And Dear Lord, I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy.
“Why would you think that?” she asked. “You have so much . . . so much more than I would ever need.”
Not enough.
He’d lost more than he could ever regain.
He could have a hundred houses, twenty times as much money, all the riches he could amass, and it would never be enough. Because it would never erase his past, his recklessness, his failure.
It would never make him the man she deserved.
“If I hadn’t forced you into marrying me—” he started, and she cut him off.
“You didn’t force me into doing anything. I chose you.”
She couldn’t believe that. He shook his head.
“You really don’t see it, do you? How remarkable you are.” He looked away at the words. At the lie in them. “No. Look at me.” The words were firm, and he couldn’t help but heed them, her eyes so blue. So honest. “You think somehow you lost all respectability when you lost your fortune. But what was that fortune but money and land cobbled together by generations of other men? It was their accomplishment. Their honor. Not yours. You—” He heard the reverence in the word. Saw the truth of her feelings in her eyes. “—you have built your own future. You’ve made yourself a man.”
A lovely sentiment, romantic, but wrong. “You mean a man who stole his wife from the dead of night, forced her to marry him, used her for land and vengeance and then . . . tonight . . . stripped her bare in London’s most legendary gaming hell?” He heard the disdain in his tone, and he looked away, toward the blackness that shrouded the high ceiling of the room, feeling like he belonged in the gutter. He wanted her dressed and far from him. “God. I swore I would never dishonor you again. I’m so sorry, Penelope.”
She refused to be cowed. Placing one hand on his chin, she forced him to meet her gaze once more. “Don’t make it sound filthy. I wanted it. I enjoyed it. I am not a child to be coddled. I married you to live, and this . . . you . . . all of it is living.” She paused and smiled, bright and beautiful, and the pleasure and regret that single smile wrought was a physical blow. “There was not a moment tonight during which I felt dishonored or misused. Indeed, I felt quite . . . worshipped.”
That was because he had worshipped her.
“You deserve better.”
Her brows came together. She pulled herself and rose from the chaise like a phoenix, wrapping herself in his coat. “It is you who is not listening. I hate that you place me up on some high shelf where you keep the things of value that you don’t want broken. But I don’t want that place of honor. I loathe it there. I loathe the way you leave me there for fear of hurting me. For fear of breaking me, as though I’m some kind of porcelain doll with no strength. With no character.”
He stood, moving toward her. He’d never thought she had no character. Indeed, if she had any more character, she’d make him mad. And as for strength, she was Atlas. A small, lovely Atlas, clad in nothing but his coat.
He reached for her and she took a step backward. “No. Don’t. I’m not through. I have character, Michael.”
“I know you do.”
“A great deal of it.”
More than he’d ever imagined.
“Yes.”
“I’m not perfect. I gave up perfection when I realized that the only thing it would ever get me was a lonely marriage with an equally perfect husband.” She was shaking with anger, and he reached for her, wanting to pull her into his arms; but she pulled back, refusing to allow him to touch her. “And as for your not being perfect, well, thank God for that. I had a perfect life in my reach once, and it was a crashing bore. Perfect is too clean, too easy. I don’t want perfect any more than I want to be perfect. I want imperfect.
“I want the man who tossed me over his shoulder in the woods and convinced me to marry him for the adventure of it. I want the man who is cold and hot, up and down. The one who runs a men’s club and a ladies’ club and a casino and whatever else this incredible place is. You think I married you in spite of your imperfections? I married you because of your imperfections, you silly man. Your glorious, unbearably infuriating imperfections.”
It wasn’t true, of course. She’d married him because she’d had no choice.
But he was not about to let her go.
Not after he’d just discovered how wonderful it was to have her in his arms.
“Penelope?”
She dropped her hands, and his coat opened, baring one long, narrow strip of skin from neck to knee. “What?” He would have laughed at the peevishness in her tone if he had not been overwhelmed by the way she looked in her stockings and his coat and nothing else. She took a deep breath, the fabric threatening to reveal her glorious br**sts.
“Are you through?”
“Maybe,” she said, reserving the right to say more.
“You can be very difficult when you want to be, you know.”
One of her pretty blond brows rose. “Well. If that is not the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.”
He reached for her, and she let him catch her this time. Let him pull her into his arms, pressing her lush, curving body to his. “I am too imperfect for you,” he whispered at her temple.
“You are perfectly imperfect for me.”
She was wrong, but he did not want to think on it anymore. Instead, he said, “You are naked in a gaming hell, love.”
Her reply was muffled against his chest, and he felt the words more than heard them. “I can’t believe it.”