Page 52 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
“You may deny it all you like, but I saw how you looked at her at the Townsend ball. How you later danced with her. And, apparently, how you stood rather close to her at a dressmaker’s recently.”
“Heavens, can a man not move through this city without being watched?” Edmund ground out.
Truly, he was more frustrated with himself—perhaps with Penelope as well, for enticing him without ever trying.
And he could see that. She lacked the boisterous, forward behavior most ladies of the ton had. If anything, her more reserved nature was what had drawn him in. He enjoyed watching how his words flustered her, how that delicious blush spread up her neck, how he had torn part of her dress and wished to have kept tearing it until?—
“You are blushing,” Benjamin noted.
“I am not,” Edmund snapped. “Your horse answers to me, and I can command him to buck you right off. Perhaps a muddy puddle will be nearby, so I can time it well.”
“And I will drag you down with me,” Benjamin countered. “And then we shall arrive at our mysterious destination muddy and make a terrible impression.”
Edmund only glowered at him, ignoring his taunts.
“Of course, it makes a lot of sense. You are thirty, and you have no wife or heir to speak of, and Lady Penelope is a spinster?—”
“Benjamin, I am starting to regret allowing you to come with me.” Edmund’s voice was a growl, his eyes narrowing on his cousin, who merely grinned at him as they rode towards the building that rose in the distance.
It was nestled before a borough of woodland, set back as if it did not quite want to leave London completely but was not committed to the countryside either.
Perhaps that matched Charles Thatcher’s preference, too. One foot in his old life, unable to fully escape, and one hand reaching for freedom, if Julian’s theory was correct. A paranoid recluse who had fallen out with a very powerful man, knowing that the man would have other powerful accomplices hunting for him—it all made sense.
“And stop saying Lady Penelope is a spinster,” Edmund muttered to Benjamin, trying to iron out his thoughts about Penelope—about that dreadful dress that had practically choked her.
He did not know why she had suddenly begun to wear such modest clothing, but it was not hard to guess, even if he did not want to outright accuse Finley on account of their old friendship.
“She is, though.”
“She is a very capable woman who the ton has not favored,” Edmund snapped. “That is no fault of her own. I am sure she would be blissfully married by now if Langwaite did not bat away every suitor. At the ball, he was raving about how nobody present was good enough for her.”
“Did you feel insulted, Edmund?”
Benjamin’s teasing question only earned him a fierce glare. His thoughts were on what he had told Penelope moments before kissing her.
“You are… a woman draped in desire I cannot let myself have. A woman who has haunted my thoughts since the night we met.”
Had she felt his arousal, as he had been unable to keep it at bay while holding her in his arms? While feeling her mouth softening beneath his, returning every stroke of his tongue against hers.
Heavens, if Arabella had not interrupted them, how much further would he have been tempted to take their secluded moment?
A balcony was only private from the floor it was attached to. He did not know, or dare to wonder, if anybody might have seen them from a higher or lower level of the opera house. In that moment, he had not cared, for he would have taken far more than a kiss had he been given the opportunity.
Ignoring his cousin’s jab, Edmund nodded towards the long pathway ahead of them, snaking deeper into the estate beyond old, rusted gates.
The house at the end of the pathway did not fare much better than the overgrown shrubs and the gates. It loomed, large and old, as if somebody had painted it a dark, ashen gray.
“This is where we are going?” Benjamin asked, his voice cracking a little.
“Yes.” Edmund was already starting towards the gate.
“I have seen cemeteries look less haunted,” his cousin muttered under his breath.
Edmund rolled his eyes. “Focus, Cousin.”
At the end of the winding pathway, a servant already awaited them, having likely heard those rusted gates that had creaked upon their arrival.
Their horses were guided to rest in the stables for the duration of their visit—which Edmund truly hoped would last long enough to keep his mind from straying to the curve of Penelope’s breast that he had grazed ever so lightly before pulling away—and they were led into the main house.
