“Not so little, I imagine.”
She met his gaze again, realizing that he was paying close attention to her. “No . . . I suppose not.”
“How did it change you?”
“I was no longer a prize. No longer the ideal aristocratic bride.” She ran her hands over her skirts, smoothing out the wrinkles that had appeared during their journey. “I was no longer perfect. Not in their eyes.”
“In my experience, perfection in the eyes of society is highly overrated.” He was staring at her, his hazel eyes glittering with something she could not identify.
“That’s easy for you to say; you walked away from them.”
He ignored the shift of focus, refused to allow the conversation to turn to him. “All those things—everything you just said—that’s how your broken engagement changed you for them. How did it change you, Penelope?”
The question gave her pause. In the years since the Duke of Leighton had caused the scandal of the ages and destroyed any chance of Penelope’s becoming his duchess, she’d never once asked herself how it had changed her.
But now, as she looked across the carriage at her new husband—a man she’d approached in the dead of night and whom she’d wed only days later—the truth whispered through her.
It had made happiness a possibility.
She swallowed back the thought, and he leaned forward quickly, almost eager. “There. There—you just answered the question.”
“I—” She stopped.
“Say it.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Anymore. Because of me?”
I was never destined to have what they have. She considered her words carefully. “It made me realize that marriage did not have to be an arrangement. The duke—he loves his wife madly. Their marriage . . . there is nothing quiet and sedate about it.”
“And you wanted that?”
Only once I knew it was an option.
But it hadn’t mattered.
She gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t matter what I wanted, does it? I’ve got my marriage now.”
Her teeth chattered on the last, and he muttered his disapproval at the sound, shifting and moving across the carriage to sit next to her. “You’re cold.” He wrapped one long arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him, his heat pouring off of him in waves. “Here,” he added, pulling a traveling blanket around them, “this will help.”
She huddled against him, trying not to remember the last time she was this close to him. “It seems you are always sharing your blankets with me, my lord.”
“Bourne,” he corrected, cocooning them tightly together in the rough wool, the words a rumble beneath her ear. “And it is either share my blankets or have you steal them.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed.
They rode in silence for a long while before he spoke again. “So, all these years, you’ve been waiting for a happy marriage.”
“I don’t know if waiting is the word I would use. Hoping, more like.” He did not reply, and she fiddled with the button of his coat.
“And your fiancé, the one from whom I stole you, would he have given it to you?”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
She should tell him the truth about Tommy. That they were never honestly engaged. But something held her back.
“It’s not worth thinking about it now. But I won’t be blamed for two more unhappy marriages. I don’t fool myself into thinking that my sisters could find love, but they could be happy, couldn’t they? They could find someone who suits them . . . or perhaps that’s too much to ask?”
“I don’t know, honestly,” he said, one hand slipping around her, pulling her close as the carriage rattled onto the bridge that would take them over the Thames and into London. “I am not the kind of man who understands how people suit.”
She should not enjoy the feel of his arm around her, but she could not help leaning into his warmth, pretending, for a fleeting moment, that this quiet conversation was the first of many. His hand was sliding slowly up and down her arm, transferring heat—and something more wonderful—to her with each lovely, warm stroke. “Pippa is virtually engaged to Lord Castleton; we expect he’ll propose within a matter of days of her return to London.”
His hand stilled for a moment before continuing its long, slow slide. “How did she and Castleton come to know each other?”
She thought of the plain, uninspiring earl. “The same way it happens with anyone, really. Balls, dinners, dancing. He seems nice enough, but . . . I do not care for the idea of him with Pippa.”
“Why not?”
“Some would say she’s peculiar, but she’s not. She’s simply bookish, loves the sciences. She is fascinated by how things work. He doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with her. But, honestly? I don’t think she gives a fig one way or another about whether or whom she marries. As long as he has a library and a few dogs, she’ll make a happiness of sorts for herself. I only wish she could find someone more . . . well, I hate to sound cruel, but . . . intelligent. ”
“Mmm.” Michael was noncommittal. “And your other sister?”
“Olivia,” she replied, “is very beautiful.”
“Then it sounds like she will suit most men quite well.”
Penelope sat up. “It’s that simple?”
He met her gaze. “Beauty helps.”
Penelope was never going to be considered beautiful. Plain, yes. Passable, even, on a good day, in a new frock. But never beautiful. Even when she was set to become Duchess of Leighton, she wasn’t beautiful. She was just . . . ideal.
She loathed the honesty in Michael’s words.
No one liked to be reminded that she was outvalued by a prettier lady.
“Well, Olivia is beautiful, and she knows it—”
“She sounds delightful.”
She ignored his wry tone. “—and she will need a man who treats her very very well. Who has a great deal of money and does not mind spending it to spoil her.”
“That sounds like the very opposite of what Olivia needs.”
“It’s not. You’ll see.”
Silence fell, and she did not mind, instead turning into his warmth, loving the way he felt against her, the heat of him making the carriage infinitely more comfortable. Just as the rocking motion of the coach was about to lull her to sleep, he spoke. “And you?”
Her eyes flew open. “Me?”
“Yes. You. What kind of man would suit you?”
She watched the way the blanket rose and fell against his chest as he breathed, the long, even movements calming her in a strange way.
I would like for you to suit me.
He was her husband, after all. It was only natural for her to imagine that he might be more than a fleeting companion. More than an acquaintance. More of a friend. More than the cold, hard man she’d come to expect him to be. She did not mind this Michael, the one next to her, warming her, talking to her.
Of course, she did not say any of those things. Instead, she said, “It doesn’t matter much anymore, does it?”
“If it did?” He was not going to let her avoid the question.
Whether because of the warmth or the quiet or the journey or the man, she answered. “I suppose I should like someone interesting—someone kind—someone who is willing to show me . . .”