"I just thought that I could get to know a gentleman outside the rules of society," she continued feebly. "Not necessarily that I would marry him, just that I might see if he…if you…were the right sort of man to be considering."
She glanced up to see the Duke shaking his head incredulously.
"So it has all been some game to you? Playing pretend in a life that is not your own in order to – what? See what a man is like outside a ballroom?" He continued to shake his head. "And you expect me to believe that once you found out I was a duke, there was no thought in your mind that I would have to marry you, that both our reputations would be destroyed if anyone knew you had been here unchaperoned for so long?"
She continued to protest, but she could tell it was falling on deaf ears. "It was silly, I admit. But I wasn’t thinking likethat, I promise. I truly thought I could just tell my family that I’d stayed at an inn, and it would be accepted. And then, perhaps…"
"Perhaps what?" he barked.
She shook her head. She could not tell him that she had thought to arrange a meeting between them where they might dance together, where he might propose marriage in the proper way. A situation where she could legitimately be confident that she knew the man and was happy to risk tying herself to him for the rest of her life.
It all sounded far too much like child’s play, and he was already angry enough with her. Besides, his fury was making her doubt herself a little. She had tested him and believed him to be a good man – and yet no one had ever spoken so cruelly to her. No one had ever been so unwilling to listen to her explanations. Granted, she’d never done anything quite this silly. But even so, surely he could have given her the benefit of the doubt.
"I am appalled that anyone could be so deceptive," he said, standing and reaching for the bell pull to call the footman. "You have done me a great disservice, Lady Penelope. You have taken advantage of my hospitality and my good nature, and still, you are deceiving me as to the real purpose of this ruse."
"I’m sorry," was all she could say, tears streaming down her cheeks.
There was a brief knock at the door, and then a footman entered, concealing his surprise at Lady Penelope's distress well.
"Please call for the carriage to be readied, Trent," the Duke ordered. "Lady Penelope will be leaving immediately."
And without even a word of goodbye, he stormed from the room, leaving the distraught Penelope to face up to what she had done.
???
The staff were polite to her, but word must have spread about the altercation in the library. None of them asked if she was well or the cause of her distress.
She was handed into the carriage, and it seemed the driver was already apprised of where she lived, for he started on the journey without so much as a word from her.
Inside the carriage, with no reading or sewing to distract her, Penelope sat and sobbed.
What had she done? And what was she going to tell her parents?
She’d had a plan when she’d entered into all of this. She would test him, and then she would know what sort of man he was. And if she thought he was a suitable candidate for marriage, she would ensure such a thing could be arranged. She had not planned for her name to be ruined, nor for the Duke to be so furious with her that he banished her from his home.
What a fool she had been. She should have just told him her name as soon as she opened her eyes on that beach, and then he would have sent her home, and none of this would be happening. True, she would not have got to know him or discovered his character, but neither would she be facing life as a ruined woman on the edge of society, and quite possibly with a broken heart to boot.
Because she was sure that in the handful of days she had spent with the Duke, she had begun to hold real feelings for him. Feelings that she had never had for anyone else because she had never known anyone like she knew him. One could have an acquaintance over several months and never spend as much time with a gentleman as she had done with the Duke on this escape from her life.
It had been exactly as she had thought – getting to know someone took more than a dance or two, and should surely be done before the marriage vows were said.
But nothing had worked out the way she had planned. And now she had a long carriage ride alone, with tears streaming down her face and far too much silence to contemplate the reality of what she had done and where it had led her.
Chapter Twenty
He wanted to read through some documents his lawyer had sent over, but he could not force his mind to focus. Blast that girl – how had she made it so impossible for him to think straight? This morning, he had been proposing matrimony. Now, she was in a carriage on the way back to Northumberland, and he would quite probably never see her again.
While that notion bothered him more than it ought to, it was not the primary emotion he felt. No, it was anger that simmered in his veins. Anger that made him unable to sit still, unable to read the words on the page.
She had tricked him. She had tricked him, and he'd fallen for it. Like some inexperienced fool, taken in by a pretty face and a kind smile.
Didn't he know better than that?
With a frustrated growl, he shoved the parchment away from him and poured himself a stiff drink. It was earlier than he would normally have had one, but he felt it was necessary.
Not that the potent whiskey tempered his anger; if anything, it made it burn more brightly.
Because he had thought, at the beginning, that perhaps she was lying to him. That she was trying to gain something, to fool him for some purpose of her own.
