A Man without a Mistress (The Penningtons Book 2) Read online

  “You thought me unable to command my horse?” she asked, struggling to her feet.

  He’d long prided himself on his polite, detached manner of speaking to the gentler sex, but the ingratitude of this reckless young woman made composure difficult to maintain. “Forgive me, but has the meaning of the word command been changed without my knowledge? The last time I consulted Dr. Johnson’s dictionary, hurtling through the park as if one were being chased by Napoleon’s entire army did not number among its definitions.”

  The lady’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it is not your understanding, but your eyesight that is at fault, sir. To mistake the glide of the canter for the uncontrolled dash of a bolt, one must lack a certain ability to discriminate. Might you be in need of spectacles?”

  “I’d no need of spectacles to see your horse was galloping away at a clip that no lady in a sidesaddle could long maintain. Not, that is, if she wished to avoid falling on her lovely ar—”

  Lord, the vexing baggage had nearly goaded him into cursing in front of her. Had he completely lost his mind?

  “I assure you I had complete control over my mount, sir, and was at no time in any danger of falling, on my lovely a— or on any other part of my person.”

  He felt his breath catch at the girl’s audacity. Would a proper lady speak so, or look at a man so boldly?

  Suddenly realizing he was staring, he yanked his eyes away from the cherry-red figure, feigning an urgent need to attend to his own attire. Leaning over to brush the dirt from his knees gave him no respite, however; from that vantage point, he could not help but see that her skirt had sidled up almost to her knee, revealing scuffed riding boots below all-too-shapely calves. Her mouth widened into an angry O as she saw the direction his gaze had taken. She yanked her skirt back down over her ankles, freeing him from the enticing sight.

  What the devil ailed him today, to allow a pert young miss to goad him into such appalling behavior? Before his lips could form the words of the apology she was surely due, a rough cough informed him they were no longer alone. A retainer joined them, holding the reins of her horse in one hand, Per’s hat in the other. The wry twist of the man’s lips told Per that this was not the first time he had been left behind as the chit tore off on her own.

  “All to rights, miss?” the groom asked.

  Skirts swayed temptingly over that shapely bottom as she strode over to collect her mount. “Yes, Farley, everything is fine. A simple misunderstanding, it would appear. The gentleman mistook my mount for a runaway and thought me in need of rescue.”

  “All too easy to make a mistake like that, here in the city, with so many folks as what don’t know a body and all,” the groom replied. “And thankful I am to you, sir, for all the young miss knows as much about handling a horse as I do meself. All good and well to give me the slip in the country, but Lord Saybrook would have me head iffen he was to hear of her riding about alone here in Lunnon.”

  Saybrook? Did the groom belong to Saybrook’s household?

  “Perhaps you might do me a favor in return then,” Per said, happy to have a reason to turn his gaze away from the cherry-red young woman, and the blush that had suffused her face at her retainer’s words. “Do you know a servant who works at Pennington House, a girl called”—he paused to pull the penitent list from his pocketbook—“Bridget McGinnis?”

  Instead of answering, the groom glanced nervously toward his mistress.

  “If you are interested in Miss McGinnis, would it not be best to speak with her, rather than her servant?” she said, stepping between him and the groom.

  “You are Bridget McGinnis?” She hardly looked the part of a dependent. And what serving girl would be allowed to ride about London on such prime horseflesh? He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  But the girl did not retreat. “And if I were?”

  Her speech and manner hardly suggested that of a lightskirt. But perhaps hard times had brought her low? He allowed his eyes to wander her person, from the springs of curling hair that peeked out from under her hat to the dirty hems of her habit. Not a typical beauty, with her abundant curves and tart tongue, but still, there was something that drew a man’s eye, even against his will. The previous Lord Saybrook had no reputation as a skirt chaser, but perhaps his heir was different. If she stirred the new master of Pennington House half as much as she did him, then perhaps Miss McGinnis was not as reformed as the Guardian Society might wish.

  “Then I would say, Miss McGinnis, you need to demand more from your protector,” he heard himself reply. “No high-flyer worth her salt would be caught dead in such outmoded clothes.”

