He stood, moving toward her. He’d never thought she had no character. Indeed, if she had any more character, she’d make him mad. And as for strength, she was Atlas. A small, lovely Atlas, clad in nothing but his coat.
He reached for her and she took a step backward. “No. Don’t. I’m not through. I have character, Michael.”
“I know you do.”
“A great deal of it.”
More than he’d ever imagined.
“Yes.”
“I’m not perfect. I gave up perfection when I realized that the only thing it would ever get me was a lonely marriage with an equally perfect husband.” She was shaking with anger, and he reached for her, wanting to pull her into his arms; but she pulled back, refusing to allow him to touch her. “And as for your not being perfect, well, thank God for that. I had a perfect life in my reach once, and it was a crashing bore. Perfect is too clean, too easy. I don’t want perfect any more than I want to be perfect. I want imperfect.
“I want the man who tossed me over his shoulder in the woods and convinced me to marry him for the adventure of it. I want the man who is cold and hot, up and down. The one who runs a men’s club and a ladies’ club and a casino and whatever else this incredible place is. You think I married you in spite of your imperfections? I married you because of your imperfections, you silly man. Your glorious, unbearably infuriating imperfections.”
It wasn’t true, of course. She’d married him because she’d had no choice.
But he was not about to let her go.
Not after he’d just discovered how wonderful it was to have her in his arms.
“Penelope?”
She dropped her hands, and his coat opened, baring one long, narrow strip of skin from neck to knee. “What?” He would have laughed at the peevishness in her tone if he had not been overwhelmed by the way she looked in her stockings and his coat and nothing else. She took a deep breath, the fabric threatening to reveal her glorious br**sts.
“Are you through?”
“Maybe,” she said, reserving the right to say more.
“You can be very difficult when you want to be, you know.”
One of her pretty blond brows rose. “Well. If that is not the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.”
He reached for her, and she let him catch her this time. Let him pull her into his arms, pressing her lush, curving body to his. “I am too imperfect for you,” he whispered at her temple.
“You are perfectly imperfect for me.”
She was wrong, but he did not want to think on it anymore. Instead, he said, “You are naked in a gaming hell, love.”
Her reply was muffled against his chest, and he felt the words more than heard them. “I can’t believe it.”
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.