Thank you for your kind words. You guys are wonderful! I feel honoured to have such nice readers in both the Merlin and Glee fandoms.
I do not own Merlin or the characters, neither do I own An Offer From A Gentleman.
LADY MIDDLETON'S SOCIETY PAPERS 19 MAY 1817
The Hanbury's hosted a small dinner party yesterday eve, and, although this author was not privileged enough to attend, it has been said that the evening was deemed quite a success. Three Pendragons attended, but sadly for the Hanbury girls, none of them were of the male variety. However, it was said that the always amiable Nigel Hawthorne was there, paying great attention to Miss Pansy Hanbury.
This author is told that both Arthur and Hugh Pendragon were invited, but had to send their regrets.
The days melted into a week and Gwen discovered that working for the Pendragons could keep a girl very busy indeed.
Her job was to be maid to all three unmarried girls, so her days were filled with hairdressing, mending, pressing gowns and polishing shoes...
She hadn't left the house not once...unless one counted time out in the back garden. But where such a life under the countess Calliope had been dreary and demeaning, the Pendragon household was filled with laughter and smiles.
The girls bickered and teased, but never with the malice Gwen had seen Victoria show to her sister Penelope. And when tea was informal...upstairs...with only the girls and Lady Pendragon in attendance, Gwen was always invited to partake.
She usually brought her basket of mending and darned or sewed buttons while they chattered away, but it was so lovely to be able to sit and sip a fine cup of tea, with fresh milk and warm scones.
And after a few days, she even began to feel comfortable enough to occasionally add to the conversation...
It had become her favorite time of day.
"Where do you suppose Arthur is?" Catherine asked one afternoon, about a week after what Gwen was now referring to as the big kiss.
"Ow!"
Four Pendragon faces turned to Gwen...
"Are you all right?" Lady Pendragon asked, her teacup suspended halfway between her saucer and her mouth.
Gwen grimaced.
"I pricked my finger."
Lady Pendragon's lips curved into a small, secret smile.
"Mother has told you at least a thousand times..." Morgana started.
"A thousand times?" Georgina asked with arched brows.
"A hundred times," Morgan amended, shooting an annoyed look at her older sister. "That you do not have to bring your mending to tea."
Gwen suppressed a smile of her own.
"I should feel very lazy if I did not."
"Well, I'm not going to bring my embroidery," Morgana announced...not that anyone had asked her to.
"Feeling lazy?" Georgina queried.
"Not in the least," Morgana returned.
Georgina turned to Gwen...
"You're making Morgana feel lazy."
"I do not!" Morgana protested.
Lady Pendragon sipped at her tea.
"You have been working on the same piece of embroidery for quite some tune, Morgana. Since February, if my memory serves."
"Her memory always serves," Georgina said to Gwen.
Morgana glared at Georgina, who smiled into her teacup.
And Gwen coughed to cover a smile of her own.
Georgina, who at twenty was merely one year younger than Catherine, had a sly, subversive sense of humour. And someday Morgana would be her match.
But not yet.
"Nobody answered my question," Catherine announced, letting her teacup clatter into its saucer. "Where is Arthur? I haven't seen him in an age."
"It's only been a week," Lady Pendragon said.
"Ow!"
"Do you need a thimble?" Morgana asked Gwen.
"I'm not usually this clumsy," she muttered.
Lady Pendragon lifted her cup to her lips and held it there for what seemed like a rather long time... While Gwen gritted her teeth together and returned to her mending with a vengeance.
Much to her surprise, Arthur had not made even the barest of appearances since the big kiss last week. She'd found herself peering out windows and peeking around corners...always expecting to catch a glimpse of him.
And yet, he was never there.
She couldn't decide whether she was crushed or relieved.
Or both.
She sighed.
Definitely both.
"Did you say something, Gwen?" Catherine asked.
Gwen shook her head and murmured, "No," refusing to look up from her poor, abused index finger.
Grimacing slightly, she pinched her skin, watching blood slowly bead up on her fingertip...
"Where is he?" Catherine persisted.
"Arthur is thirty years of age," Lady Pendragon said in a mild voice. "He doesn't need to inform us of his every activity."
Catherine snorted loudly.
"That's a fine about-face from last week, mother."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Where is Arthur?" the girl mocked, doing a more-than-fair imitation of her mother. "How dare he go off without a word? It's as if he's dropped off the face of the earth."
"That was different," Lady Pendragon said.
"How so?" This, from Georgina, who was wearing her usual sly smile.
"He'd said he was going to that awful Cavendish boy's party, and then never came back, whereas this time..." Lady Pendragon stopped, pursing her lips. "Why am I explaining myself to you?"
