The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (18 page)

Damon’s puzzled expression began to turn to alarm as his eyes darted back and forth between Roger and where I stood in his protective shadow. “No,” he began, enlightenment dawning. “No.”

I began to wring my hands. “Damon, I know this is a disappointment--”

“You and Roger? It cannot be true!” Damon’s face tightened in a mask of rage. “You foolish girl. You’ve ruined everything! How could you be such a damned fool?”

Roger’s arm jumped up, but I quickly put my hand on his sleeve.

“I would be a fool indeed to marry you,” I replied, stung. “I
overheard
you in the orchard speaking to that girl.”

“Girl?” Lady Penwyth asked sharply. “What girl is this?”

“You were in the orchard?” Damon repeated. He still regarded me as if he'd like to strangle me, but a trace of guilt softened his fury. “Oh damn.”

Lady Penwyth’s chest swelled as if another shriek were building in her. “I asked you a question, Damon. What girl is Miss Eames speaking of?”

“It does not matter,” Sir Grover interjected coolly. “You see now of what comes of allowing sentiment to cloud a simple transaction. We should have bound the chit to Damon before she arrived.”

“Sarah would not allow it, as well you know,” Lady Penwyth shot back. “But who would have thought the girl would take up with Roger? It goes beyond reason and sanity, Roger over Damon . . . though I should have suspected something when I saw Roger today at the Revel. ‘What’, I asked myself, ‘could lure the hermit out of Lyhalis?’ It could not be merely to torment me, for
that
had become well-worn sport. Oh, I worried, and for good reason.” A crimson flush burned through the powder covering her cheeks. “Husband, you should never have allowed him to fetch her from St. Ives. He has overset her mind from the beginning!”

“Exhibit control, if you please.” Sir Grover’s smooth voice sliced through his wife’s rising hysteria. “This is only the opening move, eh, Roger lad? The girl is only angry at Damon for the moment.” Sir Grover’s eyes went to his son, who nodded imperceptibly.

Damon moved forward, pulling the skirt of his coat away from his hips to show me the languid sway of his figure better, a ghost of his impish grin curling the corners of his mouth. “Now Miss Eames, see reason," he murmured appealingly. “It's not too late. Tell Roger here that you weren't thinking clearly when you accepted him. You know it’s me you want. Oh, I’ll put aside the girl if you insist, for I had no notion it would bother you. And I would never annoy you consorting with women of our own rank--that would be crude. Reconsider, won’t you?”

I stared at Damon’s remorseful expression, contrition writ on every line of his face, and felt a faint pull of his magnetism. Roger’s face, by contrast, was distant and cold. In the ordinary confines of the parlour, he seemed as remote as the quoit of his namesake, standing impenetrably in the midst of a howling storm. I saw no trace of my heated lover from the garden, and he made no effort to dissuade me from Damon. Indeed, his silence was fiercely held.

A doubt began to form in the back of my mind.

“In love, Persia m’dear, it is never too late,” Damon murmured, seductively.

Suddenly I was furious and heartily sick of it all--the way my stepmother expected me to accept my preordained future without a murmur of dissent; the way the Penwyths tried to bully me with every expectation of success; the way Damon presumed I would fall into his arms after a pretty show of regret.

I took a deep breath and winced as the air abused my cut lip. “It is too late for you.”

The pout on Damon’s face twisted to an ugly rage.

“Then take your second serving in Roger,” he snarled. “You’ll find him poor fare after me. All his riches won’t be enough to console you. You’ll think of me night after night. And when he goes mad like his father, don’t come crying back to me--I won’t be waiting.”

He flung himself to the sideboard, black anger soaking his eyes as he poured a tumbler of brandy. “You will remember this day with regret, Miss Persia Eames,” he muttered. “And so will you, Roger.”

“Do you see how unhappy you are making everyone?” Lady Penwyth rounded on me. “How selfish can one girl be? I can barely contemplate the gossip that will run rife in the neighborhood tomorrow--the glee at the scandal. My God, how am I to hold my head up in service on Sunday?”

