Leave a Widow Wanting More by Charlie Lane
Chapter 8
No matter how often Henry slept in cramped, uncomfortable places, his body never got used to it. And as the sun’s rays poured through the coach’s window, his muscles screamed at him. You’re too old, they lectured, to be sleeping in coaches!
Maybe he was. He certainly looked forward to his bed at home. Cavendish Manor. The mere thought of it was enough to make him smile, its name a line of poetry on repeat in his head. And the three smiles that would greet him at the door. He reached for his coat pocket, where he carried their gifts, near him always across deserts and seas.
“Damn.” He didn’t have the coat. Mrs. Pennington did.
Henry swung to a seated position and craned forward to see out the window. The building she lived in rose above the squalid streets. Last night, the odor had been the most memorable thing about the place, but the dark had hidden a myriad of sins. Now he saw it all—the mud and muck, the dead bird on the corner, the man sleeping in the gutter, the barely-dressed lady walking home from a night’s work. Zeus, he hated London. But poverty wasn’t London’s sole province. It was wherever Henry roamed.
If Mrs. Pennington’s life wasn’t miserable, she certainly lived in misery’s midst.
Trying not to breathe too deeply, Henry stepped down from the carriage, knitted his fingers together and stretched his palms over his head. He winced as his shoulders cracked and his muscles sang with agony. Tonight, he’d find a real bed.
But first, he needed to make sure she wasn’t sick. Seeing where she lived in the light of day … he ached to carry her away from it all, put her in his poem of a home with his three favorite smiles in the world, then—
“What in Gutenberg’s good name are you doing here?”
Large lapis lazuli eyes blinked up at him. Mrs. Pennington’s arms crossed primly over a worn, gray spencer. “You look horrible. Have you slept? Why are you here?”
“I came back.”
“Why?”
“Are you well?” he asked, sidestepping her questions. “No residual sneezes, wheezes, coughs, or chills?”
She turned up her nose. What a delightful nose! What a delightful angle it settled at, and how she managed to look down her nose at him while he was so much further up than she—nothing short of magic, that, the saucy sorceress. Not only could she look down at someone standing up, but she wasn’t sick. At all. Not even a little bit.
She was pretty, and she wasn’t dying. She’d be the perfect wife. Not quite what he had been looking for, but he’d been wrong. It had been known to happen from time to time.
But how to convince her to marry him? She hadn’t been convinced by his, if he did say so himself, very lucid arguments last night. He needed something more.
“Lord Eaden? Lord Eaden!”
“Sorry. I was woolgathering.”
She hmphed.
He smiled. “Mrs. Pennington, are you on your way to Hopkins’s shop?”
“Yes. Did you really sleep out here all night? In the coach?”
“Just so.”
She shook her head. “Ridiculous man.” But her voice lacked edge.
He held out his arm. “May I escort you to work this morning, Mrs. Pennington?”
“I don’t see why you would.”
He clasped her hand when she hesitated to take his proffered arm, and he waited for her to object at the touch. When she didn’t, he guided her down the street.
She turned a curious gaze up at him then stared pointedly at the abandoned hackney. “We aren’t taking a conveyance?”
“I promised the fellow who left it with me that he’d find it right there in the morning. It’s not raining. Yet. A walk will be nice.”
She looked up at the sky. “All right. I suppose.” She matched her steps to his, then yanked around and flew back toward her building. “I’ll be right back!” she called, disappearing inside.
Henry waited, counting. If it took her longer than five minutes to reappear, he was going up. But he didn’t have to wait more than two minutes before she was flying back out, a great mass of cloth bundled in her arms. His coat.
“I forgot I had it,” she wheezed.
He put it on and took her arm, then slipped his other hand into a pocket of the coat. There they were—the book, the bracelet, the beads and the scarab. Safe. And, it occurred to him, possibly useful. “Years ago, when I decided to travel most of the year, I had special pockets put in all my coats. Deeper, wider pockets”—he pulled the gifts into the daylight—“designed expressly to hold the things I collect for my daughters and my nephews on my travels.”
