“I just need to talk to someone. Please.”
“Only passengers with tickets are allowed on board. Move aside, please. Next?”
Marcus pulled her aside. “You can’t just walk on board like that.”
Pen grasped his arm. “If you ever, ever cared a bit about me, and I meanme, and not my mother, or whatever image of my mother you have in mind. Just me. Pen. Then you will help me get on board.”
“Do you really want that, Princess?” He looked at her searchingly.
“I am certain.”
“How certain?”
“I love him.” She uttered a choked laugh. “I am a fool that I did not notice earlier. But it is true. I must have loved him for a while. I—I just did not realise it until you came along.”
He gave a wistful smile. “At least one good thing that my unworthy self helped you with. Very well.” He stared at her as if to memorise her face. “I am so very sorry for everything. I truly am.”
Pen nodded.
“Are you moving on, or not?” The impatient voice of a man sounded behind them.
“Marcus?” Her eyes sought his.
“Go find your happiness, Princess,” he said before he pulled himself up to haughty heights. “Do you know who you are addressing? I am the Duke of Rochford. And I want to buy a ticket for a passage in the best cabin. Now.”
The officer replied, flustered. “That isn’t possible, Your Grace.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “The word impossible is not a part of my vocabulary. Lead me to your captain, if you please. Immediately.”
“But Your Grace…”
As they argued, no one noticed that Pen sidled herself past the officer and walked up the plank. First slowly, then faster, until she ran the last bit.
She was on board theAdelaide.
The sea breezeruffled Alworth’s carefully coiffed hair. Ice cold drops of sea water sprayed into his face. It was deuced chilly on deck.
He clasped the rail with his hands and looked back as the docks grew smaller and smaller until the mass of people consisted of teeming dots. Like ants.
His luggage had been brought to his cabin, a luxurious, spacious suite that would be his home for the next six months or more. The trip would go around the Cape of Good Hope, to Madagascar and then on to Bombay. It was going to be the adventure of a lifetime. Before he’d met Pen, he’d looked forward to this trip. Now the prospects of the voyage left him listless and wan.
He drummed his fingers against the rails.
She would be married to that wastrel by now. She was the Duchess of Rochford.
He couldn’t get her face out of his mind. Her narrow face with huge eyes, fringed with thick, black lashes. The quirk of her mouth when she smiled. The tilt of her head when she listened to him.
He couldn’t forget that odd look on her face, the one she’d given him when she’d agreed to marry her cursed guardian. He could’ve sworn she hadn’t wanted to.
Then why the deuce had she said yes to him?
Why had he let her go?
But after he’d heard that she loved him, always did, it had felt like a piece of his heart had been torn out. But one doesn’t commonly acknowledge things like that.
“You love her,” Serena, who always saw too much, had said with an odd smile on her face.
Balderdash.
