The Harem Bride (19 page)

Yet the finest garments in all the world
would not, she reminded herself sternly, do the trick alone. The
woman she could be was not in her clothes, but inside her head. In
her attitude, in the way she walked, the tilt of her head, the tone
of her voice, the confidence that shone from her eyes, the
certainty that she was worthy.

Ah, but was she?

And when had she started to question
her purity? Penny wondered. Was it on board ship when Aunt Cass
looked at her in shock, then clamped her teeth over questions to
which she obviously had not wished to learn the answers? Was it
Jason’s indifference, his almost . . .
embarrassed
indifference? Or was it the oddly
assessing, and sometimes overly bold, looks from Jason’s traveling
companions, Mr. Yardley and Mr. Timmons, during the long days of
their voyage back to Lisbon? Or perhaps it was Aunt Cass’s
determined effort to travel incessantly, keeping her out of England
until, at long last, the threat of Marshal Junot’s troops had sent
the Portuguese court scurrying all the way to Brazil and forced a
mass exodus of foreigners from Lisbon?

Was it possible she had been laboring under a
misapprehension all these years? Had she spent nearly ten years
erasing a personality her husband found enchanting?

He was leaving her.

He was leaving the dull stick she had become.
Nor could she blame him. She, too, was heartily bored with this
shadow creature. Yet what could she do to mend the matter when
Jason was in London and she was in Shropshire?

She could think on it, Penny realized. She
could renovate her mindset, if not her wardrobe. She could rest and
recover from three years of caring for an invalid. She could learn
to smile more readily, perhaps to laugh. She could unbend her spine
far enough to be something a bit more lively than a pattern card of
propriety.

In the early summer she would be six and
twenty. Most women her age had given their husbands an heir, a
spare, and one or more fine girls as well. Yet here she was,
twice-married to the same man, yet still at virgin. An intolerable
situation!

Yes, she must think on it. There had to be
some way to solve this ridiculous imbroglio.

~ * ~

London

Gant Deveny settled back into a brown leather
wingchair, stretched his long legs onto a matching footstool, and
eyed his friend and host, the Earl of Rocksley, over the rim of his
brandy glass. “Word’s come Old Boney’s invested Badajoz. Surely
that’s enough to oust your own small contretemps from everyone’s
tongues.”

The earl, seated across from his
friend, did not even lift his well-sculpted chin from his chest.
“As we all know, a scandal is of far more interest to the
ton
than Wellington’s campaign in
the Peninsula. Therefore, I doubt Badajoz will cause so much as a
ripple in the tale of how I have married a cast-off from the
sultan’s harem.”

“
If only Yardley . . .” Deciding that
even the mention of the earl’s former traveling companion was
painful, Lord Brawley clamped his jaws shut.

“
Yardley!” Jason snorted. “Ten years he
held his tongue. Yet no sooner does he hear the tales brought back
to town by my dear departed guests, than he must begin with,
Oh, if only I might tell . . . if only you knew
what I know . . . ah, what I could tell if I would
.”
The earl’s mimicry had a lethal cutting edge. It was a wonder, Lord
Brawley thought, that Rock had not called Yardley out.

“
It was inevitable someone would
contrive to ply him with wine,” the earl continued through bared
teeth. “Inevitable the idiot would babble the whole sordid tale.
And make it sound as if I pried the child from the sultan’s bed.”
Jason downed the last of his brandy and flung the fine crystal onto
the hearth, where it shattered in a satisfying crash of flying
glass.

When the last tinkle had come to rest, Gant
Deveny said, with more care than he usually took about his remarks,
“Yardley, overcome by a fit of conscience, has retracted.” For a
moment the two men’s eyes caught and held. Mr. Yardley’s decision
not to dine out on his story, as they both knew, had been more due
to fear of serious bodily injury than the result of a belated
attack of conscience.

“
The other friend who was with you in
Constantinople is with Wellington,” Lord Brawley continued. “Lord
Elgin, Hunt, the others at the embassy at that time, are too much
the gentlemen and too well trained in diplomacy ever to reveal the
truth. And in the past few days you and I have put about the story
of Miss Pemberton’s illness, resulting in your hasty marriage to
her niece. By next Season, Rock, you should have no difficulty
presenting your bride to the
ton
. There will have been a dozen worse
on dits
by then.”