“What are those?” Mrs. Pennington asked, leaning forward for a better look. She’d been watching him, then. Good. He might look a bear this morning, but maybe she didn’t mind. Though … he sniffed. A bath wouldn’t be unwelcome.
He put a few more inches between them, just in case.
“These,” he said, placing the objects one at a time into Mrs. Pennington’s palms, “are gifts for my girls.”
Her eyes danced over the objects, the corners of her mouth tilting up. “This one.” She placed the book and the bracelet in her lap and held up the scarab. “Which daughter is it for?”
“Pansy, the youngest.”
“Why?”
“She likes small things.”
Mrs. Pennington laughed. “But it’s a beetle.”
“It’s a scarab, actually. But yes, you could call it a beetle.”
She laughed again. “But as beetles go … it’s awfully big. Not small at all.”
“Have you ever seen an Egyptian beetle?”
“No.”
“Well then. Believe me. That one’s small.”
“All right then, but won’t her point of reference be an English beetle?”
Damn. He’d botched it. He grabbed the scarab from her fingers, hiding it in his pocket.
“Oh, oh no, I’m sure she’ll love it. I didn’t mean—” She sighed. “Oh, I’ve botched it. I’m so sorry.”
And as foul as he’d been feeling a moment earlier, he felt light as air now. How in Hades had she plucked those very words from his mind? “You didn’t botch it. I did. I didn’t think the gift through.”
She reached across the space between them and patted his arm. “She’s going to love it. I know she will.” She returned her attention to the other two objects in her hand. “And the bracelet? Who’s it for?”
“That’s for Nora. Elenora. Elenora Marie.” He loved saying her name.
“Elenora Marie Cavendish?”
“Perfect, isn’t it?”
“Rather. Why the bracelet?”
“She likes pretty things. She is a pretty thing. All my girls are, but Nora knows it.”
Mrs. Pennington’s smile slipped.
“Now, now. Don’t judge my Nora until you meet her.”
“Quite right. And the book?” She opened its cover. “What language?”
“Iranian. It’s a book of poems by an Iranian mathematician. For Ada, my eldest. Smart as a whip.”
“Can she read Iranian?”
“She dabbles a bit in languages. Doesn’t like poetry at all, though. Says she likes things that remind her there’s more to the world than England. So, I like to bring her gifts that … aren’t English.” Was he always this moronic? How had he ever built up a reputation as a passable scholar?
Mrs. Pennington was all smiles, though, and if he’d ruffled feathers before, they were soothed now. She handed him the two other gifts. He put them away and pulled two more objects from the pocket. She leaned in. “Beads?”
He nodded. “The twins collect them. I bring them different colors and patterns.”
“Marvelous.” Sincerity shone in the glint of her eye, in the soft way she stroked each bead. She pulled away, and he settled the beads back into his pocket.
“Thank you for sharing them with me,” she said. “But why?”
Ah. So, they’d come to the point. He should have known it would not take long. She was quick. Another thing he liked about her.
“I want you to marry me, Mrs. Pennington, and I must confess, I thought showing you my—” He couldn’t say it. He gagged on the words, but he had to say them. The future rested on his ability to do so. He tapped down his resolution and said it before he rethought once more. “I thought my softer side might entice you.”
She pulled away from him. Her hands fluttered about, first at her waist, then her shoulders, then her chin and temples. Finally, they dropped heavy to her sides. “At least you said the words this time. But …”
“Yes?”
“Oh!” She turned to him with a brilliant smile. “There’s the bookshop.”
Already? Zeus, she lived inconveniently close to her place of employment.
Sarah stopped in front of the shop and looked up at him with happy eyes. “I was going to say, Lord Eaden, that even though you said the correct words this time, they aren’t very effective coming from someone so … odiferous.”
Could her smile be any wider, brighter, more alluring? Impossible. He wanted her. And he was getting closer. He’d try one more time, and if she rejected him a third time, he’d walk away. But first, he needed a bath.