What A Duke Dares
What A Duke Dares
Anna Campbell
‘I can’t kidnap her!’‘If you have to, you must. Bring Pen home.’Penelope Thorne was in trouble – alone somewhere between Rome and Paris, running out of money, totally vulnerable. Until Camden Rothermere, the Duke of Sedgemoor, arrived to take her back to England, whether she wanted to go or not…The last time Pen had seen Cam, she’d turned down his marriage proposal, shattering their friendship, hurting his pride and secretly breaking her own heart. Cam had lived with scandal all his life and he’d vowed never to marry for love.To protect Pen’s reputation, they travelled as husband and wife and they desired each other more with every mile…Book Three in THE SONS OF SIN seriesA Sensuous Regency DelightTHE SONS OF SINSEVEN NIGHTS IN A ROGUE’S BEDA RAKE’S MIDNIGHT KISSWHAT A DUKE DARESA SCOUNDREL BY MOONLIGHTDAYS OF RAKES AND ROSES (Novella)
PRAISE FOR ANNA CAMPBELL (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
‘Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed is a lush, sensuous treat. I was enthralled from the first page to the last and still wanted more.’ —Laura Lee Guhrke, New York Times bestselling author
‘The fast pace and slightly gothic atmosphere make the pages fly. She keeps readers highly satisfied with the plot’s tenderness and touching emotions that reach the heart.’
—Kathe Robin, RT Book Reviews
‘Campbell matches up two proud, wary victims of abuse in this smart Regency romance … delightful insight and … luscious love scenes. Readers will cheer for these loveable and well-crafted characters.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘Truly, deeply romantic’
—Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author on Captive of Sin
‘Regency noir—different and intriguing’
—Stephanie Laurens, New York Times bestselling author on Claiming the Courtesan
‘I’m not the woman for you.’
While today’s misgivings hinted that Pen might be right, his pride flinched under her rejection. ‘We know each other so well—’
She sighed. ‘Cam, you need a duchess with dignity and decorum. You must have forgotten all the times you dragged me from disaster.’
‘You’re still young. You can be trained,’ he said, before he recognised that such a comment would hardly forward his suit. Usually he said exactly the right thing, but this encounter rattled his sangfroid.
Her momentary softening congealed to frost. ‘I’m not a hound to come at your whistle.’
He sighed again. ‘You know that’s not what I want in a bride.’
‘Do I?’ she asked, arching her eyebrows. ‘You’ve devoted your life to rising above your parents’ disgrace, the scandals have guided your every action.’
He winced under the compassion in her gaze. ‘That makes me sound like a complete idiot.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘You can help me. You’ll make a capital duchess.’
‘You’re mistaken.’ He’d never imagined that worldly smile on Pen’s face. His reluctant desire deepened. ‘I’m too independent to be anyone’s duchess, especially yours.’
THE SONS OF SIN by Anna Campbell
Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed A Rake’s Midnight Kiss What a Duke Dares
ANNA CAMPBELL was the sort of kid who spent her childhood with her nose buried between the pages of a book. She decided when she was a child that she wanted to be a writer. When she’s not writing passionate, intense stories featuring gorgeous Regency heroes and the women who are their destiny, Anna loves to travel, especially in the United Kingdom, and listen to all kinds of music. She has settled near the sea on the east coast of Australia, where she’s losing her battle with an overgrown subtropical garden.
The first book in THE SONS OF SIN series, Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed, has generated some wonderful reviews and a number of awards, including favourite historical romance from the Australian Romance Readers Association. Anna was also voted favourite Australian romance author at the ARRA Awards.
Anna loves to hear from her readers. You can contact her through her website at www.annacampbell.info (http://www.annacampbell.info).
What a Duke Dares
Anna Campbell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u055f6672-9747-51eb-b7c8-6a07158e5759)
PRAISE FOR ANNA CAMPBELL
Excerpt (#u2107bad1-b961-578b-9a15-5247437e4c7d)
About the Author (#uc0c0d084-9eee-540e-bb56-65d3e3bf4ed9)
Title Page (#u7cd891f8-6ef5-5462-be40-84b901ce5cf0)
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Epilogue
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
Houghton Park, Lincolnshire, May 1819
Every young lady dreamed of a proposal from the heir to a dukedom. Especially when the heir was rich, feted, in possession of his wits, and still young enough to have all his teeth.
Every young lady except, apparently, Penelope Thorne.
From the center of her father’s library, Camden Rothermere, Marquess of Pembridge, eyed the girl he’d known from the cradle and wondered where the hell he’d slipped up. He straightened and summoned a smile, struggling to bridge the awkward silence extending between them.
Damn it. He never felt awkward with Pen Thorne. Until now. Until he’d spoken the fatal words.
Until, instead of radiating delight at the prospect of marrying him, Pen’s black eyes sparked with the rebellious light that always boded trouble.
“Why?” It wasn’t the first time this afternoon that she’d asked him the question.
Stupidly he couldn’t summon an adequate answer. He’d blundered into this half-cocked. It was his own fault. Knowing Pen as he did, he should have prepared a comprehensive list of reasons for their marriage before broaching the subject.
