Page 67 of The Rise of a Forsaken Lady
“She’s right,” Heath said while brushing her hair back and briefly brushed her jaw. “We should be.”
Temporarily ignoring Martha, Penelope smiled to him, “Do you promise to tell me?”
His face was placid, “I promise. You should go, Penelope.”
Martha’s swift intake of breath as his familiarity was lost in the feel of the relief that unfurled in her stomach at his words. “I will hold you to that promise.”
Her fingers pulled away from his grip as she walked backward to the door and then turned to follow Martha out. She did look back to see Heath’s fists clenched at his sides before he slumped and one had gone to his face, a gesture of frustration.
“I see what you meant,” Martha said, halfway to the house. “There is much more to him than we think.”
That question, coming from another set of lips kept running through Penelope’s mind all through the rest of the day to nearly dusk. She watched from a high balcony as a few men helped an injured man—Sir Stratham, she had learned—into a carriage with her brother looking on.
Another injury in my home…I don’t know what to make of it.
She wrapped a thick wrapper around her, trying to belay the cold air from sinking into her skin. Her mind then strayed to Heath and the cryptic promise he had given her that afternoon. Why did she feel there was not only one thing that was off about Heath, but many, like layers of an onion, one under the other?
Her nose wrinkled at the comparison.Not onion…a book. A good book that has many plots and subplots. That is what Heath is like.
She went back inside and sank to the nearest seat. She had to tell Edward that she was not going to go any further with Hillbrook. Her hesitations and annoyance about the man were heightening and if he had suggested that Heath had shot the knight, her annoyance was moving to anger.
How could anyone think that Heath, gentle, wonderful Heath could do something so heinous? Then again, her staunch defense of him also led to the same measurement of doubt. Did she really know the man that much to be so sure he was innocent?
Heath had told her his last employment was under an ex-soldier who had succumbed to deep suspicion and possibly a total mental breakdown. She had heard what war could do to some soldiers, affecting their mind so deeply that they became worthless to society. Had Heath bowed to any conspiracies the man might have conjured? Did he hate the peers?
“Do you love him?” Martha’s question came out of the thin air.
Jumping a little, Penelope shot a wide look to her innocently looking maid and frowned. She knew who Martha was referring to but tried to play ignorant. “Who?”
“Stop trying to play dull-witted,” Martha scolded. “You know who I mean…Mr. Moore, do you love him?”
Love? Infatuated, yes, intrigued, yes but…love? She knew she had not reached that point yet.
“No.” She eventually replied and those words carved a hollow pit into her stomach. Laughing quietly, she then said, “But, then again, I am no expert in that sort of love.”
“But do you think youcouldlove him?” Martha asked. It was a question any other servant would have quivered in their shoes to ask their superiors, but Martha was her friend first and servant second.
Looking down on her hands resting on her lap, Penelope considered the question and knew the answer was yes. She could love Heath, but nothing would come from it. It was not as if society would allow them to marry. It was unheard off, a horror that would be a dark mark on Debrett’s for generations to come. Women from old families could marry members of the gentry, but one from the serving class? She’d be the scorn of London.
“I could,” she eventually replied with disparaging breath as her fingers scratched at the material, “But I…I could not dare.”
“You could,” Martha added with a sympathetic smile. “But I understand why.”
“Would you marry him?” The tactless question was out before she could reel it back in. “I mean…if you were inclined to.”
“No.” Martha said smiling softly. “We don’t have a connection.”
The unsaid words were, ‘like you two do’.
Shaking her head, Penelope shied away from her lack of a romance and remembered one she had vowed to mend—the one of her brother and Lady Cheltenham. “Martha, prepare my wardrobe for today. Since I cannot do anything about me and Mr. Moore, I can do something about my brother and his lost love. We’re going to visit Lady Cheltenham.”
The drive to London passed with an hour of quiet conversation and soft anticipation. She did not know what exactly she was trying to achieve with Helena, but she had to try. If she had only one thing to celebrate in her pending spinsterhood, it could be that she had gotten her brother married to the lady he had loved since he was nine-and-ten.
Edward had stiffened when she had mentioned going to visit the lady but had relented when she had pointed out that she was trying to be social.
“Is not that what you wanted, Eddie?” She had smiled.
“Yes,” he had said irritably.
