The Earl Takes a Lover Read Online Free Page A

girl under this particular toff was the lady’s personal companion—a woman who, Tony had recently sworn, could not bear the sight of a man and had an unnatural feeling for her own sex. Well, Cedony thought, if the state of her dress was any indication, she looked to be bearing this man well enough, and she would tell Tony that at the first opportunity.
    Scarlet faced and gasping, Pen scrambled out from under Robin and refused to meet his eyes as Cedony descended, giving the visible bulge in Robin’s breeches an appreciative glance as she went by. “Pru upstairs left parasol, it getting,” Pen mumbled incoherently. Panting, Robin watched her go, his eyes fixed on the hand she trailed along at waist level to keep her balance. He leaned against the wall, waiting for his erection to subside. If that girl had not appeared, he would have taken Pen on her back, on the servants’ stairs of her employer’s house. Given their respective positions, it was a little low, even for him. Make no mistake, he’d had women on their backs on the stairs, some of them in their employer’s houses, but that was the status quo. Pen was a different quantity, though how exactly he couldn’t have said. And she wouldn’t have stopped him: that was the hell of it. She might want to resist, but the inferno between them was strong enough to demolish it. In her body, when they lay together, there was little artifice and no resistance at all.
    Pen sat through church and heard nothing of Reverend Dickon’s sermon; just as well, as he had decided that morning to preach on the avoidance of the temptations of the flesh. She felt as if she had got more than she bargained for, and also as if what she had wanted had been kept tantalizingly out of her reach, and she did not know what to do next.
    As it happened, she was not required to come to any decision about the Earl of Tufton. He avoided her. Formal in company, he made sure they were never alone. Worse still, all familiarity was abruptly sanctioned and she was left facing an impenetrable stranger. To have his regard and lose it was aggravating to the point of pain. Beneath that, covered over like a leper’s spots, she felt certain it must be a flaw apparent to him alone that had turned him away.
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    Having avoided her usual haunts for several days, it took Robin a good hour to find Pen in the gazebo behind the oak trees at the foot of the south lawn. The day was fine and warm, a promise of the hotter days of summer. He took the shallow steps in a single bound, making the spacious interior seem suddenly cloistered. He was handsome, youthful and in the pitch of good health, and none of these attributes did anything to soothe Pen’s simmering temper. “I heard Pen and Liza talking,” he said without preamble. “They said you haven’t been yourself. Are you ill?”
    â€œI’m fine,” she said shortly. “Please remove yourself.”
    He laughed at the tart, formal propriety of it. Of all the mistakes he had made with her this proved, though inconsequential to his own way of thinking, to be the worst. “Look,” he began placatingly, still smiling, “I know it must seem—” But she cut him off.
    â€œNo, you look—don’t look. I don’t want to see you. Go away .” She was serious, and it dawned on him slowly as he advanced toward her, head cocked to one side, that she was not ill at all. He put one hand experimentally on her arm and she slapped it away, a sharp blow indicating, among other things, that she was stronger than she looked.
    â€œPenelope,” he began again.
    â€œDon’t you say my name,” she said, on a rising intonation. “You aren’t allowed. You can’t just—”
    He tried again. “I just want—” And she talked across him.
    â€œâ€”ignore me for a week and then waltz in here and ask me how I am, and if you