Never Had a Dream Come True

by Jennifer Wenn

  Thomas wasn’t a substitute for Rake, whom she never would be able to have. He was simply another path in life. And as he gave her a smile filled with true devotion, she knew this was a path she didn’t fear to travel.

  He made her feel calm, cherished and—as Charmaine had put it—boringly serene. With him, she knew what she had and she knew what life would be like. And after all the horrendous things she had been through, she desperately wanted to know what was next in line for her.

  Thomas would never make her feel vulnerable and unsure. So maybe he never would be able to love her the way she had dreamt, for the first seventeen years of her life, that Rake would. He still had the ability to make her perfectly happy. But more importantly, she knew she could make him a content and happy husband.

  That was, if he still wanted her when she had told him the truth about her Season and her current home at Chester Park.

  “Penelope, you know how I felt about you six months ago, and I want you to know my feelings still remain the same. My heart, my hands, and everything else I own are yours if you want them.”

  The seriousness of his voice and the firm directness of his gaze brought new tears to her eyes. What had she ever done to deserve such devotion from this wonderful man?

  “I’m honored to admit this is what I had hoped for,” she whispered, and his grip on her hands tightened as his smile broadened.

  “So you will become my wife?”

  “Y-Yes, but there is one thing…”

  “Penelope, you have made me the happiest of men!”

  He moved an inch closer and she could sense his eagerness to seal their betrothal with a kiss, even though they were not quite alone. His honest reaction made her want to cry with despair over the possibility of maybe destroying this special moment.

  But she had no choice. She would never be able to live with herself if she wasn’t completely honest with him.

  “Thomas, please.”

  The stress in her voice cut through his happy state of mind, and he hesitated for a second before retreating a little. “What is it, Penelope? Are you regretting your answer already?”

  “No, of course not, but I must tell you something which might change your wish to have me as your wife.”

  He chuckled and leaned forward again. “I will never change my mind. I have known for a long time that you are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

  “Please, just listen to me. I want you to know I will not hold you to your proposal if what I tell you is against everything you feel is right and what you can live with. If you still feel the same, you can ask me again, but I will not accept anything until you have listened to what I have to say.”

  He frowned at her, unable to imagine what she was talking about, but as her frenzy got through to him he nodded slowly. “I promise to hear you out. But I also promise you I will not change my mind. You are all I want in a wife.”

  Ignoring his kind words, she stood and began pacing in front of him, not able to look him in the eyes. She didn’t want to watch his warm admiration turn into cold loathing. “You know I have been back at Chester Park for quite a while now, and that I didn’t spend much more than a week in London before I left. You must have wondered why I returned so quickly and why I have been avoiding you these last months.”

  He nodded solemnly. Then, before she could change her mind, she blurted out the whole story from beginning to end, not skipping any part of the gruesome tale.

  “And that is the reason I now live here at Chester Park. The duke and duchess have opened their arms to me and promised I will always have a home with them. If you choose to not propose to me again, I will understand why. If this ever comes out, my reputation will be destroyed forever. No one will ever believe my innocence, as the truth is I was left without chaperone in a bachelor’s home. My father has more or less disowned me even though he is the one to blame, not me. But I can’t ignore the fact it will be I—and the man I marry—who will suffer from this, not my father, if it ever becomes common knowledge.”

  As silence settled between them, she met his unreadable eyes for the first time since beginning her horrifying tale. Nothing in his complexion or his statuesque stance told her what he thought of her experience, and doubt made her shiver.

  She couldn’t help but think her honesty had destroyed her last chance at happiness. She could see him going through what she had just told him, trying to make sense of it.

  All she could do was to wait. Wait for a verdict she was too terrified to hear.

  When he finally spoke, he made her heart bolt.

  “I’m grateful for your honesty. This must have been hard for you, opening up to me like this, and I want you to know how much I appreciate it.”

  The finality in his words brought tears to her eyes, and she couldn’t do much more than whisper a thank you.

  “I’ve been quite distraught over your refusal to see me, but this explains it all for me, of course. Your father…”

  His voice broke off, but it had shaken with anger, and he opened and closed his hands as though desperate to hit something. Or someone.

  “Your father is despicable. I can’t understand how a man can behave like that to a child in his care. I really don’t. I’m so sorry for the grief he has put you through by refusing to let you see your mother and sister. It must be so hurtful for you.”

  She nodded. The pain over not being able to see her sister and especially her sick mother was hard to live with. All she wanted to do was give her mother one last hug and whisper every word of love she could think of before she lost her forever.

  But her father had made it very clear he would never tolerate her presence near any of them. She was persona non grata now and must not ever contact them again.

  “I wish there were something I could do to lessen your pain.” He stood and took her hand, so close to her she had to lean her head back to be able to look into his eyes. “I know you, Lady Penelope de Vere, and I know you are innocent in all of this. Of course I still want to marry you. In fact I can hardly believe you still want me after meeting men as heartless as your father and this Lord Bolton.”

