Never Had a Dream Come True (11 page)

“It’s all right, Charmaine.” Penny gave her a loving smile. “It’s not your fault. And besides, I’m so proud of being your sister. It’s been a delight to watch how popular you are. You deserve it, with your beauty and your wit and charm. If I could spend every night of the Season watching you, I would be perfectly satisfied.”

Lady Nester interrupted the tender moment. “I hear your father coming upstairs, so why don’t we all go into our bedrooms—quickly.”

Lady Nester and Charmaine disappeared into her sister’s bedroom, closing the door firmly behind them. With a disappointed sigh, Penny sneaked into her own room and closed the door.

Alone as always, she sat down on the bed with a thud. She closed her eyes and listened to the muffled voices of her mother and sister on the other side of the wall, and her heart cried, abandoned,
I want more than this.

She let her gaze slowly travel throughout the room, taking in every aspect. It was a nice, neutral room with only a few books disturbing its utter perfection.

She gave the books a sympathetic smile.

Poor books.

There they lay, filled with impossible dreams of a perfect life and a beautiful but false promise of a love everlasting.

“Love conquers all,” the books squealed happily in chorus, and Penny snorted.

“Love conquers nothing. I have loved Rake for years and never won anything by it. Finally I have realized I have loved him too much for my dreams to ever come true. And when I realized this, I met a new kind of love. A quiet, sensible love between good friends.”

“Not a true love,” the books squealed. “Not an everlasting love.”

“I don’t want an everlasting love. I want an everlasting relationship,” she patiently lectured the books. “I want someone who will miss me when I’m not there, someone who wants me to stand by his side the rest of his life.”

“Not a true love. Not an everlasting love,” the books squealed again, and Penny frowned at them, not pleased with how they kept chanting about love.

“Once I believed you about true love, but reality has shown me such love doesn’t exist. True love is only a fairytale, and you, dear books, are full of them.”

The books gasped, horrified over such disbelief. “Everybody wants true love.”

“I don’t. Not anymore.”

This time it was the books who frowned at her, not pleased at how lightly she brushed away everything they had told her for the last decade. “You will be lonely without your true love.”

Penny snorted angrily. “No, I will not. I’m desperately lonely as it is, so there is no way a husband who isn’t the true love of my life will intensify my unwilling solitude.”

“If he doesn’t love you, he won’t miss you.”

Penny snorted again, but this time without any heat, and the books quickly grasped the opportunity to persuade her to join their side again.

“Your true love wants you.”

“I know,” she admitted. “But he doesn’t want me in a way that will render me any happiness. He will only make me feel more abandoned.”

“Thomas left you.”

Oh. Those cheeky books, they knew exactly what cord to pull. “Thomas definitely didn’t leave me. He had things to do.”

“He left you.”

“He did not.”

“So if he didn’t leave you, why are you feeling so lonely?”

Penny closed her eyes against the triumphant books. For the first time she admitted to herself how disappointed she felt over Thomas’s reluctance to leave the countryside for her. His presence would have made it so much easier for her to ignore her feelings for Rake and the strange power he held over her.

“He had more important things to do.”

“More important than you? What on earth can be more important than the woman you love?”

“His people were sick,” Penny almost growled.

“Ah.”

“What do you mean with that?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“I admire him for his devotion.”

“His devotion to others or his devotion to you?”

“We are not engaged, so he has no obligation to be devoted to me. I’m merely a girl he’s been courting and to whom he might propose this summer.”

“What if you meet someone else?”

“If I ever am away from the other wallflowers long enough to meet someone else, it’s up to me if I want to accept a proposal. Neither Thomas nor I have promised each other anything.”

“He must trust your feelings for him very much, then, if he feels secure enough to leave you alone among all the eligible bachelors of the
ton.
”

“He knows my wish is to be with him. I have told him as much.”

“But you haven’t told him about your long-lasting feelings for Rake, have you? If you had, he wouldn’t be so sure of your returning to him still unmarried and his to claim.”

