LORD ERA
Penelope gets him a birthday present that is either incredibly thoughtful or an act of domestic terrorism.
The thing about Jack is that he is impossible to buy for in a way that feels personally insulting. Not because he’s difficult. Just because he’s annoyingly low-maintenance and weirdly sincere. He buys practical things before anyone else gets the chance, shrugs off expensive things, and means it when he says things like, “I just want to hang with you.”
Which is lovely.
Also useless.
So for two weeks she paces around with a notes app full of terrible ideas.
Watch. Too earnest.
Jacket. Too normal.
Whiskey. Too divorced uncle.
Trip. Too much logistics.
Desk thing. Absolutely not.
And then, at one in the morning, while accidentally reading about medieval land law and internet scams, she finds it.
Tiny plot of land in Scotland.
Certificate.
Title.
Lord.
She stares at her phone for a full minute and says, out loud to the dark, “Oh no.”
Because you cannot give a man like Jack fake nobility and expect restraint.
Which, frankly, makes it perfect.
So now here she is on his couch on his birthday with a small envelope in her lap and the full, sick knowledge that she may have just altered the course of her own life.
Jack wheels in from the kitchen with takeout balanced across his thighs like this is not a thing she finds derangedly attractive for reasons she refuses to examine before dinner. He parks, hands her the cartons, then transfers over beside her in one practiced sequence. Easy. Familiar. Offensive in its competence.
His eyes land on the envelope.
Then on her face.
“This expression,” he says, “usually means either deep love or a crime.”
“Can it not be both?”
“That would track, yes.”
He reaches for the envelope.
Penelope pulls it back.
“Hang on.”
He looks at her.
She looks back.
“I might already be regretting this.”
“That,” he says, “is cryptic.”
“I know.”
“Pen.”
“Jack.”
They hold eye contact for one second too long, then she shoves the envelope at him like she’s trying to get rid of evidence.
“Open it.”
He does.
Pulls out the certificate.
Reads the first line.
Stops.
Reads it again.
His whole face goes still in a way Penelope recognizes with immediate dread.
Not confused.
Worse.
Calculating.
“Penelope,” he says.
“No.”
He lifts his head slowly.
“You bought me…land?”
“Technically, yes.”
“You bought me Scottish land.”
“It’s mostly symbolic.”
He looks back down at the page. Finds the title line.
And there it is.
The exact second the bit enters his bloodstream.
His mouth twitches once. Then smooths back out. He folds the paper carefully, like it matters, and sets it on his thigh with the solemnity of a man who has just inherited a ruined estate and at least three enemies.
“Penelope,” he says again, very calm now. “You have made me nobility.”
“That is a wildly generous reading of events.”
“No,” he says. “Too late. I’ve already changed.”
“Oh no.”
He doesn’t laugh right away. That’s what makes it dangerous. He’s too busy looking at the certificate like it’s a loaded weapon and deciding whether to use it for good or become his own villain origin story.
Then: “I do think this may change things between us.”
Penelope barks out a laugh. “How?”
“Well, for one, I assume you’ll need to stop speaking to me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Casually.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, absolutely not. You are not getting fake Scottish dirt and using it to become emotionally Victorian.”
He lifts one shoulder. “I’m not becoming emotionally Victorian. I’m becoming technically titled.”
“That is not better.”
He considers this.
Then says, “Interesting.”
“Nothing about that tone is interesting.”
“I’m just realizing there are now situations in which I can say ‘this is no way to speak to a lord’ and be, at minimum, spiritually correct.”
Penelope actually chokes.
He sees that.
He is delighted.
She points at him. “You cannot use spiritually correct as legal cover.”
“Watch me.”
He leans over and kisses her once, quick and laughing into it slightly, then sits back and holds up the certificate between two fingers.
“This,” he says, “is the best gift anyone’s ever given me.”
“You say that now.”
“No,” he says. “I say that as a lord.”
She actually laughs.
Then groans.
“Oh, this is going to be so good for you and so bad for me.”
Over the next few weeks, the title settles into him like it found an existing cavity and decided to furnish it.
His commitment to the bit is, frankly, impressive.
He doesn’t run it into the ground.
He just deploys it with precision.
At a coffee shop, when the barista asks for a name, he says, with total calm, “Lord Darcy.”
The cup comes back with LORT DARCY in thick black marker. Jack studies it with the gravity of a man reviewing a diplomatic incident.
“I have been humbled by the people,” he says.
Penelope nearly walks into a display of ground coffee.
