In for a Penny Read Online Free PDF Page B

saw one! He showed me a pathetic calculation he had made of his debts. An illegible scrawl. The boy can barely add!”
    “Yes, Papa,” Penelope said more strongly, angry with her father for being so unfair to Lord Bedlow, who was doing the best he could. “That is why he wishes to marry me. He was not brought up to understand money.”
    “Your dowry was to set you and your husband up in life and make you comfortable, not to redeem the mortgages of some profligate lordling!”
    “You never wanted Edward to have it either.” She knew that it was childish to be so contrary, but the more her father stormed, the more she clung to her rash decision. “His father’s profligacy is not Lord Bedlow’s fault. Anyway, it is too late now to repine. I have given him my word.”
    “Much his lordship will care for the word of a Brown!”
    “That is no reason to cheapen it! How many times have you told me that once you’ve shaken hands on a deal, you cannot shrink from it?”
    As Penelope was finishing this fine speech, her mother entered the room. Mr. Brown’s face seemed to cave in a little. Turning on his wife, he said, “This is all your doing! Filling her head with notions of lords and family seats! I hope you will be happy, Mrs. Brown, when your daughter is the countess of a run-down, drafty, out-of-the-way place with holes in the upholstery.”
    Mrs. Brown stared. “George, whatever are you talking about?”
    “She’s said yes to that Nevinstoke you’ve been yammering on about, that’s what! His father’s got himself killed and nowhe’s bound for the Gazette unless he can marry an heiress, and your daughter was fool enough to accept him.”
    “Oh, George, you’re in a taking for nothing. Penny wouldn’t be so foolish, would you, Penny?”
    Penelope’s face heated. “I am not foolish. But—but I did agree to marry Lord Bedlow.”
    Her mother stared at her in incomprehension. “Why?”
    Penelope was conscious that she did not know; embarrassment made her stubborn. She tilted up her chin. “You ought to be pleased, Mama. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”
    Mrs. Brown’s eyes narrowed. “George, may I talk to Penny alone for a moment?”
    Mr. Brown grumbled, but he left the room.
    “Penny, what on earth has come over you?” Mrs. Brown asked. “Are you angry with us for something?”
    “My decision had nothing to do with you!” Perhaps if her mother had come in first, Penelope might have yielded to her persuasions and sent an apologetic refusal after Lord Bedlow. But now it was too late. “You seemed to like him well enough when you met him. You introduced us to him. You looked him up in Debrett’s the moment we arrived home. What was your purpose, if not exactly what has transpired?”
    “I meant you to know him a bit longer first! You needn’t make me out to be some kind of heartless schemer. Why shouldn’t you marry a man with a university education? A man who’s seen something of the world? Who’ll take you to Venice?”
    “Edward’s traveling!”
    “Pooh, Paris,” Mrs. Brown said, who had loved Paris the one time she had managed to convince Mr. Brown to take her there. “What are you going to tell Edward?”
    Penelope’s face crumpled. “Oh, Mama, I don’t know! I didn’t even think of it until Lord Bedlow had gone, and then—”
    Mrs. Brown frowned. “Lord Bedlow must have been very persuasive.”
    Penelope blushed. “I felt sorry for him.”
    A corner of Mrs. Brown’s mouth twitched. “Is that what the young folk are calling it nowadays? When I was a girl we said we was sweet on a boy.”
    “Mama,” Penelope snapped, “I am not sweet on Lord Bedlow.”
    “Then why are you blushing like a bonfire? I never saw you look like that after half an hour in Edward’s company.”
    Penelope raised a hand to her flaming cheeks. “I’m merely a touch discomposed.”
    “He didn’t do anything he oughtn’t, did he?”
    “Of course not,” Penelope said reflexively.