A Rogue by Any Other Name (35 page)

“Yes!” Olivia said. “How did you know?”

“How indeed,” Penelope replied.

“What a clever girl!” the marchioness announced.

Michael couldn’t help it. He laughed, drawing his wife’s attention, her brow furrowed in confusion as though he were a strange specimen of flora that she’d just discovered. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing . . . I just . . . you don’t laugh much.”

He leaned in, as close as he could get with the dog between them. “Is it unbecoming?”

She laughed, the sound like music. “No . . . I . . .” She blushed again, and he would have given his fortune for her thoughts at that moment. “No.”

“Olivia,” Pippa said, “try again.”

Olivia reached into the bowl once more, but not before looking straight at Michael and announcing, “I’ve always liked rubies, Lord Bourne. I believe they complement my complexion. In case it should arise in conversation. With anyone.”

Tottenham was in a great deal of trouble, indeed.

“Oh, I’m certain that it will,” Penelope said, dryly, “what with all the talk of jewels and ladies’ complexions that men like Bourne and Tottenham must have.”

“You would be surprised,” he said to his wife, all seriousness, and she laughed again. “I shall endeavor to remember your preference for rubies, Lady Olivia.”

She smiled. “See that you do.”

“I’m not sure jewels complement a complexion,” Pippa said smartly. “A play.”

“Philippa, we’ve invited Lord Castleton to luncheon tomorrow,” the marchioness announced. “The two of you shall have time in the afternoon for a walk, I hope.”

“That would be fine, Mother.” Pippa’s attention did not waver. “Five words.”

“Tottenham wasn’t invited to luncheon,” Olivia said with a pout.

“You’re not supposed to talk, Olivia,” Pippa said. “Though that was five words, so well done.”

Michael smiled at the clever retort, but did not miss the disinterest in his sister-in-law’s response. She did not wish to marry Castleton. Not that he could blame her; Castleton was an idiot. It had taken only a few hours for Bourne to discover that Pippa was smarter than most men and that Castleton would make her a terrible match. Of course, Castleton would make anyone a terrible match, but Philippa would find her marriage particularly soul-destroying.

And Penelope would hate him for not putting a stop to it.

He looked to his wife, who was watching him carefully. She leaned in. “You do not like the match.”

He could have lied. The faster Philippa and Castleton were matched, the faster Michael had his revenge, the faster he could live his life out from beneath the cloud of anger and fury that had shadowed his last decade. Nothing had changed.

Except, something had.

Penelope.

He shook his head. “I do not.”

Something lit in her beautiful blue eyes, something that could become his addiction. Hope. Happiness. It made him feel ten times a man to be the reason for it. “You will stop it?”

He hesitated. Would he stop it?

It would make Penelope happy.

But at what price?

He was saved from having to reply by Philippa, turning to face them. “What on earth? Do you see this?”

He had not been paying attention, but Olivia was now alternately pantomiming cracking a whip, and screwing up her face, eyes tightly closed, teeth bared, with her fingers splayed out at either edge of her mouth.

“Driving a squid! Whipping the sunshine!” the marchioness called out, pride in her tone, drawing laughter from the rest of the room.

“
Driving a Squid
is a play I would dearly love to read,” Philippa said on a giggle, turning back to Penelope. “Penny, really. We could use your help.”

Penelope watched Olivia for a long moment, and Michael had difficulty looking away from her—entranced by her focus. He wondered what it would be like to be the recipient of such interest. Of such contentment. Jealousy flared again, and he scolded himself. No grown man should be envious of dogs or sisters-in-law. “
The Taming of the Shrew.
”

Olivia stopped. “Yes! Thank you, Pen. I was beginning to feel foolish up there.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Pippa said, dryly. “I don’t think shrews are blind, Olivia.” This, from Philippa.

“Oh, tosh. I should like to see you do it better. Who is next?”

“It’s Penny’s turn. She guessed the last.”

