A Rogue by Any Other Name (34 page)

She cast him a sidelong glance. “I’m surprised you would say such a thing. Don’t you want her married as quickly as possible?”

He looked away, focusing on his skating for long minutes. “You know I do. But I have no interest in forcing her hand.”

“It is only my hand that you were interested in forcing?”

“Penelope,” he began, and she pulled ahead of him, skating faster, feeling the cold wind on her cheeks, wishing that she could keep going, wishing that she could glide away from this strange, forced life that she was living. She edged past a large group of people, and he was beside her again, his hand on her arm, slowing her. “Penelope,” he said again. “Please.”

Perhaps it was the word. The softness of it. The strangeness of it on his tongue. The way he said it, as though she could ignore him and he would let her go.

But she stopped, her skates digging deep into the ice as she turned to face him. “I was supposed to stop this,” she said, knowing there was too much emotion in her words. “I was supposed to make it so that they could have a different life. Marriages that were built on more than . . .”

“More than a handsome dowry.”

She looked away from the words. “They’re supposed to have a better chance than us. You gave me your marker.”

“And at least one of them will.” He pointed to the far end of the lake and she followed the line of sight to where Olivia and Tottenham stood in conversation, a blush on Olivia’s perfect cheeks and a wide grin on Tottenham’s face. “He’s worth a fortune, and his reputation is clean enough to make him prime minister someday. If they suit, it could be a tremendous match.”

“They are alone? Together?” She began to skate again, toward them. “Michael, we must go back!”

He reached for her hand, slowing her pace. “Penelope, they are not alone on a balcony at a ball. They are standing, quite happily, on the lakeshore, conversing.”

“
Sans chaperone.
” She said, “I’m serious. We must return!”

“Well, if you say it in French, it must be very serious indeed.” His face was turned away, so she couldn’t exactly tell, but she thought he was teasing her. “It’s all entirely aboveboard.” He reached out and took her hand, turning her to skate in a different direction even as she tried to pull away. “You owe me an afternoon, wife.” When he held her firm, she stopped resisting, and he orbited her until she couldn’t help but follow him, facing him the entire way.

And then he pulled her into his arms as though they were dancing, and they skated back in an approximation of a waltz, until they were a fair distance from anyone overhearing them.

“Everyone is watching.”

“Let them watch.” He held her tightly, whispering low at her ear, “Don’t you remember what it was like to spend those first, breathless minutes alone with a suitor?”

“No.” She tried to pull away. “Michael, we must go back.”

Suddenly, it wasn’t for Olivia that she felt she must return. It was for herself. For her sanity. Because being in his arms, like this, with his voice at her ear, was not good for her convictions.

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.

He’d been riveted as she left him, so proud of her as she crossed the Serpentine, and it had taken all his control not to follow her and keep her there, in that place that seemed so far from where their marriage actually existed. He’d luxuriated in the feel of her in his arms as they’d skated, exalted in the way she smiled up at him when he’d stolen a chestnut from her paper sack, and when she’d asked him, wide-eyed, for the truth—he’d been happy to answer her with honesty.

His honesty had not been enough, though.
A well-learned lesson.

She’d expected him to refuse the invitation to charades, he knew, and he likely should have. But he found he was not ready to leave her—indeed, he found he did not like the idea of ever leaving her. And so here he was, in a drawing room, playing charades in family idyll.

Her sisters tumbled into the room, Philippa carrying a bowl filled with slips of paper, followed by a large brown dog that trotted over to the settee and pushed his way up to sit between him and Penelope, turning twice before settling, chin on Penelope’s thigh, hindquarters shoved against Michael’s hip. He shifted, making room for the hound, as her hands moved to idly stroke the dog’s ears.

Jealousy flared as the dog sighed and burrowed into the touch. Michael cleared his throat, irritated at his canine envy, and asked, “How many dogs are there in this house?”

She wrinkled her nose, thoughtfully, and he was struck by the expression—a vestige from their youth that made him want to reach out and run his finger down the creases in the pert little slope. “Ten? Eleven?” She shrugged, small and sweet. “I’ve honestly lost count. This is Brutus.”

“He appears to like you.”

She smiled. “He likes attention.”

Michael decided that foolish or not, he would happily turn over his stake in The Angel to have her hands on him in such a lovely, soothing way.

“Did you see how
tall
Tottenham is? And so handsome!” Olivia gushed, coming over to take the chair next to Michael, leaning in to speak to him. “I had no idea that a brother-in-law with a reputation like yours would have access to such a tremendous potential husband!”

“Olivia!” The Marchioness of Needham and Dolby looked as though she might perish with embarrassment. “One does not discuss such things with
peers
!”

“Not even one’s brother-in-law?”

“Not even him!” Lady Needham’s voice had risen several octaves. “An apology would not be out of hand!”

Pippa looked up from where she had set the large bowl of charades clues and pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “She doesn’t mean that your reputation is
bad,
my lord. Just that it’s . . .”

Michael raised a brow, wondering how she would finish the sentence.

“Really, Pippa. He’s not addlepated. He knows he’s a scandalous reputation. I’d wager he enjoys it.” She smiled at him, all teeth, and he decided he liked these girls. They were entertaining, if nothing else.

“All right. That’s enough,” Penelope interjected. “Shall we play? Olivia, you first.”

Olivia seemed more than willing to begin the game, and she headed for the large fireplace to take her turn. Selecting a slip of paper from the bowl, she read, pursing her lips, ostensibly considering her strategy.

Instead of pantomiming the item on the paper, however, she looked up, and said, “Do you think Tottenham will buy me a very large betrothal ring?”

“
The Marriage of Figaro,
” Penelope said, matter-of-factly.