  “My protector? What, you believe me some man’s mistress?”

  Eyes glittered back at him with a fire far different from his own cool reserve. Disregard it, he told himself sharply, even as his boots took one step closer, then another. The sight of her pulse leaping in the hollow of her neck set his own heart pounding, as if he were once again in the midst of pursuing her. But they both stood firmly on the ground.

  “Are you not, little hoyden?” he heard himself whisper, his voice rasping strange and low. Tension laced his body as he waited for her answer.

  “Sir?” The groom coughed. “Be needing your hat, will you?”

  Per jerked away in embarrassment. How humiliating, to need a servant to remind him of proper behavior! Whether lady or lightskirt, the girl had not merited such disrespect.

  But at least his actions had given him the answer to his question. For surely a gentlewoman would have reacted to his insulting familiarity with a cry of outrage or a stinging slap, rather than allow him to speak with her so. And the way her eyelids had opened so wide, then drifted so enticingly low, as if his voice had cast as deep a glamoury over her as she had seemingly cast over him . . .

  Devil take it! If every penitent he met sent him into such a state, he’d not be through with the odious search until Michaelmas. And being seen in conversation with a lightskirt would hardly burnish his reputation, would it?

  Collecting his usual sang-froid about him as if it were a shield, he strode over to his horse and swung quickly up into the saddle. He grabbed his hat from the groom and placed it, one-handed, upon his head, then turned his mount toward the south gate. But somehow—because, though they looked nothing alike, something about her put him in mind of Mary Catharine, perhaps?—he could not bring himself to leave without speaking a final word.

  “Please accept my apologies, Miss McGinnis, for mistaking you for a lady in distress. Now that I know you are much too capable ever to be in need of rescue, you can be sure I will not make the same mistake again. But I will share with you one word of advice. Any woman who rides through the park at such a breakneck pace is likely to draw unwanted attention. You’d best curb your mount if you do not wish word of your misadventures to get back to your patrons at the Guardian Society.”

  With a quick nod, he set his mount to a brisk trot, steeling himself against turning back for one last sight of the girl. And against thinking overmuch about why any such effort was needed.

  A mistress. The blasted man actually had the temerity to believe her some man’s mistress!

  Sibilla strode down the Mayfair pavement, the dappled afternoon sunlight doing little to brighten her mood. Back home in Lincolnshire, whenever unruly temper threatened to overcome her, she took refuge not in dirty city avenues but in the land, galloping heedlessly through the woods and dells until she no longer had energy left to expend on anything as useless as anger. As a child, her brothers had most often driven her out, with their taunts and teasing and their infuriating bodies, bodies large enough and strong enough to easily push aside any attempts she might make to join in their play, or protest their leaving her behind.

  But then Kit had gone to Cambridge to prepare for the church, and Benedict to the Continent to study art. And then Theo, too, had removed to London, to learn nothing at all. Unless one counted the gentlemanly debaucheries, of course. With three brothers gone, it had been her fat
her’s physician, then, who had driven her to race over the lanes with rash abandon. “Nothing to do but wait,” he would intone, his kindly smile infuriating in its resignation. “’Tis the will of God.” Nothing to do as she spent each morning nursing Papa, listening to his stories of his past political accomplishments, refusing to believe he’d not have the opportunity to contrive even greater triumphs in future. Refusing to believe he’d ever leave her.

  Toward the end, when her father had coughed and raved, Sibilla found herself tearing over the countryside, turning toward home only when she could barely keep her seat for weariness and despair. After her father’s death, she’d vowed never to allow herself to be so helpless, so vulnerable, ever again.