Right now, he wished he’d never broached the subject at all. But it was too late to retreat, or too late if he hoped to salvage a shred of self-respect from this dashed uncomfortable encounter.
“Devil take you, Pen, I like you,” he said impatiently. Despite her inexplicable and irritating behavior today, it was true. There wasn’t a girl alive that he liked so much as the chit currently regarding him as if he’d crawled out of a hole in the ground.
He knew her better than any other girl too, even his sister, Lydia. Through their childhood, he’d rescued Pen from a thousand scrapes. She’d been a hellion, riding the wildest horses in her father’s stables, climbing the tallest trees in the park, throwing herself into brawls to defend a friend or mistreated animal. Cam had long admired her spirit, loyalty, and courage.
Those were qualities he wanted in his duchess. And if she needed some guidance in deportment, he was perfectly prepared to teach her proper behavior. She was a Thorne and Thornes weren’t renowned for their prudence, but while Pen might be impulsive, she was intelligent. Once she’d become the Duchess of Sedgemoor, he was sure she’d settle down.
Or he had been, until her unenthusiastic response to his proposal.
“I like you too,” she said steadily, regarding him with unwavering attention.
Cam wondered why her admission didn’t reassure. Inhaling deeply, he strove for forbearance. “Well, there you have it, then.”
That bitter note in her laugh was unfamiliar. He could hardly believe it, but the possibility of failure hovered. Pen was clever, determined, headstrong—he’d get that out of her soon enough—and stubbornly inclined to take a positive view of events. Or at least so he’d believed until today.
He’d also believed that she’d leap at the chance to marry him.
Clearly he’d been wrong.
He wasn’t used to being wrong. Confound her, he didn’t like it.
Her voice remained curiously flat. “I’m sorry, Cam. ‘There you have it, then’ won’t pass muster. You’ll need to do better than that.”
From where she stood before the high mullioned window, she studied him much like a schoolmistress surveyed an unpromising student. He only just resisted the urge to run a finger under his unaccountably tight neckcloth.
Good God, this was Pen. She wasn’t a female who put a man through hoops before she fell into harness. She’d never demand more than he could give. She’d never subject a fellow to emotional storms. She’d never lie and cheat and betray.
She was the absolute opposite of his late mother, in fact.
Cam was unaccustomed to feeling like a blockhead, especially with the fairer sex. By nature he wasn’t a vain man, but he’d anticipated a better reaction to his proposal. Pen’s father Lord Wilmott had been in alt to hear that his daughter would become a duchess.
Most definitely, Pen was not in alt.
And she bloody well should be. After all, she was a mere baron’s daughter—and a ramshackle baron at that—while Cam was heir to the nation’s richest dukedom.
The Thornes were an old family, but had always had a justified reputation for trouble. In times of political unrest, they backed the wrong side. If they managed to lay their hands on any money, they lost it, usually in some disreputable pursuit. “Wine, women, and song” should be the family motto instead of the much more staid and highly inappropriate “steadfast and faithful.”
The previous generation had spawned a handful of eccentrics, including an uncle who had married his housekeeper. Bigamously as it had turned out. Lord Wilmott had squandered his wife’s dowry on a succession of greedy strumpets. Pen’s aunt ran with a dissolute crowd on the Continent. Peter, Cam’s friend and the current heir, was devoted to the gaming tables and disastrous investments. If Cam’s mother hadn’t been great friends with Lady Wilmott, the families would have had little contact.
What made Pen’s tepid response to Cam’s suit even harder to understand was that she’d always worshipped the ground he walked on. Was he a fool to presume on childhood adoration?
A horrible suspicion struck him. Was he presuming on far too much? Despite his parents’ scandalous behavior and the gossip about his legitimacy, the ton lionized Cam as the future Duke of Sedgemoor. Had endless flattery turned him into a self-satisfied ass?
If Pen thought him insufferably arrogant, no wonder his proposal hadn’t bowled her over. He sighed with self-disgust and impatiently ran his hand through his hair. “I’m making a dashed mess of this, aren’t I?”
Pen’s slender body lost its rigidity as a wry smile curved her lips. Lips, he reluctantly noticed, that were pink and full and lusciously kissable.
As shock shuddered through him, he wondered why he’d never noticed before. Pen had been such a constant in his life that he hadn’t taken the time to mark how she’d changed.
Still unwilling to admit that Pen wasn’t the girl he remembered, he looked more closely. To his dismay, the coltish adolescent hovered on the brink of becoming a true beauty. Even more dismaying, he felt the unwelcome, unmistakable prickle of desire.
“Yes, you are. But it’s not totally your fault.” With a grace he hadn’t seen in her before, she gestured toward the leather chairs ranged around the unlit hearth. “Sit down, for heaven’s sake, and stop looming over me.”
Actually he wasn’t looming, although with his height, he loomed over most people. Pen had always been a long Meg, closer to a boy than a girl in his mind. But in this discomfiting instant, when for the first time he saw more than his friend Peter’s occasionally annoying younger sister, there was nothing boyish about Miss Penelope Thorne.
