Not only tempting.
Heroic.
She met his gaze, suddenly seeing him in an entirely new light.
He shot forward, and the carriage became instantly small. “Don’t do that.”
She sat back, pressing away from him. “Don’t do what?”
“I can see you romanticizing it. I can see you turning The Angel into something it is not. Turning me into something I am not.”
She shook her head, unnerved by the way he had read her thoughts. “I wasn’t . . .”
“Of course you were. You think I haven’t seen the same look in the eyes of a dozen other women? A hundred of them? Don’t do it,” he said firmly. “You shall only be disappointed.”
Silence fell. He uncrossed his long, booted legs and recrossed them, one ankle over the other, before closing his eyes again. Shutting her out.
She watched him quietly, marveling at his stillness, as though they were nothing more than traveling companions, this nothing more than an ordinary carriage ride. And perhaps he was right, for there was nothing about this man that felt husbandly, and she certainly felt nothing like a wife.
Wives were more certain of their purpose, she imagined.
Not that she had felt any more certain of her purpose the last time she’d come close to becoming a wife. The last time she’d come close to marriage to a man she hadn’t known.
The thought gave her pause. He was no different than the duke, this new, grown-up Michael, who was not at all the boy she’d once known. She searched his face now for some hint of her old friend, for the deep-set dimples in his cheeks, for the easy, companionable smiles, for the wide-mouthed laughter that never failed to get him into trouble.
He wasn’t there.
He was replaced by this cold, hard, unyielding man who cut a wide swath through the lives of those around him and took what he wanted without care.
Her husband.
Suddenly, Penelope felt very alone—more alone than she’d ever been before—here in this carriage with this strange man, far from her parents and her sisters and Tommy and everything she’d ever known, rattling toward London and what was bound to be the strangest day of her life.
Everything had changed that morning. Everything.
Forevermore, her life would be thought of in two parts—before she was married, and after.
Before, there was Dolby House and Needham Manor and her family. And after, there was . . . Michael.
Michael, and no one else.
Michael, and who knew what else.
Michael, stranger turned husband.
An ache settled deep in her chest, sadness perhaps? No. Longing.
Married.
She took a deep breath, and it shuddered out of her, the sound rattling around the close confines of the carriage.
He opened his eyes, capturing her gaze before she could pretend to be asleep. “What is it?”
She supposed she should be touched that he even asked, but in fact, she found she could feel nothing but annoyance at his insensitive tone. Did he not understand that this was a rather complicated afternoon as far as emotions went? “You may lay claim to my life, my dowry, and my person, my lord. But I am still keeper of my thoughts, am I not?”
He stared at her for a long while, and Penelope had the distinct, uncomfortable impression that he was able to read her thoughts. “Why did you require such a large dowry?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why were you unmarried?”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Surely you are the only person in Britain who does not know the story.” He did not reply, and she filled the silence with the truth. “I was the victim of the worst sort of broken engagement.”
“There are ‘sorts’ of broken engagements?”
“Oh, yes. Mine was particularly bad. Not the breaking part . . . circumstances allowed me to call it off. But the rest . . . marriage to a woman he actually loved within a week? That was not so complimentary. It took me years to learn to ignore the whispers.”
“What could people have possibly had to whisper about?”
“Namely, why I—a perfect English bride, pampered and dowered and titled and all—was unable to retain control over a duke for even one month.”
“And? Why couldn’t you?”
She looked away from him, unable to say the words to his face. “He was madly in love with another. It seems that love indeed conquers all. Even aristocratic marriages.”
“You believe that?”
“I do. I’ve seen them together. They’re . . .” she searched for the word. “Perfect.” He did not reply, so she pushed on. “At least, I like to think so.”
“Why should it matter to you?”
“It shouldn’t, I suppose . . . but I like to think that if they weren’t perfect together . . . if they did not love each other so very much . . . then he would not have done what he did, and . . .”
“And you would be married.”
She looked at him, a wry smile on her lips. “I’m married anyway.”
“But you’d have the marriage you were raised to have instead of this one, a scandal waiting to be discovered.”
“I did not know it, but that one was a scandal waiting to be discovered, too.” At his questioning look, she said, “The duke’s sister. She was unmarried, not even out, and with child. He wanted our marriage to ensure that there was more to the House of Leighton than her scandal.”
“He planned to use you to cover up the scandal? Without telling you?”
“Is that any different than using me for money? Or land?”
“Of course it’s different. I didn’t lie.”
It was true, and for some reason, it mattered. Enough to make her realize that she would not exchange this marriage for that long-ago one.
It was growing cold in the carriage, and she adjusted her skirts, trying to leech the very last of the heat from the warming brick at her feet. The action bought time to think. “My sisters, Victoria and Valerie?” She waited for him to recall the twins. When he nodded, she continued. “They had their first season immediately following my scandal. And they suffered for it. My mother was so terrified they’d be colored by my tragedy, she urged them to take the first offers they received. Victoria was matched with an aging earl, desperate for an heir, Valerie to a viscount—handsome, but with more money than sense. I’m not sure they are happy . . . but I don’t imagine they ever expected to be—not once marriage became a real possibility.” She paused, thinking. “We all knew better. We weren’t raised to believe that marriage was anything more than a business arrangement, but I made it impossible for them to have more.”
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.”