Something Reckless (2 page)

“I admit I am surprised you are speaking to me, Lord Kilgrath,” she snapped out. “Most of your friends are on the verge of throwing rotten fruit.”

His smile fell a fraction and he tilted his head. “Yes, I have heard some whispers. It isn’t often a lady of your rank takes up a cause at all, let alone one that affects the conquests of men of title.”

“Perhaps it should happen more often.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry to be rude, Your Grace, but if you have come to spit hateful words or threats at me, please refrain. I’ve heard enough
to last me a lifetime. Consider your quarrel with me to be duly noted.”

Turning on her heel, Penelope made to walk away, but before she could take one step, a strong hand wrapped around her forearm. She gasped at the feel of Kilgrath’s touch and immediately spun back on him, breaking the distracting grip of his fingers.

“I apologize, my lady,” he said softly, holding his hands up in mute surrender. “But you have misread my intentions entirely.”

Penelope frowned. She had no trust in this man, although his expression seemed totally sincere. In fact, he appeared open and friendly. It was the first time she’d seen such a look from a man of his stature since she started her “crusade.”

“Have I?” she asked, wary of giving him even a quarter.

He nodded. “May we speak privately?”

She sucked in a breath. Going anywhere private with this man was tantamount to stripping off her clothing and dancing naked in the middle of the ballroom floor. And he knew it.

“I am not some naïve little dancehall girl whom you can seduce, Kilgrath,” she snapped, putting her hands on her hips. “You know the consequences of being seen leaving this room with you. If this is your plan to discredit me, it will not work.”

He shook his head. “I’m not trying to discredit you, Penelope.”

She jolted at the sound of her given name coming from his lips. It was as intimate as a touch. But before she could correct him, he continued.

“I’m trying to tell you that I support your cause.”

Jeremy smiled as Penelope’s mouth dropped open and she stared at him in utter shock. Such a pretty mouth it was, too. One he could easily imagine closing around his length, or parting with a sigh of pleasure when he touched her in the most intimate ways.

Finally, she arched one fine eyebrow. “I don’t believe you.”

He stifled a chuckle. Damn, but he liked her spirit. No doubt she would bring a hefty dose of it to his bed when he finally had her there. He couldn’t wait.

“I understand, my lady,” he said, keeping his tone somber. “I have not given you any reason to have faith in my statement. My behavior has never been the kind that a lady such as yourself could approve of. But I am a changed man.”

“Indeed.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm as she folded her
arms, unwittingly drawing his attention to the perfect curve of her small breasts.

He struggled to maintain focus. “Perhaps you heard of my brother’s marriage six months ago?”

She nodded slowly, almost as if she was uncertain if agreeing with him even in this was some kind of trap.

“Seeing his marital bliss has changed me,” Jeremy continued.

The words tasted bitter, perhaps because there was some truth in them. Christopher’s sudden and happy marriage
had
set him out of sorts.

He shook off the thought and kept talking. “And though I have tried to continue down the wicked path I was once set upon, I’ve found it less and less satisfying. Hearing your thoughts on the subject of sensual excess and marital fidelity altered my view on life. On many things. You are—” he leaned a little closer. “You are quite persuasive, Lady Norman, in ways you may not even fathom entirely.”

She rolled her eyes. “And yet you say you have changed. You are flirting with me at this very moment.”

This time he couldn’t help but chuckle. “Indeed, I may be. Old habits, you know. But I’ve never felt there was any harm in a flirtatious exchange.”

Her face suddenly grew hard. “Of course you wouldn’t see the harm. But I have never known a man who didn’t use sex as a weapon.”

Jeremy drew back slightly at the heat in her tone. So that was it. She had been used or hurt by a man in the past. Her husband, perhaps? Or some other man? Or both? He would have to ferret out that secret as part of his plan.

He tilted his head in acquiescence. “You see, my lady, I need your help. This is exactly the kind of insight I require as I make my transformation into a respectable gentleman.”

Penelope stared at him, her blue eyes almost impossibly wide. She was utterly silent for a long time, longer than a minute. Long enough that Jeremy began to wonder if she had been stricken mute with shock. But finally she shook her head.

“I do not know what game it is you are playing at, Your Grace. But I will be no part of it. Your ‘transformation’ is no more authentic than Lord Norwich’s wig.” She tilted her head. “I have no time for your foolishness. Good evening.”

She turned away a second time, and Jeremy allowed her retreat with a smile. She was one step away when he said, “I shall change your mind about me, Penelope.”

She sent a glare over her shoulder and continued into the crowd. Jeremy watched her hips twitch away with the heat of desire curling in his stomach.

Oh yes, he was going to change Penelope’s mind about so many things. And enjoy every moment of it.