At home, when she asks him to take the trash out, he looks up from his laptop, face grave, and says, “This is no way to speak to a lord.”
She throws a dish towel at him.
At work, when a client says, “Sorry, could you take another pass at this?” he smiles and says, “Of course. Service remains the burden of the landed class.” The intern laughs. The room laughs. Jack keeps going like none of that cost him anything.
He was already funny. Already good in a room. It’s just that now, whenever a little spotlight lands on him, he doesn’t swat it away on reflex. He leaves it there for a second. Lets it warm him. Then carries on.
It is, in Penelope’s opinion, a serious problem.
Also, very much her fault.
By the time they end up at his mom’s for dinner a few weeks later, she is no longer pretending otherwise.
His mom’s place is warm and loud and full of the exact kind of loving chaos Penelope has come to associate with Darcy family dinners that feel less like meals and more like endurance sports.
Cal is there. Aiden is there. One aunt has materialized from nowhere with opinions and trifle. His mom keeps introducing Penelope to people she has already met like she personally invented romance and would like formal recognition.
At some point, in the middle of absolute noise, his mom says, “Jack, grab those napkins behind you.”
And before Penelope can stop him, before anyone can intervene, Jack says, “Mother, please. I’m titled.”
The whole table loses it.
Cal folds in half laughing. Aiden nearly drops his fork. One aunt starts coughing into her wine. His mom, who should never under any circumstances be handed a live bit unless the household is fully insured, puts a hand to her chest and says, without missing a beat, “Oh, forgive me, Your Lordship. Would his ladyship prefer to supervise instead.”
Jack actually chokes.
Not a full death event. Just enough of a startled half-cough that Penelope sees, with immediate and criminal clarity, that he had not accounted for collateral damage.
Which is where she should probably have let it go.
Instead she sets her fork down very carefully, turns to Cal across the table, and shoos one hand at him like he is junior staff.
“Peasant, please,” she says sweetly. “Napkins.”
There’s a beat.
Then Cal points between them and says, “No. Absolutely not. One of you was already too many.”
Aiden drops his face into his hand. “Oh god. She’s joined him.”
The aunt with the wine points at Penelope like she’s just become the only thing worth looking at in the room. His mom is laughing so hard she has to put her drink down.
Jack turns to look at her, one eyebrow slightly up, like he knew exactly what she’d do with ladyship and was waiting for her to prove him right.
Penelope can feel herself grinning into her glass like an idiot, which is deeply unfortunate, because Jack sees that too.
And the bastard smiles, small and private and absolutely lethal.
“Would his ladyship like more potatoes?” his mom asks.
Penelope glances at the bowl. “His ladyship has known enough hardship.”
That gets him. Head down, laughing into his hand now, shoulders shaking once.
Worth it. Absolutely.
Later, when they’re in his childhood bedroom ostensibly getting his old skateboard from the closet for Cal, Penelope shuts the door behind them, kicks off one shoe, and climbs onto the bed sideways like she has legal rights there.
Jack rolls over near the desk and is still a little pink from laughing, still carrying that look.
She props herself up on one elbow and says, “You cannot let your mom hand me a wife title in front of trifle and expect me to behave like a serious person.”
Jack glances over, still smiling. “I can, apparently.”
“No.” She settles more comfortably into the bedspread, all false dignity and very real delight. “What you can do, apparently, is get an absolutely irresponsible amount of mileage out of this.”
His mouth twitches.
She stretches one leg out along the bed, lets her bare foot nudge lightly against his thigh. Somewhere in the middle. Deliberate enough to be a problem.
“You committed to that insanely fast,” he says.
She shrugs. “Your mom handed me rank over trifle. There were obligations.”
That gets a real laugh out of him.
And because she is, at core, a menace, she lets her foot drift.
Nothing dramatic. Just a lazy little slide higher along the inside of his thigh—the kind of movement that could maybe still be called accidental if everyone involved were willing to lie very hard.
Jack keeps looking at her face, and that’s how she knows. Normally he’d clock it immediately—the shift of her leg, the angle, the fact that her bare foot is now very deliberately rubbing up against him through his jeans in a way that is not even slightly aristocratic.
But he’s still distracted. Still half in the bit. Still looking at her instead of what she’s doing.
Which is interesting.
Then more interesting.
Because she keeps going.
Just a little.
A slow, idle drag of her foot up and back, enough to feel the shape of him change under the denim, enough to make something in him start to wake up before his brain catches up, enough that Penelope’s own stomach drops at the exact same moment her pulse kicks.
Oh.
That is doing something.
