. For that, I am sorry.’
The thought of their brief kiss filled her again with painful longing for something she could never have. It would be so easy to let him carry the blame for their wild moment. He was already claiming the fault. But she couldn’t allow the lie to stand. Just because she was determined not to repeat the mistake again didn’t mean she would let him castigate himself for a sin he hadn’t committed.
‘No, you took nothing I didn’t freely give.’ Her cheeks grew warm at the admission. But it was the truth. She had wanted to kiss him. She still wanted to kiss him, even as logic screamed at her for being a fool.
I am the biggest idiot.
Running a hand through his hair, he clenched his jaw. ‘You are hardly in a position to refuse me. I’m your employer. And I’ve put you in an untenable position.’
Penny laughed softly. ‘In our short acquaintance, have I given you reason to believe I can’t speak my mind? You didn’t force me to kiss you. You told me you would stop if I asked. Were you lying?’
He hissed out a breath. ‘No. I wasn’t. Although it would have broken me to do so.’
Penny believed him. ‘But you didn’t break, because I didn’t ask you to stop.’
His gaze burned into her soul, illuminating secrets and shadows she wished to keep hidden.
Sweet Jesus.
He took a measured step back. ‘Which is a problem, Miss Smith.’ It was. A real problem. ‘Because I didn’t want to stop either.’
Something small and bright in her core exploded at the admission. They were equal in their desire for each other if in nothing else.
Penny wrapped her robe tight around her. ‘It won’t happen again, my lord. I won’t allow it.’
His chuckle was dark and rich, like the hot chocolate she used to bring to Lady Drake. ‘Because it is up to you? The maid orders the marquess and he obeys?’
She bit her lip, noticing how his pupils dilated, his eyes locked onto her mouth. ‘In this, I do, and you will.’
Liam kept staring at her, stealing the breath from her lungs for an endless moment. Then he nodded. ‘Let’s hope I’m better at obeying your commands than you are at obeying mine, Miss Smith. We shan’t speak of this night again. Though I can’t promise it won’t haunt my thoughts.’
Before she could form a response, he spun and walked out the door, his boots clipping quickly down the hall.
Blazing Betty.
Penny’s legs turned to jelly.
‘What in the hellfire just happened?’ She pressed her fingers against her lips, remembering the feeling of his mouth, the scent of rain, wind, and wild green spaces that clung to him, the heat pulsing from him, filling her with delicious shivers. He was a wizard, pulling her under his spell.
She shook her head, attempting to dislodge his words from her memory. To even imagine she held a part of him captive? Impossible. Haunting a man like Liam? She dared not dream it.
He may not have lied to her this evening, but she was fairly confident she had lied to him. As she stood in the dark library, she could confess a terrifying truth to herself. She would allow him to kiss her again. If he wished it. Which was total madness. The sparks fizzing through her system invaded her mind, making rational thought impossible.
‘Fancy makes fools of us all,’ Penny whispered. But she was not some silly girl who could afford to lose herself to fantasy. Far too much was at stake. ‘He’s the enemy,’ she reminded herself harshly.
Liam is my enemy.
No. Not Liam. The Marquess of Stoneway. Lord Renquist. A lofty gentleman of the beau monde. But never Liam.
Carefully, she picked her way back to her room, hopes of sleep long since abandoned.