“Madame, the curtain has yet to fall on this melodrama,” Sir Grover remarked coolly, unmoved by the outbursts. “Miss Eames has acted impulsively, as can sometimes be expected from a young women’s soft nature. Thankfully we have laws now to curb the little upsets that foolishness will cause. For there is still the matter of your guardian’s permission, Miss Eames. The law will not permit you to marry without it--and a wise law it is. For once, Lord Hardwicke did sensible gentlemen a favor.”

Hope glittered in Lady Penwyth’s eyes. “Yes, Sarah will not countenance this defiance. I will write to her now and apprise her of your naughtiness, though it does not cast a pretty light on our guardianship--”

“I’ve already written to Mistress Sarah Eames,” Roger said.

Lady Penwyth’s steps faltered on her way to her writing desk. Damon’s chin rose from where it had sunk into his neckcloth, and even Sir Grover seemed mildly intrigued.

“You’ve . . . you’ve written to my stepmother?” I croaked.

Roger kept his expression blank. “I’ve acquainted her with my affairs. For you see, I know the law as well.”

My mind raced. Writing my stepmother for permission to marry me meant that Roger had put methodical action into achieving our union well in advance of today.

Suddenly Roger grinned at Sir Grover, a blinding flash. “Mistress Eames writes that she is rather impressed with the extent of my estate . . . and the settlement I dangled before her.”

“I’ll wager she is.” Sir Grover murmured. His face crimsoned under his white wig, and for the first time I felt a prick of fear. Sir Grover had lost his temper.

Roger held his smile, taunting Sir Grover who bit his lip as if holding back a roar of fury.

After a suspended moment, Sir Grover gave a slight shudder, as if shaking the emotion from his heart. “No matter. I will write Mistress Eames myself and remind her of her obligation. I too have choice settlements to offer . . . and she would not like to cause a rift with her sister.”

Lady Penwyth sputtered gratefully.

Roger sighed. His hair had come completely unbound from the ill-tied queue, flowing over his shoulders in a river. Only the cut over his eye saved him from looking like an archangel. “I did not want to do this.”

“I say,” came a sleepy voice from the parlour door. “Have I intruded on a family chat?”

“What the devil are you doing here?” Damon muttered sulkily over the rim of his glass.

Henry DeVere ambled in, unruffled by Damon’s rudeness or Sir Grover’s thunderous expression.

“The card game is over,” Sir Grover said, “and my son’s pockets are to let. There are no pickings for you tonight, DeVere.”

Mr. DeVere paused during his workman-like bow in the direction of Lady Penwyth. “That is a very uncivil greeting, Sir Grover. I wouldn’t be here at all except at the express appeal of Mr. Roger Penwyth, who asked me to pay you a courtesy call this night. I told him that it was not necessary, for you and I were men of business--there could be no resentment among the pragmatic.”

“And what is it that I’m to be pragmatic about?”

The brows over Henry DeVere’s sleepy eyes shot up. “Why, that I mean to make a run for it. Hadn’t Penwyth told you?”

“Make a ‘run’ for what?”

“The county seat, of course. I mean to stand for the election this summer. I’ve always fancied adding ‘MP’ to my ‘Esq’.”

Sir Grover gave a bark of laughter. “You cannot mean it, man. To win an election takes money, years of cultivation, a study of progressive principles, securing high support--”

Henry DeVere did not look offended at all by Sir Grover’s unflattering disbelief. “I
know
--such a lot of work! I thought I would never have the constitution for it. Running about the county socializing with the freeholders . . . and the promises one is forced to make, well, I hope I can remember them all when the time comes. Luckily the difficulty of securing the high support is solved, so there is one less empty promise on my conscience.”

Sir Grover looked as if he were smelling something unpleasant. “And whose man are you to be?”

“Lord Sidney’s.”

“Impossible.”

“Yes, yes, I know the two of you have had an understanding for years. But that’s what makes it all so intriguing. Lord Sidney is growing much concerned with your level of debt--not that it approaches anything near his--aristocrats exist on a plane far above ours. But when I mentioned that Damon Penwyth owed me a deal, he became troubled.”

