Chapter Sixteen
Callum arrived at Jasmyne Street the next morning, his body still humming but his head clear.
He should have been tired after last night—he had not reached home until early morning—but instead he was more alive than he had been since he’d arrived in London.
He wanted to see Penelope again. He needed to see her in a way that left him breathless.
Their time together had felt like something exceptional.
Did she feel the same? Last night she had agreed to an affair, but this morning she might have changed her mind.
He hoped not. If an affair was all she had to offer him then he would take it, but he admitted to himself that he wanted more.
Deep in his secret heart, he wanted a great deal more.
“MacKenzie.”
Penelope’s voice sounded behind him in the sitting room, and he spun around, a smile he couldn’t hold in on his face.
She was not smiling. She was watching him with that careful caution he knew meant she did not want him to see what she was thinking.
That, and the shadows under her eyes and the way in which her hair was drawn back in a severe style he had not seen before, did not bode well for any sort of future between them.
She was frowning as her gaze wandered over him. He looked down at himself and realized then that in his rush to get here, to see her again, he had dressed in a rush. Compared to last night’s splendor, he must look like a ragbag.
“MacKenzie, you are disheveled,” she said in her forceful voice. “Your shirt is creased and your jacket ill-made. Is it one of your old ones? At least your boots are clean.”
“Angus makes sure of that,” he admitted.
“Perhaps Angus should supervise the rest of you,” she said. Her judgmental gaze dropped to his pantaloons. “These are very baggy,” she said critically. “The fashion is for them to be as tight as is bearable to the wearer. What about the inexpressibles Mr. Doddington made for you?”
“They escaped my mind.”
“I can see that.”
“These were to hand, and I was in a hurry,” he admitted, wondering if they were really going to discuss his choice of pantaloons. He sought for some criticism of her appearance, but she was perfect as usual, and he could only find one.
“I don’t like your hair,” he said abruptly. “You look like a headmistress about to give me the cane.”
She raised an eyebrow, but instead of engaging with that thought, she said, “Sit down.”
He sat and she arranged herself opposite him.
By now he was beginning to wonder if last night had been a dream because this woman was so removed from the abandoned creature he had held in his arms. And she was not making it easy for him to find a way to bring up the subject.
It was as if she had locked their intimate evening away and was refusing to acknowledge it.
“I think you will need to spend more time and thought on your appearance, MacKenzie,” she was saying. “What woman would shackle herself to you as you are now? Presentation is very important when it comes to attracting a wife.”
“Thank you,” he said, trying not to grit his teeth. “I am not used to worrying about my appearance overmuch. We do not have many social occasions to dress up for at Bonnyrigg.”
“Well, if you marry the sort of woman you have described to me, you will have many more social occasions. You need to prepare yourself.”
He groaned in real despair, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t you want to be admired and looked up to by your neighbors? I thought that was the point.”
“My father wants us to rise in the world, but I’m not sure he wants to be admired. He does not need the admiration of others to be the man he is, and neither do I.”
She blinked at him. “Callum,” she began, with a sigh, “how can I change you for the better if you will not listen?”
“I am listening,” he retorted.
“At least have some pantaloons fitted to your figure and—and shape,” she said, unexpectedly stammering on the words. “It would be such an improvement. That garment is so very loose.”
“It’s getting tighter by the minute,” he muttered.
Her eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s that voice you use when you are scolding me. It . . . I find it very stimulating.”
She went still. “Callum,” she said.
“Penelope,” he replied.
And then with a sound very like a whimper, she stood and launched herself into his arms. Surprised and elated, Callum caught her, gripping her waist as she leaned over him, her mouth already seeking his.
And just like that, he was lost. The sensation of her lips against his, the desperate need that was right there, was more important than anything else.
The mask she had been wearing was stripped away and the woman from last night was back, a little more frantic perhaps, but she was in his arms just as he had hoped she would be when he set off in a rush this morning.
She was already fumbling at his pantaloons, the ones she had just been berating him for, and he was hard and ready.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said in wonder. “I must be insane.”
“Welcome to the asylum.” He kissed her so that he could silence whatever else was coming from her mouth. It was too late to stop, it really was.
He lifted her, his hands finding the soft shape of her thighs and buttocks, adjusting her so that she was in the right position.
She groaned softly as his cock brushed against that place he had discovered last night was her most sensitive and slid inside.
She clung to him, murmuring encouragement, urging him to go faster. Already he could feel himself close.
“Hurry,” she panted. “Selina is bringing tea.”
Callum gave a painful laugh, and in the next instant they had reached their crescendo. She trembled, her eyelids fluttering as he tried not to shout out aloud to the world just how wonderful this was.
She was quicker to recover than him. She was already climbing off him, smoothing her skirts, pushing at her hair, which he was glad to see was no longer looking so severe. With trembling hands, he buttoned himself up and then stood, a little shakily, trying to get a grip on his emotions.
“Penelope,” he began, not knowing how to contain the words clamoring to be said.
He thought he might be going to tell her how much he admired her—because God knew he could not say the L word.
Nor could he say that he wanted to marry her and take her back to Bonnyrigg and have his way with her several times a day.
His strong urge to say all of those things filled him with horror. Penelope would cancel their lessons immediately and send him on his way. Perhaps it was just as well Selina knocked on the door at that moment and entered.