"I can't imagine," Gwen murmured.
Catherine, who was sitting closest to her, nearly choked on her tea. But Georgina whacked her on the back even as she leaned forward to inquire,
"Did you say something, Gwen?"
Gwen shook her head as she stabbed her needle into the dress she was mending... Completely missing the hem.
Catherine gave her a dubious sideways glance...
And Lady Pendragon cleared her throat...
"Well, I think..." She stopped, cocking her head to the side. "I say, is that someone in the hall?"
Gwen stifled a groan and looked over towards the doorway, expecting the butler to enter. Bennett always gave her a disapproving frown before imparting whatever news he was carrying.
He didn't approve of the maid taking tea with the ladies of the house. And while he never vocalized his thoughts on the issue in front of the Pendragons, he rarely took pains to keep his opinions from showing on his face.
But instead of Bennett, Arthur walked through the doorway...
"Arthur!" Catherine called out, rising to her feet. "We were just talking about you."
He looked at Gwen.
"Were you?"
"I wasn't," she muttered.
"Did you say something, Gwen?" Morgana asked.
"Ow!"
"I'm going to have to take that mending away from you," Lady Pendragon said with an amused smile. "You'll have lost a pint of blood before the day is through."
Gwen lurched to her feet...
"I'll get a thimble."
"You don't have a thimble?" Morgana asked. "I would never dream of doing mending without a thimble."
"Have you ever dreamed of mending?" Georgina smirked.
Morgana kicked her, nearly upsetting the tea service in the process.
"Morgana!" Lady Pendragon scolded.
Gwen, using that as a distraction, stared at the door, trying desperately to keep her eyes focused on anything but Arthur.
She'd spent all week hoping for a glimpse, but now that he was here, all she wanted was to escape.
If she looked at his face, her eyes inevitably strayed to his lips. And if she looked at his lips, her thoughts immediately went to their kiss.
And if she thought about the kiss...
"I need that thimble," she blurted out, jumping to her feet. There were some things one just shouldn't think about in public.
"So you said," Arthur murmured, one of his eyebrows quirking up into a perfect...and perfectly arrogant...arch.
"It's downstairs," she muttered. "In my room."
"But your room is upstairs," Morgana said.
Gwen could've killed her.
"That's what I said," she ground out.
"No," Morgana said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You didn't."
"Yes," Lady Pendragon said. "She did. I heard her."
At that, Gwen twisted her head sharply to look at Lady Pendragon... And knew in an instant that the older woman had lied.
For her...
"I have to get that thimble," she said, for what seemed like the thirtieth time. Then she hurried towards the doorway, gulping as she grew close to Arthur.
"Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself," he said, stepping aside to allow her through the doorway. But as she brushed passed him, he leaned forward, whispering, "Coward."
Gwen's cheeks burned, and she was halfway down the stairs before she realized that she'd meant to go back to her room.
'Dash it all!' She didn't want to march back up the stairs and have to walk passed Arthur again. He was probably still standing in the doorway, and his lips would tilt upward as she passed... With one of those faintly mocking, faintly seductive smiles that never failed to leave her breathless.
This was a disaster. There was no way she was going to be able to stay here. How could she remain with Lady Pendragon, when every glimpse of Arthur turned her knees to water?
She just wasn't strong enough... He was going to wear her down, make her forget all of her principles and all of her vows.
She was going to have to leave. There was no other option...
And that was really too bad, because she liked working for his sisters. They treated her like a human being, not like some barely paid workhorse.
They asked her questions and seemed to care about her answers.
She knew she wasn't one of them... Would never be one of them, but they made it so easy to pretend.
And in all truth, all that she had ever really wanted out of life was a family.
With them, she could almost pretend that she had one.
"Lost your way?"
Gwen looked up to see Arthur at the top of the stairs, leaning lazily against the wall.
She looked down and realized that she was still standing on the stairs.
"I'm going out," she said.
"To buy a thimble?"
"Yes," she said defiantly.
"Don't you need money?"
She could lie and say that she had money in her pocket, or she could tell the truth and show herself for the pathetic fool she was...
Or she could just run down the stairs and out of the house. It was the cowardly thing to do, but...
"I have to go," she muttered, and dashed away so quickly that she completely forgot she ought to be using the servants' entrance.
She skidded across the foyer and pushed open the heavy door, stumbling her way down the front steps.
When her feet hit the pavement, she turned north, not for any particular reason, just because she had to go somewhere...
And then she heard a voice...
An awful, horrible, terrible voice...
Dear God, it was the countess...
