You do not deserve her.
Tommy’s words echoed in his thoughts—those words that had sent him home, to his wife, to prove his place in her life. To prove that she belonged to him. That he could master her body in a way no other man had.
But it was he who had been mastered.
“Michael,” she whispered against his chest, his name a lingering promise on her lips as one of her hands stroked up his torso. The long, lush touch sent another wave of pleasure through him, followed all too closely by desire when she whispered, soft and sleepy and tempting, “That was splendid.”
He meant to tell her not to become too comfortable in his bed.
Not to become too comfortable in his life.
He meant to tell her that the evening had been a means to an end.
That their marriage would never be the kind she required.
But she was already asleep.
*
Dear M—
I realize that you may not wish to reply to my letters, but I plan to send them nonetheless. A year, two, or ten—I would never want you to think I had forgotten you. Not that you would believe such a thing, would you?
It’s your birthday next week. I would have embroidered a handkerchief for you, but you know that needlepoint and I do not exactly suit.
Remembering—P
Needham Manor, January 1817
No reply
The next morning, Penelope entered the breakfast room, hoping to see her new husband—the man who had changed everything in one glorious day and glorious night, the man who had made her realize that perhaps their marriage could be more. That perhaps their contrived love match could be less contrived and more . . . well . . . a love match.
For surely there was nothing so superb as the way he’d made her feel the prior evening in his bed. It was of little consequence that she had awoken not cloaked in decadent fur but in her perfectly pristine, perfectly pressed white linen sheets in the bedchamber she had been assigned.
In fact, she was rather touched that he might have moved her there in the night without waking her. He was obviously a kind, caring, loving husband, and their marriage, which had begun as such a disastrous farce, was destined for something much much more.
She hoped that he would join her as she took her seat at the lovely long table in the handsome and lavishly appointed breakfast room, wondering if he still enjoyed sausage at breakfast, as he had when he was very young.
She hoped that he would join her as she accepted a plate of egg and toast (no sausage in sight) from the young footman, who clicked his heels together in a rather extravagant manner before returning to his post in the corner of the room.
She hoped Michael would join her as she lingered over her toast.
As she sipped her fast-cooling tea.
As she eyed the newspaper, perfectly folded and placed to the left of the empty seat at the far end of the soon-growing-too-long table.
And, after a full hour of waiting, Penelope stopped hoping.
He was not coming.
She remained alone.
Suddenly, she was keenly aware of the footman in the corner of the room, whose job it was to simultaneously know immediately what his mistress might require and to ignore her altogether, and Penelope felt a blush rise high on her cheeks.
For, surely, the young footman was thinking terribly embarrassing things.
She slid a glance at him.
He was not looking.
But he was most definitely thinking.
Michael wasn’t coming.
Stupid, stupid Penelope.
Of course he wasn’t coming.
The events of the prior evening had not been magical to him. They’d been necessary. He’d officially taken her to wife. And then, like any good husband, he’d left her to her own devices.
Alone.
Penelope eyed her empty plate, where the bright yellow yolk of the egg she had eaten so happily had congealed, affixing itself rather grotesquely to the porcelain.
It was the first full day of her life as a married woman, and she was eating breakfast alone. Ironic, that, considering she’d always viewed breakfast with a husband who barely knew her as a lonely affair indeed. But now, she would, with pleasure, take breakfast with her husband over breakfast by herself, under the watchful eyes of a too-young footman who was doing his very best not to see her.
For it seemed that in her desire for a husband who wanted her for more than what was ordinarily requested of a wife, she’d found herself married to one who did not even want her for that.
Perhaps she’d done something wrong the evening before.
The flush had reached her ears, and she felt them burning, likely red as roses as she tried to think of what she might have done wrong, of how her wedding night might have gone differently.
But every time she tried to think, she remembered the young footman, now blushing himself, in the corner, not knowing what to say to his mistress and very likely wishing she would finish her breakfast and leave the room.