He twirled them in a slow circle. “We shall return to them in a few minutes. For now, answer the question.”
“I did answer it.” She tried to pull back, but he held her firmly. “This isn’t proper.”
“I’m not letting you go. If anyone sees us, they’ll simply see the Marquess of Bourne doting on his lovely wife. Now answer the question.”
Except, he wasn’t doting on her. It wasn’t real.
Was it?
“I’ve never been courted. Not to breathlessness.” She couldn’t believe she’d admitted it to him.
“Didn’t your duke do his best to woo you?”
Penelope couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Have you ever met the Duke of Leighton? His is not the most wooing of dispositions.” She paused, a memory of the duke stopping a ball for his future wife flashing through her mind, before adding, “At least, it was not with me.”
“And the others?”
“Which others?”
“The other suitors, Penelope. Surely one of them did his best to . . .”
She shook her head, looking around them, searching for her sisters, afraid of being seen. Philippa was standing with a group of girls at the center of the glittering ice. “I’ve never been rendered breathless by a suitor.”
“Not even Tommy?”
No. She should have said it, but didn’t want to. Didn’t want to betray her friend. Didn’t want Michael to know she’d been a means to an end for all of them . . . even Tommy. “I thought we weren’t discussing Tommy.”
“Do you love him?” There was urgency in his tone, and she knew he would not relent until she answered him.
She lifted one shoulder. “He is a dear friend. Of course I care for him.”
His eyes grew dark. “That isn’t what I mean, and you know it.”
She did not pretend to misunderstand. Instead, she told him the truth, knowing the confession would give him power. Not caring, because she wanted something in their relationship to be real. “He did not make me breathless either.”
A small child—no older than four or five—skated past, followed by his apologetic father and a laughing mother who turned to dip a curtsy to them. Penelope smiled and waved away the apology before she said, softly, “Perhaps that is the problem, though. Perhaps I waited too long for breathlessness and missed . . . well . . . everything else.”
When he said nothing, she looked up at him to find him tracking the same family she had been watching. Finally, he looked down at her very seriously, and she could not look away as they turned and turned in the momentum of the waltz, neither of them forcing movement, but spinning nonetheless. Something shifted in the air between them.
“I’m very happy that you did not marry Leighton or Tommy or any of the woefully lacking others, Sixpence.”
No one but Michael had ever called her Sixpence, a silly nickname he’d given her a lifetime ago, assuring her that she was worth far more than a penny to him. They had been sweet words at the time, a lovely little idea that had been sure to make her smile, and her response now was no different.
Warmth spread through her at the name, followed by a question far more serious than the name. “Is that honesty? Or is it false honesty? Who are you, right now? The real you? Or some approximation of the man you think they want you to be? Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter, because now . . . in this moment . . . it matters.” Her voice grew soft. “And I’m not even sure why.”
“It’s the truth.”
And maybe it made her a fool, but she believed him.
They stood there for a long moment, his eyes flecked with greys and golds and greens and so intent upon her, as though they were alone on that lake—as though all of London were not swaying and gliding around them—and she wondered what might happen if all of London weren’t there. If all of London did not matter.
He was so close, the heat of him so real and tempting, and she thought he might kiss her there.
No.
She pulled away before he could.
She had to.
She couldn’t bear the idea of him using her again.
Snow had begun to fall, dusting the brim of his pin-striped cap and the shoulders of his beautifully tailored coat. “I should go to Olivia before she and Tottenham decide to elope.” She paused. “Thank you for the afternoon.”
She turned and left, skating away, feeling the loss of him keenly. It was wrong that he could make her want him so much, so quickly, with a single soft smile or kind word. She was weak when it came to him.
And he was so very strong.
“Penelope,” he called out to her, and she turned back to meet his gaze, something altogether dangerous sparkling in his brown eyes. “The afternoon is not over.”
And, for a brief instant, Penelope thought she might be breathless.
Chapter Sixteen
Dear M—
I had absolutely no doubt that this season would be horrid, but it’s worse than I thought. Oh, I can suffer the gossip, the whispers, the way that I have become invisible to those eligible bachelors who used to ask me to dance, but seeing the duke and his new, beautiful duchess—that is difficult.
They’re so very much in love; they don’t even seem to notice the chatter that follows them. And then, yesterday, I heard tell in a ladies’ salon that she is increasing.
It is so strange to see someone else live the life you might have had. Stranger still to ache for it and exalt in the freedom of not having it all at once.
Unsigned
Dolby House, April 1824
Letter unsent
It was a strange thing indeed, wooing one’s wife.
He would have expected such a thing to involve candlelight, a quiet bedchamber, and an hour or two of salacious whispering. And yet it appeared that the wooing of his wife would involve her sisters, her somewhat ridiculous mother, five of her father’s hounds, and a game of charades.
It was the first time he’d played charades since he’d left Surrey for school eighteen years earlier.
“You needn’t remain here, you know,” Penelope said, sotto voce, from her place next to him on the Dolby House drawing-room settee.
He leaned back, crossing one ankle over the other. “I enjoy a good round of charades as much as the next man.”
“And it is my experience that men do adore parlor games,” she said wryly. “The afternoon is past, you know.”
The words were a not-so-subtle reminder that she’d paid him in full . . . that his time was up. He met her blue gaze. “It’s still past the hour of noon, Sixpence.” He lowered his voice. “By my count, I’ve at least five more hours with you—well into the night.”
She blushed, and he resisted the urge to make love to her right there—to strip her out of her too-becoming frock and lay her down bare on the very settee on which they sat.
Her family would likely not have approved.
It was not the first time that he’d considered stripping her of her clothes that day, nor was it the tenth. Nor, likely, the hundredth.
Something had happened on the ice, something for which he had not been prepared.
He’d enjoyed himself.
He’d enjoyed Penelope.
He’d enjoyed skating with her, and teasing her, and watching her with her sisters, each charming in her own right. And he’d been so tempted to reach out and claim his wife. But when he’d tried, she’d turned from him—filled with glorious strength—chin high, lovely, refusing to settle for less than what she deserved.