She froze in the doorway, the tray full of teapot and cups rattling violently in her hands.
Her gaze went from Penelope to Callum and back again, but she said nothing.
After a pause, she continued into the room, chattering about the cake she had made and how she hoped Callum would like it.
After setting the tray on the table, she straightened, looking rather flushed, and she hurried to the door. It closed quietly behind her.
Penelope put her hands over her face. “You see what you have done,” she said in a muffled voice. “Now I will never hear the end of it from her. After all my promises never to allow one of my clients to step beyond the boundaries I have set.”
Callum thought he should be insulted. Was he really just one of her clients? He had been believing himself to be more. Deciding to take a lighter approach, he reached for a cup and poured in the tea and added milk.
She had dropped her hands and was watching him, and now she glared. “You should add the milk first,” she said. “You must always add the milk first.”
Confused, he froze with the cup halfway to his lips. “I never add the milk first!”
“It is the rule,” she continued, eyes sparkling with righteous indignation.
“There are no rules!” he said stubbornly. “I like to add the milk last, and I willna change.”
“MacKenzie, what use is it to tell you things if you refuse to do them?”
Now they were shouting over each other, and suddenly Callum had had enough.
He leaned over the table and kissed her.
She seemed to be about to push him away, and then instead she caught hold of the lapels of his jacket and held him there. Their kiss grew more heated, and when she tugged him closer, he knocked against the table and the tea tray, and there was a crash as everything fell to the floor.
He didn’t care, and neither, it seemed, did she. Once again, they were too insatiable for each other to stop.
Even when he heard the door open and Selina’s, “What on earth . . .?” he couldn’t bring himself to behave like the gentleman he was supposed to be. Anyway, Selina left again immediately and they were once more alone.
“We truly are insane,” Penelope said with quiet amazement, pausing their frantic kisses to look up at him. He was on the settee now, lying on top of her.
“I am happy with that,” he replied. “Insanity suits us.”
“Callum . . .”
“No, I will hear no more from those lovely lips. I am going to take you now, and this time I am going to make it last.”
“Oh God,” she moaned. They were the last coherent words she spoke.
*
After Callum had gone, Penelope could hardly bear to look at Selina. The other woman seemed about to burst with excitement. And laughter.
“I knew it!” she kept saying gleefully. “As soon as I saw him, I just knew it!”
Penelope wasn’t sure what it was Selina knew, but she was certain that at some point she would have to hear all about it.
Right now she preferred to be alone with her wildly racing thoughts.
One moment she was castigating herself for her stupidity, and the next she was remembering Callum’s kisses and his touch, and his handsome face flushed with desire as he looked down upon her.
His eyes . . . She could look into his eyes forever.
Madness or not, neither of them could stop themselves. But shouldn’t Penelope be the one to stop? Wasn’t she supposed to be in charge?
“You have a right to enjoy yourself,” Selina reminded her quietly.
Penelope looked up and found the other woman seated opposite, watching her challengingly.
“You have given up a great deal over the years. For Mortimer, mainly.” Selina swallowed, knowing plain speaking might not be what Penelope wanted to hear. “I think it is time you thought of what you wanted.”
“What I want and what I don’t want have nothing to do with it,” Penelope replied, but without her usual fire. “I have a livelihood to maintain.”
“MacKenzie is only here for a short time, and then he will be gone.”
She had never felt so low in her life. “Yes.”
“Then again, maybe—”
“There is no maybe,” Penelope retorted. “Callum MacKenzie needs a wife suited to his position and his father’s ambitions. I am not that person, as you well know, Selina!”
Something in her voice must have registered with her friend. Penelope had heard the ache in it, the desperate wish that things were different, but what was the point? They weren’t different, they could never be different, and she must learn to accept it.
Selina shook her head. “You are too hard on yourself. Why don’t you ask MacKenzie what he thinks? He might surprise you.”
Penelope shook her head. She couldn’t allow herself to hope. Her dreams would only be dashed. She knew better than to see her world through an idealistic lens. “My career as a teacher of etiquette is probably over anyway,” she said dully. “Have there been any more enquiries?”
Selina admitted there had not.
“I am sure if you spoke to MacKenzie . . .” she began.
“No. I will not do that. At the moment, he might believe himself infatuated with me, because that is all it is, but it would soon wear off. And what then? I would have ruined him, taken away his dreams and those of his parents, and be sentenced to a life of misery in cold, miserable Bonnyrigg. Is that what you want for me, Selina?”
Selina shook her head. “Of course it isn’t,” she said, her eyes suspiciously bright. “But you could make it work, I know you could. You could charm the MacKenzies into welcoming you into their lives. They would love you, as you deserve to be loved.”
Penelope had nothing to say to that—she could not get the words past the lump in her throat.
The problem was, it did sound wonderful.
A life where she was part of a family, with a husband who loved her and perhaps even children, if it wasn’t too late.
But then what of Mortimer? And what of her tarnished reputation?
Someone would find out, and word would spread and she wasn’t sure she could bear to see the disappointment in the eyes of those she may by then have grown to love.
Better not to risk it.
A fling, yes. An affair, that was a possibility. Then she could store up the memories of MacKenzie and their time together, so that she could dust them off in the years to come. Take each one out like a precious jewel. And remember.