“My feelings for Rake are not relevant when it comes to Thomas. I’m done with that part of my life.”

“Of course you are.”

Bloody cheeky books. They knew her too well.

Of course she wasn’t finished with that part of her life. How could she be? Her feelings for Rake consumed her whenever they met. She knew the only way to get rid of them was to stay out of his way, to get as far away from him as she could. And the easiest way to do so was to marry someone who wasn’t a part of Rake’s crowd and who wasn’t interested in Rake’s choice of lifestyle.

Thomas.

“What I feel for Thomas is light and uncomplicated. With him I am at ease. Fanny—who has more opinions about my life than anyone could think possible—calls it friendship instead of love, and she insists it proves how indifferent I am. She also insists it proves my heart isn’t in it. But I disagree, because the feelings I have for Rake are nothing like the true love you have talked about, either. Those feelings turn my whole being inside out, and instead of being content I mostly feel insecure and confused.”

“At least you feel something.”

With an angry growl, she collected the books and put them in a drawer and closed it firmly. She had enough with her own mind questioning her. She didn’t need a couple of well-read books trying to undermine her decision too.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she wanted peace and quiet in her life. If it meant marrying Thomas—so be it. Maybe he never would love her like she deserved to be loved, but so what?

She just wanted to belong to someone.

The next evening Penny knocked softly on Charmaine’s door, praying desperately for her sister to still be awake even though it was the middle of the night.

Minutes long as hours passed before the key moved in the lock and the door opened quietly. To Penny’s relief it was Charmaine’s beautiful face which appeared in the doorway, not that of her nasty maid.

“I need to speak with you,” Penny whispered, and Charmaine’s eyes narrowed as she took in her sister’s pale face and tear-filled eyes. She nodded quietly before she slipped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her. Not until they were safely inside Penny’s bedroom did Charmaine open her mouth.

“What is it, Penny? You look devastated. What happened? Is it Father? Has he done something to you?” Charmaine grabbed Penny’s hand and together they sat side by side on the bed.

“W-what? Father? No, he hasn’t done anything. It’s me. I did something incredibly thoughtless, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Nothing you have done can be that bad, Penny.”

“What was I thinking about? Or rather, why wasn’t I thinking? But it was as if my worst nightmare was coming true, and I just lost my wits.”

“Penny, please. Now you scare me. Please tell me what happened.”

Penny looked into Charmaine’s compassionate eyes and her whole body shook as deep sobs tore through her. Her sister dragged her into her arms and Penny closed her eyes and let the sisterly love overflow her as she wept until all her tears were gone and only a sniffle now and then was heard.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she finally sat back up, and Charmaine gave her a small smile filled with love as she dried Penny’s wet cheeks with a handkerchief.

“Do you feel better?”

Penny nodded. Strangely enough, she did feel much better. Finally giving in to her mortified feelings had taken the worst away and left her only mildly shaken instead of completely devastated.

“Do you want something? Water?”

Penny shook her head.

“Then,” Charmaine said with a voice which told she wouldn’t accept any excuses, “I want you to tell me what this is all about.”

Penny took a deep breath. “When we were at the Green Park picnic today, Fanny and Rake took me aside to talk to me. They said they had something urgent to tell me, and that it was about you.”

Charmaine looked just as astonished as Penny had felt. “About me? Whatever could it be that Fanny and Rake could tell you about me?”

“I thought the same until Rake started to act strangely. You know how sophisticated he always acts, a true fashionable gentleman from head to toe.”

“Oh, I know. Rake is the essence of a gentleman and always acts with arrogance.”

“But this time he wasn’t as blasé, and he almost seemed nervous. He was walking to and fro in front of me and Fanny until I thought he would ruin the lawn under his feet. And then it dawned on me…”

“What?”

“Do you remember what my fears were when you went off to your first Season in London?”

Charmaine snorted. “Yes, I do. You were so sure he would fall madly in love with me and marry me before you had a chance to make him fall for you. Such a silly fear, as Rake has known me for his whole life and never cared about me at all. Why would he suddenly have feelings for me?”

