Read Online A Lady of His Own by Stephanie Laurens - Free Book Online

more.”
    He searched her eyes, her face, then inclined his head. “But only a little bit more.” He opened the door, followed her through. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
    She nodded a good night, then climbed the stairs.
    Charles watched her go, then headed for the library.
     
    In one respect his prediction went awry; he saw her next very late that night.
    After spending three hours leafing through Burke’s Peerage and Debrett’s , studying Amberly’s connections, then looking for locals with connections to the Foreign Office or other government offices, trying to identify who Penny might feel she should protect, all to no avail, he turned down the lamps and climbed the stairs as the clocks throughout the house struck half past eleven.
    Halting on the landing, he looked up at the huge arched window, at the stained glass depicting the St. Austell family crest. Rain beat a staccato rhythm against the panes; the wind moaned softly. The elements called, tugged at that wilder, more innocent side of him the years had buried, teased, tempted…
    Lips curving in cynical self-deprecation, he took the left branch of the stairs and climbed upward, heading not for his apartments as he’d originally intended but to the widow’s walk.
    High on the Abbey’s south side immediately below the roof, the widow’s walk ran for thirty feet, a stone-faced, stone-paved gallery open on one side, the wide view of the Fowey estuary framed by ornate railings. Even in deepest night with the moon obscured by cloud and the outlook veiled by rain, the view would be magnificent, eerily compelling. A reminder of how insignificant in Nature’s scheme of things humans really were.
    His feet knew the way. Courtesy of the years, he moved silently.
    He halted just short of the open archway giving onto the walk; Penny was already there.
    Seated on a stone bench along the far wall, one elbow on the railing, chin propped on that hand, she was staring out at the rain.
    There was very little light. He could just make out the pale oval of her face, the faint gleam of her fair hair, the long elegant lines of her pale blue gown, the darker ripple of her shawl’s knotted fringe. The rain didn’t quite reach her.
    She hadn’t heard him.
    He hesitated, remembering other days and nights they’d been up here, not always but often alone, just the two of them drawn to the view. He remembered she’d asked for time alone to think.
    She turned her head and looked straight at him.
    He didn’t move, but Penny knew he was there. To her eyes he was no more than a denser shadow in the darkness; if he hadn’t been looking at her, she’d never have realized.
    When he didn’t move, when she sensed his hesitation, she looked back at the wet night. “I haven’t yet made up my mind, so don’t ask.”
    She sensed rather than heard his sigh.
    “I didn’t realize you were here.”
    He’d thought her in her chamber; he couldn’t have known otherwise. She returned no comment, unperturbed by his presence; he was too far away for her senses to be affected—she didn’t, otherwise, find him bothersome to be near. And she knew why he’d come there—for much the same reason she had.
    But now he was present, and she was, to o…she tried to predict his next tack, but he surprised her.
    “You weren’t that amazed to learn I’d been a spy. Why?”
    She couldn’t help but smile. “I remember when you returned for your father’s funeral. Your mother was…not just happy to see you, but grateful. I suppose I started to wonder then. And she was forever slipping into French when she spoke to you, far more than she usually does, and you were so secretive about which regiment you were in, where you were quartered, which towns you’d been through, which battles…normally, you would have been full of tales. Instead, you avoided talking about yourself. Others put it down to grief.” She paused, then added, “I didn’t. If you’d wanted to hide grief, you would have