  He wiped the tears off her cheeks and pulled her into his arms, hugging her close to him in an effort to offer her love and protection. She held on to his jacket as if her life depended upon it, savoring his compassion.

  “I do hope finding you two like this means you are about to get married, because if you are not, I’m afraid I will have to force you into holy matrimony without any regard to your feelings and wishes.”

  Breathlessly they broke apart, and Penny couldn’t hold back a happy smile at the duchess, who stood in the doorway, an amused smile on her face.

  “Your Grace, I do apologize for my wanton behavior. I usually don’t act this way, but as you have guessed, Penelope has accepted my proposal that she become my wife, and I was quite beside myself out of sheer happiness.”

  “Oh, it’s all right, Mr. Bedford. I have known you all your life, and I know you never would openly show such bodily affection, especially in front of others, without great reason. I have always admired your gentlemanly ways and how stoically you hold yourself to your late mother’s lessons about how a young country squire should behave. As a mother of young men not as well behaved as you, I admit being quite impressed with your mother’s achievement.”

  Thomas beamed with satisfaction at the duchess’s kind words. “I’m pleased to hear this, Your Grace. My mother always spoke highly of you, and I know she would have been proud to hear your words today.”

  “Did your mother ever tell you we knew each other before either of us married? We were of the same age and debuted together in London all those years ago.”

  Thomas bobbed his head eagerly. “Yes, Mother told me. She said you two and a couple of the other debutantes were quite close then, and you were the best of friends.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed.” The duchess gave Thomas a radiant smile, but Penny could tell the lady lied; Lady Anna
had never been a good liar, which her sons had used all through their childhood days.

  “I wonder if you could tell me where to find His Grace? I have something very important to ask him, something a man normally asks a girl’s father. But, as you know…”

  Thomas voice broke of, and the duchess patted his hand with affection. “Yes, of course. His Grace is in his study. If you go to the foyer, you can ask one of the footmen to show you the way. We will await your return here. Please ask my husband to join you, by my request.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.”

  Thomas bowed his head politely to her before he turned to Penny. “I will return shortly, and hopefully you and I can start planning the rest of our lives together, starting with the wedding.”

  Penny blushed as he lightly kissed the back of her hand and, with a last lingering look, left her alone with the duchess as he disappeared into the salon. Not until she heard the door close behind him did she turn toward her companion.

  “Thank you,” she said with all her heart.

  “For what?”

  “For accepting Thomas as my future husband and for not letting him know his mother wasn’t one of your closest friends.”

  The duchess laughed, a bit embarrassed, caught in a lie. “Bloody bad liar that I am. I don’t think he noticed, though. He seemed quite impressed by his mother’s connections, and I didn’t think there was any need to take that away from him. And regarding my accepting him as your future husband—I must admit I still desperately cling to my wish for you to become my daughter in name, too, not only in heart. But I don’t hold it against you, my dear. I too recognize how perfect Mr. Bedford is for you in your current state of mind.”

  “My current state of mind?”

  “Yes, dearest. I don’t think you would have been this keen on marrying Mr. Bedford if you weren’t too much in need of feeling safe and being able to trust someone. This is your life, and I’m not going to tell you how to live it, but I want you to please indulge me and wait with the wedding until Christmas.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  The duchess smiled sadly. “I know. But the only thing I now can hope for is that Richard will, before it’s too late.”

  “He won’t, which I know you are well aware of. He never changes his mind about anything.”

  Penny bit her lip, unable to continue without bursting into tears. She didn’t want to think about Rake right now, especially not at this moment that should be the happiest in her life. But the duchess seemed determined to talk in her son’s behalf, and Penny knew there was no way to stop her.

  “He might. If you let him.”

  “If I let him?” Penny scoffed. “What on earth makes you think I would have something to do with his changing his mind? He is a man of his own and with quite an intelligent mind of his own. There is nothing I could say or do that would ever make him rethink.”

  The duchess looked down at her nails and seemed almost uninterested in the conversation. “You could tell him about the night at Lord Bolton’s.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?” The duchess lost her indifferent attitude. “He has every right to hear this too.”

  “No, he hasn’t,” Penny snorted, indignant.

  “Yes, he does, because he loves you.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  This time it was the duchess who snorted. “Yes, he does, and the only one who is stupid enough not to realize that is you.”

  Penny snorted again, but not as indignantly as before. Her silly, stupid heart immediately started to do somersaults with joy at the duchess’s words, and she let herself float away on a wave of dreams for a moment before reality came back and hit her on the head.

  “Lady Anna, please, he doesn’t love me. And furthermore, I know he never will.”

  “Maybe we will always disagree about what he feels for you, but please hear me out when I ask you to tell him about what happened that night.”

  “Why?”

  This time Penny couldn’t stop the tears, and soon she sat on the terrace wall again, sobbing because of a pain which would never leave her. The duchess sat down next to her and handed Penny her silken handkerchief.

