Page 55 of The Duchess' Ultimatum
And it was just as she watched the last lord and his wife turn down the hall and vanish from sight that she sighed with relief, ready to stumble to her room, collapse on her bed, and put this day behind her.
Or that was the plan, save for one mitigating circumstance.
“We need to talk.” From out of the darkness, Dorian emerged.
Penelope was too tired to feel surprised. And too worn through to lean toward anger. She saw him coming, she exhaled with apathy, and then she started to walk around him. “I told you, we have nothing to talk –”
“You’re wrong about that.” Dorian stepped in front of her, blocking her exit. “And you know that you are.”
“Is that so?” she scoffed.
“You’re upset with me,” Dorian said.
She rolled her eyes. “That is where you are wrong. I was upset with you… for so many things. But I have since changed my mind, coming to a new realization.”
“Which is?”
Penelope made sure to be looking at him, just as she made sure not to let her emotions show. “I don’t care. I did for some time.I… I thought that I needed to. I was confused and unsure and I wanted answers, Dorian. But now…” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what you say, because there is nothing left to be said. You might be my husband, but we are hardly married, and what you choose to do with yourself doesn’t concern me one little bit.”
Her words clearly struck a chord with Dorian. He leaned back as if she had slapped him, confusion and pain flashing behind his eyes. “Penelope, what happened last night –”
“I told you, I don’t care.”
“You do care,” he pressed on. “Telling yourself otherwise makes no difference, just as it won’t make it go away. Please, if you will just let me explain myself. You owe me that.”
Dorian was half-right, and Penelope hated that he was.
Where she had since resigned herself to the inevitable truth, convincing her subconscious that she did not care, she knew just as well that there was a part of her that still did.
When she went to see Dorian last evening, it wasn’t done on a whim or because she was bored. She went to him because she had started to develop feelings, and she wanted to know if they were returned.
And for a few glorious seconds, she thought that they were. In those seconds, when their lips had locked and their bodies had entwined, she had realized that her desire for a child wasn’t bornfrom the need to be a mother, but the need to fill the hole inside of her. And that hole, as gaping as it was, could just as easily be filled by Dorian.
That is what I have been missing. Companionship… even love. If he accepted me in that moment, I wouldn’t have cared if he could give me a child. Giving himself to me would have been enough.
She was well past that point by now.
“Owe you?” she scoffed. “I don’t owe you anything. You are the one who…” She sucked through her teeth, trying desperately not to let her anger get the better of her. “Is there not somewhere else you need to be? Perhaps there is a young redhead that you should be entertaining?”
“Ah, so that is it.” Dorian looked at her flatly. “You are not angry at me, but jealous.”
“I really am not.”
He laughed. “Do you know what I think? I think you are just as unsure as I am, and when you saw Henrietta with me today, you were secretly relieved.”
“Relieved!” she cried. “Why would I be –”
“Because it gave you an excuse,” he spoke over her. “I admit that I have not been the best of husbands. And I admit that I haveconfused you, baited you and let you go – made you question what I want. But you, Penelope, have been just as confusing. Do not pretend otherwise.”
“Me!” Penelope’s heart began to pound, frustration flooding her. “I was –”
“More than happy to pretend as if this marriage meant nothing for three years,” he cut her off. “More than happy to tell me how little you thought of me when you did return. Proud, it seemed, that you wanted nothing to do with me. So please, do not pretend as if this is all me.”
“And what of last night?” Penelope glared at her husband, refusing to back down. “Did I confuse you then? Was I not clear in what I wanted?”
“If you remember, I was the one who kissed you.”
“As you were the one who pulled away.”
