A Lady of His Own Read Online Free PDF Page A

to Granville attaining his majority.
    And thus the freedom to get himself killed, leaving his mother and sisters, if far from destitute, then without immediate protectors.
    That, Charles decided, opening his eyes and starting to pace again, was what bothered him most. Here was Penny already involved in God knew what, and there wasn’t any male in any position to watch over her. Except him.
    How she’d feel about that he didn’t know.
    At the back of his mind hovered a lowering suspicion over why she hadn’t been eager to marry, why no gentleman had managed to persuade her to the altar, but how she now thought of him, how she now viewed him, he didn’t know and couldn’t guess.
    She’d be prickly almost certainly, but prickly-yet-willing-to-join-forces, or prickly-and-wanting-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-him? With ladies like her, it wasn’t easy, or safe, to guess.
    He did know how he felt about her — that had been an unwelcome surprise. He’d thought thirteen years would have dulled his bewitchment, but it hadn’t. Not in the least.
    Since he’d left to join the army, he’d seen her a few times in ’14, and then again over the past six months, but always at a distance with family, both his and hers, all around. Nothing remotely private. Tonight, he’d come upon her unexpectedly alone in his house, and desire had come raging back. Had caught him, snared him, sunk its talons deep.
    And shaken him.
    Regardless, it was unlikely there was anything he could do to ease the ache. She’d finished with him thirteen years ago—cut him off; he knew better than to hold his breath hoping she’d change her mind. She was, always had been, unbelievably stubborn.
    They would have to set that part of their past aside. They couldn’t entirely ignore it—it still affected both of them too intensely—but they could, if they had to, work around it.
    They’d need to. Whatever was going on, that matter he’d been sent to investigate and that she, it seemed, had already discovered, was potentially too dangerous, too threatening to people as yet unknown, to treat as anything other than a battlefield. Once he knew more, he’d try to separate her from it. He didn’t waste a second considering if she, herself, was in any way involved on the wrong side of the ledger; she wouldn’t be, not Penny.
    She was on the same side he was, but didn’t yet trust him. She had to be protecting someone, but who?
    He no longer knew enough about her or her friends to guess.
    How long before she decided to tell him? Who knew? But they didn’t have a lot of time. Now he was there, things would start happening; that was his mission, to stir things up and deal with what rose out of the mire.
    If she wouldn’t tell him, he’d have to learn her secret some other way.
    He strode along the ramparts for half an hour more, then returned to his room, fell into bed, and, surprisingly, slept.

CHAPTER
2

    H E AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE SOUND OF HOOF beats. Not on the gravel drive circling the house, but farther away, not nearing but retreating.
    He’d left the French doors to his balcony open, a very un-English act, but in Toulouse he’d grown accustomed to open windows at night.
    Fortuitous. Rolling from the bed, he stretched and strolled across the room. Naked, he stood in the balcony doorway watching Penny, garbed in a gold riding habit, steadily canter away. If the doors hadn’t been open, he’d never have heard her; she’d left from the stables, a good distance from the house. Sidesaddle on a roan, she was unhurriedly heading south.
    To Fowey? Or her home? Or somewhere else?
    Five minutes later, he strode into the kitchen.
    “My lord!” Mrs. Slattery was shocked to see him. “We’re just starting your breakfast—I had no idea—”
    “My fault entirely.” He smiled charmingly. “I forgot I wanted to ride early this morning. If there’s any coffee? And perhaps a pastry or two?”
    In between muttering dire warnings over what was sure