Tempting Mr. Weatherstone: A Wallflower Wedding Novella (Originally Appeared in the E-Book Anthology FIVE GOLDEN RINGS) (6 page)

Chapter Six

T
HE
W
EATHERSTONES AND
the Rutledges set out late the next morning and traveled all day. Once they reached the halfway point of their journey, they stopped at an inn for the night. Being so late in the year and with the threat of snow hanging in the dark-lined clouds overhead, there weren’t many travelers, and the owner and his wife doted on those who were there. In fact, they were so well tended to that Penelope didn’t have a single moment to speak with Ethan.

Of course, she wasn’t expecting a declaration of love over a bowl of turnips, especially with their parents so close by. However, she did expect more than their usual conversation, which consisted of remarks on the delicious pork pie, the fine crust on the jam tart, the robust flavor of the mulled wine . . .

Yet, when she mentioned how the country air must have given him quite the appetite, he averted his gaze.

For her, something monumental had occurred between them. Something that changed her entire outlook. Something that made her hope for the first time in . . . forever. Surely, their relationship wasn’t destined to remain the same. The specter of her future was far away. In place of the old woman at her needlework was a life filled with dark, passionate kisses and a love that was its own adventure.

Yes, she would be very happy to have many more adventures like the one she had with Ethan yesterday morning. She wouldn’t even mind if kisses were somehow worked into their daily routine.

She smiled on a sip of wine and glanced down to her plate, situated, as usual, to the left of his. “The roasted parsnips are particularly fine. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Weatherstone?”

For the first time since they stopped here in their separate carriages, he regarded her. A look of relief washed over him as he nodded. “Very fine, Miss Rutledge. And how did you find the beets?”

“Fair. But not nearly as fine as your Minerva’s beets.” She wasn’t entirely sure she liked that look of relief. It certainly didn’t bode well for where her thoughts were at this precise moment. Because she was still wondering how to approach the topic of scheduled kisses. Perhaps once they were settled, she would join him for a morning walk in the country and discuss it.

She could picture their debate clearly in her mind. He would suggest Tuesdays and Thursdays before dinner, and she would state that Wednesdays and Fridays after dessert would be better, simply for the sake of being contrary.

“I see your ankle has recovered from yesterday morning,” Abigail Weatherstone commented from across the table, startling her from her musings. “You were so fortunate to have Ethan so close at hand.”

She did her best to hide her blush behind her wineglass. Abigail had a way of being too direct at times, and her gaze now told Penelope that she suspected something other than a morning walk had gone on between them.

“Yes, very,” she said quickly. “As you suggested, I do believe resting in the carriage was the best thing for it. I used the time to work on the most beautiful butterfly. I’d love to show you after dinner.”

“I would like that,” she said with a smile, but her direct gaze remained. “I’ve always been fascinated with butterflies. For so long, they go about seemingly unnoticed, then one day they are transformed, and the world suddenly changes. For the better, I think. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Penelope nodded, knowing that an understanding
had
passed between them. An uncontrollable smile curved her mouth. “Yes, very much so.”

Abigail lifted her glass. “To butterflies, my dear?”

She reached forward and touched Abigail’s glass with a clink.

“What say you, Ethan?” her father asked with a chuckle from the opposite end of the table. “Shall we toast to a more manly insect? Perhaps a centipede?”

However, the joke appeared to have been lost on Ethan, for he did not smile. In fact, he seemed in another world, lost to his own thoughts. Once he realized he was being studied by the group, he cleared his throat. “Yes, of course,” he said, and absently lifted his glass to mimic the rest of them.

P
ENELOPE AND
A
BIGAIL
were to share a room, just as Ethan and her father would. However, when she returned to her room, she discovered that her needlework was not with her things. Knowing that her satchel had probably been put in her father’s room, she stepped across the hall, prepared to knock on the door.