  Yet here she stood, not three days arrived in London, and already social convention had ruined her freedom. Devil take him, that far-too-attractive man, with his insulting insinuations and presumptuous hands. Devil take him for stealing away even the tame release offered by a harmless gallop. If only I’d had the courage to let fly with my riding crop—

  Her steps beat against the cobbles as she strode across Oxford Street. Ridiculous to give the rude stranger any more of her thoughts. She had problems much closer to home—three, to be exact. Three insufferable, infuriating problems that had driven her to race Lady Jane through the park as if Old Nick himself had been in close pursuit. Namely, Benedict, who gave her a bow rather than an embrace when he finally dragged himself away from his oh-so-important studio to acknowledge their arrival. And Kit, who called the next day only to tell her he was far too busy to accept that morning’s, or any morning’s, invitation to ride. And above all, Theo, her beloved Theo, who had driven her from the house without even stepping a foot within it. How could he let three entire days slip by without calling?

  Well, if Theo would not come to her, then she would just have to go to him. Aunt Allyne might insist that a respectable unmarried lady did not call on a gentleman, but surely the rule did not apply to brothers.

  “Miss?” The question was tentative, but insistent, spoken by her maid, Bridget McGinnis. The same Bridget McGinnis after whom the insolent man in the park had been inquiring. When Sibilla had so impulsively allowed that man to mistake her for the maid her aunt had hired, her only thought had been to protect the young woman. Having a gentleman chasing after a servant surely boded no good. And her later questioning suggested the girl might just be in need of such protection. Though Bridget denied knowing any such man, her refusal to look her mistress in the eye struck Sibilla as more than just respectful deference.

  “Aware, are you, that we’ve left Mayfair, miss?” Bridget asked. “This neighborhood—’tis not all it should be. Not a place for a gentlewoman such as yourself.” The girl’s freckled face flushed with the exertion of keeping pace with Sibilla’s quick strides. “Sure, are you, that it’s your brother’s lodgings? And not those of his—”

  “Not those of his what?”

  An odd look passed across Bridget’s face, the meaning of which Sibilla could not tease out after less than a week’s acquaintance. And the sharpness with which she had just spoken would hardly give Bridget any incentive to confide.

  Before she could soften her tone to question Bridget further, a shutter seemed to draw down somewhere inside the girl, curtaining all emotion from her scrutiny. “It do be nothing, miss,” the maid murmured, head bent.

  Dash it all. She’d never found it difficult to be on good terms with the family’s servants before. But here she’d known this girl for less than a week, and already the poor thing stood in dread of her. Why should grief make it so difficult to keep a civil tongue in her head?

  She sighed in mute apology, hoping the girl would forgive her rudeness.

  “Here is Seymour Street, miss” was Bridget’s only response.

  Sibilla nodded, then walked down the pavement until she reached number 28. A maidservant, clearly on her way out to polish the front railing, pulled the door wide from beneath Sibilla’s hand.

  Sibilla stepped back to avoid a collision. “Is your master within?” she asked.

  The serving girl’s eyes widened. “You be wantin’ ’is lordship?” She glanced back through the open door, a look of doubt overtaking her face.

  “Yes. Lord Saybrook.” Her voice caught. It still hurt, using that title to refer to someone other than her father. “He is your employer, is he not?”

  The girl nodded, but did not say another word.

  Low laughter from inside the house broke the awkward silence. Heavens, she hadn’t heard that sound in more than a year. She smiled, her brother’s good cheer heartening her for the difficult task ahead.

  Pushing past the protesting maidservant, Sibilla began to climb.

  “Miss. Miss. Does ’is lordship know you’re a-comin’?” The servant dropped her basket, flapping her hands in obvious dismay as she chased Sibilla up the stairs. “My lady, please . . .”

  Taken back by the girl’s obvious distress, Sibilla paused on the landing. “I am Miss Pennington. Surely he will not object to a visit from his own sister?”

  “Aye, miss, I mean, no, miss, please, miss, if you’ll just wait here?” Scrambling in front of her, the servant gave an awkward curtsy, then rushed down the hall to a half-opened door.

  Sibilla crossed her arms and tapped her foot to the sound of muffled words and shuffling chairs. What could Theo be up to, that his servant would be so filled with consternation at the thought of his sister catching him at it?

  Or was he still be so angry about their last argument that he’d commanded his staff not to allow her entrance?

  Shaking off the ill thought, Sibilla stepped determinedly down the hall and opened the door.