Jason was still slumped in his chair,
glowering at the tips of his toes. The brandy decanter on the table
beside him was nearly empty. “Once again, I am grateful for the
warning, Gant. If I had brought Penelope into the midst of this . .
.”

“
At the rate Caroline Lamb is making a
fool of herself over Byron, the tale of the Countess of Rocksley as
a harem girl should be short-lived. Some say the Lamb had herself
delivered to Byron on a silver platter. Without a stitch, Rock,
without a stitch.”

That caught the earl’s attention. He lifted
his head, raised a questioning brow.

“
Apochryphal, perhaps,” Lord Brawley
shrugged, his hair shining even redder than usual in the flickering
firelight, “but that’s how the tale goes. She was curled up, naked
as a jay, under a great silver lid. When the cover came off,
voilà
, there she was, a dish to
tempt a king.”

“
Or the snottiest young lord in the
realm,” the earl growled. “Byron deserves to be haunted by Caroline
Lamb and every other foolish female who sighs over that
blasted
Childe Harold
. What
he and Knight have done to Lord Elgin is a bloody sin. The man
saved some of the world’s finest works of art. Sculptures going to
rack and ruin by weather, war, and every passing thief, including
Bonaparte. And long before our time, the Greeks themselves
destroyed part of the Parthenon by converting it to a church. Then
the demmed Turks turned it into a mosque.”

The earl leaned forward, his cobalt eyes
alight with indignation. “It’s a high point, the Acropolis, a
perfect site for a fortress. So, naturally, the Turks stored
gunpowder there, which was blown sky high by lightning, taking the
Propylaea with it. And in the seventeenth century the Venetians had
the temerity to shell the place, with the Parthenon taking a direct
hit.

Think on it, my friend. Can you imagine
anyone so mad as to shell the Acropolis?

“
And then Bonaparte’s agents came along
and were bent on stealing what was left. So what was poor Elgin to
do? And yet, between them, Knight and Byron have succeeded in
making him such a villain that I fear he may be reviled down the
years of history, instead of praised for what he has
done.”

Slowly, Jason hauled himself to his feet and
went in search of another brandy glass. “Even my dear wife,” he
said over his shoulder, “tells how she cringed when she watched the
workers chipping out the metopes.” As he poured more brandy, the
earl shook his head. “Some of the greatest archeological treasures
of the world now rest in the Duke of Devonshire’s courtyard, and no
one but poor Elgin and his voluble detractors even seem to
care.”

Lord Brawley, in an attempt to divert his
friend from descending from morose into melancholia, chose an
abrupt change of subject. “And what of the fair Daphne?” he
inquired. “Have you seen her since your return?”

For a moment Gant feared a second brandy
glass would follow the first into the fireplace.

“
She has seen me,” Jason mumbled into
his brandy “At the Haversham’s rout and the St. Aubyn’s ball. She
initiated two conversations, to which I responded briefly. That is
the sum of it.”

“
Yet you have not formally broken with
her?”

“
Should I?”

“
Should you not?”

The Earl of Rocksley’s shoulders stiffened as
he teetered on the brink of grabbing his best friend by the crisp
white linen of his cravat, hauling him to the door, and booting him
down the front steps. Fortunately, the earl’s mind was not so
fogged by brandy fumes that he had totally forgotten his friend
spoke nothing but the truth. Instead, Jason decided to take umbrage
with Lord Brawley’s uncharacteristic sensibilities. “I was under
the impression, my friend,” said the earl, “that you prided
yourself on being a man of the world, a sophisticate of the first
order. And do I now hear recommendations of marital fidelity?
Turned Evangelist, have you, dear boy? My wife is a cast-off of
Sultan Selim the Third, yet I am expected to eschew my delightful
mistress of two full years—”

“
Damnation, Rock! Are you saying that
scurrilous tale is true?”