Since he’d last seen her—and for the life of him, he couldn’t recall when that had been, such an ardent suitor he was—she’d grown up. The thin body had gained subtle but fascinating curves. The vivid, pointed face that had always seemed too small for her decisive features had refined into striking attraction. When had she tamed her tangled mane of hair into those gleaming ebony coils?
Apprehension tasted sour on his tongue. God help him, this new Penelope was a bloody disaster. He narrowed his eyes on the siren who had mysteriously supplanted a hoyden as daring as any of his male friends. And saw that she was blossoming into a woman who made men stupid.
Categorically he didn’t want to marry a woman who made men stupid, the way his mother had made his father stupid. How insulting to his chosen bride that part of her appeal had been her lack of overt attractions.
His father’s example proved what catastrophes resulted from choosing a tempestuous beauty as a wife. Cam had grown up hearing salacious gossip about his mother’s affair with her husband’s younger brother. Nobody, including Cam, knew who had fathered him. He was a Rothermere, but not necessarily the late duke’s son.
Long ago Cam had decided to marry someone he could be friends with, not who became a challenge to every deuced roué in London. Cam wanted a wife who would help him establish the Rothermere name as one to be respected, not a cause for snickering and dirty jokes as it had been all his life.
Gossip about his parentage had dogged Cam from boyhood. School had been a nightmare, and while he made a fair job of pretending he no longer cared, he knew whispers of his bastardy still spiced the tattle whenever his name was mentioned. He’d be damned before he subjected his own children to similar torments.
He reminded himself that this was brave, honest Penelope Thorne, she who risked her neck to save a kitten from village boys twice her size. But looking at her now, he didn’t see the girl who had launched a hundred escapades. Instead, he saw a woman who other men would pursue. A woman who perhaps would succumb to temptation, as his mother had done. Pen’s burgeoning loveliness made Cam burn to bed her, but it beggared any chance of an unexceptional domestic life.
Feeling slightly ill, Cam accepted Pen’s offer of a seat and watched her take the chair opposite. Dear heaven, when had that smooth glide replaced her eager gallop? This was Pen, yet it wasn’t.
Even as he questioned his old playmate’s suitability as a bride, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. When had she become this intriguing creature? Where the hell had he been when the transformation took place? At nineteen, she was a little late to be approaching her first season, but he could already see that she’d set society on its ears. She’d prowl into London’s ballrooms on those long legs, like a tigress set loose amid a host of pretty little butterflies.
“I appreciate that you’re doing your duty by your mother and mine. A match between us was always their greatest wish.” The earnestness in Pen’s regard was familiar, but still he felt as if he’d been tossed high into the air and come to land in a different country. “But let’s be realistic. I’m not the woman for you.”
While today’s misgivings hinted that Pen might be right, his pride flinched under her rejection. “We know each other so well—”
“Which is why I’m convinced that any match between us would be a debacle.”
“Why?”
Her lips twisted, and he realized that her earlier bitterness hadn’t entirely vanished. “Isn’t that my question?” She sighed. “Cam, you need a duchess with dignity and decorum. You must have forgotten all the times you dragged me from disaster.”
“You’re still young. You can be trained,” he said, before he recognized that such a comment would hardly forward his suit. Usually he said exactly the right thing, but this encounter rattled his sangfroid.
Her momentary softening congealed to frost. “I’m not a hound to come at your whistle.”
He sighed again. “You know that’s not what I want in a bride.”
“Do I?” she asked, arching her eyebrows. “You’ve devoted your life to rising above your parents’ disgrace. You’ve never made a secret of the fact that your wife must be beyond reproach.”
He bared his teeth at her. Mention of his mother’s adultery always raised his hackles. “Pen, this isn’t something I wish to discuss.”
She made a sweeping gesture. “Whether you want to talk about it or not, the scandals have guided your every action.”
He winced under the compassion in her gaze. “That makes me sound like a complete widgeon.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You can help me. You’ll make a capital duchess.”
“You’re mistaken.” He’d never imagined that worldly smile on Pen’s face. His reluctant desire deepened. “I’m too independent to be anyone’s duchess, especially yours.”
“You can change,” he said desperately, wishing he’d taken Lord Wilmott up on his offer of a brandy earlier. Cam wasn’t used to being so wrong-footed with a woman, with anyone. Where had his famous social assurance buggered off to?
“Perhaps I can. If I wanted to change. I don’t.” She sighed with a tolerance that made his skin itch with resentment. “You’d be trading your family’s scandals for mine, and the rumors would continue to dog you all our lives. I follow my heart before my head. I speak my mind. Before the ink was dry on the settlements, I’d do something to upset the old tabbies. You’d find yourself knee-deep in gossip and you’d hate that. You’d start to hate me.”
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever pictured as my wife. I decided as a boy that I’d marry you.” He straightened in his chair and bit out each word, before remembering that he came to woo, not browbeat her. “Our families expect me to make you my duchess.”
The regret in her smile did nothing to bolster his optimism. “I’m sorry, Cam. For once in your life, you’ll have to disappoint expectations.” Her gaze sharpened in a way that he didn’t completely understand. “I know you don’t love me.”
He flinched back as though she’d struck him. Damn, damn, damn. Love. He’d thought Pen too smart to fall prey to mawkish sentimentality. “I esteem you. I admire you. I enjoy your company. You know the Fentonwyck estate. You know me.”
