Page 36 of Love in the Time of Scandal
He cocked his head and studied her. That roguish smile still lingered on his lips. “So what noble activity were you engaged in whilst waiting for me?”
“I was contemplating how on earth we’re going to make each other happy for the next several decades.” She looked pointedly at the flask hanging from his fingers. “Strong spirits will be required, obviously.”
“You think so?” With one booted foot he kicked another chair out from under the table. “Let’s have a drink, then.”
“Ladies don’t drink.”
He leaned back and picked up two glasses from the tray on the table behind him. He tipped his flask and poured a small amount in each glass. “Ladies don’t drink because they aren’t allowed by their proper and respectable mamas. You’re a married woman now. Have a drink with me.”
“Is it whiskey?” Penelope eyed the glasses in unwilling interest. Whatever he wanted her to do must be a bad idea, and yet...
“It’s an excellent French brandy.” His faint grin seemed to simmer with wicked intentions and hint that he wasn’t such a shallow prig. “You’re not afraid, are you?”
She hesitated a moment longer, then defiantly seated herself. “Not at all. I simply hate the smell of whiskey and wouldn’t drink it if you forced me to.”
He caught up his glass and raised it in the air with a grand sweeping motion. All his movements were loose and sweeping. “To our marriage,” he said, watching her with glittering eyes.
Penelope raised her glass. “If you insist.” She took a dainty sip. It was strong but smooth, and although it made her gasp and blink a few times, it felt warm and soft once it reached her belly.
The corner of her husband’s mouth crooked. He tossed back the entirety of his drink with one flick of his wrist, and poured more. He reached across the table and refilled her glass. “To our future.”
Better endured when foxed, she thought, but obediently took another sip. “Are you drunk?”
“A little,” he said without guilt. “Are you?”
She licked her lip for a stray drop of brandy. “Of course not.”
“Drink up, then.” He raised his glass and tossed down his liquor as before.
“Why should I get drunk?”
Atherton shrugged and tugged at his cravat. His jacket was hanging off one shoulder, and his waistcoat was already half undone. Penelope watched from under her eyelashes as he pulled the cravat free and threw it on the floor. His shirt flopped open at his neck, giving her a view of skin all the way down his throat. He looked rakish and dangerous, unlike his usual buttoned-up self. “You don’t have to get drunk. I thought you would relish the chance to live a little dangerously.”
Penelope took another sip. It went down very easily this time, silky smooth. She took another longer drink, until the glass was almost empty. “I had hoped for something more exciting than sitting in a hotel room drinking brandy.”
He draped one arm over the back of his chair and slouched elegantly. His eyes slid over her in blatant appraisal—and hunger. “What else have you got in mind?”
When her brother, James, got drunk, he would say anything. He often wouldn’t remember half of what he’d said the next day, but Penelope had learned a variety of very interesting and useful things when he was three sheets to the wind, things she was sure even her parents never knew. She’d learned that Millie the upstairs maid had been sent away to the country not for her lungs but because she’d been carrying George the stable hand’s baby, and that George had taken a beating from the head groom before being given a wage increase and allowed to marry Millie. She’d learned that James’s mate at university, Edward, had been sent down for lewd behavior—with a male porter. She’d learned that Mr. Wilford had been a suicide and not the victim of a housebreaker as publicly believed, and that Lady Barlow’s child, born after years of barren wedlock, was really the offspring of her husband’s valet.
How James knew some of that, Penelope couldn’t imagine, but it was all fascinating. Sadly her brother had given up most heavy drinking, at least when she was around, but it struck her that Atherton might be similar. This could be her chance to get truthful answers from him on questions that had tormented her for months.
“We could talk,” she suggested, pushing her glass back across the table. “Get to know each other.”
“We could get to know each other in other ways,” he replied with another searing glance at her bosom, but he tipped the flask over her glass again. “What should I know of my wife?”
She thought for a moment, sipping her brandy slowly. Lord Almighty, no wonder men drank it by the cask. Bloody lovely stuff. She felt bold and clever and fairly invincible. “You asked me once what you’d done to earn my dislike. I denied it but I doubt you believed me, particularly since I was lying.” That got his attention. His eyebrows went up, and the hand holding his glass paused in midair. Penelope shrugged. “I haven’t been able to work out in my mind how an honorable man would turn his back on a friend of many years’ standing and allow him to be condemned—even shunned—by everyone in town.” She cocked her head and kept her expression artless. “Why did you?”
Atherton finished his drink in one swallow. “I never intended that to happen. I never wished Sebastian ill.”
“But you accused him of scheming to run off with your sister,” she pointed out.
He let his head fall back, as if he’d faced this question a hundred times and was weary to death of it. “She disappeared in the middle of the night. She was deeply infatuated with him, and I knew he was very fond of her. There were few other places she could have gone in Richmond. It wasn’t unreasonable to think she had gone to Bastian.”
Bastian. Penelope had never heard that, not even from Abby; it must have been Sebastian’s childhood nickname, and it hinted at the depth of the friendship he’d betrayed. “So you went looking for her at his house. But why did you assume he’d seduced her into an elopement?”
He gave his flask a shake, and then held it out and closed one eye, squinting into its depths. “I was fairly crazed with fear when I went after her, and said things I didn’t really believe.”
“Crazed with fear?” she exclaimed in surprise. “Why?”
