Page 68 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
He took her flustered state as a chance to swoop in and claim another pawn of hers.
“I noticed how you both disappeared from the ballroom. My friends and I returned to the refreshments table to find her gone, as were you. You would not know anything about that, would you, Brother?”
Her voice was entirely too innocent. She knew the answer, but that did not mean he would admit it.
“I do not know what you mean,” he said. “Lady Penelope has been nice to you, has she not? Inviting you in with her friends and such. I see how you get on with them.”
“They are refreshing, to say the least.” She laughed. “They are all rather different from one another, yet their circle is very tight. I was worried I would not fit in at first, but I do not feel out of place anymore. Lady Penelope has helped with that. Did you know that she plays the pianoforte excellently? She mentioned it to me some evenings ago. I also find her to be polite and kind. Well-read and well-mannered. Her patience is endless, as it must be to endure her brother. But she is gentle, and I believe she thinks far more deeply than anybody has ever allowed her to speak, and?—”
“Arabella,” Edmund interrupted. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” She feigned innocence once more.
“Telling me about Lady Penelope’s notable qualities.”
After a moment, Arabella dropped her hands to her lap, pausing the game. Sneakily, Edmund snatched one of her knights, and she scowled at him before her face smoothened again.
“I just want you to be happy, Edmund. As your sister, that would be nice for me to see. You deserve happiness, and there is something that tells me you think you do not. Whatever horrors you faced over these last seven years do not make you less worthy of contentment.”
How does she know?How does she know that I believe I cannot hold Lady Penelope as tenderly as I want to because it would be with the hands that did the bidding of a monstrous man?
But he could not let himself talk about that, not to Arabella, whose innocence he still wished to protect.
He cleared his throat. “Continue playing, or I will take advantage of your distraction.” She did, looking disappointed, but Edmund was already speaking again. “I am happy.”
His sister frowned at him. “Do not lie to me.”
Her words were sharp, even though her voice was gentle.
Edmund swallowed thickly, looking away from her. He had missed this—those cunning eyes of hers knowing as much about him as he did about her. They had always done that, even when they were younger. Known one another better than anybody else, despite their age difference.
They were close, and the years they had spent apart had created a small tear. One that could be easily fixed. He saw it—the way they mirrored one another at times, contrasting in other ways, as he did with Benjamin. For a moment, he could see how his cousin had raised Arabella. How she was equal parts Benjamin and Edmund, both influenced by Edmund’s father.
The image of Penelope flashed in his mind. How she had looked so ethereal in her gown the night before, right there on the ballroom floor in her halo. She had been the most illuminated thing there, catching every light, and she had not even seen it. He thought of the words she had uttered about herself, the terrible accusations she had heard, shaping her opinion of herself.
He had despised it, wanted to bite those words from her tongue, lick them from her until there was nothing left but an empty canvas for him to fill with his praise and compliments.
“Brother?” Arabella asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.
“Yes,” he said in a rush. “Sorry. I… I really am happy, Arabella. How could I not be, having returned home where I belong?”
“That is not all there is to happiness,” she pushed. “You could have a true home, true belonging, and share that.”
His thoughts were still ensnared on Penelope, on the way her chest had heaved when he had slid his fingers into her, on how her gasps had been sharp when he added further friction against the outside of her heat. On how she had moaned his name.
“Let us simply play,” he said, looking down at the chess board.
Even though Arabella continued playing and steered their conversation in another direction—specifically whether Edmund and Benjamin were friends, because she could not figure out if they loathed or liked one another—Edmund could not focus.
He was distracted, his mind torn apart. Finley’s warnings and control, Penelope’s soft pleasured noises and self-deprecation, the ton’s views. It all spun in his mind, until, finally, the game ended and he lost.
Arabella smirked at him again, standing up with a flourish. “And that, Brother, is how I best you at every game from now on—with the tricksyoutaught me many years ago. I shall await Lord Graham’s visit.”
She smiled, giving a little happy hum as she perused the stacks of books behind them, leaving him in disbelief.
* * *
Across London, in the Ayersfield townhouse, Penelope sat with Daphne in the parlor. They had a basket of fabric between them, and their embroidery needles clicked away.
