Chapter 3 #2
When the ladies withdrew to the drawing room after dinner, leaving the gentlemen to their port and cigars, she made her excuses as quickly as propriety allowed.
Caroline raised a questioning brow, but Penelope merely claimed a need for fresh air and slipped from the room before her sister could insist upon accompanying her.
The corridor leading back toward the dining room was blessedly empty, though she could hear masculine laughter echoing from behind the closed door.
She hesitated, uncertainty warring with determination.
This was improper. Seeking him out, approaching him privately—it violated every rule of decorum she had spent a lifetime observing.
Yet the memory of his face across the dinner table—drawn, distant, somehow diminished—propelled her forward.
The gentlemen were beginning to emerge, moving toward the drawing room where card tables had been arranged.
Penelope pressed herself into the shadows of a recessed doorway, heart hammering as she waited.
William passed first, deep in conversation with the baronet.
Then Lord Hammond, already slightly foxed if his unsteady gait was any indication.
Finally, the Duke appeared.
He walked alone, his expression carved from granite, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. He looked, Penelope thought with sudden clarity, like a man walking toward his own execution.
“Your Grace.”
He stopped so abruptly she thought he might stumble. His head turned toward her hiding place, and for a heartbeat his guard dropped entirely. She saw shock, just visible for a few seconds before it disappeared.
“Miss Hartwell.” His voice carried none of its customary warmth. “You should not be here.”
“I might say the same of you.” She stepped from the shadows, keeping a respectable distance between them. “The others have gone to the drawing room.”
“I am aware.”
The silence stretched uncomfortably. Penelope found herself cataloguing details she had no business noticing—the slight disarray of his cravat, as though he had tugged at it repeatedly; the faint tremor in his hands before he clasped them behind his back; the muscle jumping in his jaw.
“Are you quite all right?” The question was asked before she could reconsider it.
His laugh held no humour. “Perfectly well, I assure you.”
“You are lying.”
The words hung between them, too blunt for politeness, too true for denial. The Duke’s eyes finally met hers properly for the first time that evening, and what she saw there stole her breath—anguish, barely restrained, churning beneath a surface of forced composure.
“Miss Hartwell—”
“You have barely spoken all evening,” she continued, her voice low but insistent. “You ate nothing, drank too much, and looked as though you wished to be anywhere but here. So I ask you again: are you quite all right?”
For a second, the surprise was evident in his features. Then it was gone, replaced by a weariness that aged him beyond his years.
“I need to speak with you,” he said quietly. “Not here. Not like this.”
Her pulse quickened. “About what?”
“I cannot explain. Not now.” He glanced toward the drawing room, where laughter floated down the corridor. “Come to my house tomorrow. Please.”
The request landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples of alarm through her carefully maintained composure.
“That is entirely improper,” she said, though her voice was less steady than she wished.
“You know I cannot—”
“This is not about propriety, Miss Hartwell. This is—” He stopped, seemed to struggle with something, then continued in a tone she had never heard from him before. Desperate. “I would not ask if there were any other way. But I need your help, and I need you to trust me.”
Trust him? The Duke of Blackmere, London’s most notorious rake, whose reputation preceded him into every ballroom and scandal sheet?
“I do not understand,” she managed. “What could you possibly need from me that requires such secrecy?”
His jaw worked, as though fighting some internal battle. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
“Something has happened. Something I cannot manage alone. And you—” He stopped again, then met her eyes with an intensity that pinned her in place.
“There are reasons. Reasons I cannot explain standing in your sister’s corridor.
Come to my house tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock.
I swear to you, on whatever honour I have left, that no harm will come to you. ”
Penelope’s mind raced. Every rule of proper behaviour screamed that she should refuse, should turn and walk away from whatever dangerous proposition this was. Visiting a gentleman’s residence, unchaperoned, would destroy her reputation if discovered.
And yet...
“You wish to seduce me,” she said flatly, giving voice to the fear that had been lurking since he made his request. “This is some elaborate scheme to—”
“Miss Penelope.” He cut her off with such quiet authority that her words died in her throat. His eyes held hers with unwavering focus, and when he spoke, there was not a trace of his usual mocking. “If I wanted to seduce you, I would have already succeeded. This is a serious matter.”
The arrogance of it—the sheer, breathtaking presumption—sent heat flooding through her. She wanted to respond, but the words would not come.
Because beneath her indignation lurked a terrible suspicion that he might be right. The Duke of Blackmere had seduced women far more worldly and guarded than herself. If he had truly set his sights upon her virtue, she rather doubted her defenses would prove adequate.
The realization should have terrified her.
Instead, it merely deepened her confusion.
“Then what is this about?” she asked, hating the way her voice wavered.
“I cannot tell you. Not here.” He stepped closer, and she caught the scent of sandalwood and something darker, more complex.
“But I swear to you, Miss Hartwell, this has nothing to do with seduction and everything to do with—” He seemed to struggle for words.
“With a matter of grave importance. One that concerns you whether you know it or not.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I am aware.” A ghost of his usual smile touched his lips, though it carried no warmth. “Come tomorrow. Please. You may bring your maid if it eases your conscience. But come.”
From the drawing room, Caroline’s voice called for her, asking if she had gotten lost. The Duke’s expression tightened, and he took a step backward, restoring the proper distance between them.
“Two o’clock,” he repeated. Then, without waiting for her answer, he turned and strode toward the drawing room, leaving her standing alone in the shadowed corridor with her heart hammering against her ribs.
Sleep proved impossible.
