on her answer.
“And then I kissed him,” Penny answered quietly. “And he kissed me back.”
“No.” Emma took three paces backward and stared at her from the opposite side of the Ashbury House morning room. “Oh, Penny.”
“I was caught up in the moment. He’d just rescued Bixby, and I was grateful. And when his shoulder flexed beneath my hand, his muscles felt so—”
“You were feeling his shoulders?”
“Only one of them,” she protested, as if this fact made it any less improper.
Penny stepped down from the dressmaker’s box, sank onto the divan, and buried her face in her hands. Emma spooled her measuring tape and came to sit beside her.
Penny laid her head on her friend’s shoulder. “It’s such a relief to see you. I haven’t had anyone to confide in. Thank you for coming to Town.”
“Naturally, we came. You said you needed us. Besides, I ought to thank you. For years now I’ve been dying to give you a new wardrobe. I’ll draw up sketches, make patterns. Then we’ll see that you have the best of fabrics and the most talented dressmakers in London.”
As a seamstress-turned-duchess, Emma could have abandoned needlework in favor of a life of leisure. Most women in her place certainly would have done so.
However, Emma was not the usual sort of woman, and Penny was ever grateful for it. Their common status on the fringes of genteel society was the reason they’d become close friends.
“I don’t know what’s come over me,” Penny moaned. “Whenever he’s near, I feel like an animal in mating season. I think I’ve fallen in lust.”
“If you have, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. Many a woman has fallen victim to the same contagion. Including me. If you don’t wish to see Mr. Duke, simply avoid him.”
“I can’t avoid him. He’s offered to help me with my aunt’s demands, and even if he hadn’t, he lives next door.”
“Good God, Penny.” The Duke of Ashbury stormed into the room. “Do you know what kind of brigand you have living next door?”
“Gabriel Duke,” she answered.
“Gabriel Duke, that’s who.” Ash glowered at the window. He always looked fearsome, due to the battle scars twisting one half of his face. If not for the giggling child attached to his boot, he might have looked truly intimidating.
“Richmond, darling.” Penny extended her arms, and the boy toddled into her embrace. “Look how big you’ve grown.”
“Your new neighbor is an infamous blackguard,” Ash continued. “And now Emma tells me you’re consorting with the man?”
“I’m not consorting with him. My aunt has given me an ultimatum. If I don’t earn her approval before the month is out, my brother will take me back to Cumberland.”
Penny’s stomach churned. Ever since her aunt’s visit, the prospect of returning to Cumberland had loomed over her like a thundercloud, oppressive and dark. The mere idea of living in that house, sleeping in that room …
She couldn’t go back. She wouldn’t.
“Mr. Duke offered to assist me with a few tasks. It’s in his financial interests that I remain in Bloom Square.”
“Oh, I’m certain it’s in his interests. Haven’t you heard what he did to Lord Fairdale?”
Penny bounced Richmond on her knee. “I hadn’t heard, actually.”
“I’ll tell you. First, he bought up all the man’s paper. And I mean all of it. Tracked down every last creditor, from an unsettled wager at White’s to his outstanding balance at the glover’s, rolling them all into one insurmountable debt. Then he drove down the value of stock in a shipping company, leaving Fairdale with nothing of worth to sell. He was left with nothing but a bit of barren land and the crumbling ancestral house.”
“Goodness.”
“There was nothing of goodness in it. Sheer villainy. He not only mowed that family to field stubble, he salted the earth beneath them. And Fairdale hasn’t been his only victim. The man means to gather England’s best families into a bundle of sticks and break them over his knee. You cannot have anything to do with him. The danger is too great.”
“The danger of what?”
He spread his arms. “Isn’t it obvious? He wants to ruin you.”
“Ash, please.” Emma covered her son’s ears. “Not in front of Richmond.”
“He’s isn’t even two years old. It’s not as if he can understand.” Nevertheless, Ash ceded to his wife’s request. “The man means to R-U-I-N you.”
Penny sat up straight. “Are you suggesting Mr. Duke intends to S-E-D-U-C-E me? How absurd.”
It was absurd, she told herself. Their kiss the other day was not an act of seduction. It was an accident. A moment of madness.
More to the point, it was all her doing.
If anything, she’d taken advantage of him.
Penny shook her head. “He R-U-I-N-S lords’ fortunes, not ladies’ reputations.”
“You never know if he’ll start branching out. If the villain has designs on your dowry, you are too inexperienced to handle him.”
“Oh, I think Penny can handle him,” Emma said innocently. “She’s handled the man quite capably thus far.”
Penny cast a look at her friend. Please don’t.
“I won’t stand for it,” Ash said with force. “Neither will Chase.”
“Chase?”
“As usual, it appears I need no introduction.” Chase Reynaud entered the room, linked arm-in-arm with his excessively pregnant wife, Alexandra, and followed by their two wards, Rosamund and Daisy.
“Alex.” Penny handed Richmond to Emma and rushed to embrace her friend tightly—or as tightly as possible, given the obstacle between them. While Rosamund and Daisy mobbed her with kisses, Penny helped her friend waddle to the divan. “I thought you’d entered your confinement.”
“I’m weary of being confined.” Alexandra dropped onto the divan with a thud. “Besides, Ash said we were needed at once. I’m not certain why.”
Ash said, “Tell her, Chase.”
Chase stood tall and leveled a finger at Penny with unconvincing severity. “You cannot live next to that man. Don’t you know what he did to Lord Fairdale? The villain—”
“Bought up his debts, destroyed his investments, and left him with scarcely anything to his name.”
“Yes. What if the bast—”
“Chase,” Alexandra said sharply.
He sighed. “What if the B-A-S-T-E-R-D sets his eyes on you?”
“A,” Rosamund corrected. “B-A-S-T-A-R-D.”
Penny made a suggestion. “Girls, would you kindly run across the square to my house and have a look at Angus? He sneezed yesterday. Perhaps he has a cold.”
“Maybe it’s the plague!” Daisy cheered.
“Probably not,” Penny said. “But you had better go see.”
“Is there any chance he’s dying? I don’t want him to die, of course. But it’s ever so exciting when there’s a chance.”
“Daisy, he’s not dying.” Rosamund tugged her younger sister by the hand. “They’re trying to be rid of us so they can discuss adult matters.”