Dukes By the Dozen

She attempted to douse the ember by taking another drink. But the brandy only seemed to loosen her tongue. “Be glad you are not a woman, Beech, else you’d be ruined for such enthusiasm.” Lord, but it felt good to say what she’d been thinking, to let the words loose upon the world. She propped her feet upon the fireplace bumper. “Utterly ruined—your very existence treated as an affront to all well-bred behavior.”

Gracious but she was airing out all sorts of her dirty linen this evening—even she could hear the bitterness in her tone. But Beech had been a loyal friend in their long-ago youth—before he had gone away to the Navy and she had been fool enough to turn her reckless fancy to kissing handsome men—and he deserved the truth. The whole truth, and not what she had been admitting out of some idiotic mixture of resentment and pride.

“So here you are, an affront, barricaded behind a chest of drawers,” Beech concluded in that steady, smooth baritone as deep and rich as the liquor. “Might I venture if that precaution is to keep you from being imposed upon by idiot chaps eager to keep you ruined?”

“Why, Beech.” Penelope felt the brandy’s warmth spread all the way to her toes. “How extraordinarily perceptive you are.”

He deflected her praise. “Human nature is the same on a ship as it is in a ballroom.”

“Is it? That brings to mind all sorts of interesting questions I should love to ask. But the problem is that it is February, and the St. Valentine’s poems have begun. I can normally endure them—the poems as well as the idiot chaps who send them—but my present circumstance seems to have brought out the absolute worst in the county’s bachelors.”

The horrible doggerel was nearly enough to make her eager for the escape of exile. Nearly—she supposed the post could still reach her in Backwater-By-Nowhere.

“St. Valentine’s Day poems?” Beech’s dark scowl scoured his forehead. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Poor Beech. You—”

“—have been away,” he finished for her. “So it seems.”

“Poor Beech,” she said again.

“I’m not sure I like being called that—it smacks of helplessness.” He put down his drink. “And I assure you, despite present appearances, I am not helpless.”

“I never meant to imply so,” she agreed. He looked too vital, too real for helplessness. “You’re only too good—too honest and open—for your own good.”

“I am flattered you should think so,” he said. “I’ve seen too much of the world to wish to be anything other than honest. There is no hiding from the truth.”

He touched his empty sleeve again in that strangely reassuring gesture, as if he needed to remind himself that his arm was indeed gone.

“Brave Beech, then.”

And she was Ruined Penelope Pease, who was now too far beyond the pale to ever marry, and though she had become inordinately skilled at ignoring the proverbial elephant in any room, she was damned tired of it.

So, she looked Beech in the eye. “Tell me what happened to your arm.”

CHAPTER 4

FOR A FRAUGHT MOMENT Penelope feared she had overstepped the mark—his eyes went still over the rim of his brandy glass.

“I lost it, of course,” he said with such offhand grace that she wondered if she were making too much of the injury. But then, his mouth curved into a wry smile. “Brava. Do you know you are the very first person I’ve encountered since my return who has had the”—he hesitated for the barest second, as if he might have been about to say something else before he settled upon—“temerity to speak of my alteration.”

She wasn’t sure whether she was meant to be chastened or affronted. But she felt affronted—for him. “It seems a rather stupid thing not to notice that where you once had two arms hanging from your rather fine shoulders, you now have but one. And I keep track of my friends.” What few she had left. Which made her rather anxious to keep the one fate had been kind enough to provide for her this evening. “I read the newspapers, and know what ships you’ve been on, when you’ve been in battles, and when you’ve been mentioned in dispatches. Especially when you were counted as grievously injured.”

“How flattering.”

“Yes, well.” Penelope felt heat suffuse her cheeks. But she wanted to be done with cynicism—Beech of all people deserved honest admiration for his sacrifice. “You were listed at the Battle of Pirano, when you were first lieutenant on Victorious. I’m afraid I lost track of you for a while, until you were posted as Commander out of the squadron at Malta.”

“Devil take me.” His smile lasted only a moment. “You are well-informed.”

“People talk.” And she still listened—even when what she heard wasn’t entirely flattering. “And heroes are talked about everywhere.”