Penelope stepped into her chamber with a loud sigh. As she closed her door behind her, her lady’s maid, Fiona Clifton, entered from the adjoining bedroom. Penelope forced a smile for the woman.

Fiona had once been a mistress. Penelope wagered she was probably a very sought after one at that. With her shiny brown hair, porcelain skin, and light blue eyes, she made a stunning picture to behold. Just watching her, Penelope could feel the sensual power her maid was so very aware of. Fiona knew exactly how to
move, to look, to speak in order to gain masculine attention. Half the men on Penelope’s staff were in love with her.

But Fiona paid them no mind. Abused by her so-called protector, she had willingly taken a place in Penelope’s household after the two women met accidentally at the opera when Fiona’s angry lover had deserted her after a particularly vicious argument.

Fiona’s past, what she had been through, were part of why Penelope had started talking to her friends about the sensual excess of the men in their sphere. No woman should be forced to bear what Fiona had, no matter her place in life.

“Good evening, Penelope,” Fiona said as she stepped forward to start unlacing Penelope’s gown.

Penelope winced as the other woman pinched her. A good mistress she might have been, a good lady’s maid she most definitely was not. But one did not save another person, then complain about her skills.

“How was the party?” Fiona asked, and Penelope thought she heard a wistful hint in her maid’s voice.

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder, but the young woman was focused entirely on the task at hand. Perhaps she had only imagined the longing.

“Honestly?” Penelope sighed. “Quite horrid. I was given the cut direct by more people than not. Even the ones who whisper that they support me will not stand up with me in public.”

Fiona wrinkled her brow. “I’m afraid I know the feeling.”

Penelope nodded. She supposed that was true. Fiona had occasionally come to various parties on the arm of her protector before she ran away from him, and she had never been accepted, either. Everyone knew what she was. What she did.

And they punished her for it.

“What’s worse is that now some of them are attempting to play me for a fool,” Penelope said as Fiona pulled her gown away from her shoulders.

Instead of folding it properly, the former courtesan tossed it aside. In silent dismay, Penelope watched the yards of fine silk crumple into a pile in the corner.

“How so?” Fiona asked as she came around to the little bench in front of Penelope’s dressing table and flopped down on it as if the action of undressing Penelope had worn her out entirely.

“I was approached by the Duke of Kilgrath,” Penelope admitted with a roll of her eyes.

“Jeremy?” Fiona asked, straightening up. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, I always liked Jeremy.”

Penelope went still. She had all but forgotten that Fiona had once been part of Jeremy’s crowd. In fact, her former protector, Anthony Wharton, was one of the Duke’s best friends. She pursed her lips. Was that why Kilgrath had approached her? Was he trying to wheedle his way into her good graces so that he might speak to Fiona? Penelope had never thought of him as the kind of man who would condone violence against a woman.

But perhaps he wasn’t acting on behalf of his friend, after all. Kilgrath might simply want Fiona for himself now that Wharton no longer had her. Penelope had heard the small group of men who called themselves The Nevers had shared lovers in the past.

“How close were you to Lord Kilgrath?” Penelope asked, hoping she sounded nonchalant.

“Not as close as I would have liked,” Fiona laughed. “My, he is a handsome devil, isn’t he?”

Penelope remained silent. God yes, he was handsome. Too handsome. Just looking at him made her think things she was sworn to fight against. When she smelled that clean, masculine scent of his skin, it made her weak. When he smiled at her, it made her want.

But she also knew he was a complete liar. Especially about his supposed conversion to her way of thinking.

“Handsome or not, he’s trying to make a fool of me,” she said as she slipped her fingers into her hair and began taking her locks down. Normally her maid would perform that duty, but Fiona seemed far too interested in chatting.

“How?”

One by one, Penelope tossed the pins she was removing onto her coverlet. “Kilgrath wanted me to believe that he is no longer interested in the debauched life he has enjoyed for so long. That he has been changed by the things I’ve said about the consequences of excess.”

Fiona covered a giggle with her palm. “Jeremy Vaughn? No, I’ve never known anyone who enjoyed his debauchery more. And with good reason. He can get anything he wants, any time he wants it with a mere crook of his finger. Why would he want to abandon that?”

“He wouldn’t,” Penelope conceded.

A little twinge of regret made itself known in the pit of her stomach. She frowned. Had she really wanted to believe him? In some tiny part of herself, had she wished he truly were changed and turning to her for guidance?

Stupid girl.

“Oh, I completely forgot,” Fiona said, rising from her place at
Penelope’s dressing table and digging in the pocket of her plain gown. She pulled out a letter and held it out to Penelope. The envelope had been crushed by the careless manner in which Fiona shoved it into her pocket.