Penelope stood and smoothed out her skirts, and Michael watched as she made her way to the makeshift stage, withdrawing a slip of paper and unfolding it. She considered the phrase for a long moment before an idea dawned, and her face lit up. He shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable, suddenly wanting to hurry her from the room and the house, home, to his bed.

But the round had begun, and he would have to wait.

She held up three fingers, and he imagined the feel of them on his jaw, his lips, his cheeks.

“Three words!”

She stiffened her posture and saluted her sisters, then marched stiffly around the stage, her full breasts straining at the edge of her gown. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and watched, enjoying the view.

“Marching!”

“Soldiers!”

She made an encouraging sign with her hands.

“Napoleon!”

She mimed firing a rifle, and his attention lingered at the place where her shoulder and neck met, the soft, shadowed indentation there that he ached to kiss . . . the place he would kiss in another time and place, if they were married and he were a different man.

If he were a man she could love.

If theirs was a marriage built on something other than revenge.

Do not touch me.
The words whispered through him, and he loathed them. Loathed what they represented—the way she thought of him, the way she believed he would treat her. The way he
had
treated her.

The way he was treating her.

“Hunting!”

“Father!”

“Father hunting Napoleon!” Olivia’s silly guess pulled Penelope from her mime with a laugh. She shook her head, then pointed at herself. “Father hunting you!”

Pippa looked at Olivia. “Why on earth would that be in the charades bowl?”

“I don’t know. Once, I had
Aunt Hester’s wig
.”

Pippa laughed. “I put that one in!” Penelope cleared her throat. “Right. Sorry, Pen. What were you not saying?”

Penelope pointed to herself.

“Lady?”

“Female?”

Wife. His wife.

“Girl?”

“Daughter?”

“Marchioness!” The Marchioness of Needham and Dolby interjected her first guess with such exuberant glee that Michael thought she might topple from her settee.

Penelope sighed and rolled her eyes before meeting his gaze, eyebrows raised as if to say,
Help?

Something startlingly akin to pride exploded in his chest at the request—at the idea that she might come to him for assistance. He found he wanted to be the man to whom she turned. He wanted to help her.

For chrissake’s, Bourne, it’s charades.

“Penelope,” he said.

Her eyes lit. She pointed at him.

“Penelope? You’re a part of the clue?” Olivia looked skeptical. Penelope began to mime again. “Sewing?”

She grinned and pointed at Olivia, then mimed pulling a thread out of needlepoint quickly. “Unsewing?”

She pointed at Olivia again, then to herself, then mimed sewing and unsewing once more before she looked to Pippa, clearly the sister she really expected to be able to put all the clues together.

He did not want Pippa to win. He wanted to win. To impress her.

“
The Odyssey,
” he said.

Penelope smiled, broad and beautiful, clapping her hands and jumping up and down, enjoying the fleeting triumph, then mimed firing a rifle and marched around the little stage once more. Penny spun around, pointing directly at Michael, all her attention on him, and he felt like a hero when he guessed, “The Trojan War.”

“Yes!” Penelope announced on a great sigh of breath. “Well done, Michael.”

He couldn’t stop himself from preening. “It was, rather, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t understand,” Olivia said. “How did Penny sewing and unsewing make for the Trojan War?”

“Penelope was Odysseus’s wife,” Philippa explained. “He left her, and she sat at her loom, sewing all day, and unraveling all her work at night. For years.”

“Why on earth would someone do that?” Olivia wrinkled her nose, selecting a sweet from a nearby tray. “
Years?
Really.”

“She was waiting for him to come home,” Penelope said, meeting Michael’s gaze. There was something meaningful there, and he thought she might be speaking of more than the Greek myth. Did she wait for him at night? She’d told him not to touch her . . . she’d pushed him away . . . but tonight, if he went to her, would she accept him? Would she follow the path of her namesake?

“I hope you have more exciting things to do when you are waiting for Michael to come home, Penny,” Olivia teased.

