Penelope’s Secret
Penelope's Secret
"She has been imprisoned in the tower for seven years," Penelope read aloud, "and yet her beauty remains unmarred by suffering, her spirit unbroken by—" She paused, frowning at the page. "Seven years? In a tower? Without proper nutrition or sunlight? I find myself skeptical of her complexion."
Florinda shifted in her chair by the window—the morning room had become her domain during daylight hours, a prison of cushions and blankets from which she could not escape without assistance. "Mrs. Radcliffe is not known for her medical accuracy."
"Seven years," Penelope repeated. "I have been here for three weeks and I am already contemplating whether the curtains could be fashioned into a rope. This woman must have the patience of a saint or the mental acuity of a turnip."
"Perhaps both." Florinda accepted the cup of tea Penelope poured for her—her third of the afternoon, because apparently invalid status came with mandatory hydration. "Gothic heroines do tend toward the insipid. All that swooning leaves little time for developing a personality."
"And yet we keep reading."
"We keep reading," Florinda agreed, "because occasionally the villain gets eaten by wolves, and that is deeply satisfying."
Penelope laughed—that warm, genuine sound that made it impossible to dislike her—and set the book aside.
The afternoon sun slanted through the windows, catching the gold in her hair and making her look, Florinda thought with considerable irritation, like precisely the sort of woman a duke ought to marry. Pleasant. Pretty. Uncomplicated.
Florinda was none of those things. She was sharp-tongued and past her prime and currently unable to stand without assistance, and she had spent the past week developing feelings for this woman's fiancé that were as inappropriate as they were inconvenient.
This was, she reflected, what came of reading too many novels. One began to imagine one's own life as a Gothic melodrama, complete with forbidden passion and doomed longing and a great deal of staring out of windows.
She was staring out of a window right now. How mortifying.
"You've gone quiet," Penelope observed. "Are you in pain? Shall I call for the surgeon?"
"I am in perfect health, apart from the shattered leg and the bruised dignity." Florinda turned away from the window with what she hoped was a casual air. "I was merely contemplating the tragedy of Gothic heroines. They fall in love so easily. It seems terribly inconvenient."
"Terribly," Penelope agreed. Her voice had gone oddly flat.
Florinda looked at her properly then. Penelope was staring at the abandoned novel with a face that did not match her cheerful tone—distant, almost melancholy.
"Are you quite well?"
"Perfectly." Penelope's smile returned, bright and practised. "I was just thinking about how rarely Gothic novels feature heroines who make sensible choices. They always follow their hearts into disaster when they ought to be considering their prospects."
"Prospects," Florinda repeated. "You sound like my stepmother."
"Your stepmother sounds like a wise woman."
"She is. Terrifyingly so." Florinda hesitated, then added: "She would tell you that following one's heart is a luxury most women cannot afford."
"She would be correct." Penelope picked up her teacup, cradling it in both hands as though seeking warmth.
"Love is not a requirement for a successful marriage.
Security is. Compatibility is. The ability to maintain a household and raise children without murdering one another—that is the foundation upon which sensible unions are built. "
The words had the ring of an oft-repeated lesson. Florinda found herself saying, before she could think better of it: "That sounds like a speech you have given yourself many times."
Penelope's hands tightened on her cup. "Does it?"
"It does." Florinda should stop. She should change the subject, discuss the weather, return to mocking Mrs. Radcliffe's medical inaccuracies. Instead: "Have you ever been in love, Lady Penelope?"
The silence stretched. Florinda counted three of her own heartbeats—a habit she appeared to have acquired from someone she was not going to think about—before Penelope answered.
"Once." The word emerged like a confession. "I was very young. It did not... answer."
"What happened?"
Penelope's laugh was brittle. "What always happens. He was unsuitable. My father forbade it. I was sensible." She set down her teacup with careful precision. "He was a dancing master. Can you imagine? The scandal if anyone had known I fancied myself in love with the man who taught me to waltz."
A dancing master. Florinda tried to reconcile this with Penelope's composed exterior—this woman who seemed to have been born for drawing rooms and proper marriages and the role of duchess.
"What was his name?"
"Thomas." Penelope said it as though she had not spoken it aloud in years.
"Thomas Harrison. He had the most extraordinary hands—strong and precise, the way he would guide me through a turn...
" She stopped, her cheeks flushing. "This is wildly inappropriate.
I am engaged to a duke. I should not be discussing a dancing master's hands. "
"And yet you are."
"And yet I am." Penelope met her eyes. "I have not spoken of him to anyone. I do not know why I am telling you."
"Because I am trapped in a chair and cannot flee?"
That surprised a genuine laugh from Penelope. "Perhaps. Or perhaps because you look at me as though you understand what it means to want what you cannot have."
The observation was uncomfortably accurate. Florinda felt heat rise to her face and looked away, casting about for a safe response.
"I was engaged once." The words escaped before she could reconsider. "To a poet."
"A poet?" Penelope leaned forward, momentarily distracted from her own confession. "How romantic."
"I thought so at the time." The bitterness surprised her; she had thought this wound healed. "He wrote me verses. Grand declarations of eternal devotion. I was nineteen and foolish enough to believe that a man who spoke of love so beautifully must surely feel it."
