Penelope & Prince Charming Read Online Free PDF Page B

her see the lean muscle of his inner thighs, and how very tight his breeches truly were.
    Sometimes Penelope and Meagan, while sitting as wallflowers in London ballrooms, played a naughty game of deciding which man in the room had the finest-fitted tight trousers. TTs, Meagan called them. If Damien appeared at a tonnish ball in the breeches he wore now, he would win hands down.
    Damien disappeared into the shadow of the house. Penelope scuttled after him, breathless, pretending she could care less about his breeches.
    Lady Trask and Michael Tavistock were nowhere in sight. The butler, Mathers, a man devoted to Lady Trask, stopped short in astonishment as Damien strode unimpeded into the hall. He seemed masterful in her own house, in a way her father never had been.
    “Ah,” Mathers dithered.
    “I have come to see Lady Trask,” Damien said. “Fetch her for me. I shall I wait in the drawing room.”
    Mathers gaped. “But…”
    “It is all right, Mathers,” Penelope said quickly, then wondered if everything really was all right. “Please take him to the drawing room and serve him tea. I will fetch Lady Trask.”
    Without waiting for reply, she turned away, heart thudding, and whisked toward the stairs.
    She felt Damien’s gaze on her as she swiftly ascended. His eyes held caution, but they also held warmth. He looked at her because he wanted to look at her. It made her uncertain and unsteady on her feet.
    She reached the top of the staircase without falling, and hurried down the long hall to her mother’s chamber.
    The corridor outside Lady Trask’s bedchamber door was deserted without a lookout. Penelope eased the door handle silently down and opened the door a crack.
    She saw Michael Tavistock, naked, the sun shining on his dark red hair and muscular back as he faced the bed.
    Swiftly, Penelope closed the door, her cheeks scalding. From inside, she heard her mother moan Michael’s name, and Michael say, “I love you.”
    Penelope stopped, frozen, as his hoarse words caught in her throat.
    I love you.
    Michael Tavistock truly did love Lady Trask, Penelope knew that. She saw it in his eyes whenever he looked at her. For his own reasons, the handsome, forty-five-year-old man had become enchanted with Penelope’s rather featherheaded mother. Penelope was glad, for her mother’s sake as well as her own, because she very muchliked Meagan’s father. He was a kind man, and looked upon Penelope with as much protection and benevolence as he would his own daughter.
    Now she felt a strange pain in her heart. Damien had kissed her, had told her, with that same catch in his voice, that he’d fallen in love with her. But he could not be real. None of this could be real.
    Penelope went back down the hall, counted to twenty, then walked to her mother’s bedchamber again, making as much noise as she could.
    When she reached the door, all was quiet within. She knocked and said brightly, “Mama? Are you awake?”
    After a time, the door opened a few inches. Michael stood behind it, in trousers and half-laced shirt, his hair mussed. “What do you need, Penelope?”
    Michael had brown eyes and a strength and quietness that Penelope liked. His dark red hair had started graying at the temples, but still spilled from his forehead in thick waves. His face was not handsome like Damien’s, but square and plain, the face of a man who knew what he looked like and was not bothered by it.
    Michael had a commonsense wisdom that counteracted Penelope’s mother’s flightiness, and Penelope quite looked forward to the day he would become her stepfather. He and her mother had not mentioned marriage to either of the girls, but Penelope and Meagan had already decided upon the outcome of their affair.
    “We have visitors,” Penelope said, her mouth dry. “From Nvengaria.”
    Michael raised his brows.
    “I know,” Penelope said. “But I think it’s true. And you are never going to believe this…”
    The drawing room was simply