“Well it didn’t feel silly then,” Penny said a bit indignant. “And to my utter mortification, it didn’t feel silly earlier today either.”

Charmaine sighed, knowing her sister too well. “Please don’t tell me you’ve said something about it to Rake.”

“I-I might have…”

“Penny!”

Penny stood up, too upset to be still. “I know, Charmaine, but he caught me off guard. I’ve been having such trouble ignoring him in my heart the last couple of days, and when he said he wanted to tell me something about you I lost control.”

“What did you say?”

Penny blushed, still feeling embarrassed over her own actions. “Something like ‘Oh, my God, you are going to marry Charmaine.’ ”

“That wasn’t too bad,” Charmaine frowned.

“No, it wasn’t. But then Fanny started to soothe my feelings and pointed out how I by now should be well aware that you meant nothing to him.”

“Oh.”

“And then I asked him with tears in my eyes— ‘You are not?’ ”

“Oh.”

Penny sighed. “He’s too intelligent to not understand what it all was based upon. A woman who’s in love with him.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.” Penny sniffed. “Not a word. He just stared blankly at me before he turned and left.”

“He did? Rake, the wicked libertine, didn’t even say something absolutely unheard of?”

“No. He just opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before he left, as if he didn’t know what to say. Lord, I feel so stupid. Fanny thinks I’m overreacting, that Rake is completely naïve when it comes to feelings, but she doesn’t know the whole truth about him and me.”

“You never told her about the lake?” Charmaine seemed extremely pleased about being the only one Penny had confided in.

“No, at first I didn’t know how to, and later it just felt too much to tell. And now she’s too caught up in the Season and her budding romance with the Duke of Hereford.”

Charmaine froze, and Penny closed her eyes, horrified. When would she ever learn to keep her mouth shut? Without another thought she blurted out what had started it all, what Fanny and Rake had wanted to tell her about Charmaine.

“Are you sure about this?” Charmaine’s voice was cold and clipped.

“About Fanny and the duke?”

“Yes.”

“Fanny admitted as much.”

Charmaine laughed, obviously relieved. “Fanny can’t be sure of this, as the Season hardly has had time to begin, and she just met the man.”

“But Fanny told me the duke had acknowledged the attraction to Rake, who is a close friend of his.”

“H-he did?”

“Yes. And he wouldn’t have admitted to Rake something like this if he hadn’t meant it. Rake is Fanny’s uncle and close family, after all.”

“Oh.”

The devastation in Charmaine’s beautiful eyes was obvious, and Penny dropped to her knees in front of her sister and grabbed her cold hands.

“What Fanny and Rake wanted to tell me was that Fanny had overheard you telling your friends the duke was courting you. And having the inside information about the duke’s feelings, they knew what you said was a blatant lie. They wanted you to have a chance to set things straight before the truth came out.”

Charmaine sat like a Roman statue, her face pale from shock.

“Please, Charmaine, why were you lying to your friends? What on earth possessed you to say something you know isn’t the truth?”

Charmaine took a deep shaky breath before she released her hands from Penny’s grip and stood up.

“I’m not the liar here,” she said coldly as she crossed the room to the door.

“What? Charmaine, I just told you how you were overheard telling your friends an outright lie!”

“And you believe your friend over me?”

“No, Charmaine, I don’t. But Fanny wouldn’t make something like this up, and especially not involve Rake in it if it weren’t true.”

“So you do believe her.”

“How can I not?”

“Believe me when I tell you there is nothing true about what Francesca told you, and I want you to know you have hurt me immensely with your complete distrust in me and my actions.”

“Charmaine…”

“No, don’t. It’s too late. Now I know how you feel about me.”

Penny looked into Charmaine’s face and knew without any doubt she was lying. As the door quietly closed behind her sister, she sat alone on the floor of the bedroom, too tired to be able to think straight.

She needed to rest.

Tomorrow was a new day, and hopefully she would be able to see things more clearly after a good night’s sleep. With tired hands she undressed and lay down on the bed, falling asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.