"What happened?"
"He was performing devotion, not feeling it.
" Florinda forced her voice to remain steady.
"When a better prospect appeared—an heiress with twice my dowry and half my opinions—he discovered that eternal devotion had an expiration date.
He jilted me publicly. Announced it at a dinner party, in front of everyone I knew. "
"Oh." Penelope's hand found hers, warm and sympathetic. "How cruel."
"It was efficient, certainly." Florinda managed a wry smile. "I learned several valuable lessons that evening. Never trust a man whose feelings come too easily. Never believe pretty words without proof of action. And never, under any circumstances, fall in love with a poet."
"Was his poetry at least good?"
"I thought so at the time."
"And now?"
Florinda considered. "I believe 'your eyes are like twin moons of gentle sorrow' was perhaps not the pinnacle of the form."
Penelope choked on her tea. "Twin moons of gentle sorrow?"
"He rhymed 'devotion' with 'ocean' in no fewer than six separate verses."
"No."
"And once attempted to compare my hair to 'spun sunbeams kissed by angels' tears.'"
"Angels' tears?" Penelope was laughing now, her earlier melancholy temporarily forgotten. "Why would angels be weeping on your hair?"
"I never did receive a satisfactory explanation." Florinda found herself smiling despite everything. "Though I suspect the angels were weeping at the quality of his verse."
They laughed together, two women who had loved unwisely and learned to mock themselves for it. Florinda recognized the ache of friendship forming—the particular danger of being seen, of sharing wounds with someone who understood.
This was terrible. This was so much worse than simple attraction to an engaged man. Penelope was not a rival to be resented. She was kind. She was wounded in her own way. She was settling for a marriage without love because that was what sensible women did.
And Florinda wanted her fiancé.
She was a monster. A Gothic villain in an invalid's chair.
"So we are alike," Penelope said, her laughter fading into wistfulness. "Both of us had our opportunity for love. Both of us lost it. And now..."
"Now you marry a duke," Florinda finished. "And I return to being the spinster aunt who reads Gothic novels and frightens the servants with her opinions."
"That sounds rather peaceful, actually."
"It has its advantages. No one expects me to be pleasant at breakfast."
Penelope's smile was sad. "I shall be expected to be pleasant at every meal. For the rest of my life. As a duchess, one's breakfast demeanor is apparently a matter of public concern."
"Frederick—His Grace—does not strike me as a man who requires pleasantness." The name came out before Florinda could stop it, too familiar, too intimate. She felt her face heat.
If Penelope noticed the slip, she did not acknowledge it. "He is... kind. I could do far worse." She paused. "My father could have contracted me to someone cruel. Frederick is not cruel. He will make an adequate husband."
Adequate. Florinda had never heard a word contain so much resignation.
"Love is not a requirement," Penelope said again, as though reminding herself. "Security is. Compatibility is. The ability to maintain a household—"
"Without murdering one another," Florinda finished. "Yes. You mentioned."
They sat in silence for a moment, two women who understood each other far too well.
"I should go," Penelope said, rising. "I promised the housekeeper I would review the menu for the dinner party next week. Apparently there is a crisis involving oysters that requires my immediate attention."
"Oyster crises wait for no woman."
"They do not." Penelope paused at the door, looking back. "Thank you. For listening. I have not... I do not have many friends. My position makes it difficult."
"You have one now," Florinda said, and meant it, and hated herself for the lie underneath the truth.
Penelope smiled—that warm, genuine smile—and left.
Florinda stared at the abandoned novel on the table. The Italian. A story of imprisoned heroines and forbidden love and villains who got what they deserved. In novels, the woman who wanted another woman's betrothed was always the villain. The schemer. The one who deserved wolves.
She did not feel like a schemer. She felt like a woman sitting in a chair she could not escape, wanting things she could not have, forming friendships she did not deserve.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Deliberate. Measured. Approaching.
Her heart counted them without her permission. One. Two. Three. Four—
The door opened, and Frederick appeared.
"It is time for dinner," he said. "I have come to—"
"Carry me. Yes." Florinda's voice emerged sharper than she intended. "I am aware of the schedule."
He paused in the doorway, watching her. "You seem... discomposed."
"I have been reading Gothic novels all afternoon. Discomposure is inevitable." She held out her arm, not meeting his eyes. "Shall we proceed? I am told there may be an oyster crisis, and I should hate to miss the drama."
Frederick crossed the room. She did not watch him approach. She did not count his steps—seven, it was seven steps from the door to her chair, she was counting anyway, she could not seem to stop.
He lifted her, and she was in his arms, and Penelope's voice echoed in her head: He will make an adequate husband.
There was nothing adequate about the way her pulse raced when he touched her. Nothing sensible about the way she had memorized his breathing pattern. Nothing proper about any of this.
"Fourteen stairs," she said, because she could not say anything else.
"Yes." His voice was very close to her ear. "Fourteen stairs."
She had become the villain in someone else's love story. The worst part was that she could not even hate herself properly for it—she was too busy counting heartbeats and memorizing the exact pressure of his hands.
One step. Two. Three.
Gothic heroines, Florinda thought grimly, had no idea how complicated real villainy could be.