were waiting for her in the sitting room. She had marked the ones that she expected to be the most important, opened those, and left the others lined up against a wall to obscure the decorating. The rest she could arrange on the shelves that had held the china figurines. She handed them, one piece at a time, to a horrified Jem to carry to storage, until his arms were quite full of tiny blushing courtiers, buxom maid servants and shepherds who seemed more interested in china milkmaids than in china sheep.
Jem appeared torn, unable to decide if he was more horrified by the overt femininity of the things or the possibility that he might loose his grip and smash several hundred pounds’ worth of antique porcelain.
She waved him away, insisting that it mattered not, as long as they were gone from the room and she could have the shelves empty.
She gestured with the grouping in her hand, only to glance at the thing and set it down again on the table, rather than handing it to the overloaded servant. The statue was of a young couple in court clothes from the previous century. The man was leaning against a carefully wrought birdcage, and had caught his lover around the waist, drawing her near. She was leaning into him, bosom pressed to his shoulder, her hand cupping his face, clearly on the verge of planting a kiss on to his upturned lips.
And Penny’s mind flashed back to the previous evening, and the feel of her husband’s hands as they had touched her back. What would have happened if she had turned and pressed her body to his?
Jem shifted from foot to foot in the doorway, and she heard the gentle clink of porcelain.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘You have more than enough to carry. I will keep this last one for now. Perhaps it can serve as a bookend.’ She placed it back on the shelf, pushing it to the side to support a stack of books. The Maid of Hamlet. The Orphan of the Rhine. She’d kept the Minerva novels. Her lust-crazed Germans were supporting a shelf full of fainting virgins.
She sank back on to a chair, defeated by rampant romance.
There was a commotion in the hall, breaking through the silence of the room, and coming closer as she listened, as though a door had opened and a dinner party had overflowed its bounds. She could hear laughter, both male and female, and her husband by turns laughing and attempting to quiet the others.
At last there was a knock on the closed door of her room before Adam opened it and said with amused exasperation, ‘Penelope, my friends wish to meet you.’
She did not know how she imagined the nobility might behave, but it had never been like this. The crowd pushed past the duke and into the room without waiting for permission to enter. The women giggled and pulled faces at the great piles of books, and one man leaned against a pile of open crates, nearly upending them on to the floor. Only the last to enter offered her anything in way of apology: he gave an embarrassed shrug that seemed to encompass the bad manners of his friends while saying that there was little he could do about it one way or the other.
‘So this is where you’ve been keeping her, trapped in the sitting room with all these dusty books.’ A pretty blonde woman in an ornate, flowered bonnet ran a critical finger over her library.
‘Really, Barbara—’ the laugh in Adam’s response sounded false ‘—you make it sound as though I have her locked in her room. I am not keeping her anywhere.’
‘She is keeping you, more like.’ An attractive redhead made the comment, and Penny stiffened.
The woman clarified. ‘I imagine the bonds of new love are too strong to break away, Adam. I wonder if you will manage to leave your house.’
Penny returned her cold smile. That had not been what she’d meant at all. It had been a slight on her wealth, followed by sarcasm. She was sure of it.
But Adam ignored it, smiling as if nothing had been said, and Penny vowed to follow his example.
Her husband gestured to his friends. ‘Penelope, may I present Lord John and Lady Barbara Minton, Sir James and Lady Catherine Preston and my oldest, and dearest, friend, Lord Timothy Colton, and his wife, the Lady Clarissa.’ He gestured to the cruel redhead and the man who had acknowledged Penny earlier. Adam smiled proudly at the man, and then looked to Penny. ‘You will get along well with Tim, I think, for he is also a scholar. Botany. Horticulture. Plants and such. No idea what he’s doing half the time. Quite beyond me. But I am sure it is very important.’ Adam waved his hand dismissively, and Tim laughed.
Penny didn’t understand the reason for her husband’s pretended ignorance or the meaning of the joke. But clearly it was an old one, for the others found it most amusing. The room dissolved in mirth. It was like finding herself in a foreign land, where everyone spoke a language that she could not comprehend.
When their laughter had subsided, Clarissa spoke again. ‘And what shall we call you?’ The woman reached out to her, and took both her hands in what seemed to be a welcoming grip. Her fingers were ice cold.
‘I know,’ said Lady Barbara. ‘We could call you Pen. For Adam says you like to write. And you were a book printer’s daughter.’
Lady Catherine rolled her eyes. ‘You write on paper, Bunny. Not in books.’
Clarissa looked down at Penny with a venomous smile. ‘Surely not “Penny”, for you are not so bright as all that.’ There was a dangerous pause. ‘Your hair, silly. It is I who should be called Penny.’ She released Penny’s hands and touched a coppery curl, smiling past her to look at Adam.
Penny watched, with a kind of distant fascination. Clarissa’s gesture had been blatant flirtation, and she seemed not to care who noticed it. Yet her husband, Timothy, paid it no attention. He seemed more interested in the books on the table before him than his wife’s behaviour to another man.
Adam ignored it as well, avoiding Clarissa’s gaze while answering, ‘But it is not your name, is it, Clare? Penny was named for the loyal wife of Odysseus. And she is worth far more than copper.’
There was an awkward pause.
Clarissa responded, ‘So we assumed. We can hope that you are worth your weight in gold, Pen, for you will need to be to equal your husband’s spending.’
And then they all laughed.
One, two, three … Penny felt shame colouring her skin compounded by anger at Clarissa and her own husband, and the pack of jackals that he had allowed into her study to torment her. She wanted nothing more than to run from the room, but it would only have made the situation worse. So she forced a laugh as well.
Her response would not have mattered, for now that she had wounded, Clarissa ignored her again and returned her attention to the duke. ‘Darling Adam, it is so good to see you back amongst us. It is never the same when you are not here. London is frightfully boring without you, is it not, Timothy?’
Her own husband was looking at her with a sardonic twist to his smile. ‘Would that you found such pleasure in my company as you do in Adam’s, my darling.’ He turned to Adam. ‘But I missed you as well, old friend. Without you, times have been sober, as have I. We must put an end to that sorry condition as soon as possible. White’s? Boodle’s? Name your poison, as they say.’
‘White’s, I think. This evening?’
‘Of course.’
Clarissa stamped her foot. ‘You will do nothing of the kind. I expect you to dine in
