Swirling. Sucking.
Sigh.
Other ladies—and no doubt a good many gentlemen—would view their tangled, passionate interlude as a mistake. Penny? Never. She had not an inkling of regret.
She felt awake. Alive.
And rather proud of herself, really.
She’d never dreamed she would feel such raw, carnal sensations. Her friends had marriages where love and desire were intertwined—two strands in a tightly braided cord. But Penny had always believed it couldn’t be that way for her. The chance had been stolen from her long ago, when she was too young to even understand what she’d lost.
But today …
She thought of the way he’d paused when she touched his hand. When she hadn’t known whether she wished to drag his touch higher, or push it away. But he hadn’t made any judgments or pressed to satisfy his own desire—he’d merely waited for her to decide. It was a revelation.
After packing up the picnic things—the ants wanted her sandwiches, even if Gabriel didn’t—she cast a final look at the riverbank, scanning the reeds for any sign of a sleek brown otter.
Nothing.
If Hubert had wanted to return to her, she supposed he would have done so. Perhaps Gabriel was right. He was pursuing the life he was born to have. A life that didn’t include Penny.
Farewell, Hubert. I wish you many happy years.
As she turned back toward the carriage, her bare feet squelched in her boots. She’d retrieved her stockings, but there seemed no point in putting them on when her wet skirts would immediately soak them through.
Penny was no wheelwright, but as she returned to the coach, even she could see that the carriage wheel had not yet been repaired. Her first hint was that it was lying on the side of the road.
“It’s the bit that connects it to the axle that’s broken.” Gabriel swiped at his brow with his forearm. “This could take hours to mend.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“The two of us will walk ahead to the village,” he said. “We’ll wait on the carriage at the inn.”
“Why can’t we wait here?”
“I can’t take you home looking like that.” He swept a glance down her muddied, grass-stained frock. “We both need to wash.”
“I can bathe at home.”
“And you could do with a lie-down.”
“If you’re so concerned about my fatigue, why do you want me to walk two miles to the inn?”
“Because. I’m. Famished.”
Penny blinked at him.
“There. Are you happy? I couldn’t choke down enough of your miserable sandwiches. I need to eat something. Something that once had a face.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a horrid way of putting it.”
“You asked. I tried to spare your feelings this time. Give me credit for that much.”
“Go on by yourself, then. I can wait here.”
“I’m not leaving you stranded on the side of the road.”
“I wouldn’t be alone. I’d be with the coachman and smith.”
“You’re not as important to them as you are to me. I’m not leaving you here.” He picked up the birdcage and walked backward, in the direction of the village. “Just like you’re not letting me walk away with your deuced parrot.”
Impossible man.
The afternoon had grown warmer. Delilah, being a tropical bird, seemed to thrive in the heat. Penny did not. She was weary and thirsty, and growing testier by the moment. “I thought the village was only a mile or two.”
“It can’t be much farther now. Probably just after that bend in the road.”
“You said that two bends in the road ago. I thought the coach would have caught us by now. Perhaps they can’t mend it.”
“All the more reason to find the village. If worse comes to worst and the carriage can’t be mended, we can find other transportation. I can hire a—” He stopped in the road. “Fuck.”
His blasphemy sent Delilah into a titter. “Fancy a fuck, love? Ooh! Ooh! Yes! Pretty girl.”
“My coat,” he said. “I left it in the carriage.”
Penny paused and squinted at the cloudless sky and the cheerfully scorching sun. “I can’t imagine you’ll need it.”
“I don’t need the coat. I need the money that’s in it.” He set the birdcage on the ground and rubbed his face with both hands, cursing into them.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know. But one way or another, I’ll have you back in London by nightfall. You needn’t worry you’ll be ruined.”
“I’m not worried I’ll be ruined. I can’t be ruined.”
He lowered his voice, though there was no one but Delilah to hear. “If this is about earlier, by the river … There’s quite a gulf between what we did and the act of copulation. You haven’t lost your virtue.”
“For heaven’s sake, I understand how matters work between a man and a woman.” She wiped sweat from her brow. “I can’t be ruined because that would suggest I have prospects to ruin in the first place. I’m still unmarried, despite being an earl’s daughter, despite having a considerable dowry. No suitors are beating down my door.”
“There is no way in hell that your unmarried state is due to a lack of interest.”
“Please, enlighten me as to the reason.”
“That’s simple. You’ve been hiding yourself, and you’re good at it. A master of camouflage.”
She laughed. “Camouflage?”
“That’s the only possible explanation. You’ve made a frock from the same silk covering the drawing room walls, trimmed it with cat hair and feathers. Then when gentlemen visit, you stand still and blend in.”
“You have a surprisingly vivid imagination.”
“What I have is experience.” He stopped in the road and turned to face her. “I’ve built a fortune by spotting things that are undervalued, dusting them off, and selling them at the proper price. I know a hidden treasure when I see one.”
“Oh.”
Looking away, he pushed his hand through his hair. “Not this again.”
“Not what again?”
“Every time I speak three words, you look as though you’re going to swoon into my arms.”
“I do not,” Penny objected, knowing very well that she probably did.
“You sigh like a fool, blush like a beet. Your eyes are the worst of it. They turn into these … these pools. Glassy blue pools with man-eating sharks beneath the surface.”
“I hope you’re not planning a career in poetry.”
“For the good of us both, you have to cease gazing at me.”
“Then you have to cease wooing me.”
“Wooing you.” He grimaced, as if the words were a pickled lemon on his tongue. “I don’t woo.”
“You do too woo.” She lowered her voice to match his gruff timbre. “‘I need you,’ ‘I’m not letting you go.’ A woman can’t help but go soft inside. Those sorts of declarations are unbearably