Yet, before she could, she encountered Ethan pacing the narrow hall. His cravat was askew and, by the way the wavy locks drooped over his forehead, his hair looked as if he’d run his hands through it repeatedly. Noticing her, he stopped suddenly. The dark worry in his gaze caused her own worry to rise.

“Are you unwell?” Truly, she’d never seen him like this.

“No,” he said after a moment, then appeared to think on it, and again replied, “No.”

Without thinking, she went to him, lifting a hand to touch his face to see if he felt overly warm. But like before, he seized her wrist. “No,” he said again, sterner this time.

She pulled back as if he’d slapped her. “Am I not allowed to display my concern?”

He lowered his head on an exhale and raked his hand through his hair. “Of course. And you have. I know you care for me, Pen.”

A feeling of dread washed over her. Suddenly, she understood, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want the terrible understanding to fully form because she feared her heart could not take it. Butterflies were fragile creatures.

“Care for you?” She loved him. She’d always loved him. It had simply taken most of her life to realize how much her happiness depended on him. “Surely, since you know practically everything about me, you would know my feelings better by now.”

He looked nervous, his eyes darting to the closed doors on either side of them. With a jerk of his head, he gestured for her to follow him to the end of the hall near the window that overlooked the stables.

“First of all,” he began quietly, his troubled expression turning to resolve, “I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found you yesterday morning. I was in a panic and overwrought.”

“No, you were angry,” she corrected. “You thought I was simply being foolish.”

“Yes, well . . . there’s that.” He locked his grave gaze with hers. “You put yourself in danger, and I didn’t know how to react. If I hadn’t been up all night . . . Hadn’t chanced to look out the window to see you leave on your foolish—” He stopped and drew in an unsteady breath. “When I finally saw you, I wanted to shake you. Try to shake some sense into you.”

She blanched, hating where this conversation was going, but she had to ask. “What stopped you?”

“I couldn’t hurt you, Pen. And yet, I was so . . . overwrought that I simply reacted.” He raked a hand through his hair again and paced in the small space in front of her. “In the light of things now, I realize my actions were unconscionable, on an equal footing with my first impulse.”

The kiss.
The perfect, magical, passionate kiss that transformed her life had happened solely because he couldn’t rationalize shaking her?

Penelope’s head spun, her world tilting. She wanted to step back and lean against the wall for support, but her feet were rooted to the floor. She wanted to close her eyes with the hope that if she didn’t look at him, his words wouldn’t hurt as much, but her gaze remained fixed on him.

He stopped in front of her, his expression full of contrition, his arms locked at his sides. “It was a most unfortunate incident, and I do hope you’ll forgive me. I think you know, my life would never be the same without you,” he added, almost inaudibly.

She swallowed against a sob that was building in the back of her throat. “The same?”

“Our family dinners. Our chats in my study. Surely, you must also regard those moments with fondness.” He attempted a smile, but it did not reach his apologetic eyes. “We keep each other sane, you and I.”

Sane? She was feeling anything but sane at the moment. She wanted to crawl out of her skin and be anywhere else.

“I would hate for my lapse in decorum to risk that.”

“Lapse in—” Her heart sank, but she refused to allow him to notice. “No, of course you would not. Everything must remain the same.”

Ethan must not have heard the censure in her statement because he nodded. “Then, if you’ll excuse me, I bid you good night.”

Without waiting for her response, he turned sharply on his heel and walked down the hall, disappearing into the shadow of the stairway.

She stared at the vacancy he left long after the echoes of his footsteps died away. For knowing Ethan as well as she did, she should have known better than to believe the whispers of her foolish heart.

Chapter Seven

W
HEN
P
ENELOPE MISSED
the first of their dinners once they’d arrived in the country, it was completely understandable. After all, her father had said she was still weary from their travels.

However, then she missed another. And then two more.

