Page 232

Pen’s head reeled with a grand, desperate notion.

She wasn’t a hedge whore or a public ledger, open to all comers.

But a lady of easy virtue nonetheless, perhaps a high flyer or a quality courtesan.

Pen wiped his sweating palms on his breeches.

He couldn’t afford her. Look at her skin; she wasn’t starving or diseased, nor beaten into submission.

Her eyes were clear and steady, if her expression was somewhat baffled, and she smelled like spring.

A field of bluebells filled his mind, kissed by a warm sun.

Ah, God. For the first time he understood why a man would go to the trouble of keeping a mistress.

So he could have sole access whenever he wished and keep her hidden from the outside world.

He swallowed. How could he manage to keep her?

Most of the letters on Ross’s blasted table were bills and accounts of some sort, reminders of funds his rotter of a brother had died owing.

“I’m certain we can come to an agreement.

” Pen’s voice scratched his throat. Where was the boy with the rum?

The tremor was starting again, but the need this time was not for alcohol.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted anything that had to do with another person. Wanted closeness. Affection. Approval.

Ah, yes. He’d wanted affection from his mother, approval from his father, company and camaraderie from his brother.

And the evil-minded universe had laughed in his face and stretched him out upon the rack.

Pen sweated underneath his neckcloth and worked with a finger to loosen it.

This woman wouldn’t be withholding, mocking, or cruel.

She was warm and soft all over, inside and out.

She blew out a stream of air and Pen stared, arrested by the shape of her anemone-red lips. They would purse in exactly that fashion when he kissed her.

“I don’t suppose you would consider simply giving it to me,” she said. “Out of charity, you know.”

Giving her—oh, he’d any number of notions of what he could give her. Starting with certain attentive parts of his body. Then the rest, all of him, for eternity.

Now, where had that bacon-brained thought come from?

He was going barking mad with her standing there across the plain wooden room, and Ross watching with his infuriatingly bland expression, and all of this keeping her from where she ought to be, which was in his bed, minus her clothes.

He mustn’t be too stupid; women blessed with this kind of beauty were unfailingly cunning as well.

“What surety do I have that you wouldn’t come back and demand something after?” he growled.

He stood and stalked nearer, grimacing as his sore muscles protested.

He’d been sitting too long. But he couldn’t come off a complete cully, not even to a fine-looking woman.

She’d lead him to the cloth market and then later present her bill in the form of a by-blow he was expected to rear.

He’d seen it happen to his friends; the Prince of Wales had a dozen such claimants for his paternity, besides the kitlings a certain Mrs. Fitzherbert might be raising in her nest.

“Well.” She blinked, and Pen comprehended for the first time why love-struck young men composed sonnets to their lady’s various features. He could get tangled in her lashes, caught and left to die there, happily. “I expect we would settle on some sort of contract,” she said.

“Contract.” His breath came shallow. This was too close to marriage, commitment.

Contracts always cost something. He couldn’t recall his friends ever mentioning they had a formal arrangement with their birds of paradise.

They gave her a slip on the shoulder, carte blanche if they were a generous fool, jewels and silks if she performed in a satisfactory manner, and a dismissal when the performance had lost the power to interest them. Not contracts .

She frowned. Pen sweated. Perhaps expensive courtesans did demand written agreements. She could have anything that was his, but he couldn’t have claims on his incomes or estates. For one thing, he couldn’t support them.

“Ross?” He turned to his worthless secretary. Fortunate he had not removed his annoying self. Perhaps Ross, though born to the yeoman’s class, understood these arrangements better than Pen did. “Draw us up a contract.”

“Delighted, sir.” Without expression, Ross sorted through the stack of papers on the table before him. “I do not believe we have the pleasure of knowing your name, miss?”

“Why, yes,” she said, blurring the words together. Pen strained to identify her accent. West Country, but something more than that? “Gwenllian ap Ewyas.”

Welsh . Pen’s heart lifted, thrilling to the musical sound of her voice.

He could afford a Welsh mistress. Everyone knew the country was full of nothing but sheep herders and potato farmers.

How a benighted land had produced such a pearl of a woman was a mystery, but he meant to take advantage of this rare stroke of good fortune.