  “Because he needs to hear it. He’s not been himself since the night when you crashed into Fanny’s bedroom and he could see quite clearly that you had been through something horrendous which had left you a terrified shell of yourself. Your decision to not tell him—or anyone else—about it devastated him. For the first months he kept tormenting us for information. But we had promised you to not talk about it. In the end he gave up and closed us all out, just as we had closed him out.”

  The duchess’s motherly concern was overwhelming, and Penny wanted to give in to her wish. But the mere thought of having to face Rake and tell him the events of that night made her nauseous and more determined than ever to never let him know.

  It had been difficult enough telling Thomas about the incident; telling Rake would be like walking through the nightmare again, and she knew she couldn’t. Rake wouldn’t as lightly brush it away as Thomas had. No, Rake would demand retaliation and wouldn’t rest until all the culprits had been caught and punished. Rake was a fighter, a man of revenge. He wasn’t a healer.

  And she needed time to heal.

  She needed a chance to put it all behind and continue on with her life quietly.

  Telling Rake would be too much raw emotion and too little redemption. She knew he didn’t love her, but she couldn’t deny the fact that he did care for her. He had, after all, known her throughout her whole life, and even though he had spent most of the time trying to avoid her, he still had always shown her an absentminded brotherly affection.

  The duchess’s dejected sigh interrupted Penny’s thoughts. “I know I can’t force you to do as I want, and you know I will never break my vow of secrecy and tell Richard myself. But I need you to please hear me out for one last time. If you do, I promise to let you live your life as you want. Well, at least as long as Richard doesn’t change his mind. If so, I won’t be able to stop myself from interfering on his behalf.”

  Penny smiled teary-eyed over the honest request and knew she couldn’t deny her benefactor anything. She cared too much about the duchess. She nodded in response and was rewarded with a smile just as teary-eyed. “Thank you.”

  The duchess twitched the delicate fabric of her skirt between her fingers, seeming more distressed than Penny had ever seen her.

  “I love my son dearly, and I can hardly stand watching him suffer like this without being able to help him. I know you love him too. Probably more than you ever will admit, especially to him.”

  The last part came with a very pointed look, and Penny blushed. She could hardly deny her feelings for Rake. They had been her constant companion for the last eighteen years.

  “He has changed over the last couple of months,” the duchess continued forcefully. “And now he’s behaving like a man without sense or sensibility. He’s no longer the man I brought up, and James tells me no one can reach through to him.”

  “Jamie told me as much yesterday,” Penny admitted. “He seemed quite worried.”

  “You know how absentminded and elusive James has been over the last year, burying himself in his bad memories, so that must show you I don’t exaggerate how large the problem with Richard is.”

  “Of course I believe you.” Penny sighed over the impossible situation. She felt desperate in her need to help the duchess with her concerns regarding Rake, but she still didn’t want to enlighten him.

  “Just talk to him. You don’t have to tell him anything if you don’t want to, but at least he will see you are not avoiding him anymore. I know he will not be too overjoyed about your upcoming engagement, but at least he will know you two are on speaking terms again. He needs you, Penny.”

  “I-I wouldn’t know wh-what to say.”

  The duchess hugged Penny close. “Don’t you fret over this, my dear. You don’t need to do much. Just look at h
im. Talk to him. Laugh with him. Make him believe you are fine again and have overcome your earlier problems.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to talk to me?”

  “Why wouldn’t he want to talk to you?” The duchess snorted most disrespectfully. “I promise you, all you need to do is smile at him and he’ll be rolling at your feet faster than my husband’s beloved dogs.”

  “Really? Smile?” Penny rolled her eyes, effectively taking away the seriousness of the conversation.

  The duchess laughed, obviously relieved at Penny’s light response. “Yes, smile. You have quite an overwhelming smile, my dear. He won’t be able to ignore you.”

  “Who is ignoring our Penny?”

  The duke’s booming voice filled the rose-clad terrace, and the two ladies greeted the two gentlemen eagerly. Penny slipped her hand into the crook of Thomas’s arm, which he offered her politely as she smiled at the duke.

  For being such a mean-looking man, Hannibal Darling had the softest heart she knew of. He was her champion and would turn a mountain into pebbles if it meant saving her.

  During these last couple of months, he hadn’t once tried to make her open up to him. Instead, he had only hugged her whenever he thought she needed a bit of love and devotion. To a scorned soul, a bearlike hug now and then meant everything.

  “So,” the duchess purred. “Have the two of you had an interesting conversation?”

  “Indeed we have.” Thomas beamed. “His Grace has most graciously agreed to my request for Penny’s hand in marriage.”

  “Oh, what fantastic news!” The duchess clapped her hands with a little too much excitement, and her husband rolled his eyes knowingly. “Now I have a wedding to plan.”

  When Penny opened her mouth, the duchess wagged warningly with her index finger. “Don’t you even try to take this away from me, Lady Penelope de Vere.”