“How old were you when you inherited the dukedom?” Penelope asked, leaning forward slightly.
“Old enough,” he mused. “And inheriting a dukedom makes it sound as though he had left me with great fortunes.”
“Did he not?” Penelope crinkled her nose. Alexander was hardly pinching pennies; surely most of his wealth had been inherited.
“My father was not so forward-thinking, shall I say,” he said, a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice. “He had a penchant for gambling away whatever he had. By the time he passed, I inherited only several of his debts and the one establishment that he cared to preserve.”
“The gentleman's club,” Penelope completed for him. “Was that all he left you?”
“Left implies that he had any consideration of me when he was alive. The gentleman’s club was his only asset that remained intact because he frequented it till the day he died.”
“He was a gambler,” Penelope breathed out.
“Oh, that would be putting it kindly,” he replied. “The club was more like his personal haven where he was free to squander his fortunes.”
Penelope’s lips parted slightly. “How did you recover from that?”
“I didn’t. Not immediately,” Alexander admitted. “After he died, I was left with the debts, and the disgrace. He was not a well-liked man. But I fought for years to rebuild what he had lost. If I incurred a few scars along the way, I suppose I cannot complain much.”
Penelope shuddered to think about what he meant by scars. Her intuition told her that it was not just the physical scars that he was referencing.
“But it is still quite a remarkable feat to buy back whatever he lost,” she admitted. “Was it through...”
Penelope did not finish her sentence, but the implication was clear. It was only a natural connection – a man who owns a gentleman’s club and had a father who had a penchant for gambling. Could it be the case that Alexander had learned toout-gamble him and won back what he had lost?
A grim expression settled on his features, one that was so dark that it startled her.
“Do not ever insinuate that I am anything like the late duke,” he reprimanded. “I have not gambled once. Everything I have, I earned back with only my hard work and the connections that I made along the way. My title helped me, but I would have been fine even without it.”
“I did not mean to offend you,” Penelope’s tone softened, realizing that this was a difficult topic for him. “I was only trying to know more.”
“And now you do,” he cut in, “so do not ever make the mistake of assuming that I inherited his habits. If anything, I have fought all my life to avoid them.”
Penelope blinked, struck by the rawness in his tone.
“Because you didn’t want to become him?”
“Because Irefusedto become him,” Alexander corrected. “Keeping the club was my way of proving that. That I could stand in the very same room he did and walk out with my dignity intact. I found that I can look at temptation in the eye, and still walk away from it.”
She studied him, feeling the depth of that confession settle in her chest like a weight.
“This explains a great deal,” she muttered, nodding to herself.
Alexander’s eyebrow shot up, and he looked at her to elaborate.
“What I mean to say is,” Penelope scrambled to collect her words. “Well, I suppose I understand a bit better now why you are so careful about everything. The rules, all of it. They are all in place so that you do not step out of the boundaries that you have created for yourself.”
Alexander did not deny it.
“You seem to be wholly interested in understanding people,” he commented.
“I am interested in understanding you,” Penelope corrected. “There is a difference.”
Alexander searched her face for any signs of insincerity. But he would find none. Penelope had meant her words.
“If you keep this up,” he muttered , reaching out to touch her hand. “I might just grow used to it.”
Suddenly, Penelope was all too aware of the heat emanating from his skin onto her. Her breath hitched and for a dizzying moment, she did not know what room she was in anymore.
