Dukes By the Dozen

“Good of you,” Marcus cut in, already moving back toward the ballroom, towing Sir Harold along like an empty barge in his wake. “Come along, sir.”

They arrived at the ballroom door just as Penelope cleverly managed to take a chair on the far side of the room. “Is that not she, sir?”

Sir Harold followed the line of Marcus’s gaze to the improbable sight of his daughter doing her best to look idle, innocent and bored. Which was impossible, especially in that claret gown that set off her creamy complexion to perfection. She drew Marcus’s eye like a ship on a wine dark sea.

“Ah, yes, indeed. Beg your pardon, Your Grace,” Sir Harold blathered. “Seem to have overlooked her there.”

“Indeed.” Marcus could only agree. “It appears everyone has overlooked her there.” He gave his coat an unnecessary tug. “Let us remedy that at once.” He came to moor directly in front of where his Pease Porridge was pretending to make a concentrated study of the parquet floor. “Is that my old friend, Miss Pease?”

Pease Porridge looked up at him from under her lashes with such a delicious, dark angel combination of astonishment and delight that he very nearly laughed out loud. “Why, it is you!” He began to enjoy himself. “Sir Harold, if you would be so kind as to make the formal introductions?”

“M’daughter, Miss Pease, Your Grace.” Sir Harold gestured awkwardly. “Penelope, His Grace, the Duke of Warwick.”

“Miss Pease.” Marcus reached out his hand to raise her to her feet. “What a pleasure it is to be reacquainted with you after all this time.”

“Your Grace.” Her eyes danced with impish glee. “Why, it seems only a moment.”

Oh, she was fine—as nimble and quick as a yacht.

Marcus took command of the deck. “Indeed, it has been so long since I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to you, I wonder if you would take pity on an old sailor and take a turn about the room, while we talk of old times?” He turned to her father with the uncompromising smile that had made naval lieutenants jump to do his bidding. “With your permission, of course.” Which he did not wait for, making off with his prize ship while he showed her father a clean pair of heels.

“Well done, Commander Beecham. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father so flummoxed, even after he’s had an argument with me.”

It was a pleasure to hear the familiar rank from her lips. “That is what we navy men call a cutting out expedition,” he explained before he steered the conversation back to her comment. “Happen often, those arguments?”

“Often enough. As I said, I am persona non grata, meant to be properly chastened. Which, by my very presence at your side, I am clearly not.”

Properly chastened for not marrying Caius—the thought was not to be borne. “The words ‘gloriously defiant’ come to mind.”

Pleasure pinked her cheeks, though she sailed on, as unruffled as a wine-dark swan. “Unrepentant will do.”

“Nothing to repent.” They reached the end of the room and turned back to face the barely concealed stares of the assembly. Their unrestrained interest put him on his mettle, determined to return fire with fire.

He abandoned his earlier plan of battle for a new strategy that Admiral Nelson would have approved—engage directly with the enemy. If his brother had ruined Penelope, he would un-ruin her. “Well, we’ve had a drink, and walked and talked and proposed marriage, so the only thing left, it seems, is to dance.”

Her answer came on a laugh. “That would give my father a satisfactory apoplexy.”

“Excellent.” Marcus offered her his hand. “Then let us do so, now.” While his blood and courage were high. “A set is just forming.” A waltz, thank the devil.

But she looked at the hand he had offered as if it were a species of ship rat—small but potentially lethal.

“I won’t bite, Pease Porridge.”

“Oh, Beech.” A smile—slow and impish and entirely teasing—spread across her lips as she looked up at him from under her lashes. “And here everything had been so promising.”

The bolt of awareness and pleasure that shot through him was stronger than hot brandy. Oh, she was more than fine—she was as sharp and well-aimed as a carronade. And he was ready to strike the slow match. “Still might be—if you dance with me.”

Definitely would be, if she married him.

“Beech.” Her smiled faded slowly into something too much like disbelief. “But what about— Can you really?”

Heat—embarrassment, shame and that ugly feeling of diminishment—broke out under his collar, but he would be damned if he would let it show. “I am not helpless. Some things, a man doesn’t forget how to do.” Some things a man knew in his bones, even if some of those bones were missing. “Dance with me, and I’ll show you.”

CHAPTER 6

PENELOPE LOOKED AT HIM—REALLY looked at him to see the man whom experience had tempered like a steel sword. The man who had so calmly and so casually proposed they marry.

A proposal she had been too stunned to accept.

“Come, Pease Porridge. Let’s give them something real to gossip about.”