“All very gratifying, I’m sure.” Her smile turned sour. “But I won’t marry without love.”
He surged to his feet. “We both have parents who married for love. As a result of love, my father descended into cruelty and obsession and my mother became a byword for promiscuity. Pardon me saying so, but your parents aren’t much better. Doesn’t that convince you that friendship and respect form a stronger basis for marriage than passing physical passion?”
“I doubt that either my parents or yours understood what love truly is.” Emotion thickened her voice and strengthened his premonition of failure. “Love means wanting the best for the beloved, whatever the cost. Love means sacrificing everything to achieve the beloved’s happiness.”
“You’re an idealist,” he said disdainfully.
“Yes, Cam, I am.” She rose with more circumspection—an adjective he’d never before associated with Pen Thorne—and regarded him with an unreadable expression. For a woman who confessed lack of control, she was remarkably controlled. “I believe love makes life worth living and nobody should marry without it. You’re too young to settle for second best.”
He placed a short rein on his temper. He was rarely angry, but right now, he wanted to fling one of the smug Ming dogs on the mantelpiece into the fire. “I’m twenty-seven.”
She released an impatient huff. “Well, I’m only nineteen. I’m definitely too young to settle for second best.”
“I hardly think becoming the Duchess of Sedgemoor counts as second best,” he said frigidly, wondering just where his childhood friend had gone.
Pen sighed as if she understood his turmoil. “It is when the duke offers only a lukewarm attachment.”
Resentment tightened his gut. He didn’t want to be understood. He hoped like hell she hadn’t noticed his bristling sexual awareness. Having Pen recognize his unwilling desire just as she sent him away with a flea in his ear seemed the final humiliation.
“Would you rather I lied?” he growled.
She winced as though he’d hit her. “Even if you lied, I wouldn’t believe you, Cam. I’ve known you too long. And you set your mind against love long ago.”
He struggled for a reasonable tone. Blustering would only make her dig her heels in. The encounter verged dangerously close to a quarrel. “Pen, think of the advantages.”
Her jaw set in an obstinate line. “Right now, aside from the obvious fact of your riches, I can’t see any.”
His appeal to her worldly interests disappointed her. Shame knotted his gut. With regret, he recalled the days when in her eyes, he could do no wrong. He drew himself up to his full height and glared.
“There’s no point going all ducal, Cam,” she said curtly, not, blast her, remotely cowed. “That look lost its power over me before you went to Eton.”
She shifted closer, stretching one hand toward the mantel. When he noticed how her fingers trembled, he faced the unpleasant truth that despite outward calm, this encounter upset her.
Of course it did. She felt things deeply. More than once, he’d caught Pen crying alone after her brothers’ teasing had struck a painful spot. She was proud, Penelope Thorne. Another desirable quality in a cracking duchess.
But clearly not his duchess. Pen didn’t have a monopoly on pride. Cam regarded her down his long nose and spoke as coldly as he’d speak to an overweening acquaintance. “I gather that you’re refusing me.”
The knuckles on the hand clutching the mantel turned white, although her voice remained steady. “Yes, I am.” She paused. “I appreciate your condescension.”
That was so obviously untrue that under other circumstances, he’d have laughed. But pique shredded his sense of humor. Through his outrage, he knew that he behaved badly. However unfairly, he blamed Pen for that unprecedented state of affairs too.
He bowed shortly and spoke in a clipped voice. “In that case, Miss Thorne, I’ll waste no more of your valuable time. I wish you well.”
Something that might have been pain flared in her dark eyes, but he was too angry and, much as he hated to admit it, wounded to pay heed. She stepped toward him. “Cam—”
“Good day, madam.”
He turned on his heel and stalked off.
Pen watched Cam march out of her father’s library, his back rigid with displeasure, and told herself that she’d done the right thing. The only thing she could in honor have done.
Right now she didn’t feel that way. She felt like she’d swallowed toads. She clung to the mantel to stay upright on legs likely to crumple beneath her.
Her anguish didn’t change merciless reality. Cam didn’t love her. Cam would never love her. Nothing in today’s awkward, painful encounter had convinced her otherwise.
As a foolish child, she’d dreamed of him tumbling head over heels in love with her. What girl brought up in close proximity to the magnificent Rothermere heir wouldn’t imagine a fairy-tale future? Especially when her mother encouraged her.
But that was before Pen had grown up and recognized the stark truth. A truth ruthlessly confirmed when she was sixteen. One summer at Fentonwyck, she’d overheard Cam talking to his best friend Richard Harmsworth about discouraging a local belle’s advances. When Richard had blamed the girl’s antics on love, Cam had responded with cutting contempt and said that was even more reason to steer clear of the unfortunate lady.
Romantic love has no place in my life now or ever, old chap. Let other fellows make asses of themselves. I’ve seen too much of the damage that poisonous emotion can wreak. It’s a trap and a deceit and a damned nuisance. I’ll never marry a woman who expects me to love her.
Pen felt sick to recall that self-assured pronouncement. Perhaps she might have dismissed his remarks as a young man’s bravado, except that in the three years since, everything she’d seen of Cam confirmed that he’d meant every word.
