“Rather pretty?” He uttered a hollow laugh. “She was beautiful.” The way he said it, there was an undercurrent of something in his voice that made Pen listen up.
“Tell me about her,” Pen said.
“She was the most enchanting woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And I have seen my share of beautiful women. Then I met Adita.” There was pain in his eyes. “John was posted to Jaipur. I accompanied him. It was like a fairy tale. And your mother a fairy tale princess.”
Pen’s breath came heavily as the full impact of what he revealed to her sank in. “You loved her.”
At first, she thought he would not answer. When he did, there was a world full of pain in his voice. “Oh yes, I did. This wasted heart is very much capable of love. The real thing. But she chose John. Not me. Never me.”
“You loved my mother,” Pen repeated numbly, not fully comprehending. “And then she died.”
His voice cracked. “I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save her.”
Pen remembered how he’d pulled her out of the rubble. Somehow, she’d been unhurt. He’d set her aside and then went looking for her mother. Who’d died with her father. Even in death, they lay in each other’s arms.
She remembered Marcus, his face full of tears, how he’d held her mother’s dusty and broken dead body, rocking her.
Pen had howled. She’d clung to him. And he’d promised he’d take care of her forever.
Here she was, on the way to Gretna Green, to marry Marcus.
“You loved my mother,” she repeated.
“You are a spitting image of her. Do you know? Now even more so than when you were younger. It is—difficult to look at you. To see her likeness in your face, and yet it is not her. It is uncanny.” He swallowed. “I do like you, Pen. Very much so. But you have to forgive me. I could not, for a long while, bear to look at you.”
There was stark sorrow on his face. “I suppose this is why I chose to break contact with you. It was—still is—easier for me to drown in alcohol and opium.”
Silence settled in the carriage as Pen digested what he just told her.
Her voice shook. “What about Charlotte Wentwood?”
He blinked at her. “Who?”
Another realisation punched her in the gut. “You never sent her.” She closed her eyes. “You never sent Charlotte Wentwood. You’re not my sponsor.”
“Sponsor?”
Of course he was not.
“You were never my sponsor. For the ball. For the season. You never sent Charlotte to turn me into a girl. I thought—I thought you sent her. Which was the only reason I agreed to go along with her as she tried to turn me into a lady.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Should I have? After Fariq told me of your masquerade, I thought you did rather well on your own. That match with Blackstone. I taught you well, didn’t I?” A ghost of a smile flitted over his face. “I thought it best not to interfere.”
Or not to care.
He hadn’t come to the ball because of her, either, but because of the woman with the rouged cheeks, Lady Carrington.
A good guardian would’ve not only picked her up from the seminary when her time there was over, he would’ve obtained a chaperone for her, given her a season, made sure she was taken care of.
“It doesn't matter.” She stared blindly out of the window. Then she laughed.
“I am glad you can find some amusement in this situation,” Marcus said.
“I am just finding this odd,” Pen said. “My friend Arabella once made a wish that each of us, her friends, marry a duke. That must have been a powerful wish, for here I am, on the way to marrying one. Except—” She looked up, realisation dawning in her eyes. “Except I just realised I don’t want to.”
It hit her like lightning. Alworth. It had always been Alworth. He’d been her guardian angel in so many ways. In his sleepy, sarcastic, charming, bullying way. He’d been her true friend all along, and she’d never seen it. He’d gone along with her antics, even though he’d seen through her. He’d guided and protected her. He’d wanted to marry her, even. To save her reputation.
He’d been the only person who ever saw and accepted her for who she really was. He’d never made assumptions based on her appearance. Whether she was Indian, British, prince, princess, street boy, gentleman, gambler, lady, all or none of it—he was the only one who understood that the face you showed to the world did not necessarily have to match up with the reality of who you were inside. He’d seen and understood the confusion inside her. Maybe that was because Alworth himself wore a mask. That of the superficial dandy. They were more alike than different.
