“For you, yes!”
“I will not permit it.” She stomped a foot, whirled to leave him and caught her shoe on the carpet. “Damn!” she grumbled as he caught her in his arms.
“You have a wicked vocabulary,” he said with a rueful laugh.
She extricated herself from his grasp. “And I like using it.”
“So I hear.” He acknowledged that with wide eyes.
She straightened her posture and shook off his hold. “When we thought we were in love, we were infatuated.”
“I was mad for you.”
“And we could not see our way out of the fog.”
“Yet you married your first husband weeks after we parted.”
She stood her ground. “You mean, weeks after you wrote to say your father did not approve.”
“So true,” he admitted with sorrow.
“I had to marry, Theo. Whispers went round that I had been compromised. My father demanded I marry.”
“Did you love the man?”
She would speak the truth. “Over time, in a manner of speaking, yes. He was twenty years older, kind and gentle. Generous with pin money.”
“Did he love you?”
“I think so. He told me so. Often. Before he went out to his mistress.” She fluttered her lashes to keep her tears of outrage at bay.
“And your second husband? Did he love you?”
“More than the first.” She tossed her head, proud of her relationship with that man. “But he preferred other men to me.”
“Oh, Penn.”
“No pity, please. I liked him. He did…he did do his duty by me. But though his duty was done, mine never was. Not by him, his title or his line. I was lost in grief and dismay a second time. And I was hopeless. Weeks before, I’d seen you at the theater with your second wife and I…I was wretched. Before my year of mourning was up, I married Lord Goddard because he…he was as charming, persuasive and—”
He waited for more, encouraged her to tell him with an inquisitive look.
She should not tell him. What did she owe Theo? Not such raw and intimate facts as her bedroom secrets. “He was inventive in bed. I learned a lot about…the arts. But even with those, I was not up to the job of providing him an heir. And yes, lest you ask, I did care about him.”
“Care?”
She shook her head madly and would say no more.
“Oh, Penn, give me time to show you that there is much to love about me.” He raised her gloved hand to his lips and she vibrated with long lost desire.
She remembered every detail about him far too well. He liked a mix of sandalwood and citrus for cologne. He preferred coffee to tea. Beer to brandy. Honesty to prevarication. “We have both changed.”
“I knew who you were then. And I do now.”
She cast him a wary eye and swished her skirts at him. “After all these years? No, Theo. No.”
She took a step away.
He blocked her way. “I’ll prove it.”