She wouldn’t know her own worth, being raised among swine, and she wouldn’t object to the coarser elements of the company he kept.

He could show her off at the theater, stroll her through the pleasure gardens, and she’d likely be satisfied with paste jewels and a keeper who didn’t beat her.

He could afford her. For a very long time. Perhaps indefinitely.

“And I presume you are here about your interest in the property of St. Sefin’s,” Ross continued in his bland voice.

“Yes.” The word was a whisper. She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “That’s correct.”

“Saint sodding who ?” Pen barked. She wanted property?

The minx! The designing little greedy guts.

Then he observed the interesting lift to her bosom granted by her straight-backed posture, and he decided she was worth it.

There was no padding, no falseness there.

Did she but unveil the lace and let him see the mere tops of them, he was like to sign over anything for her breasts alone.

He needed that rum, devil take it. His mouth was dry as straw. “How much is the property worth?”

“At value, around a thousand pounds,” Ross said. “But if one were to arrange a proper lease, the rents over time could amount to much more.”

“I am interested in buying outright,” she said with a nervous edge to her voice.

“You asked me to give it to you,” Pen reminded her. “A regular nunnery, is it?”

Her brows were black and thick, like her lashes, and their pronounced arch made her eyes look larger, more expressive. “Not for some time, sir, though I’m told some nuns still lived there at the time of dissolution. It was the only Cistercian establishment for women in Wales, though I understand?—”

“His lordship is inquiring whether you run a brothel,” Ross said in the same flat, bored tone.

He was clearly unimpressed by her beauty, unbewitched by her ethereal aura.

How did he manage to escape her spell, blast the man?

Ross ran in the petticoat line, though he wasn’t nearly as energetic in his patronage as Pen was.

“A brothel?” she gasped. “No!” The most glorious blush, the pink rose of a sunrise, spread over her cheeks.

It accented the height of her cheekbones, the elegant jut of her nose, the finely carved slope where her jaw curved toward her ear.

He imagined such a blush spreading all over her body when he?—

Her mouth was still moving. “A house of charity, milord!”

“A what?” Blood pounded in his ears, rhythmic as high tide, a combination of outrage, horror, and lust. “I never supported a charity home. Ross! Do I run any charities?”

“That is quite outside your realm of interests, sir,” said his secretary.

“We’ve been there for years, milord. Nearly seven.”

Before his brother became viscount, then. “I can’t conceive that my father ever approved such a venture,” Pen said. “What rents have you been paying until now?”

Up went that chin. He was right about her being pert. “None. Milord.” The blush deepened.

“None whatsoever,” Ross emphasized.

“We have maintained the property,” she hurried to say. “Kept it from falling into disrepair. We haven’t the funds to replace the windows, of course, and some of the stonework requires a skilled mason, but we?—”

“And you live there?” Pen demanded.

“Yes, with…” She bit her lip as he glowered. With this Barlow, no doubt. Well, no longer. Her old keeper was about to be deposed.

Ross sorted through his pile and produced a set of papers containing a series of sketches.

A crumbling ruin of an abbey, in better condition than Tintern but not nearly as picturesque.

A rather extensive set of buildings, that!

She wanted hectares, with a ruined old church, a solid compound of blocky medieval stone, and assorted outbuildings in the back. For the sheep and potatoes, no doubt.

She twined long fingers together as he stared at her. Those long, clever fingers he could imagine sliding through his hair, down his chest, over his scars, and, yes, a woman who demanded property for her favors could damn well tolerate his scars.

“…welcome to come see for yourself, milord, and meet them. There is Evans, and Dovey, that is Mrs. Van der Welle, and Cerys, and…”

A string of meaningless names. Why was she still talking? She’d do better appealing to him if she removed that blonde lace wrapping her bosom.

“It goes on as long I wish,” Pen stated. “I get to end it. Not you.”

“You mean, you will put a term on our lease?” Her eyes widened. “Er…yes, if you wish that in the contract.”

“Write it down, Ross.” Pen glared at his secretary, who made an elaborate show of producing an inkstand and quill. He did not, however, commence writing.