Even with those closest to him—Richard, his sister, Pen—he kept some element of himself apart, untouchable. Over the years that distance had only grown more marked.
Camden Rothermere was rich, handsome, clever, honorable, and brave. And completely self-sufficient.
Pen had prayed that Cam would ignore his late mother’s matchmaking, but of course, he considered it his duty to offer for Penelope. Just as he considered it his duty to inform her that his interest was purely dynastic.
If she’d harbored the tiniest shred of hope of melting the ice in his heart, she’d disregard questions of her notorious family and headstrong inclinations. She’d even try to make herself anew in the image he wanted.
But she knew Cam as she knew herself, and she’d never been a fool.
Cam wouldn’t countenance a marriage based on love and she couldn’t countenance a marriage that wasn’t. She never went into anything halfhearted, and a loveless union would destroy her.
Pen remained trembling near the fireplace, knowing that her family awaited news of her engagement. Her refusal of the greatest marital prize in the kingdom would set the cat among the Thorne pigeons. Right now, her control was so precarious; she shied from her mother’s bullying.
She fought a childish urge to cry. If she cried, there would be endless questions and more bullying. Her mother saw tears as opportunity for manipulation, not for comfort.
Pen sucked in a shaky breath and although she’d sworn that she wouldn’t, she rushed to the window facing the long drive.
Cam cantered away on his magnificent bay horse. He didn’t glance behind to catch her staring after him. Why would he? He’d want to get as far away from her as he could. For a famously self-controlled man, he’d verged very close to losing his temper this afternoon.
That had been a surprise. She hadn’t imagined that he cared so much about marrying her. In truth, she hadn’t imagined he cared at all.
But then, he’d expected her to say yes without hesitation. Despite the fact that Penelope Thorne was wrong for him on every count.
Except perhaps one.
The fact that she’d love him until she died.
Chapter One (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
Calais, France, January 1828
Through the bleak hours between midnight and dawn, the candles burned low in the shabby room high in the dilapidated inn. Wind rattled the ill-fitting windowpanes and carried the creaking of boats at their moorings and the reek of salt and rotting fish. The man lying in the narrow bed gasped for every breath.
Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, leaned forward to plump the thin pillows in a futile attempt to offer his dying friend some relief. When Cam sank into his wooden chair beside the bed, Peter Thorne’s eyes opened.
Although he and Peter hadn’t been close in years, Cam knew about his friend’s numerous reverses. The Thornes were famously rackety, and a son and heir who gambled away his fortune was hardly the worst of it.
Cam had arrived in Calais a few hours ago and rushed straight here to find the doctor in attendance. He’d cornered the man before he left. The harassed French medico had been blunt about his patient’s prospects.
At first, Peter had drifted close to unconsciousness, but the eyes focusing on Cam now were clear and aware. Eyes sunk in dark hollows in a face that carried no spare flesh. It was like staring into a skull.
“You … came.”
The words were hoarse, slow in emerging, and ended in a fit of coughing. Swiftly Cam fetched some water in a chipped cup. After a sip, the sick man collapsed exhausted against the hard mattress.
“Of course I came.” Anguish and outrage gripped Cam. Peter had been a companion in childhood games, a participant in university hijinks. He was only thirty-five, the same age as Cam, too bloody young to die.
“Wasn’t sure you would,” Peter gasped before succumbing to another coughing fit.
Cam offered more water. “We’ve always been friends.”
“From boyhood.” The response was a papery whisper. “Although you’ll wish me to the devil tonight.”
“Never.”
“Don’t speak … too soon.” He closed his eyes and Cam wondered whether he slept. The doctor had said that the end would come tonight. Looking into Peter’s bloodless features, Cam couldn’t doubt that conclusion.
Grief stabbed his gut, made his hand shake. He placed the cup on the crowded nightstand before he spilled the water. He wasn’t a religious man, but he found himself murmuring a prayer for a swift end to his friend’s sufferings.
“I need your help.”
Cam started to hear Peter speak. Spidery hands plucked fretfully at the threadbare covers drawn high on this cold night. If Cam thought it would do an ounce of good, he’d shift his friend to the best inn in town. But even without the doctor’s warning, he saw that Peter’s time was measured in hours, perhaps even minutes. Relocating him would be cruel rather than kind.
“It’s Pen.”
The moment he’d received Peter’s summons, Cam had harbored a sinking feeling that it might be. “Your sister?”
“Of course my damned sister.” Another coughing attack rewarded Peter’s irritable response.
Cam slid his arm behind Peter’s back to support him while he caught his breath. “The doctor left laudanum.”
Peter coughed until Cam thought surely he must suffocate. The cloth pressed to his mouth came away bloody. Rage at a fate that turned a once-vital young man into a barely breathing skeleton clutched at Cam’s gut.
When Peter could speak again, it was in a whisper. Cam leaned close to hear.
“I don’t want to sleep.” He winced as he drew a breath. Cam saw that every second was excruciating. “I’ll have rest enough soon.”
Staring into his friend’s face, Cam recognized the futility of a comforting lie. They both knew that Peter wouldn’t see the dawn.
