He took a deep breath, his hands to her waist to move her, to rise. “You don’t want to hear about that.”
She pushed herself up over him, hands flat on his chest, staying his movement. “I do want to hear about it.” She stared down at him, refusing to let him up.
To let him retreat.
He lay back, resigned. “How much do you know?”
“I know you lost it all in a game of chance.”
She was so close, her blue eyes so intent, and regret rocketed through him. He hated that she knew his mistakes. His shame. He wished he could be someone else for her. Someone new. Someone worthy of her.
But perhaps if he told her the tale, if she knew everything, it would keep her from coming too close. Perhaps it would keep him from caring too much.
Too late.
He steeled himself from the thought, barely a whisper. “It was vingt-et-un.”
She did not look away. “You were young.”
“Twenty-one. Old enough to wager everything I owned.”
“You were young,” she repeated emphatically.
He did not argue. “I gambled everything. Everything that was not entailed. Everything that wasn’t pinned down by generations. Like a fool.” He waited for her to agree. When she didn’t, he pressed on. “Langford pushed me to wager more and more, goading me, taunting until everything I had was on the table, and I was certain I would win.”
She shook her head at that. “How could you know?”
“I couldn’t, could I? But I’d been hot for the evening—I’d won hand after hand. When you are on a winning streak it’s . . . euphoric. There comes a point when everything shifts, and reason flees, and you think it is impossible to lose.” The words were coming freely now, along with the memories that he’d long kept locked away. “Gaming is a sickness for some. And I had it. The cure was winning. That night, I could not stop winning. Until I stopped winning and lost everything.” She was watching him, her attention rapt. “He led me into temptation, convincing me to wager more and more . . .”
“Why you?” There was a furrow between her brows and anger in her voice, and Michael reached up to smooth the wrinkled skin there. “You were so young!”
“So quick to defend me without all the information.” His touch followed the slope of her nose. “He’d built it. The lands, the money, everything. My father was a good man, but when he died, the estate was not as successful as it could be. But, there was enough there for Langford to work with, to make it prosperous, and he did. By the time I inherited, the marquessate was worth more than his own lands; he didn’t want to relinquish it.”
“Greed is a sin.”
As is vengeance. He paused, thinking back on the long-ago game that he’d relived hundreds of times, thousands. “He told me I’d thank him, eventually, for taking everything from me,” he said, unable to keep the derision from his tone.
She was quiet for a long moment, her blue eyes serious. “Perhaps he was right.”
“He wasn’t.” Not a day went by that Michael did not resent the very air that Langford breathed.
“Well, perhaps gratitude is a bit much. But think of how you rose in spite of his obstacles. Think of how you faced his odds. Conquered them.”
There was an urgent breathlessness in Penelope’s voice, and Michael at once adored and loathed it. “I told you once not to make me a hero, Penelope. Nothing I did . . . nothing I am . . . is heroic.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. You are so much more than you think.”
He thought of the papers in his coat pocket, of the plan he’d set in motion that morning. Of the vengeance for which he had waited all these years. She would see soon enough that he was no hero.
“I wish that were true.”
For you.
The thought haunted him.
She leaned closer, her gaze serious and unwavering. “Don’t you see, Michael? Don’t you see how much more you are now than you would have been? How much stronger? How much more powerful? If not for that moment, for the way it changed you, the way it changed your life . . . you would not be here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And neither would I.”
He tightened his arms around her. “Well, that is something.”
They lay there for a long while, lost in their thoughts, before Penelope changed the subject. “And after the game? What happened then?”
Michael looked up to the ceiling, recalling. “He left me a guinea.”
She lifted her head. “Your marker.”
His intelligent wife. “I wouldn’t spend it. I wouldn’t take anything from him. Not until I could take everything from him.”
She was watching him carefully. “Revenge.”
“I had nothing but the clothes on my back and a handful of coins in my pocket—Temple found me. We’d been friends at school, and he was fighting anyone who would pay him for a match. On nights when he wasn’t boxing, we were running dice games on the street in the Bar.”
Her brow furrowed. “Wasn’t that dangerous?”
He saw the worry in her eyes, and a part of him ached for her softness, for her sweetness. Her presence there, in his arms as he told this tale, was a benediction. It was as though she could, with her worry and her care, save him.
Except, he was long past saving, and she didn’t deserve this life, filled with sin and vice. She deserved so much more. So much better. He shrugged one shoulder. “We learned quickly when to fight and when to run.”
One of her hands came up to his face, and she touched his healing lip gently. “You still fight.”