She always thought she needed Marcus to understand who she really was.
She couldn’t have been more mistaken.
She needed precisely no one to help her realise she was Pen. Just Pen.
Something dreadful squeezed in her chest. Hot, tight, unbearably burning. She choked.
“Is anything the matter?” Marcus sat up in alarm.
“I’m f-f-fine.” Something hot rolled over her cheeks. Something unfamiliar. Something she’d not done in a very long time.
For the first time since that terrible day she’d lost her parents, the stone that was lodged in her chest loosened, and Penelope Reid cried.
The carriage had haltedby the wayside, and the driver groaned. “Are we to continue on to Scotland now, or not, Your Grace?”
Pen had descended from the carriage and looked over the barren, wind-swept fields. They were in the middle of nowhere. If they continued down that road, they would reach Scotland. She turned and looked the other way, the one going south. That was the road to Alworth.
Marcus took out the grass blade from his mouth and threw it into the wind. “Tell me when you’ve made up your mind, Princess. As I said, I’d marry you. I owe it to your parents, after all. The last thing I can do for them.” He stared down the road, the wind swept his hair across his high forehead. “I am rubbish as a guardian. You know I’d be even more so as a husband. It will be a marriage of convenience. But you will be taken care of in all ways. It is an oath I would keep with my soul.”
She turned to him. “In all ways, but one. You will never love me. You’d marry me out of obligation and guilt. You’d marry me not because you see me, Pen. But because you see my mother in me. Because you still love her.”
His silence was affirmation.
Pen nodded.
“We proceed, then?”
“No.” The wind blew into her face, and it felt good on her swollen eyes. Finally, she knew what she wanted. “I want to go back. To London.”
“To do what, exactly?”
“To catch Alworth before he journeys to India.”
A crushof people filled the East India docks, along with their trunks, boxes, and crates. Everyone was in each other’s way as passengers waited to board their ships. Finding Alworth in the crowd was like finding a sardine in a sea of herrings.
Pen dropped her shoulders. “It’s hopeless.”
She rubbed her nose. It smelled of salty seawater, rotten fish, and sewage.
Marcus grabbed a sailor. “Which ship to the East Indies?”
The sailor shrugged. “They’re all East Indiamen.”
Marcus turned to Pen. “Do you remember which ship is his?”
She racked her brain. “It’s theAdelaide.” He’d mentioned it once in a conversation at the club. How long ago that was.
“TheAdelaide’s there.” The sailor jerked his head towards a massive merchant ship that was loading cargo. People stood in line to board the ship.
Pen caught a flash of pink on the front deck. There was only one man who wore pink like that. She squinted. “I think he’s on deck. Over there.”
She ran. But the dock was jammed full of people, so progress was difficult. She mowed into a man who dropped all the trunks.
“Oy. Watch it!”
“I’m so sorry. But I have to get on the ship.” She boxed her way forward. “I need to get on the ship.”
“Tickets and papers, please,” an officer said in a bored voice, and held out his hand.