“Pen’s in trouble.” Peter fumbled after Cam’s hand, gripping with surprising strength. His clasp was icy, as though the grave already encroached into this room.
Cam’s expression hardened. He hadn’t seen Pen in nine years, since his proposal. The only proposal he’d ever made, as it had turned out. If the chit was in trouble, she probably deserved to be. “I’m sure that she’s been in tight spots before.”
Penelope Thorne had never had the chance to make a splash in London society. Instead, she’d joined her eccentric aunt on the Continent and stayed there. She hadn’t returned to England even after her parents’ death in a carriage accident five years ago. Cam gathered she’d been somewhere in Greece at the time.
He hesitated to admit that her refusal had undermined his confidence to such an extent that he only now seriously contemplated marriage again. He needed a wife to help restore his family’s reputation, which was even more appalling than the Thornes’, and at last he’d found the perfect candidate. His recently chosen bride was as dissimilar to his hoydenish childhood playmate as possible.
Thank God.
By all reports, Pen had become rather odd. There had been nasty rumors from Sicily about her sharing a shady Conti’s bed, and of a liaison with a Greek rebel. Goya had emerged from seclusion to paint her both clothed and naked in imitation of his famous majas. Not to mention her week’s sojourn in the Sultan’s harem in Constantinople.
She’d published four volumes of travel reminiscences, books Cam had read over and over, although he’d face the stake before confessing that publicly. A man would rather be flayed than claim a taste for feminine literature.
Peter’s hand tightened. The desperation in his old friend’s face was unmistakable. Unfortunately. “Lady Bradford died last October. Pen’s gone from disaster to disaster since. She’s on her way north to Paris to meet me, but she’s a woman alone on a dangerous journey.”
Serves the hellcat right, Cam wanted to say, then wondered at his spite. He was accounted an equable fellow. The last time he’d lost his temper was when Pen had refused him. If she’d lost her chaperone, however inadequate, Pen should easily find alternative protection. And he meant that in the Biblical sense.
“Peter, I—” Cam began, not sure how to respond. He guessed that his friend meant to charge him with rescuing Pen from her irresponsibility. Although, hell, after a lifetime of friendship, how could he say no?
As if reading Cam’s reluctance, Peter spoke quickly. Or perhaps he knew that he had too few breaths remaining to waste any. His urgency seemed to suppress his cough so he managed complete sentences. “In her last letter, she was in Rome and running out of money. That was a month ago. God knows what’s befallen since.”
“But what can I do?”
“Find her. Bring her back to England. Make sure she’s safe.” Peter regarded Cam like his last hope. Which made it damned difficult to deny him. “Elias will have his hands full inheriting and Harry’s not up to the job, even if I could get him away from the fleshpots.”
Peter forestalled Cam’s suggestion that another Thorne brother could undertake this task. Cam rose to pace the tiny room. “Confound it, Peter. I’ve no authority over Pen. She won’t pay a speck of attention to me.”
“She will. She’s always liked you.”
Not last time they’d met. “I can’t kidnap her.”
Shaking, Peter shoved himself higher against the pillows. His black eyes, so like his sister’s, burned in his ashen face as if all the life concentrated in that blazing stare. “If you have to, you must. I won’t have my sister bouncing all over Europe, called a whore by ignorant pigs who should know better.”
Bloody hell.
His stare unwavering, Peter clawed at the blankets. He gulped for air and gray tinged his skin now that brief vitality faded. “There’s no man I trust more than you. If you’ve ever considered me a friend, if you’ve ever cherished a moment’s affection for my sister, bring Pen home.”
A moment’s fondness for his sister? Aye, there was the rub. Until she’d treated him like an insolent lackey, he’d been fond of Penelope Thorne.
Pausing by the window, he stared into the stormy night. An endless forest of masts ranged against the turbulent sky. It was a night for making deals with the devil. Except in this case, Cam would wager good money that the devil was the woman at the end of the wild goose chase.
He caught his reflection in the glass. He looked like he always did. Calm. Controlled. Cold. The habit of hiding his feelings had become second nature. But he was sorrowing and resentful—and that resentment focused on one troublesome woman. Behind him, hazy in the glass, he saw Peter watching him, suffering stoically through his last hours.
How could Cam refuse? Futile as the quest was. Pen would go her own way, whatever her dying brother asked, whatever pressure her childhood friend placed upon her.
Cam leveled his shoulders. Duty had guided him since he’d been old enough to understand the snide whispers about his mother’s affair with her brother-in-law. Duty insisted that he accept this task, however unwillingly. Slowly he faced his friend. “Of course I’ll do it, Peter.”
And was rewarded by an easing in Peter’s painful tension and a hint of the formerly brilliant smile. The Thornes were a famously handsome family and fleetingly, Cam glimpsed his rakish old companion. “God bless you, Cam.”
God help him, more like.
Chapter Two (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
Val d’Aosta, Italy, February 1828
During nine years of travel, Penelope Thorne had been in more tight spots than she cared to remember. None quite so restricted as this one in the rundown common room of a flea-ridden hostelry high in the Italian Alps.
Battling to steady her hand, she raised her pistol and pretended that facing down a pack of miscreants was an everyday occurrence. Instinct insisted that betraying her fear would only invite rape and robbery—perhaps murder.
