Page 97 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
But she had already lost him, and that made her gasp in distress as she saw those walls slam right back up. Tears blurred her vision.
When he spoke to her next, his voice was ever so cold. “From the start, I warned you that I am not a man who can offer you what you deserve. I laid every card on the table.”
She flinched. “Yes, and you once told me you do not lose any game you play, so is that all I was to you? A card game? And now that you have dealt your hand and won, what is your prize? Being unreachable? Wringing pleasure from me and giving it in return, but never truly letting me in? Remaining lonely so you do not stray from your quest for revenge? Two things can co-exist, but you are too stubborn to see it.”
Devastation cracked through her as she heaved for breath.
“Yes, well, we had an arrangement,” he told her, his tone formal, as if he was conducting business. Her heart lurched, her throat constricting uncomfortably. “And it is not my fault if you have decided to change that.”
“Do you not want to change it?” Her voice betrayed her heart, cracking.
He didn’t answer her. In her imaginings, he turned cold on her, said that he would much rather reenact one of the positions from the paintings as he had before. Or he walked out, not wanting anything if they could not couple.
But he was not that heartless, and her heartbreak only convinced her for a moment.
Instead, she received something much worse—his silence. And that broke her heart more than anything could have.
“If you cannot answer me,” she said, her words like the crack of a whip, hard and masking her pain, “then I am done. I am leaving.”
Do you wish to stop me?
She didn’t bother asking, and she didn’t wait either.
Penelope turned on her heel and strode out of the gallery, out of the house where she had found a sanctuary, and got in her carriage to return to Langwaite Manor, where she belonged. Where she would always belong—beneath her brother’s thumb.
She did her best to pretend that she was merely on her way home from Julian Gray’s house that very first night. There had been no Edmund, only the escort her friends had arranged for her to see. Penelope would be a changed woman at the touch of a stranger, and she would have gone through with it all and had never met Edmund.
It was hard to convince herself of it, because her body knew the feel and the taste of his now, and she knew that any dream would never be as beautiful as what they had together. And no nightmare would ever be as awful as how she felt walking away.
ChapterTwenty-One
“Penelope, you adore your books,” Daphne said some days later as they wandered through one of London’s largest bookshops.
Penelope merely nodded, her gaze sweeping over the shop below her as she leaned on the railing on the mezzanine of the second floor. Behind her, more books towered, and all she could think about was the very first time Edmund had touched her. A library, and a bookcase against her back, and the salacious thrill of being caught hastening their kisses.
“I care because you cannot see everything that I see… I meant every word I said on that balcony, Penelope. I see you, and nothing else exists. I see you, and you are all I can think about. I see you, and it drives me to insanity every minute… and I fight to hold myself back from claiming you in some form.”
Edmund’s words from that day so long ago drifted back to her with a hard clench of her heart. She turned her face away from the shop below, towards the window, but the smell of books was everywhere, reminding her of him, of that first moment of giving in to one another.
Did she regret it?
Her chest was hollow even as her heart beat uselessly.
“Pen?” Daphne pushed. “Are you all right?”
“I am fine,” Penelope answered.
But even to her own ears, she sounded verynotall right. She was not, and she had not found the words to tell her friend that they had been right to caution her. Except they had cautioned against his violence and danger, not the heartbreak he had wrought upon her.
“You do not seem?—”
Penelope straightened up, smiling too brightly. “I am well, and everything is fine, Daph. Do not worry yourself. Come on, we ought to join the others.”
“Lady Arabella will be joining us,” Daphne said.
Penelope’s heart gave a horrible lurch, and she nodded. She could only hope that the young lady did not mention Edmund.
“Are you sure you do not want to buy a book? I know it cheers you up.”