The Earl of Rocksley set his brandy
glass on the sidetable with a thud. “Not that it’s any of your
bloody business, but my wife—” Jason bit off his words, a
horrifying thought rushing through his mind. He could not truly
attest to his wife’s virginity. The Grand Vizier had assured him
that only a virgin could be given to a pasha as a wife, but he did
not actually
know
. . .
Therefore, his intended hot-headed response that his wife was most
certainly a virgin might not be true. Nor could he attest that his
wife was still as virginal as the day she was born, as he had had a
grand total of two wedding nights with her and a series of nights
to follow in ice-bound Shropshire, and yet he had done nothing.
Nothing at all. A lack of action to which he could not possibly
admit.

So he would lie—or at least pretend a
conviction he did not have. “My wife’s purity has never been in
doubt,” declared the Earl of Rocksley, a trifle too pugnaciously.
“She was a virgin on our wedding night and, unlike poor Charles
Lamb with his Caroline, I have no reason to doubt her fidelity. And
damn and blast you, Brawley, for having the temerity to ask.”

Jason pushed himself to his feet. “And now,
if you would be so good as to find your own way out, I’m for my
bed. Rescuing my wife’s reputation is demanding work. I find myself
quite fatigued.”

As the butler bolted the front door of
Rocksley House behind him, Gant Deveny stood motionless on the
front landing, his pale face reflecting more sorrow than cynicism.
Never had he seen a woman who appeared less like a harem girl than
Penelope Lisbourne. He would have helped squelch the scandalous
tales about her, even if Jason were not his best friend. And yet,
there was something more to the tale, something he could not put
his finger on. Something deeper than the ton’s latest
on dit
.

He thought of the gallant manner in which the
ice-encrusted Lady Rocksley had dealt with a drunken butler and a
hostile housekeeper, while sounds of raucous revelry drifted down
from the gallery above. Ah, yes, there was more to Penelope
Lisbourne than met the eye.

Suddenly, Lord Brawley gave a great bark of
laughter. He—tall to the point of gangly, red haired, pale skinned,
freckled, and afflicted by a terminal case of cynicism—was actually
considering playing Cupid. With a jaunty whistle, and swinging his
cane as if he didn’t have a care in the world, Gant set off toward
his rooms at the Albany.

Half a block away, he broke off in
mid-whistle, his cane freezing in mid swing. What if Lady Rocksley
followed her husband to town? What if she stepped straight into the
harem scandal, exacerbated by the earl’s unresolved relationship
with Daphne Coleraine?

Oh, devil it!. He’d think about it in the
morning. Lord Brawley’s whistle was not heard during the remainder
of his walk to Oxford Street, where he hailed a hackney to take him
back to his rooms near St. James.

“
Your pardon, my lady,” Hutton said,
interrupting Penny’s frowning perusal of the linen inventory in the
cozy morning room at the rear of the house, “but Mr. Thomas
Tickwell has come to call.” In response to his mistress’s blank
look, the butler added, “Mr. Tickwell is the earl’s solicitor, my
lady. Handles all county legal matters for his lordship. Though,
naturally,” Hutton added in what he fancied was the tone of a most
superior household majordomo, “Lord Rocksley also has a legal
gentleman in London.”

For the Countess of Rocksley, a haze
seemed to pass over the sun outside; the room dimmed most
alarmingly. For what possible reason . . .? Jason had made it quite
clear he wanted an heir, so a legal separation was out of the
question. Dear God, did he mean to divorce her? That must be it.
Having discovered he could not bear to bed her, he was going to
petition Parliament for a divorce.
That
was why he had gone to London. Leaving his
local solicitor the sorry task of imparting the dire
news.

Coward!
Penny
was unsure if her epithet was aimed at her husband or herself, for
her feet refused to obey her command to move. “Hutton,” she
murmured, “perhaps you would be kind enough to show the gentlemen
in here?”

“
Of course, my lady.” The butler bowed
himself out, returning shortly with a man of such medium age,
medium height, and innocuous appearance that Penny’s spirits rose a
notch, in spite of her conviction that his business with her must
be quite shocking. Mr. Thomas Tickwell simply did not look like an
ogre bent on destroying her life. To top off the contrast with what
Penny had expected, his hazel eyes were twinkling and his full lips
curved into a broad smile.