Over by the sideboard, Damon’s skin turned ashy.

Sir Grover fiddled with his ruby ring. “What nonsense. Five hundred? It’s nothing.”

Mr. DeVere’s expression was one of profound regret. “It pains me to tell the father that his son has since increased his indebtedness to me by five-fold.”

Sir Grover turned slowly toward Damon.

“I thought my luck would turn. It always does,” Damon protested. A shrill note edged his voice. “I will win it back. It’s only a matter of time. Father, don’t look at me like that!”

“Faro is not Damon’s game, I’m afraid,” Henry DeVere remarked sadly to Sir Grover. “And so his debt, combined with your leverage to open your new wheal, and the recent spate of spending on this marvelously entertaining Revel--” he gave an encouraging smile to Lady Penwyth--“have conspired to convince Lord Sidney that he should look to one who manages his private affairs more prudently.”

Mr. DeVere’s sleepiness vanished. “Expect Lord Sidney’s letter in tomorrow’s post.”

Icy rage flooded Sir Grover’s face. “You may try, Henry DeVere,
Esq.
but you don’t have the blunt or the cunning to overturn me.”

Mr. DeVere’s eyes shifted briefly to Roger. “Well, I’ve said enough. My, this wasn’t as unpleasant as I thought it was going to be. Lady Penwyth, Miss . . . Eames, is it? Good evening to you both. Penwyth--”

“In due time, Henry,” Roger replied. “In due time.”

Mr. DeVere departed with a soft clicking of his heels on the parquet floor boards.

Sir Grover turned to Roger. “So you mean to fund DeVere’s run for my seat by stealth.”

“I do what I must to get what I want.”

“And what is it you want Roger, hm? This girl? This paltry, lame girl who may have money but nothing else, and no, you don’t need her money, so I’m finding it difficult to believe you do it to have her. What then?”

“Must there be a motive?”

“Oh there’s always a motive. And yours is revenge.”

Roger’s jaw moved but he did not answer.

“A word of advice, my boy: don’t let passion and ill-considered judgment of the consequences rule you. You’ll end up making a blunder.”

“Are you speaking from your own acquaintance with passionate blunders?”

I gasped. Was Roger’s cool retort a pointed reference to Sir Grover’s infatuation with his mother Morgreth, the ‘mistake’ that sent his father Heron Penwyth over the edge of madness? Or was he referring to the note his wife burned in a spasm of jealousy, the note from Morgreth pleading for help?

“We should have given the nurse two guineas to drown him when we had the chance,” Lady Penwyth spat viciously through her tears.

Sir Grover ignored his wife. “Relation or no, think twice before you set yourself against me, Roger Penwyth. I make a poor enemy.”

A smile of relish spread over Roger’s face. “So do I.”

I felt ill. Before me a family lay in ruin. Roger’s plot was methodical and well-planned, honing in upon the Penwyth weaknesses with ruthless precision: Lady Penwyth’s desire to maintain a genteel propriety before her neighbors; Damon’s need for my money to save him from a fatal burden of debt; Sir Grover’s long-held political ambitions.

Somehow I did not believe that it was done solely to wrest me from them for himself.

I swayed. The overwrought emotions flooding the room combined with the upsets to my equilibrium earlier in the day were beginning to take a toll.

Roger looked down at me. The dark blue ring surrounding his light green irises made his eyes look like a falcon’s. “I think I’ll take Persia with me now.”

“
You can’t
!” Lady Penwyth wailed. “The scandal, the gossip--”

“My dear Jocasta, scandal and gossip follow me like hounds on a hare. Do you think I care about it now?”

“Then think of the trouble it will cause Miss Eames if you take her before you are married!” Lady Penwyth persisted tearfully.

“I am more concerned about the trouble she will endure under this roof if I leave her.”

Lady Penwyth moaned, and Sir Grover raised his hands as if he’d like to have my neck between them. Damon threw me a look of purest loathing over his snifter.

Despite my doubts about Roger’s motives, the thought of spending another moment in the Hermitage made my stomach churn. “Don’t leave me here,” I whispered.