Ethan, too, had been plagued by an ailment. In fact, he couldn’t seem to shake free of it. Every day for a week, he’d felt listless, unable to focus on his accounts or clear his head. His appetite disappeared. Even the cook’s scones and orange marmalade held no appeal.

Still, he waited for a visit from Pen. Of course, it was colder now. The walk between their country houses was longer than the distance between number 7 and number 3. Still, a carriage would make the journey shorter. He’d make it himself, if only he knew she would receive him . . .

Damn.
He wished she would walk in right now, letting him know that everything would be the same again. Letting him know that he hadn’t irrevocably harmed everything they had by losing control.

Surely, the heavens would not punish him for one time. Surely,
they
knew how many times he’d denied the impulse to hold Pen in his arms, to taste her lips, to feel her body against his . . .

He doubled over as a deep, welling emptiness tore through his heart, an ache so profound he did not think he would survive it.

“
Ethan!
” his mother exclaimed, rushing into the study to his side. “What is it, dear?”

He held up a hand in reassurance. “It is nothing.” Clutching the side of the desk with his other hand, he gradually stood and drew in a breath. He faced her and offered a smile of reassurance. “Breakfast did not appeal to me, and so I have not eaten today.”

“Nor did you eat last night,” she chided, hovering next to him as he made his way to the chair. “Even James commented on it, wondering if both you and Penelope were suffering the same ailment.”

“Surely not.” He knew the true reason Pen had avoided the dinners. She couldn’t forgive him for losing control. She must hate him. She must . . .

“She’s leaving, you know.”

“What?” He shot up, feeling his head spin and all the blood drain out of his body.

His mother nodded gravely. “She’s going to live with her sister. Eventually, she’ll be governess to Eugenia’s children.”

No. No. No,
his mind railed. This could not be happening. Surely, in time, she could find a way to forgive him. Surely, in time, the kiss would become a mere memory and everything would go on in the same manner as it always had.

His life depended upon it.

“How can she do this?”

His mother turned away with a shrug. “It really is the best thing for Penelope. After all, what does she have to look forward to by staying with her father? All she has is her needlework.”

“She has more than that. She has—” He stopped abruptly, not wanting to reveal the depth of his heartache. Not even wanting to admit it to himself.

“You?” his mother asked, finishing his unspoken admission. As if she could see into his heart, she dared him to deny it with the sly lift of her brow.

He refused to respond, turning to stare out the window. He wasn’t going to have this conversation with his mother. He didn’t even want to think about it.

“But she doesn’t really have you. All she has are dinners a few nights a week. All she has are conversations in your study. All she has are the morning walks when you find yourselves running into each other as if by chance.”

She has more than that,
he argued. She had his high regard. She had his undivided attention. She had his . . . heart.

All of it. She possessed every single beat and even the space in between.

“She’s spent so long being content with what you two had, that I believe it quite surprised her to discover that her life was passing by. I think it took seeing her sister so happily settled with a husband and family for her to realize that she wanted more.”

More? A desperate need awakened inside of him. He wanted more, too. But there was too much he risked losing in the process. Already he’d altered one thing between them, and look at how that turned out. She was leaving.

His mother sighed. “I know you fear that a single action or alteration on your part will put everything you have with Penelope at risk. What you don’t see is that by doing nothing, you risk even more,” she said simply, then lifted her palms, weighing her words with one, then the other. “All you have to do is decide if what you have now is worth risking for the chance at greater happiness.”

“I could lose her,” he said before he could stop the words from tumbling out.

His mother blinked up at him, surprised by his admission, but pleased. She gave him a watery smile. “Or you could gain so much more.”

Chapter Eight

C
HRISTMAS
E
VE WITH
the Weatherstones had been a standing tradition for the past fifteen years. For Penelope, it was to be her last.

After next week, she would be living with her sister and celebrating next Christmas with Eugenia’s family. Of course, her father would most likely travel to Plymouth for the season, as well. So this could very well be the last year for any of them.