Gwen's heart stopped, and she quickly pressed herself back against the wall. The countess was facing the street, but unless she turned around she'd never notice her.
At least it was easy to remain silent when one couldn't even breathe...
'What is she doing here?' Gwen thought.
Penwood House was at least eight blocks away, closer to...
Then she remembered... She'd read it in Middleton last year, one of the few copies she'd been able to get her hands on while she was working for the Cavendish's.
The new Earl of Penwood had finally decided to take up residence in London, so the countess and her two daughters had been forced to find new accommodations.
But next door to the Pendragons?
Gwen couldn't have imagined a worse nightmare if she tried.
"Where is that insufferable girl?" she heard the countess asked.
And she immediately felt sorry for the girl in question. As the countess's former insufferable girl, she knew that the position came with few benefits.
"Penelope!" the woman yelled, then marched into a waiting carriage.
Gwen chewed on her lip, her heart sinking. In that moment, she knew exactly what must've happened when she left...
The countess would have hired a new maid and she was probably just beastly to the poor girl. But she wouldn't have been able to degrade and demean her in quite the same fashion she'd done with her.
For that to happen, you had to know a person and really hate them to be so cruel. Any old servant wouldn't do.
And since the countess had to put someone down...because she didn't know how to feel good about herself without making someone else feel bad...she'd obviously chosen her own daughter Penelope as her whipping boy...or girl, as the case might be.
Poor Penelope came dashing out the door, her face pinched and drawn. She looked unhappy, and perhaps a bit heavier than she had been two years earlier.
'The countess wouldn't like that,' Gwen thought glumly.
The woman had never been able to accept that Penelope wasn't petite and blonde and beautiful like Victoria and herself.
If Gwen had been the countess's nemesis, then Penelope had always been her disappointment.
Gwen watched as the poor girl stopped at the top of the steps, then reached down to fiddle with the laces of her short boots, even as Victoria poked her head out of the carriage, yelling, "Penelope!" in a rather unattractively shrill voice.
Gwen ducked back, turning her head away because she was right in Victoria's line of sight...
"I'm coming!" Penelope called out.
"Hurry up!" her sister snapped.
The girl finished tying her laces, then hurried forward, but her foot slipped on the final step, and a moment later, she was sprawled on the pavement.
Instinctively, Gwen lurched forward moving to help Penelope, then she jammed herself back against the wall...
Penelope was unhurt, and there was nothing in life Gwen wanted less than for the countess to know that she was in London...practically right next door.
Penelope picked herself off the pavement, stopping to stretch her neck, first to the right, then to the left. Then...
She saw her...
Gwen was sure of it. Because the girl's eyes widened, and her mouth fell open slightly. Then her lips came together, pursed to make the "G" before saying,
"Gwen?"
Gwen shook her head frantically.
"Penelope!" came the countess's irate cry.
And Gwen shook her head again, her eyes begging and pleading with Penelope not to give her away.
"I'm coming, mother!" the girl called. She gave Gwen a single short nod, then climbed up into the carriage, which thankfully rolled off in the opposite direction.
Gwen sagged against the building... She didn't move for a full minute.
And then she didn't move for another five.
Arthur didn't mean to take anything away from his mother and sisters, but once Gwen had ran out of the upstairs sitting room, he lost his interest in tea and scones.
"I was just wondering where you'd been," Catherine was saying.
"Hmmm?"
He craned his head slightly to the right, wondering how much of the streetscape he could see through the window from this angle.
"I said," his sister practically hollered, "I was just wondering..."
"Catherine, lower your voice," Lady Pendragon interjected.
"But he's not listening."
"If he's not listening, then shouting isn't going to get his attention."
"Throwing a scone might work," Morgana suggested.
"Morgana, don't you da..."
But she had already lobbed the scone...
Arthur ducked out of the way, barely a second before it would've bounced off the side of his head. He looked first to the wall, which now bore a slight smudge where the scone had hit, then to the floor where it had landed, remarkably in one piece.
"I believe that is my cue to leave," he said smoothly, shooting a cheeky smile at his youngest sister.
Her airborne scone had given him just the excuse he needed to duck out of the room, to see if he could trail Gwen to wherever it was she thought she was going.
"But you just got here," his mother pointed out.
He immediately regarded her with suspicion... Unlike her usual moans of 'But you just got here' she didn't sound the least bit upset that he was leaving.
Which meant she was up to something...
"I could stay," he said, just to test her.
"Oh, no," she said, lifting her teacup to her lips even though he was fairly certain it was empty. "Don't let us keep you if you're busy."
