A Rogue by Any Other Name (17 page)

She kept talking, not entirely understanding why she felt she should tell him the whole story. “My marriage was to be the most calculated, the most businesslike of them all. I was to become the Duchess of Leighton. I was to keep quiet and do my husband’s bidding and breed the next Duke of Leighton. And I would have done it. Happily.” She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “The duke—he had other plans.”

“You escaped.”

No one had ever referred to it in such a way. She’d never admitted it, the quiet comfort that had come in the dissolution of the engagement, even as her world had come crashing down around her. She’d never wanted her mother to accuse her of being selfish. Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to agree with Michael. “I’m not sure that most women would call what happened to me an escape. It’s funny how a little thing like a broken engagement can change everything.”

“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 . . .”

How to live.

She couldn’t say
that.
He would laugh her out of the carriage. “Someone to dance with—someone to laugh with—someone to care about.”

Someone who would care about me.

“Someone like your fiancé?”

She thought of Tommy, considered for a fleeting moment telling Michael that the unidentified man to whom he referred was the friend they’d known all their lives.
The son of the man who took everything from him.
But she didn’t want to upset him, not while they were quiet and warm, and she could pretend they enjoyed each other’s company.

So instead she whispered, “I should like for it to be someone like my husband.”

He was silent for a long time, long enough for her to wonder if he’d heard her. When she risked peering up at him through her lashes, she found that he was staring at her with an unsettling intent, his hazel eyes nearly golden in the fading light.

For one, fleeting moment, she thought he might kiss her.

She wished he would kiss her.

A flush spread high on her cheeks at the thought, and she turned away quickly, returning her head to his chest, closing her eyes tightly, and willing the moment gone—along with her silliness.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they did suit.

Chapter Eight

Dear M—

Just a quick note today to tell you that we are all thinking of you, me most of all. I asked my father if we could come to Eton for a visit, and of course he told me that it wouldn’t be appropriate, as we are not family. It’s silly, really. You’ve always felt as much like family as some of my sisters. Definitely more like family than my Aunt Hester.

Tommy will be home for his summer holiday. I am crossing my fingers that you will join us.

Ever—P

Needham Manor, May 1816

No reply

On the evening of his wedding, Bourne exited his town house almost immediately after depositing his new wife inside and headed for The Fallen Angel.

He would be lying if he said that he didn’t feel like something of an ass in leaving her so summarily, in a new home with a new staff and nothing familiar, but he had a single, immovable goal, and the faster he reached it, the better they all would be.

He would send the announcement of their marriage to the
Times
, get the young ladies Marbury matched, and have his revenge.

He did not have time for his new wife.

He certainly did not have time for her quiet smiles and her quick tongue and the way she reminded him of everything that he had lost. Of everything on which he’d turned his back.

There was no room in his life for them to talk. No room to be interested in what she had to say. No room to find her entertaining or to care even a bit about how she felt about her sisters or how she had coped with her broken engagement, now years behind her.

And there was definitely no room for him to wish to murder the man who had broken that engagement and made her doubt herself and her worth.

It did not matter that she put flowers on his parents’ graves at Christmas.

Maintaining a distance from her was essential—it was distance that would establish the parameters of their marriage, namely, that he would retain his life, and she would build her own, and while they would see her sisters matched together, it was for their individual reasons.

So, he left her sleepy-eyed and wrinkled in her traveling cloak and headed to The Angel, doing his best to ignore the fact that she was alone on her wedding night, and that he’d likely suffer extra torture in hell for leaving her there.

Four hours in a coach, and he was already too soft with her.

He breathed deep, enjoying the frigid dampness in the evening air, yellow with thick January fog as he navigated through Mayfair to Regent Street, where a handful of peddlers remained in the waning light, rising up out of the mist only when they were an arm’s length away. They did not speak to him, their well-honed instincts telling them that he was not in the market for what they were selling. Instead, they faded away as quickly as they appeared, and Bourne made his way to the great stone building atop St. James’s.

The club was not open yet, and when he slipped through the owners’ entrance and onto the pit floor, he was grateful for the lack of company in the cavernous room. There were lanterns lit around the floor, and a handful of maids were completing the day’s work—scrubbing at carpet, polishing sconces, and dusting the framed art on the walls.

Bourne crossed to the center of the pit floor, stopping there for a long moment to take in this place—the place that had been home for the last five years.

Most afternoons, he was the first of the owners to arrive at The Fallen Angel and he liked it that way. He enjoyed the quiet of the pit at that hour, the silent moments before the dealers arrived to check the weight of the dice, the oil on the wheels, the slickness of the cards, preparing for the mass of humanity that would descend like locusts and fill the room with shouts and laughter and chatter.

He liked the club empty of all but possibility.

All but temptation.

He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, feeling for the talisman that was always there, the coin that reminded him that it was temptation and nothing else that kept these tables full.

That it was temptation that ruined.

That one did not risk what one could not afford to lose.

The coin was gone. Another reminder of his unwanted wife.

He moved to the roulette table, brushing his fingers across the heavy silver handle of the wheel, spinning it, running the colors together, all speed and luxury, as he reached for the ivory ball on which so many hopes had been pinned—and lost. With a practiced flick of his wrist, he sent the ball spinning into the well, loving the sound of bone on metal, the way it shivered over him, all smoothness and sin.