She did her best not to think about it when she arrived and saw the country house decorated with fragrant pine wreaths and red and silver bows. She tried not to think about it at dinner when Ethan mentioned they were having the last of Minerva’s pickled beets—which, according to Abigail, he’d made a special trip to London in order to bring them back for this occasion. And she tried not to think about it now, as they sat in the living room, listening to Abigail play joyful carols on the fortepiano.

Penelope felt anything but joyful. Weren’t there hymns or carols that expressed one’s melancholy on this holiday? She sighed, thankful the sound was disguised by the final trilling notes of “Here We Come A Wassailing.”

In fine spirits, her father clapped and stood up from the settee beside her. “Marvelous playing, Abigail. I could listen to these happy tunes for hours,” he said as he made his way to the tree and plucked a ribboned scroll from one of the branches. “Which reminds me of a special gift I thought of just for you.”

Having drunk far too much Christmas punch, he presented the scroll to her with a flourish. Smiling, Abigail eagerly took the scroll, slipping the ribbon off with haste like a girl unwrapping her first doll.

“James Rutledge, you spoil me,” she tittered in delight. “Why it’s the perfect piece of music for this day. However did you know?”

Hooking his thumbs beneath the fabric of his lapels, he rocked back on his feet and grinned. “I’ve had my suspicions for a while now. It is Bach’s most celebrated work.”

Abigail took his hand, thanked him, then stood to retrieve a small package wrapped in brown paper, handing it to him. “For you.”

Her father made a show of shaking it by his ear and wiggling his eyebrows as if he’d guessed some great secret before he unwrapped it. “My favorite pipe tobacco. How thoughtful, Abigail.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Thank you.”

Penelope watched them with a bittersweet joy. They were all such good friends, close as any two families could be. She would miss this. She would miss this very, very much.

Ethan jumped up from his chair, which was unusual for him. This evening, he’d had a sort of nervous energy about him. He never fidgeted, but she’d noticed him toying with his napkin at dinner, then, just a moment ago, pulling on the fringes of a pillow.

It was almost comical in a way because she was
not
fidgeting. Instead, she was unusually reserved, sitting on the settee with her hands sedately clasped in her lap.

“I believe I saw a familiar-looking package in the tree for me, Pen,” Ethan said, as he fished through the boughs to the small, square package. This year, she’d chosen to wrap his gift in a scrap of linen she’d purposely stained with tea in an effort to match the color of his eyes.

He resumed his place on the armchair, poised at the very edge as he unwrapped the package, as if he didn’t already know what was inside. When he saw the handkerchiefs, a smile broke over his face. “Pen, you have no idea how much I look forward to these each year, to admire your fine stitching and the designs you loop off the letters. I see the tiniest of gray moths on the tail of the
E.
Yes, I do believe these are the finest yet.”

Every year it was usually the same thing. First the handkerchiefs, then the nod of acknowledgment. However, this year, of all years, he chose to flatter her needlework. This year, of all years . . . and when she needed the sameness in order to keep herself sane.

His pretty words were too much. Her emotions, already like a cup full of Christmas punch, were threatening at each moment to spill out. She didn’t want his compliment. She’d wanted to take one last nod from him with her. One final nod to bury in her wounded heart.

“I—” she stopped, her voice cracking. She had every intention of telling him how glad she was that he liked them. But when she tried again, nothing came out. Instead, a sudden rush of tears flowed from her eyes. All she could think of was how this was going to be the very last Christmas with him.

Unable to bear it any longer, she fled the room, rushing to the safety of the dark study.

Standing beside his desk, she wiped away the tears with her fingertips, and when those became too damp, she used the heels of her hands. She tried to compose herself. After all, she only had to wait a short while longer, and she could thoroughly give in to her misery, and no one would be the wiser.

“You left without your present, Pen,” Ethan said from behind her, his voice low.