Arthur fought to school his features into an impassive expression, or at least to hide his shock. The last time he'd informed his mother that he was busy, she'd answered with,
"Too busy for your mother?"
His first urge was to declare he would stay and park his behind in a chair, but he had just enough presence of mind to realize that staying to thwart his mother was rather ridiculous, when what he really wanted to do was leave.
"I'll go, then," he said slowly, backing towards the door.
"Go," she said, shooing him away. "Enjoy yourself."
Arthur hustled from the room before his mother managed to befuddle him any further.
On his way, he reached down and scooped up the scone, gently tossing it to Morgana, who caught it with a grin. He then nodded at his mother and sisters and headed out into the hall, reaching the stairs just as he heard his mother say,
"I thought he'd never leave."
Very odd, indeed.
With long, easy strides, he made his way down the steps and out the front door. He doubted that Gwen would still be near the house, but if she'd gone shopping, there was really only one direction in which she would've headed.
He turned right, intending to stroll until he reached the small row of shops, but he'd only gone three steps before he saw her pressed up against the brick exterior of his mother's house, looking as if she could barely remember how to breathe.
"Guinevere?" He rushed towards her. "What happened? Are you all right?"
She started when she saw him, then nodded.
He didn't believe her, of course, but there seemed little point in saying so.
"You're shaking," he said, looking at her hands. "Tell me what happened. Did someone bother you?"
"No," she said, her voice uncharacteristically quavery. "I just... I...ah..." Her gaze fell on the stairs next to them. "I tripped on my way down the stairs and it scared me." She smiled weakly. "I'm sure you know what I mean. When you feel as if your insides have flipped upside down."
Arthur nodded, because, of course he knew what she meant. But that didn't mean that he believed her.
"Come with me," he said.
She looked up, and something in the brown depths of her eyes broke his heart.
"Where?" she whispered.
"Anywhere but here. I live just five houses down," he added.
"You do?" Her eyes widened, then she murmured, "No one told me."
"I promise that your virtue will be safe," he interrupted. And then he added, because he couldn't quite help himself... "Unless you want it otherwise."
He had a feeling she would have protested if she weren't so dazed, but she allowed him to lead her down the street.
"We'll just sit in my front room," he said. "Until you feel better."
She nodded and he led her up the steps and into his home, a modest town house just a bit south of his mother's.
Once they were comfortably ensconced, and Arthur had shut the door so that they wouldn't be bothered by any of his servants, he turned to her, prepared to say,
"Now, why don't you tell me what really happened."
But at the very last minute something compelled him to hold his tongue.
He could ask, but he knew she wouldn't answer. She'd be put on the defensive, and that wasn't likely to help his cause any.
So instead, he schooled his face into a neutral mask and asked,
"How are you enjoying your work for my family?"
"They are very nice," she replied.
"Nice?" he echoed, sure that his disbelief showed clearly on his face. "Maddening, perhaps. Maybe even exhausting. But nice?"
"I think they are very nice," Gwen said firmly.
Arthur started to smile, because he loved his family dearly and he loved that she was growing to love them, but then he realized that he was cutting off his nose to spite his face...
Because the more attached she became to his family, the less likely she was to potentially shame herself in their eyes by agreeing to be his mistress.
Damn! He'd made a serious miscalculation last week. But he'd been so focused on getting her to come to London, and offering a position in his mother's household had seemed the only way to convince her to do it.
That, combined with a fair bit of coercion.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Why hadn't he coerced her into something that would segue a little more easily into his arms?
"You should thank your lucky stars that you have them," Gwen said, her voice more forceful than it had been all afternoon. "I'd give anything for..."
But she didn't finish her sentence.
"You'd give anything for what?" Arthur asked, surprised by how much he wanted to hear her answer.
She gazed soulfully out the window as she replied,
"To have a family like yours."
"You have no one," he said, his words a statement, not a question.
"I've never had anyone."
"Not even your..." he started. And then he remembered that she'd slipped and told him that her mother had died at her birth. "Sometimes," he said, keeping his voice purposefully light and gentle. "It's not so easy being a Pendragon."
Gwen's head slowly turned around...
"I can't imagine anything nicer."
"There isn't anything nicer," he replied. "But that doesn't mean it's always easy."
"What do you mean?"
And just like that, Arthur found himself giving voice to feelings he'd never shared with any other living soul, not even his family...
"To most of the world," he said, "I'm merely a Pendragon. I'm not Arthur or Art or even a gentleman of means and hopefully a bit of intelligence. I'm merely..." He smiled ruefully. "...a Pendragon. Specifically, Number Two."
Gwen's lips trembled, then they smiled.