It is also, unfortunately, doing something to her.
The whole thing goes hot and ridiculous at once: the bed, the room, the family just outside the door, the fact that this is technically still about ladyship while her foot is very much not doing anything remotely ceremonial anymore.
And he doesn’t even know.
Jack is still looking at her like he’s mid-thought.
Then it hits him.
His eyes drop.
Straight to his lap.
And the sound he makes is half groan, half laugh.
“Penelope.”
There’s amusement in it. Also suffering. Also the very specific tone of a man who has just realized he missed something important and does not care for the implications.
She looks back at him, shamelessly pleased with herself.
“What.”
His hand tightens around her ankle—not stopping her, just acknowledging the crime scene.
From the hall, his mom calls, “Did you find the skateboard or are you two redecorating in there?”
Jack closes his eyes for one second and shifts, too late to make it subtle. “Penelope,” he says, already half laughing. “You are so annoying.”
Penelope smiles, slow and radiant and entirely unrepentant, and lets her foot move once more just to prove she can.
From the hall, his mom again: “I heard that, Jack.”
He laughs despite himself, looks back down at her, and now whatever was playful in his face a second ago has gone quieter. More focused. More dangerous.
“Well,” Penelope says sweetly, “this is no way to speak to your ladyship.”
That gets another groan out of him.
Excellent.
A week later, they meet Ben and some of his old rugby crowd at a bar.
Nothing formal. Just a crowded table, sticky surfaces, too many fries, and one of Jack’s college friends telling a story that is mostly slander and somehow still flattering.
Jack is midway through correcting a detail—not defensively, just because accuracy matters, apparently—when the table goes quiet around him.
Not awkward quiet.
Listening quiet.
He finishes the story. Lands the punchline. The whole table laughs.
Then one of the guys—Ben’s friend, not Ben, one of the secondary-orbit men Penelope can never fully keep straight—shakes his head and says, “Honestly, I kind of hate you for being this smooth.”
It’s the kind of thing Jack has always been good at deflecting.
Usually he’d bat it off. Make a joke. Turn himself into the mechanism instead of the subject.
This time, he just grins and says, “Yeah, well.”
That’s it.
No self-deprecation. No turning it into luck or timing or anything that makes it smaller.
Just the grin.
Goddamn it. That shouldn’t be as hot as it is.
He was already him—already charming, already funny, already fully capable of walking into a room and rearranging the atmosphere on accident. It’s just that now he lets it sit on him for a second longer. Doesn’t flick it away quite so fast. Doesn’t hand the room back before he’s actually finished enjoying it.
It fits him in a way she finds deeply unhelpful.
The table laughs. He lets them. Then he goes right on with the conversation like nothing happened.
Penelope takes a long sip of her drink and looks anywhere but directly at him, because if she looks directly at him she’s going to start smiling like a complete idiot and then everyone will know she is, at core, an easily manipulated woman with a god complex.
Because that’s the really toxic part.
Not just that it looks good on him.
That some tiny, vile little part of her keeps whispering:
I did that.
Not all of it. She’s not clinically insane.
But enough of it to be a problem.
Enough of it that when he says something five minutes later and the whole table laughs again, she gets this bright, private rush of satisfaction under the embarrassment.
Like yes. Exactly. Look at him.
Then immediately: no, not for public consumption, you absolute freak.
On the drive home, she says nothing—not because she doesn’t have anything to say, but because if she opens her mouth too soon she’s going to sound deranged in a way that could actually be used in court.
Jack notices, obviously.
“What?”
She keeps looking out the window. “Nothing.”
“Lie.”
She turns to look at him.
He’s driving one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the hand control, easy, streetlights moving across his face in strips. One brow slightly up. Mouth still carrying the aftershock of the evening.
“It’s becoming a problem,” she says.
“What is?”
“You.”
He nods. “That does narrow it down.”
She huffs a laugh despite herself.
“Just—” She makes a frustrated little motion at the windshield, the road, the whole stupid evening. “The lord bit. The fact that it somehow works. The fact that you’re wearing it around like a joke and then underneath it you’re being all—”
“All what?”
She turns fully in her seat now, glaring at him because this is apparently her life.
“Pleased with yourself.”
He is quiet for a second.
Then: “Should I not be?”
That makes her blink.
Because the question isn’t smug. Or defensive.
Worse.
It’s real.
“No,” she says. “That’s not what I mean.”
He waits.
God, she hates when he does that. He gets still and lets silence sit there like he knows if he just leaves it alone long enough she’ll walk into it herself.