  A large blond man stood by the head of the table, his face hauntingly familiar—so like Papa!—yet at the same time, so distressingly distant. “Theo?”

  Her eldest brother had always taken care with his attire. But the man standing before her looked as if he had never heard of the word valet, never mind made daily use of one’s services. His waistcoat unbuttoned, his hair disheveled, his cravat entirely askew, he looked as rumpled as a pile of laundry awaiting the day’s washing.

  None of that mattered. She flew across the room and pulled her brother into an unexpectedly fierce embrace. “Theo,” she whispered into his neckcloth as she felt his arms encircle her. “Theo.”

  The urge to beg his forgiveness—not for her interruption, but for the horrid imprecations she had thrown at him over their father’s sickbed—flooded her. But before she could summon the words, she felt him stiffen, his arms loosen. Shrugging carefully out of her grasp, he set her aside as if her touch embarrassed him.

  “Billie. What are you doing here?” he asked as he worked the buttons on his waistcoat. “And who was fool enough to give you this direction?”

  “Your direction?” she repeated. It had been plaguey difficult, in fact, to ferret out Theo’s direction; none of her family seemed to know of it. Only after ransacking the office of her father’s secretary, guessing that the account books must include mention of any rent he paid, had she discovered this Seymour Street address. Why would he wish to keep his whereabouts a secret?

  “Why, Aunt Allyne, of course,” she prevaricated, adding a careless shrug for good measure.

  “Our aunt sent you here, did she? I am all astonishment.”

  The slight slur of his words, the unsteadiness of his gait, the way he slumped into a chair without waiting for her to take a seat—was her brother drunk? And so early in the afternoon?

  Theo reached out to pull the stopper free from a decanter on the sideboard. Before he had a chance to refill his empty glass, Sibilla’s hand darted out to pull it from his grasp.

  “Have a care, or you’ll spill on that frock,” Theo said, carefully enunciating each word as he peeled back her fingers one by one to repossess the glass.

  “Aunt Allyne says it’s entirely unsuitable for town. Too tight in the bod— But I’m determined not to give it up,” she hear
d herself chatter. Why did he stare so at his glass, as if it could reveal every secret of the world to one wise enough to plumb its illusive depths? “Papa loved red, and I haven’t been able to wear colors, not since—”

  Neither she nor her brother, it seemed, could bring themselves to finish that sentence. Too many “sinces” hung in that silence between them, light as air, thick as a castle’s wall.

  She looked at Theo then, really looked at him. He was more than just disheveled; with such red-rimmed eyes and bristle-bound cheeks, he looked careworn. Exhausted. Why?

  Maybe Theo missed their father more than she’d thought. The two had never managed to rub along very well together, Papa’s political ambition the driest of kindling to the spark of Theo’s indifference. But this looked like grief. Did he care that much for Papa, then, despite their almost constant bickering?

  Tipping his head with slow care to lean back against his chair, Theo hardly seemed in a state to discuss his finer feelings, never mind all the logical, rational arguments she had prepared to persuade him of his political obligations.

  Would he even listen to an apology, or offer one of his own in return?

  Start slowly, Papa’s voice cautioned inside her head.

  Sibilla sank into the chair beside her brother, folding her hands neatly on the table. “I came to ask if you’d spare me your copy of the Times, Theo. Aunt Allyne has forbidden me to read it, of all things, and I’m woefully uninformed of the doings of Parliament this past week.”

  “Forbidden you the Times, has she?” He moved one hand to rest stolidly atop a copy of the newspaper lying beside him.

  “Yes. Except for the court news, which she kindly clips from the paper for my edification. ‘Time enough for the rest when you are married,’ she says. As if I hadn’t read the political column to Papa every morning since I was a child. Tell me, what debates will be roiling Lords today?” she asked, easing the sheets from under his fist.

  Large hands pulled the paper from her before she could read even a word. “Brangling with our aunt already, are you Billie? Self-effacing woman, but rather immovable in her ideas, you’ll find. Better to give over early; save you the headache.”