Page 23 of How Not to Marry a Duke

"What was his name?"

"Thomas." Penelope said it as though she had not spoken it aloud in years. "Thomas Harrison. He had the most extraordinary hands—strong and precise, the way he would guide me through a turn..." She stopped, her cheeks flushing. "This is wildly inappropriate. I am engaged to a duke. I should not be discussing a dancing master's hands."

"And yet you are."

"And yet I am." Penelope met her eyes. "I have not spoken of him to anyone. I do not know why I am telling you."

"Because I am trapped in a chair and cannot flee?"

That surprised a genuine laugh from Penelope. "Perhaps. Or perhaps because you look at me as though you understand what it means to want what you cannot have."

The observation was uncomfortably accurate. Florinda felt heat rise to her face and looked away, casting about for a safe response.

"I was engaged once." The words escaped before she could reconsider. "To a poet."

"A poet?" Penelope leaned forward, momentarily distracted from her own confession. "How romantic."

"I thought so at the time." The bitterness surprised her; she had thought this wound healed. "He wrote me verses. Grand declarations of eternal devotion. I was nineteen and foolish enough to believe that a man who spoke of love so beautifully must surely feel it."

"What happened?"

"He was performing devotion, not feeling it." Florinda forced her voice to remain steady. "When a better prospect appeared—an heiress with twice my dowry and half my opinions—he discovered that eternal devotion had an expiration date. He jilted me publicly. Announced it at a dinner party, in front of everyone I knew."

"Oh." Penelope's hand found hers, warm and sympathetic. "How cruel."

"It was efficient, certainly." Florinda managed a wry smile. "I learned several valuable lessons that evening. Never trust a man whose feelings come too easily. Never believe pretty words without proof of action. And never, under any circumstances, fall in love with a poet."

"Was his poetry at least good?"

"I thought so at the time."

"And now?"

Florinda considered. "I believe 'your eyes are like twin moons of gentle sorrow' was perhaps not the pinnacle of the form."

Penelope choked on her tea. "Twin moons of gentle sorrow?"

"He rhymed 'devotion' with 'ocean' in no fewer than six separate verses."

"No."

"And once attempted to compare my hair to 'spun sunbeams kissed by angels' tears.'"

"Angels' tears?" Penelope was laughing now, her earlier melancholy temporarily forgotten. "Why would angels be weeping on your hair?"

"I never did receive a satisfactory explanation." Florinda found herself smiling despite everything. "Though I suspect the angels were weeping at the quality of his verse."

They laughed together, two women who had loved unwisely and learned to mock themselves for it. Florinda recognized the ache of friendship forming—the particular danger of being seen, of sharing wounds with someone who understood.

This was terrible. This was so much worse than simple attraction to an engaged man. Penelope was not a rival to be resented. She was kind. She was wounded in her own way. She was settling for a marriage without love because that was what sensible women did.

And Florinda wanted her fiancé.

She was a monster. A Gothic villain in an invalid's chair.

"So we are alike," Penelope said, her laughter fading into wistfulness. "Both of us had our opportunity for love. Both of us lost it. And now..."

"Now you marry a duke," Florinda finished. "And I return to being the spinster aunt who reads Gothic novels and frightens the servants with her opinions."