“At the bar,” she says. “When that guy said you were smooth. Usually you’d throw it away. Tonight you didn’t.”
“Huh.”
“Oh no,” she says immediately.
He glances at her. “Oh no what?”
“Do not sit there and discover things about yourself at me.”
“Why?”
She stares at him.
At the nerve.
At the fact that she is apparently about to volunteer this information with no legal representation.
“Because I am enjoying this on a level that feels spiritually unhelpful,” she says.
“And,” she says, because if she stops now she’ll either fling herself out of the car or spend the whole drive vibrating in silence, “because I know some tiny percentage of it came from me. Which is…” She exhales, already smiling against her will now because this is so humiliating it’s nearly funny. “Frankly, a bit of an ego event.”
He looks at her then.
Actually looks.
And there it is again—that awful little thrill of having landed something squarely enough to change his face.
Penelope turns back to the window before she can get stupider.
“I hate this conversation.”
His voice comes out lower when he answers.
“I don’t.”
Of course he doesn’t.
That should’ve been obvious.
They make it home in a silence that isn’t really silence at all. More like the air around a wire that’s still humming after you touched it.
By the time the apartment door closes behind them, Penelope can feel the whole evening sitting under her skin like heat.
She kicks off her shoes by the sofa. Jack locks the door, turns, and just looks at her.
There it is. That look.
Calm on the surface. Something hotter underneath it. Something that heard every word in the car and has no intention of pretending otherwise.
Penelope points a warning finger at him.
“Don’t.”
His mouth twitches. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like you’re about to make this my problem.”
“Your problem,” he repeats. “You gave me a title and got hot about it, and now it’s my problem?”
She stares at him.
He’s right and she hates it and she kind of doesn’t hate it at all.
“Yes,” she says.
He rolls closer.
Easy.
As if he already knows how this ends.
“Say it again,” he says.
She stares at him. “Absolutely not.”
“The ego bit.”
“No.”
“The hot bit.”
She actually laughs, once, incredulous. “The audacity.”
“You brought it up.”
“That does not mean you get to make me repeat it like some kind of pervert.”
His brows lift. “Like some kind of pervert.”
“Yes.”
“Interesting position from the woman who bought me nobility and is now upset that it suited me.”
Her mouth falls open.
Because that is, obnoxiously, closer to the truth than she’d like.
She huffs a laugh. “You’re so annoying.”
“And yet.”
She hates that line. Mostly because it keeps working.
He reaches her then, one hand landing lightly on the outside of her knee where she’s still standing by the sofa.
“Tell me,” he says, voice low now, “the thing you’re not saying.”
Penelope lets out a slow breath.
She could deflect.
She could make a joke.
She could do the thing where she pretends she didn’t just admit something humiliating in the car and he pretends he didn’t hear it.
Instead she says, “The fact that I did it.”
His hand goes still on her knee.
“Did what?”
“Made you hotter.”
The look on his face does something to her pulse that should probably concern her.
“Say that again.”
“No.”
“Penelope.”
“You heard me the first time.”
His hand slides higher. Just an inch. Enough to make her pulse stumble.
She looks down at it.
Then back up at him.
His face is open in that infuriating way of his—no smirk, no rescue, just the steady waiting that means he is going to make her say it if it kills them both.
So she says it.
“You always had the confidence. That’s not the thing.”
His eyes stay on hers.
“It’s just…” She exhales. “At the bar. You let that compliment sit. You didn’t throw it away. You just… let yourself be enjoyed.”
Something in him goes very still—not shocked, just hit.
She keeps going, because she’s already this far in and frankly she wants to see what happens.
“And I know the title is fake, and I know you were already you, but I also know I handed you something that let you do that without apologizing for it first.” She swallows. “And that gets to my ego.”
She doesn’t say in a bad way.
Because it’s not.
His hand tightens on her leg—not enough to hurt, but enough to claim what she just said.
Then he smiles, small at first, and lets it stay there while he looks at her for a second too long, chewing on it, liking it.
“Penelope,” he says.
That’s all.
Just her name, in a tone that says I can’t believe you just said that to me and you have no idea what you’ve done.
Her whole body betrays her instantly.
Good, she thinks. Let him see it.
Jack sees that happen.
Something in him sharpens.
He transfers from chair to sofa in one quick movement, like he has already decided exactly how this is going to go.
Then he catches her wrists.
Quick. Easy.
One fluid tug. Enough to pull her between his knees and off balance, enough that her hand catches at his shoulder on instinct, enough that by the time she registers what’s happening she’s already there and he’s already decided.