She sniffed and discreetly wiped her wet hands over her knitted shawl. “Present? But you already gave me your present.” He’d settled her account for needlework supplies.
For the very last time.
The thought caused her next breath to come in ragged.

“Yes, but this year, I have one more gift for you.” He remained behind her, and something in the controlled manner of his tone made her realize that stepping away from the routine must be very difficult for him.

She blinked her eyes, keeping her face averted as she tried to make it appear she hadn’t been crying. “You didn’t have to. I enjoy our standing tradition.”

He was quiet for a moment. So quiet, she wasn’t sure if she’d offended him. But just as she was about to apologize, he spoke. “When I saw it, I knew it was made solely for you, no matter what story the jeweler told.”

The jeweler? And then suddenly she understood. He’d gotten her a gift—no, more of a memento—from their small morning adventure. She turned, expecting to see the odd jade tortoise in his hand or even the hideous bird, a joke shared between them.

However, when she saw what he was actually holding, the carefully crafted smile she wore died on her lips. Tears threatened again. In fact, they were probably spilling down her cheeks, only she was too shocked to notice.

It was the ring.

Even in the dimness of the room, the dark sapphires glinted with a fascinating light that held her stare.

“I love you, Pen,” Ethan said simply, as if he’d said it a million times, and she’d heard him utter the words for years upon years.

She blinked, staring at him, wondering if she’d gone mad and was imagining all of this.

It wasn’t possible. In their world of routine and sameness, nothing like this was possible.

“Everything is chaos without you. You, who can never be still for a single moment. You, who constantly challenges my sanity. You, with your wry wit and the way that you know me better than I know myself. You”— he took a breath and stepped forward, using one of his handkerchiefs to wipe the tears from her face—“are the only way I can find peace in my own life.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

He grinned, contradicting her by nodding. “I need you, Pen. I need you more than I need a straight cravat or a smudgeless accounting ledger or even orange marmalade. I need you more than I need air to breathe.” He stepped closer, slipping his arms around her waist, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Because you are my air. I can only breathe when you are near. And if you will not be mine, if you will not consent to be my wife, then I may never breathe again.”

She looked up at him and saw that his expression was no longer teasing but serious. “Wife?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly. This was very . . .
not
sameness.

He nudged her nose with his, gazing intently at her. “Yes.”

“You want to marry me?” She felt she had to clarify, just in case.

He chuckled and kissed her all-too-briefly on the lips. “That is the general idea. I don’t know of another way to go about trying to have you as my wife, so yes, I believe I’m asking you to marry me.”

She smiled at his teasing. This, she knew, would always be the same. “You can’t blame me for needing clarification. It is rather unlike you, after all. I would have expected a paper marked with notes on how to proceed.”

Again, he laughed, squeezing her tightly to him. “You know me so well. I
had
planned to get down on bended knee in the music room, in front of our parents, and very poetically ask you to be my wife.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “My plan was much simpler than what turned out, I’m afraid.”

She closed her eyes as he trailed kisses along her jaw. “I like this way much better.”

“You do?” He smiled against the spot just below her ear, nipping her bare lobe gently.

Mmm . . .
She made a sound of agreement. “Do you really need me more than you need a smudgeless ledger?”

Ethan lifted his head and regarded her. “You doubt it?”

She lifted her brows and gave him a teasing grin as she shrugged, challenging him to prove it.

Without releasing her, he moved to his chair and sat down, pulling her down with him. He opened the top drawer to his left, and there, he drew out his ledger. She recognized it as the one from town by the volume number stamped into the cover. Opening it, he showed her. With a look of triumph, he pointed to a large smudge of ink near the center that completely obscured the figures beneath it. “That was the day I realized how much I love you.”

She looked up at the date, her heart warming at the sight, and now understanding why she’d seen such a peculiar light in his eyes the day he took her to the jewelers.

“Oh, Ethan, it took you that long to know?” She released a dramatic sigh, one of her best, she was sure. “I’ve known for years.”