One of his hands stroked down her back, over the fabric of his coat, and he smiled at the idea that she was wearing his clothes. “I can, my sweet, adventuresome lady.” He kissed the top of her blond head, sliding a hand inside the coat to palm one lovely breast, adoring the shiver that coursed through her at the touch. “I should like for you to be naked beneath my clothes every day.”
She smiled. “You know I am naked beneath my own clothes every day, do you not?”
He groaned. “You should not have said such a thing. How am I to do anything but think of you naked from now on?”
She pulled away with a laugh, and they began to dress, Penelope swatting at Michael’s hands every time he reached for her.
“I am helping.”
“You are hindering.”
She righted the little cream bow at the front of her dress while he tied his cravat without a looking glass.
He could happily dress with her every day, for the rest of eternity.
But he wouldn’t.
Not once she discovers your lies. The whisper echoed through his mind.
“Is this water?” She pointed to a pitcher standing in the corner next to a washbasin.
“Yes.”
She poured water into the bowl and submerged her hands to the wrists. Not washing them, simply, settling them into the cool liquid. He watched her for a long moment as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Two. Three.
She removed her hands and shook off the liquid, turning back to face him. “There’s something I feel I should tell you.”
In nine years running dice and cards and every other kind of gaming there was, Michael had learned to read faces. He’d learned to identify nervousness and exhilaration and cheating and lying and rage and every other point on the spectrum of human emotion.
Everything but the emotion that filled Penelope’s gaze—the emotion that lurked beneath the nervousness and the pleasure and the excitement.
Oddly, it was because he’d never seen it before that he knew precisely what the emotion was.
Love.
The thought robbed him of breath and he straightened, consumed all at once with desire and fear and something that he did not want to think on. Did not want to acknowledge.
He’d told her not to believe in him.
He’d warned her.
And for his own sanity, he could not let her tell him that she loved him.
He found he wanted it too much.
So he did what he did best. He resisted temptation, approaching her and pulling her into his arms for a quick kiss—a kiss he was desperate to prolong. To enjoy. To turn into something as powerful as the emotion coursing through him. “It’s getting late, darling. No more talk tonight.”
The love in Penelope’s gaze gave way to confusion, and he was filled with self-loathing.
Sadly, that, too, was coming to be a familiar emotion.
A knock sounded on the door, saving him. Michael checked the clock; it was nearly three in the morning, far too late for visitors, which meant only one thing. News.
He crossed the room quickly and opened the door, reading Cross’s face before the other man had a chance to speak.
“He is here?”
Cross’s gaze flickered over Michael’s shoulder to Penelope, then back to Michael, grey and inscrutable. “Yes.”
He couldn’t look at her. She was close, close enough for her delicate scent, to wrap around him, likely for the last time.
“Who is here?” she asked, and he didn’t want to answer, even as he knew that she had to know. And that once she did, he would lose her forever.
He met her gaze, trying his best to be calm and unmoved.
Remembering the singular goal that he had set for himself a decade earlier.
“Langford.”
She stilled as the words crashed through the room. “One week,” she said softly, recalling their agreement before shaking her head. “Michael. Please. Don’t do this.”
He couldn’t stop himself. It was all he’d ever wanted.
Until her.
“Stay here. Someone will take you home.” He left the room, the sound of the door closing behind him echoing like a gunshot in the dark, empty hallway beyond, and with every step he took, he steeled himself against what was to come. Oddly, it was not facing Langford—the man who had ripped his life from him—that required the added strength.
It was losing Penelope.
“Michael!” She had followed him into the hallway, and the sound of his name on her lips had him turning back, unable to ignore the anguish there. Wanting desperately, instinctively, to protect her from it.
To protect her from himself.
She was racing toward him, fast and furious, and he could not do anything but catch her, lifting her in his arms as her hands clasped his face, and she stared into his eyes. “You don’t have to do this,” she whispered, her thumbs stroking across his cheeks, leaving agonizing tracks. “You have Falconwell . . . and you have The Angel . . . and more than he could ever dream. So much more than anger and vengeance and fury. You have me.” She searched his gaze before finally saying, achingly soft, “I love you.”
He’d told himself that he did not want the words, but once said, the pleasure that coursed through him at their sound on her lips was nearly unbearable. He closed his eyes and kissed her, deep and soul-searching, wishing to remember the taste of her, the feel of her, the smell of her—of this moment—forever. When he released her lips and returned her to her feet, he took a step back, breathing deep, loving the way her beautiful blue eyes flashed when he touched her.
He had not touched her enough.
If he could go back, he would have touched her more.