Penelope smiled, but there was something in her gaze that he did not like, something akin to sadness. He blamed himself for it. Before him, she was happier. Before him, she smiled and laughed and played games with her sisters without reminder of her unfortunate fate.

He stood to meet her as she approached the settee. “I would never leave my Penelope for years.” He said, “I would be too afraid that someone would snatch her away.” His mother-in-law sighed audibly from across the room as his new sisters laughed. He lifted one of Penelope’s hands in his and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “Penelope and Odysseus were never my favored mythic couple, anyway. I was always more partial to Persephone and Hades.”

Penelope smiled at him, and the room was suddenly much much warmer. “You think they were a happier couple?” she asked, wry.

He met her little smile, enjoying himself as he lowered his voice. “I think six months of feast is better than twenty years of famine.” She blushed, and he resisted the urge to kiss her there, in the drawing room, hang propriety and ladies’ delicate sensibilities.

Missing the exchange, Olivia announced, “Lord Bourne, I make it your turn.”

He did not look away from his wife. “It grows late, I am afraid. I think I should take my wife home.”

Lady Needham came to her feet, toppling a small dog from her lap with a little yelp. “Oh, do stay a little longer. We are all so enjoying your visit.”

He looked at Penelope, wanting to snatch her away to his underworld but allowing her to make their decision. She turned to her mother. “Lord Bourne is right,” she said, sending a thrill through him. “We have had a long afternoon. I should like to go home.”

With him.

Triumph surged, and he resisted the impulse to toss her over his shoulder and carry her from the room. She would let him touch her tonight. She would let him woo her.

He was sure of it.

Tomorrow remained a question, but tonight . . . tonight, she would be
his
.

Even if he did not deserve her.

* * *

Dear M—

Victoria and Valerie were married today in a double wedding to mediocre husbands indeed. I’ve no doubt that their choices were limited because of my scandal, and I can barely swallow back the anger and the unfairness of it all.

It seems so unfair that some of us get such a life—filled with happiness and love and companionship and all the things we are taught never to even dream of because they are so rare and not at all the kind of things to expect from a good English marriage.

I know envy is a sin, and covetousness, as well. But I cannot help wanting what others have. For me, and for my sisters.

Unsigned

Dolby House, June 1825

Letter unsent

She was falling in love with her husband.

The startling realization came as he handed her up into the carriage, knocking twice on the roof before settling in beside her for their return home
.

She was falling in love with the part of him that ice-skated, played charades, teased her with wordplay, and smiled at her as though she were the only woman in the world. She was falling in love with the kindness that lurked beneath his exterior.

And there was a part of her, dark and quiet, that was falling in love with the rest of him. She did not know how she could manage being in love with all of him. He was too much.

She shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked, already moving to pull a blanket over her.

“Yes,” she lied, clutching the wool to her, trying to remember that this man, the kind solicitous man who asked after her comfort, was only a fleeting part of her husband.

The part that she loved.

“We shall be home soon enough,” he said, coming close, wrapping one arm around her shoulders, a band of warm steel. She loved his touch. “Did you enjoy your afternoon?”

The word simmered through her like a promise, and she could not keep the flush from her cheeks, even as she did her best to distance herself from him and the emotions he inspired. “I did. Charades with my sisters is always amusing.”

“I like your sisters very much.” The words were soft, a rumble of sound in the darkness. “I was happy to be a part of the game.”

“I think they are happy to have a brother they enjoy,” she said, thinking of her brothers-in-law. “Victoria’s and Valerie’s husbands are less . . .” She hesitated.

“Handsome?”

She smiled. She couldn’t help it. “That as well, but I was going to say—”

“Charming?”

“And that, but—”

“Utterly enthralling?”

Her brows rose. “Utterly enthralling, are you?”

He feigned affront. “Have you not noticed that about me?”

The frightening thing was that she had. Not that she would tell him that. “I hadn’t. But I can see that you are also infinitely more modest than the others.”

It was his turn to laugh. “They must be very difficult, indeed.”