He looked to his wife, who was watching him carefully. She leaned in. “You do not like the match.”
He could have lied. The faster Philippa and Castleton were matched, the faster Michael had his revenge, the faster he could live his life out from beneath the cloud of anger and fury that had shadowed his last decade. Nothing had changed.
Except, something had.
Penelope.
He shook his head. “I do not.”
Something lit in her beautiful blue eyes, something that could become his addiction. Hope. Happiness. It made him feel ten times a man to be the reason for it. “You will stop it?”
He hesitated. Would he stop it?
It would make Penelope happy.
But at what price?
He was saved from having to reply by Philippa, turning to face them. “What on earth? Do you see this?”
He had not been paying attention, but Olivia was now alternately pantomiming cracking a whip, and screwing up her face, eyes tightly closed, teeth bared, with her fingers splayed out at either edge of her mouth.
“Driving a squid! Whipping the sunshine!” the marchioness called out, pride in her tone, drawing laughter from the rest of the room.
“Driving a Squid is a play I would dearly love to read,” Philippa said on a giggle, turning back to Penelope. “Penny, really. We could use your help.”
Penelope watched Olivia for a long moment, and Michael had difficulty looking away from her—entranced by her focus. He wondered what it would be like to be the recipient of such interest. Of such contentment. Jealousy flared again, and he scolded himself. No grown man should be envious of dogs or sisters-in-law. “The Taming of the Shrew.”
Olivia stopped. “Yes! Thank you, Pen. I was beginning to feel foolish up there.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Pippa said, dryly. “I don’t think shrews are blind, Olivia.” This, from Philippa.
“Oh, tosh. I should like to see you do it better. Who is next?”
“It’s Penny’s turn. She guessed the last.”
Penelope stood and smoothed out her skirts, and Michael watched as she made her way to the makeshift stage, withdrawing a slip of paper and unfolding it. She considered the phrase for a long moment before an idea dawned, and her face lit up. He shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable, suddenly wanting to hurry her from the room and the house, home, to his bed.
But the round had begun, and he would have to wait.
She held up three fingers, and he imagined the feel of them on his jaw, his lips, his cheeks.
“Three words!”
She stiffened her posture and saluted her sisters, then marched stiffly around the stage, her full br**sts straining at the edge of her gown. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and watched, enjoying the view.
“Marching!”
“Soldiers!”
She made an encouraging sign with her hands.
“Napoleon!”
She mimed firing a rifle, and his attention lingered at the place where her shoulder and neck met, the soft, shadowed indentation there that he ached to kiss . . . the place he would kiss in another time and place, if they were married and he were a different man.
If he were a man she could love.
If theirs was a marriage built on something other than revenge.
Do not touch me. The words whispered through him, and he loathed them. Loathed what they represented—the way she thought of him, the way she believed he would treat her. The way he had treated her.
The way he was treating her.
“Hunting!”
“Father!”
“Father hunting Napoleon!” Olivia’s silly guess pulled Penelope from her mime with a laugh. She shook her head, then pointed at herself. “Father hunting you!”
Pippa looked at Olivia. “Why on earth would that be in the charades bowl?”
“I don’t know. Once, I had Aunt Hester’s wig.”
Pippa laughed. “I put that one in!” Penelope cleared her throat. “Right. Sorry, Pen. What were you not saying?”
Penelope pointed to herself.
“Lady?”
“Female?”
Wife. His wife.
“Girl?”
“Daughter?”
“Marchioness!” The Marchioness of Needham and Dolby interjected her first guess with such exuberant glee that Michael thought she might topple from her settee.
Penelope sighed and rolled her eyes before meeting his gaze, eyebrows raised as if to say, Help?
Something startlingly akin to pride exploded in his chest at the request—at the idea that she might come to him for assistance. He found he wanted to be the man to whom she turned. He wanted to help her.
For chrissake’s, Bourne, it’s charades.
“Penelope,” he said.
Her eyes lit. She pointed at him.
“Penelope? You’re a part of the clue?” Olivia looked skeptical. Penelope began to mime again. “Sewing?”
She grinned and pointed at Olivia, then mimed pulling a thread out of needlepoint quickly. “Unsewing?”
She pointed at Olivia again, then to herself, then mimed sewing and unsewing once more before she looked to Pippa, clearly the sister she really expected to be able to put all the clues together.
He did not want Pippa to win. He wanted to win. To impress her.
“The Odyssey,” he said.
Penelope smiled, broad and beautiful, clapping her hands and jumping up and down, enjoying the fleeting triumph, then mimed firing a rifle and marched around the little stage once more. Penny spun around, pointing directly at Michael, all her attention on him, and he felt like a hero when he guessed, “The Trojan War.”
“Yes!” Penelope announced on a great sigh of breath. “Well done, Michael.”