Penelope sighed. “What is this?”

Fiona shrugged. “It was delivered just after you departed for the ball. I told Smickens I would give it to you when you arrived home. He still despises me, you know.”

With a shake of her head, Penelope thought of her very proper butler. He, like the rest of the staff, had a hard time accepting a former lady of the evening as their equal. At least those who weren’t swayed by Fiona’s ample charms had difficulty.

“He will change his view in time, especially as you improve in your duties,” Penelope said as she took the letter. “I wonder who this could be from. I do hope it’s not another threat.”

She broke the blank seal that held the pages together and opened the note. She scanned the words within and could not help the sharp gasp that escaped her lungs. The pages in her fingertips fell away, drifting to the floor as she stared at them with a hand clamped over her lips.

Fiona rushed over to gather up the missive. “What is it?” she breathed, turning over the letter.

“No!” Penelope yelped, jumping forward.

But Fiona was too quick. She sucked in a breath as she began to read out loud.

“‘My dearest Lady Norman,’” she read, eyes widening. “‘You do not know me, but I have watched you from afar for many a month. I cannot remain silent any longer. Please allow me to tell you of my admiration. Where shall I start? The lips that a man
could easily imagine wrapped around his swollen cock? Or the throat I would spend an evening kissing, if only you would allow it? Your breasts, which would fill my hands. If I stroked my fingers over them, would you cry out? Sigh with pleasure?’”

Penelope stood frozen as Fiona read the words, the lascivious, erotic words that described in growing detail what the letter writer wished to do to her. It had been one thing to read them in a quick, shocked glance. It was quite another to have them recited to her in the sultry voice of a former courtesan.

“Stop,” she whispered, surprised at how husky her own tone had become. She reached out a trembling hand and snatched the letter from Fiona’s fingers.

Her lady’s maid stared at her with parted lips. Her cheeks were flushed and her breasts lifted with each breath. “Who in the world wrote that?”

Penelope shook her head. “Someone who is playing a cruel, foolish jest, no doubt.” She moved for the fire and held out the note toward the flames. But as she stared at the missive, she found she could not drop it into the devouring fire. Instead, she made a show like she had tossed it in, but in truth she hid it behind her back.

Fiona moved toward her. “It goes into great detail if it is only a jest,” she whispered. “A man who wrote that would have to truly desire you, have truly watched you, to go into such lusty particulars.”

The blood rushed to Penelope’s cheeks.
Want
her? She didn’t think a man had ever truly wanted her. Her husband had used her body, but for his own means, not because he wanted her particularly. And most of the men of the
ton
hated her at present, they didn’t want to touch her unless it was in violence.

The words in that letter should have made her angry. Disgusted. But instead they…they moved her.

She blushed as Fiona tilted her head and looked at her closely. “Penelope?”

Penelope shook her head as if to dismiss the topic. “I shall not humor that kind of person with a response. Now, I am very tired. Is my bath ready in the next room?”

Fiona opened her mouth, but then shut it again, as if biting back a statement. “Er, yes. I did forget, but Smickens reminded me. It is ready for you.”

Penelope nodded. “Very good. I shall bathe myself. You may retire to your bedchamber.”

“Th-thank you,” Fiona said softly, then backed out of the room with a strange expression on her face.

As soon as Fiona had gone, Penelope padded into the bedroom. There, behind a screen next to her bed, was the big tub her servants had filled with steaming water. Penelope approached the basin with a sigh of anticipation. It had been a trying night and all she needed was a good, long soak to put her to rights again.

She set the letter on the silver platter that contained her soaps and slipped out of her chemise and stockings. Then she put one foot into the hot water with a hiss of contentment. Ah, yes. This was what she needed.

The water rolled over her body as she settled back against the tub wall, covering her to the very tops of her breasts. She gasped as the water slapped against her tingling nipples and made her very aware of the ache that had begun in her body. But when?

Was it when she read the letter? No, it had been before that. Probably while she sparred with Kilgrath. As humiliating as it
was, her exchange with him had started her body down a path of wanting that she could not allow. She had tried to ignore it at the time, but their exchange had been stimulating in more ways than one.

This was madness. She would not let the manipulations of a libertine like Kilgrath or the perverse scrawl of an anonymous “admirer” sway her from the morals she held so dear.

She grabbed for the soap on the little tray beside the tub, but her damp fingers touched the folded sheets of the letter instead. She yanked her hand back as if burned and stared at the white linen pages.

Who could have written those things to her? And how much more did that unknown person say? She had only skimmed the first page, which talked of her breasts, of her mysterious admirer’s desire to see them in moonlight, touch them, strum the nipples until she cried out, lick the delicate curves…