"You're much more than that," she said.
"I'd like to think so, but most of the world doesn't see it that way."
"Most of the world are fools."
He laughed at that. To him, there was nothing more fetching than her scowl.
"You will not find disagreement here," he said.
But then, just when he thought the conversation was over, she surprised him by saying,
"You're nothing like the rest of your family."
"How so?" he asked, not quite meeting her gaze. He didn't want her to see just how important her reply was to him.
"Well, your brother Bradford..." Her face scrunched in thought. "His whole life has been altered by the fact that he's the eldest. He quite obviously feels a responsibility to your family that you do not."
"Now wait just one..."
"Don't interrupt," she said, placing a calming hand on his chest. "I didn't say that you didn't love your family, or that you wouldn't give your life for any one of them. But it's different with your brother. He feels responsible. And I truly believe he would consider himself a failure if any of his siblings were unhappy."
"How many times have you met Bradford?" he muttered.
"Just once." The corners of her mouth tightened, as if she was suppressing a smile. "But that was all I needed. As for your younger brother, Hugh... well, I haven't met him, but I've heard plenty..."
"From whom?"
"Everyone," she lied. "Not to mention that he is forever being mentioned in Middleton... Which I must confess, I've read for years."
"Then you knew about me before you met me," he said.
She nodded.
"But I didn't know you. You're much more than Lady Middleton realizes."
"Tell me," he said, placing his hand over hers. "What do you see?"
Gwen brought her eyes to his, gazed into those blue depths and saw something there she'd never dreamed existed... A tiny spark of vulnerability... Of need.
He needed to know what she thought of him, that he was important to her.
This man, so self-assured and so confident, needed her approval.
Maybe he needed her...
She curled her hand until their palms touched, then used her other index finger to trace circles and swirls on the fine kid of his glove.
"You are..." she began, taking her time, because she knew that every word weighed heavier in such a powerful moment. "You are not quite the man you present to the rest of the world. You'd like to be thought of as debonair and ironic and full of quick wit...and you are all those things...but underneath, you're so much more. You care," she said, aware that her voice had grown raspy with emotion. "You care about your family... And you even care about me, although God knows I don't always deserve it."
"Always," he interrupted, raising her hand to his lips and kissing her palm with a fervency that sucked her breath away. "Always."
"And... And..."
It was hard to continue when his eyes were on hers with such single-minded emotion.
"And what?" he whispered.
"Much of who you are comes from your family," she said, the words tumbling forth in a rush. "That much is true. You can't grow up with such love and loyalty and not become a better person because of it. But deep within you, in your heart, in your very soul, is the man you were born to be. You... Not someone's son. Not someone's brother. Just you."
Arthur watched Gwen intently. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but he discovered that he had no words. There were no words for a moment like this.
"Deep inside," she murmured. "You have the soul of an artist."
"No," he said, shaking his head.
"Yes," she insisted. "I've seen your sketches. You're brilliant. I don't think I knew how much until I met your family. You captured them all perfectly, from the sly look in Georgina's smile to the mischief in the very way Morgana holds her shoulders."
"I've never shown anyone else my sketches," he admitted.
Her head snapped up.
"You can't be serious."
He shook his head.
"I haven't."
"But they're brilliant. You are brilliant! I'm sure your mother would love to see them."
"I don't know why," Arthur said, feeling sheepish. "But I never wanted to share them."
"You shared them with me," Gwen said softly.
"Somehow," he said, touching his fingers to her chin. "It felt right to do so."
And then his heart skipped a beat, because all of a sudden everything felt right...
He loved her...
He didn't know how it had happened, only that it was true.
It wasn't just that she was convenient... There had been lots of convenient women...
She was different. She made him laugh. She made him want to make her laugh. And when he was with her... Well, when he was with her he wanted her like hell, but during those few moments when his body managed to keep itself in check...
He was content.
It was strange to find a woman who could make him happy just with her mere presence. He didn't even have to see her, or hear her voice, or even smell her scent...
He just had to know that she was there.
If that wasn't love, he didn't know what was.
He stared down at her, trying to prolong the moment, to hold on to these few moments of complete perfection.
Then something softened in her eyes, and the colour seemed to melt right then and there. From a shiny, glowing brown to a soft bronze.
Her lips parted and softened also, and he knew that he had to kiss her. Not that he wanted to... That he had to.
He needed her next to him, below him and on top of him.
He needed her in him, around him and a part of him.
He needed her the way he needed air.
And, he thought in that last rational moment before his lips found hers... He needed her right now.
NB* I didn't read over so, you know...
Stay safe!