A dozen men leered at her. All desperate. All drunk. All drawing courage from their cohorts’ belligerence.
“The first man who moves gets a bullet,” she said in fluent Italian.
Unfortunately the denizens of this godforsaken village spoke some outlandish dialect. Their speech bore little resemblance to the melodious Tuscan that she’d learned in Florence’s salons.
Pen cursed the bad luck and bad weather that stranded her so far from civilization. Behind her, her maid and coachman cowered against the wall. The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen. He was probably in on the plot. He’d looked just as villainous as these thugs.
A heavily whiskered brute swaggered forward, expression contemptuous. Through the blast of incomprehensible patois, she made out the words “one” and “bullet.”
She kept the gun straight, despite crippling fear. “One bullet does a lot of damage.”
His lip curled in disdain and he took another step. She cocked the gun, the sound loud in the fraught silence. “Any nearer and I’ll shoot.”
He proved his scorn by approaching so close that she smelled the stale odor of his hulking body. Her stomach, already churning with dread, revolted and she only just stopped herself from faltering back. Behind him, the others shifted. Whatever the leader said prompted laughter. Laughter that made her skin crawl.
“I warned you.” She forced herself to meet the glittering excitement in his piglike eyes.
Her finger tightened on the trigger and an explosion rent the air. She jerked back and her ears rang. The hot stink of gunpowder filled her nostrils.
“Porca miseria—” He staggered into the gang, who heaved and growled like an angry ocean. A bloody hole punctuated his forehead and astonishment froze his features before his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped motionless.
Dear heaven, he was dead. At her hand.
Pen desperately wanted to be sick. In her twenty-eight years, she’d never killed anyone.
As the rabble coalesced into a menacing unit, she fumbled in her pocket for her second gun. She felt a presence at her shoulder and realized that at last her coachman Giuseppe displayed some backbone. If only he displayed some backbone while carrying a rifle. But his weapons remained in her carriage outside. All he had were his fists.
“Brava, milady.”
The men surged on a wave of rage. Pen raised her pistol with a hand that proved unexpectedly firm. Stinking bodies surrounded her, blocked the air. Cruel hands grabbed her, pinched her breasts. A blow landed hard against her ribs, stealing her breath.
Terror gripped her. She had one bullet left. Was this time to use it?
Giuseppe was somewhere in the melee. She couldn’t help him. She could barely help herself. Gasping and struggling she lifted her gun, bleakly aware that once she shot, she was at the mob’s mercy.
When a gunshot rang out, she first thought she’d fired. Yet the pistol remained cool in her hand.
The groping hands stilled. The angry roar faded to silence. The attack had lasted seconds, but it had felt like a lifetime.
Another gunshot and the horde fell away like a tide withdrawing down the beach.
“Get away from her.”
Cam?
Astonishment turned Pen to stone. Even after nine years, his voice was familiar. The authoritative baritone caught at the heart that she’d kept on ice since their last meeting.
Sullenly her assailants retreated, creating a path between Pen and the doorway where her unlikely rescuer stood. Pen sucked in her first full breath in what felt like hours. Sweat, blood, and the reek of her fear tainted the air.
The tall man wearing an elegant cape and a beaver hat tilted at a rakish angle seemed to belong to a different species from the bandits. Cam carried two horse pistols, a rifle hung over his shoulder and a sword dangled at his hip. Snow brushed his hat and shoulders.
“Get out and don’t come back.” As he stepped forward, his tone sent a chill oozing down her backbone. “This lady is under my protection.”
His Italian was as good as hers and this time the thugs understood. Although his arsenal of weaponry undoubtedly spoke more loudly than words.
One of the men remonstrated about their dead comrade until Cam raised the gun. The fellow skulked off with the rest, the dead man hoisted between them.
Shaky and ill, Pen extended a trembling hand toward Giuseppe. To her consternation, Cam gripped her arm. Even through the leather glove he wore, she felt the heat of his touch. How could he affect her like this after so long?
“I’m all right,” she forced past rising gorge.
“Like hell you are.” His hold tightened.
If only the room stopped revolving. If only she caught a decent breath. If only she saw something other than Cam’s endlessly disapproving expression and the face of the man she’d shot.
“I’ve … I’ve never killed anyone before.”
“Don’t waste your pity.” He sounded livid.
Wonderingly she stared into his face. That beautiful, sculpted, austere face that still haunted her dreams, no matter how she’d struggled to forget him. “You’re angry with me?” she asked in bewilderment.
“Damn right I am.” His mouth flattened. “I’d love to take you over my knee and give you a good spanking.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she said faintly, her voice coming from the end of a long tunnel. Cam’s face became the only fixed point in a reeling world.
She closed her eyes. Then her stomach gave a nauseating swoop as Cam swept her up in his arms. She managed an incoherent protest before blackness claimed her.
“Take this.” Fumbling to hold Pen, Cam shoved the horse pistols at the useless cur who had cowered behind her. He firmed his grip on Pen’s motionless body. She was a bonnie fighter. How his heart had leaped when he saw her courage, even while his belly twisted with terror.