There’s nothing rushed about him, which is very much the problem.
He looks up at her from there, still holding both her wrists in one hand, his face gone quiet and dangerous in a way that makes the room feel smaller.
She can feel him thinking.
Feel him enjoying the fact that she said it out loud. That she sees him. That she likes what she sees.
His mouth curves again.
“Right,” he says softly.
Penelope exhales, shaky and half laughing now because this is so transparently her fault.
“Don’t.”
He doesn’t ask what part.
Doesn’t help her.
He plants one hand on the sofa cushion behind her and moves.
Fast this time.
Not chaotic.
Decisive.
He drags her onto his lap and pins her back against the sofa cushions, catches both her wrists over her head, and suddenly there is no room left for dignity or second thoughts or any version of this where she gets to pretend she isn’t exactly where she wanted to end up.
Her breath catches so hard it almost hurts.
Jack looks at her like he likes that too.
“This,” she says, because apparently she’s decided to just narrate her own destruction, “is exactly what I mean.”
His eyes go darker.
He leans in just enough that his breath moves against her mouth.
“What part.”
“The part where you get all…” She gestures uselessly with the hand he isn’t letting her use. “This. Deliberate.”
That smile again, meaner now.
He shifts under her, stronger than he needs to be about it, and she knows he’s clocking her reaction. Knows she’s seeing the difference. Knows it’s doing exactly what he wants it to do.
And the worst part is she likes that too.
“You hear one humiliating thing,” she says, breathless, “and suddenly you’re impossible.”
Jack’s thumb moves once over the inside of her wrist.
“Mm,” he says. “You don’t sound unhappy about it.”
Her laugh comes out broken and bright.
“No,” she says. “That’s the ego issue.”
His grin goes sharp.
“Which part? That I heard it, or that you like that I heard it?”
Fuck.
“Both,” she says.
He grins at that. Brief and devastating.
Then he leans in closer, mouth brushing hers without kissing her yet, and says, low and sure, “You tell me you made me hotter and then stand there expecting me to be normal.”
That lands so hard she goes still.
He feels it.
Of course he does.
The grin disappears.
What’s left underneath it is worse.
A steadier kind of heat. Less playful now. More focused.
“This is very unfair of you,” he says softly.
Penelope stares at him. “You’re on top of me.”
“Yeah,” he says.
Like that explains everything.
Maybe it does.
His hand slides from her wrists to the back of her neck, not releasing so much as reclaiming.
And there it is.
The thing she was trying to say in the car.
He hasn’t become somebody else. He’s just staying there now—letting himself be seen without apologizing for it, letting her watch what it does to him, letting her enjoy it.
Jack catches that thought crossing her face and smiles.
Then he kisses her.
He kisses her without softening it.
Penelope breaks under it instantly—not because she’s weak, but because he’s right there, solid under her, one hand warm at the back of her neck, the other firm at her back, and because this whole stupid thing has become exactly the kind of problem she likes having.
He shifts beneath her, stronger than he needs to be about it, just enough to make the point in his shoulders, his chest, the pressure of him everywhere.
This is not the version of Jack that slips out of being looked at.
This is the version she built a joke for and then had the terrible judgment to admire.
And she’s not even a little bit sorry about it.
“You’re very smug for someone with imaginary holdings,” she whispers.
Jack’s hand moves from her back to her jaw.
His eyes flick to her mouth.
“Seems real from here,” he says quietly.
God.
That one nearly finishes her on the spot.
She closes her eyes for one second.
He catches her chin and tips it back up.
“No,” he says softly. “Stay.”
Penelope opens her eyes.
He looks almost angry now with how badly he wants her—not mean, just stripped down past charm, past joking, into something much more direct.
“You tell me,” he says, “that I’m more confident because of you. Tell me it’s hot. Tell me it gets to your ego.” His grip tightens once at the back of her neck. “And then you want me to what? Thank you politely.”
Her laugh comes out broken.
“That would be very lordly.”
“I’m off duty.”
Then he kisses her again, and whatever remains of the conversation dissolves into something private and heated and entirely her fault.
Much later, when she is half boneless against him and he is still maddeningly smug in the aftermath, Penelope lifts her head off his shoulder and says, “I hope you know this has validated you in ways I’m not comfortable with.”
Jack, without opening his eyes, says, “I know.”
She narrows hers. “I mean it.”
“I know.”
She studies him for a second.
Then mutters, “You’re getting a Sonicare next year.”
His mouth curves.
“Lie.”
And unfortunately, as usual, he is completely right.
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