Chapter 10 #2
“Good heavens,” she gasped, her heart hammering for reasons that had nothing to do with the near-collision.
“Apologies.” His voice was low, intimate in the darkness. “I did not expect to encounter anyone prowling the corridors at this hour.”
“I was not prowling. I was—” She stopped, aware of how her explanation would sound. “Checking on Rose.”
“Again?”
His voice held no judgement. Only understanding that somehow felt worse.
Penelope stepped back, putting proper distance between them, though her hands seemed reluctant to leave his chest. She forced them down to her sides, painfully aware of how little she wore.
Of how little he wore—his coat and waistcoat abandoned, his shirt open at the throat where his cravat should have been, the sleeves rolled to his elbows in a manner that revealed far too much of his forearms.
She should not notice such things.
“Lottie has matters well in hand,” he said, his eyes glinting as they caught the candlelight. “Rose is sleeping soundly. I checked not ten minutes ago.”
“You checked?” The surprise in her voice was evident before she could temper it.
His lips quirked. “I am capable of concern for the child, my lady. Despite what you may think of my character.”
“I did not mean—” She broke off, flustered in a way she could not quite name. “I simply did not expect you to—”
“Care?” The word held an edge now. “Is that truly the opinion you hold of me? That I am so thoroughly dissolute as to be incapable of basic human decency?”
“No.” The denial came quickly, honest. “No, I do not think that at all.”
He studied her for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the shadows. “What do you think of me, then?”
The question hung between them, waiting and intimate. Penelope’s throat went dry.
“I think,” she said at last, “that you are far more complicated than you pretend to be.”
He cocked a single brow, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “And you, wife, are far more perceptive than is entirely comfortable.”
“I shall endeavour to be more obtuse in future.”
“Please do not.” His smile came slow. “Your honesty is rather refreshing. If occasionally inconvenient.”
They stood in the candlelit corridor, close enough that she could smell sandalwood and leather and something uniquely him. Close enough that she could see the shadow of stubble along his jaw, the way his hair fell across his forehead as though he had been running his fingers through it.
Close enough that propriety screamed at her to step away, to retreat to her chamber and lock the door between them.
Yet her feet refused to move.
“You should be asleep,” she said softly.
“As should you.” He tilted his head, studying her. “Yet here we both are, prowling the corridors like guilty conspirators.”
“I am not guilty of anything.”
“Neither am I. Merely restless.” His gaze travelled over her face with unsettling focus. “Though I suspect we are restless for different reasons.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “I cannot imagine what you mean.”
“Cannot you?” The question held some amusement. “I think you are a terrible liar, my… dear wife.”
lifted her chin, refusing to be cowed, despite the blood rushing to her cheeks. “And I think you take far too much pleasure in teasing me.”
“Guilty as charged.” He leaned against the wall, all lazy elegance despite the hour. “Though in my defence, you make it remarkably easy. You blush so beautifully.”
“I do not—” She stopped, feeling the heat intensify in her cheeks, betraying her even as she tried to deny it. “You are insufferable.”
“You have mentioned that already. This afternoon, in fact.”
“It bears repeating.”
His laugh came low and warm, intimate in the darkness. “We are arguing again.”
“You seem to enjoy it.”
“Perhaps I do.” His voice dropped, losing its teasing edge. “You are the only person who challenges me, I suppose. Who does not simply accept whatever version of myself I choose to present. It is... unsettling. And rather addictive.”
The confession stole her breath. She stared at him, searching his face for mockery, for the careful distance he usually maintained.
“I do not mean to unsettle you,” she managed.
“Do you not?” He pushed off the wall, moving closer—not inappropriately so, but enough that the space between them felt charged. “I rather think you do. Whether you admit it or not.”
“That is—” Her voice caught. “That is a rather presumptuous assertion.”
“Is it?” His hand lifted, hesitated, then fell back to his side. “Forgive me. I seem to have developed a habit of speaking too plainly in your presence.”
“Better too plain than not plain enough.” The words were out before she could stop them, echoing her criticism from earlier in the nursery.
His smile turned rueful. “You wound me, wife.”
“I speak only truth.”
“As do I.” The lightness faded from his voice entirely.
“You did well today, Penelope. With Rose. With everything. I know I said it at luncheon, but—” He stopped, and sighed.
“I wanted you to hear it again. To know that I see what you are doing here. The care you are taking. The strength it requires.”
The praise moved into her bones like warmth, refusing to be dismissed or minimized. She looked up at him, this man who was her husband in name and scandal and little else, and felt something shift between them. It terrified and thrilled her in equal measure.
“Thank you,” she whispered, the words inadequate but all she could manage past the tightness in her throat.
He reached up again—and this time his hand did not fall away. His fingers brushed her cheek, so gentle she might have imagined it, there and gone before she could react.
“Sleep, Penelope,” he said softly. “Rose is safe. Lottie is capable. And you—you need to rest before you collapse in the corridor and force me to carry you to your chamber in a manner most inappropriate for a husband and wife who are still learning to… understand one another.”
The image his words conjured sent heat flooding through her. “I would not—that would be—”
“Scandalous? Improper?” His smile turned wicked. “All the more reason to seek your bed now, whilst you still possess the strength to walk there under your own power.”
She should be offended. Should deliver some cutting remark that would put him firmly in his place.
Instead, she found herself smiling. “You are impossible.”
“Yet another thing you have mentioned already.” He stepped back, restoring the proper distance between them. “Goodnight, Penelope.”
“Goodnight… Alastair.”
She moved toward her chamber door, painfully aware of his gaze following her. She paused with her hand on the latch, glancing back despite every instinct screaming at her to simply retreat.
He remained where she had left him, watching her with an expression she could not decipher in the candlelight.
“Sleep well,” he said quietly.
Then he turned and disappeared back into the shadows from which he had emerged, leaving her alone in the corridor with her racing heart and the ghost of his touch still warm upon her cheek.
Penelope slipped into her chamber and closed the door, leaning against it as she pressed her fingers to the place his hand had been.
You did well today.
The words echoed in her mind, settling into the spaces between her ribs where loneliness had lived for so long.
He had seen her. Truly seen her—not as a convenient solution to scandal, not as a duchess performing her duty, but as a woman fighting to do right by an innocent child thrust into impossible circumstances.
She crossed to her bed, slipping beneath the covers still fully aware of every place they had stood too close, every word that had felt too intimate for mere politeness.
This was foolishness. Reading meaning into simple kindness. Letting herself believe that the concern in his eyes meant something beyond basic decency toward the woman he had been forced to marry.
Yet as sleep finally claimed her, pulling her down into dreams she would not remember come morning, one thought persisted above all others.
When he had touched her cheek, when he had looked at her with such unguarded honesty—
She had wanted him to do it again.