Penelope lay in her bed, staring at the canopy overhead whilst her mind turned the evening’s events over and over like pages in a book she could not quite comprehend. The Duke’s face haunted her—that desperate look in his eyes, the careful control that had seemed moments from shattering.
Something I cannot manage alone.
What could possibly require her assistance? They barely knew one another beyond their sparring exchanges at social gatherings. She had no particular skills or connections that might prove useful to a duke. Unless...
Unless this was precisely what she had feared—some elaborate trap designed to compromise her. Perhaps he had wagered with his friends that he could seduce the dull, spinsterish Miss Hartwell. Perhaps this entire display of distress had been calculated to prey upon her sympathy.
But no.
The thought felt wrong even as she entertained it. Whatever else the Duke might be, he was not a skilled enough actor to feign the anguish she had witnessed. And his words—if I wanted to seduce you, I would have already succeeded—had carried the ring of truth rather than boast.
So what, then?
She rolled onto her side, watching moonlight paint silver patterns across her floor.
Two o’clock. If she went, she risked her reputation, her future, possibly her virtue.
If she refused, she would spend the rest of her life wondering what desperate matter had driven London’s most notorious rake to beg for her help.
The choice should have been obvious.
Yet here she was, at half-past midnight, rising from her bed and reaching for her dressing gown.
“Miss?”
Her maid, Annie, appeared in the doorway connecting their chambers, her face creased with sleep and concern. “Is something amiss?”
Penelope hesitated. Then, with the reckless certainty of someone who had already made her decision regardless of wisdom, she said: “Fetch my cloak. The dark one. And dress yourself warmly.”
Annie’s eyes widened. “Miss Penelope, you cannot mean—”
“I am going out.” Her voice was steadier than she felt. “And you are coming with me.”
“But miss, it’s the middle of the night! Your mother will—”
“My mother need never know, provided we are quiet and quick.” Penelope moved to her wardrobe, selecting a simple walking dress. “I require your assistance, Annie. And your discretion.”
The maid opened her mouth as though to protest further, then seemed to recognize the futility of argument. She had been in the Hartwell household long enough to know when Penelope had set her mind to something.
“Very well, miss,” she said with a sigh. “But if we’re caught, I’m telling your mother this was entirely your idea.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
They dressed in hurried silence, Penelope’s fingers fumbling with buttons and laces whilst her pulse hammered an irregular rhythm.
This was madness. Utter madness. Sneaking from her home in the dead of night to visit a gentleman’s residence based on nothing more substantial than a cryptic request and her own stubborn curiosity.
Yet she could not stop herself.
Twenty minutes later, they slipped from the servants’ entrance and into the night, where Penelope’s brother-in-law’s carriage waited—procured through a combination of careful planning and shameless bribery of the Thornbury coachman, who owed her several favors.
The journey to Blackmere House passed in anxious silence. Penelope kept her hands clasped tightly in her lap, fighting the urge to demand the driver turn back. Beside her, Annie maintained a disapproving silence that spoke volumes.
When the imposing facade of the Duke’s townhouse came into view, Penelope’s courage nearly failed entirely.
Turn back, the rational part of her mind screamed. This is folly of the highest order.
But the image of the Duke’s face—that barely controlled desperation—steadied her resolve.
The butler who answered her knock looked appropriately scandalized at finding a young lady on the doorstep at such an hour, but he nevertheless showed her and Annie inside with professional discretion.
Perhaps, Penelope thought with grim humor, the Duke of Blackmere received midnight female visitors with sufficient regularity that even this was unremarkable.
“His Grace is in his study, miss,” the butler intoned. “If you will follow me.”
They moved through corridors that smelled of beeswax and old books, past portraits of stern-faced ancestors who seemed to judge Penelope’s presence with painted disapproval.
The house was quieter than she had expected—no sounds of revelry, no evidence of the scandalous parties she had heard whispered about.
Just silence, heavy and waiting.
The butler stopped before a closed door, knocked once, then opened it without waiting for a response.
“Miss Hartwell, Your Grace.”
He stepped aside, allowing Penelope to enter whilst Annie remained in the corridor with a pointed look that suggested she would be listening for any sounds of distress.
The study was smaller than she had anticipated, lined with books and dominated by a massive desk covered in scattered papers. Candles burned low in their holders, casting wavering shadows across the room.
And there, behind the desk, stood the Duke.
He looked worse than he had at dinner—his cravat was gone entirely, his shirt open at the throat, his hair dishevelled as though he had been running his hands through it repeatedly. He stared at her with an expression somewhere between relief and horror.
“You came,” he said hoarsely. “I did not think... that is, I hoped, but I could not be certain—”
“Your Grace.” Penelope cut through his uncharacteristic rambling, her voice admirably steady.
“You said this was urgent. I am here. What is this about?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then seemed to struggle with where to begin. Finally, he simply gestured to something beside the desk.
Something she had not noticed in her initial survey of the room.
A wicker basket, lined with soft blankets.
Penelope moved closer, confusion mounting. Why would the Duke summon her in the middle of the night to show her a—
The sound reached her ears before her mind could complete the thought.
A cry.
Thin, querulous, unmistakably infant.
A baby’s cry.
Her eyes flew to the basket, then to the Duke, then back to the basket as her heart seized in her chest.
“Your Grace,” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the increasing wails. “What have you done?”
“I…” He hesitated. “I have not done anything,” he insisted. “This… was dropped at my manor, and the note included your name. But… Since your opinion of me could not be lower, I suggest you take leave and forget you saw anything.”
With that, he left—taking the basket with him, and leaving her alone in the empty room.