"Perhaps not," he agreed, crossing his arms and staring at her. Hard. "But it will hurt. You will not like it, Penelope. And I won't like it."
She swallowed convulsively. Good. Maybe he was getting through to her.
"But forget all of that," he continued. "You have spent the last decade insulting people. Offending them."
"I have said lots of very nice things as well," she protested, her dark eyes glistening with unshed tears.
"Of course you have, but those aren't the people you are going to have to worry about. I'm talking about the angry ones, the insulted ones." He strode forward and grabbed her by her upper arms. "Penelope," he said urgently, "there will be people who want to hurt you."
His words had been meant for her, but they turned around and pierced his own heart.
He tried to picture a life without Penelope. It was impossible.
Just weeks ago she'd been... He stopped, thought. What had she been? A friend? An acquaintance? Someone he saw and never really noticed?
And now she was his fiancee, soon to be his bride. And maybe ... maybe she was something more than that. Something deeper. Something even more precious.
"What I want to know," he asked, deliberately forcing the conversation back on topic so his mind wouldn't wander down such dangerous roads, "is why you're not jumping on the perfect alibi if the point is to remain anonymous."
"Because remaining anonymous isn't the point!" she fairly yelled.
"You want to be found out?" he asked, gaping at her in the candlelight.
"No, of course not," she replied. "But this is my work. This is my life's work. This is all I have to show for my life, and if I can't take the credit for it, I'll be damned if someone else will."
Colin opened his mouth to offer a retort, but to his surprise, he had nothing to say. Life's work. Penelope had a life's work.
He did not.
She might not be able to put her name on her work, but when she was alone in her room, she could look at her back issues, and point to them, and say to herself, This is it. This is what my life has been about.
"Colin?" she whispered, clearly startled by his silence.
She was amazing. He didn't know how he hadn't realized it before, when he'd already known that she was smart and lovely and witty and resourceful. But all those adjectives, and a whole host more he hadn't yet thought of, did not add up to the true measure of her.
She was amazing.
And he was ... Dear God above, he was jealous of her.
"I'll go," she said softly, turning and walking toward the door.
For a moment he didn't react. His mind was still frozen, reeling with revelations. But when he saw her hand on the doorknob, he knew he could not let her go. Not this night, not ever.
"No," he said hoarsely, closing the distance between them in three long strides. "No," he said again, "I want you to stay."
She looked up at him, her eyes two pools of confusion. "But you said—"
He cupped her face tenderly with his hands. "Forget what I said."
And that was when he realized that Daphne had been right. His love hadn't been a thunderbolt from the sky. It had started with a smile, a word, a teasing glance. Every second he had spent in her presence it had grown, until he'd reached this moment, and he suddenly knew.
He loved her.
He was still furious with her for publishing that last column, and he was bloody ashamed of himself that he was actually jealous of her for having found a life's work and purpose, but even with all that, he loved her.
And if he let her walk out the door right now, he would never forgive himself.
Maybe this, then, was the definition of love. When you wanted someone, needed her, adored her still, even when you were utterly furious and quite ready to tie her to the bed just to keep her from going out and making more trouble.
This was the night. This was the moment. He was brimming with emotion, and he had to tell her. He had to show her.
"Stay," he whispered, and he pulled her to him, roughly, hungrily, without apology or explanation.
"Stay," he said again, leading her to his bed. And when she didn't say anything, he said it for a third time. "Stay." She nodded.
He took her into his arms. This was Penelope, and this was love.
CHAPTER 18
The moment Penelope nodded—the moment before she nodded, really—she knew that she had agreed to more than a kiss. She wasn't sure what had made Colin change his mind, why he had been so angry one minute and then so loving and tender the next.
She wasn't sure, but the truth was—she didn't care.
One thing she knew—he wasn't doing this, kissing her so sweetly, to punish her. Some men might use desire as a weapon, temptation as revenge, but Colin wasn't one of them.
It just wasn't in him.
He was, for all his rakish and mischievous ways, for all his jokes and teasing and sly humor, a good and noble man. And he would be a good and noble husband.
She knew this as well as she knew herself.
And if he was kissing her passionately, lowering her to his bed, covering her body with his own, then it was because he
wanted her, cared enough to overcome his anger.
Cared for her.
Penelope kissed him back with every ounce of her emotion, every last corner of her soul. She had years and years of love for this man, and what she lacked in technique, she made up in fervor. She clutched at his hair, writhed beneath him, unmindful of her own appearance.
They weren't in a carriage or his mother's drawing room this time. There was no fear of discovery, no need to make sure that she looked presentable in ten minutes.
This was the night she could show him everything she felt for him. She would answer his desire with her own, and silently make her vows of love and fidelity and devotion.
When the night was through, he would know that she loved him. She might not say the words—she might not even whisper them—but he would know.
Or maybe he already knew. It was funny; it had been so easy to hide her secret life as Lady Whistledown, but so unbelievably hard to keep her heart from her eyes every time she looked at him.
"When did I start needing you so much?" he whispered, raising his head very slightly from hers until the tips of their noses touched and she could see his eyes, dark and colorless in the dim candlelight, but so very green in her mind, focusing on hers. His breath was hot, and his gaze was hot, and he was making her feel hot in areas of her body she never even allowed herself to think about.
His fingers moved to the back of her gown, movin
g expertly along the buttons until she felt the fabric loosening, first around her breasts, then around her ribs, then around her waist.
And then it wasn't even there at all.
"My God," he said, his voice a mere shadow louder than breath, "you're so beautiful."
And for the first time in her life, Penelope truly believed that it might be true.
There was something very wicked and titillating about being so intimately bared before another human being, but she didn't feel shame. Colin was looking at her so warmly, touching her so reverently, that she could feel nothing but an overwhelming sense of destiny.
His fingers skimmed along the sensitive skin at the outside edge of her breast, first teasing her with his fingernails, then
stroking her more gently as his fingertips returned to their original position near her collarbone.
Something tightened within her. She didn't know if it was his touch or the way he was looking at her, but something was making her change.
She felt strange, odd.
Wonderful.
He was kneeling on the bed beside her, still fully clothed, gazing down at her with a sense of pride, of desire, of ownership. "I never dreamed you would look like this," he whispered, moving his hand until his palm was lightly grazing her nipple. "I never dreamed I would want you this way."
Penelope sucked in her breath as a spasm of sensation shot through her. But something in his words was unsettling, and he must have seen her reaction in her eyes, because he asked, "What is it? What is wrong?"
"Nothing," she started to say, then checked herself. Their marriage ought to be based on honesty, and she did neither of them a service by withholding her true feelings.
"What did you think I would look like?" she asked quietly.
He just stared at her, clearly confused by her question.
"You said you never dreamed I would look this way," she explained. "What did you think I would look like?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "Until the last few weeks, honestly I don't think I thought about it."