She did not stop.
He followed, slowly and methodically, up the stairs and down the long, dark hallway to her bedchamber. She had left the door open, knowing that he would find entry even if she locked herself inside. He closed the door behind him as she moved to her dressing table and removed her gloves, draping them carefully over a chair.
“Penelope,” he repeated, with a firmness that demanded obedience.
Well, she was through obeying.
“Please, look at me.”
She did not waver. Did not reply.
“Penelope . . .” He trailed off, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him rake his fingers through his hair, leaving a path of glorious imperfection there—so handsome, so uncharacteristic. “For a decade, I have lived this life. Revenge. Retribution. This is what has fed me—nourished me.”
She did not turn back. Could not. Did not want him to see how he moved her. How much she wanted to scream and rail and tell him that there was more to life . . . more to him . . . than this wicked goal.
He would not hear her.
“You’re wrong,” she said, moving to the washbasin at the window. “It has poisoned you, instead.”
“Perhaps it has.”
She poured cool, clear water into the bowl and submerged her hands, watching them pale and waver against the porcelain, the water distorting their truth. When she spoke, it was to those foreign limbs. “You know it will not work, don’t you?” When he did not reply, she continued. “You know that once you’ve meted out your precious revenge, there will be something else. Falconwell, Langford, Tommy . . . then what? What comes next?”
“Then life. Finally,” he said, simply. “Life out from beneath the specter of that man and the past he gave me. Life without retribution.” He paused. “Life with you.”
He was close when he said it, closer than she expected, and she lifted her hands from the water and turned around even as the words stung—even as they made her ache. They were words she had desperately wanted to hear . . . since the beginning of their marriage . . . perhaps since before that. Perhaps since she began writing him letters, knowing he’d never receive them. But no matter how much she wanted to hear those words, she found she could not believe him.
And it was belief—not truth—that mattered. He had taught her that.
He stood less than an arm’s length away, serious and stark, his hazel eyes black in the shadows of the room, and she could not stop herself from speaking even as she knew she would never make him see the truth. “You’re wrong. You shan’t change. Instead, you shall remain in the darkness, cloaked in revenge.” She paused, knowing that the next words were the most important for him to hear. For her to say. “You shall be unhappy, Michael. And I shall be unhappy with you.”
His jaw steeled. “And you are such an expert? You with your charmed life, tucked away in Surrey, never a moment risked, not a single mark on your perfect, proper name. You don’t know the first thing about anger, or disappointment, or devastation. You don’t know what it’s like to have your life ripped from under you and want nothing more than to punish the man who did it.”
The quiet words were like a cannon in the room, echoing around Penelope until she could no longer hold her tongue. “You . . . selfish . . . man.” She took a step toward him. “You think I do not understand disappointment? You think I was not disappointed when I watched everyone around me—my friends, my sisters—marry? You think I was not devastated the day I discovered that the man I was to marry was in love with another? You think I was not angry every day that I woke in my father’s home knowing that I might never have contentment . . . and that I would never find love? You think it is easy to be a woman like me, tossed from one man to another to control—father, fiancé, now husband?”
She was advancing on him, pressing him back toward the door of the room, too irritated to enjoy the fact that he was retreating along with her. “Need I remind you that I have never, ever had a choice in the direction of my life? That everything I do, everything I am, has been in service to others?”
“That is your fault, Penelope. Not ours. You could have refused. No one was threatening your life.”
“Of course they were!” she exploded. “They were threatening my safety, my security, my future. If not Leighton or Tommy or you, what? What was to happen when my father died, and I had nothing?”
He came toward her then, taking her shoulders in his hands. “Except it was not out of self-preservation, was it? It was out of guilt and responsibility, and a desire to give your sisters the life you could not have.”
Her gaze narrowed. “I will not apologize for doing what was right for them. We are not all you, Michael, spoiled and selfish and . . .”
“Don’t stop now, darling,” he drawled, releasing her and crossing his arms over his broad chest. “You were just coming to the good bit.” When she didn’t reply, he raised a brow. “Coward. Like it or not, you made your choices, Sixpence. No one else.”
She hated him for using the nickname with her now. “You’re wrong. You think I would have chosen Leighton? You think I would have chosen Tommy? You think I would have chosen—”
She stopped herself . . . wanting desperately to finish the sentence, to say you. Wanting to hurt him. To punish him for making everything so much more difficult. For making it impossible to simply love him.
He heard the word anyway. “Say it.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not? It’s true. If I were the last man in Britain, it would never have been me. I’m the villain in this play, the one who snatched you from your perfect country life, all vengeance and wrath, far too hard and cold and undeserving of you. Of your feelings. Of your company.”
“Your words. Not mine.” Except they weren’t true. Because, of all the things she’d done, of all the matches she’d almost made, he was the only one she’d really wanted.
He took a step backward, raked a hand through his hair, and gave a short huff of laughter. “You have learned to do battle, haven’t you? Poor Penelope no longer.”
She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, promising herself that she would put him—and the fact that she loved him—from her mind. “No,” she finally agreed. “Poor Penelope no longer.”
Something shifted in him, and for the first time since their marriage, she did not question the emotion in his gaze. Resignation. “So that’s that, is it?”
She nodded once, every inch of her resisting the words, wanting to scream at the injustice of it all. “That’s that. If you insist upon revenge, you do so without me at your side.”
She knew the ultimatum would never be met, but it was no less of a blow when he said, “So be it.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dear M—
I was at the theater tonight, and I heard your name. A handful of ladies were discussing a new gaming hell and its scandalous owners, and I could not help but listen when I heard them mention you. It’s so odd to hear you referred to as Bourne—a name I still associate with your father, but I suppose it’s been yours for a decade.
A decade. Ten years since I’ve seen you or talked to you. Ten years since everything changed. Ten years, and I still miss you.