He stared down into her face. The promise of the girl had flowered into the sort of beauty that started wars. He still remembered how disturbed he’d been all those years ago to discover his childhood shadow transformed into a striking woman. Now the long slender body was curved and soft in his arms. Her scent teased him. Something fresh and floral. Warm and womanly. Smoky. A trace of gunpowder, by God.
Long black hair flowed around her. Outrage threatened to choke him as he recalled those savages tearing at it and pawing her. If he’d had more bullets and some men at his back, he’d have done a damned sight more than chase the brigands away.
“Fetch the landlord,” he said to the girl he assumed was Pen’s maid. She hunched on the stairway, dark eyes wide as if expecting Cam to take up where the locals left off. She rose and managed a wobbly curtsy before disappearing down a corridor.
Pen stirred as he laid her carefully upon a wooden bench under a shuttered window. Looking at Pen, a turbulent mix of emotions assailed him. Relief at her survival, of course. Anger at her being in this place at all. An unacceptable physical awareness.
An awareness that only built as he bent over her, checking for injuries. Scratches marked her neck and shoulders. He couldn’t see much else wrong with her. Horror clenched his gut as he imagined what might have happened if he hadn’t arrived.
Inky eyelashes fluttered against pale cheeks, but she didn’t wake. What shocked him wasn’t her sensuous beauty. What shocked him was that she still contrived to look innocent.
His gaze fell to her lips, parted slightly as she inhaled. Something that felt disconcertingly like lust shuddered through him. As he pulled her torn bodice over her shift, he struggled not to notice the satiny skin under the tattered dress. He was a scoundrel to think of her as a desirable woman, rather than as a duty to hand off as soon as possible.
Blast it to hell. The moment his eyes dropped to her breasts, she stirred.
“Have you seen enough?” she asked in English.
The Duke of Sedgemoor was famous for his self-assurance. Nobody made him blush. But heat prickled along his cheekbones as he straightened and regarded Penelope with what he hoped was his usual detachment.
“You don’t appear seriously hurt.” He flung away his cloak and set his sword and rifle on a table. He was prepared for this lawless corner of the world even if Pen wasn’t.
“Not on my bosom at any rate.” Clutching at her bodice, she struggled to sit.
He stifled a quelling response. After all, he had been ogling her. “What in heaven’s name brought you to choose this hovel?”
One slender hand brushed her tumble of hair back from her face. To his dismay, he saw that she was shaking.
“Try the weather.” Her tone was sharper than his sword. “I know you could barge through an avalanche without creasing your neckcloth, but we lesser mortals must seek shelter when snow blocks the roads.”
She was a fool to travel through the mountains in February, but her pallor silenced his scolding. The landlord bustled in, carrying a tray.
“Mi dispiace, mi dispiace …” The fellow burst into an emotive explanation from which Cam gathered that the brigands had locked him in the cellars.
Cam seized the tray, pleased to see a bottle of brandy and two glasses. After the last half hour, he deserved a drink. Once the landlord assured them that he’d arranged for some stout villagers to guard the hostelry—a matter of civic honor apparently—Cam reserved a bedroom and sent him away.
Pen had remained quiet through the innkeeper’s recitation. So quiet that when they were alone, Cam tilted an eyebrow in her direction. Unless she’d changed beyond all recognition, quiet wasn’t her natural state. “Are you all right?”
He had a sinking feeling that the answer was “no,” but typically, she lifted her chin and glared at him. He wondered what she saw. Nothing she liked, if he read her expression right.
“Perfectly.”
He’d believe that if her gaze hadn’t skittered away from the blood on the floor. A girl carrying a bucket crept into the room and kneeled to clean up the mess. The strain on Pen’s face eased.
These flashes of understanding were odd. Cam thought she’d be a stranger after all this time. Yet she wasn’t. In many ways, she was still as familiar as his sister.
Peter had given Cam all Pen’s recent letters so he had an idea of where to seek her. It was how he’d tracked her to this backwater. He’d struggled against falling under the spell of the woman who wrote with such humor and vitality. She hadn’t mentioned any amorous intrigues. But then, she’d been writing to her brother.
She swallowed and stared at him, he suspected in preference to the bloodstains. “What a coincidence that you turned up.”
“A lucky coincidence,” he said drily, lifting the brandy bottle.
“I hope you’re pouring me one.”
Another reminder that she wasn’t the innocent he’d proposed to. “As you wish.”
“I wish.”
He passed her a brandy and tried to hide his surprise when she took a confident swig. In his world, unmarried ladies of good family didn’t indulge in strong spirits. But of course, Pen no longer belonged to his world.
He thought of Lady Marianne Seaton, the woman he’d chosen to marry. Lady Marianne wouldn’t drink brandy. But then he couldn’t imagine Lady Marianne having the fortitude to shoot a bandit either.
He’d never seen Lady Marianne less than perfectly turned out. Pen sat before him completely disheveled. Her bodice sagged, revealing the lacy edge of her shift. It seemed a betrayal to acknowledge that of the two women, Pen struck him as considerably more beddable.
The devil of it was that the years hadn’t diminished his reluctant sexual interest. The moment he’d seen Pen again, he’d wanted her. And now he was stuck with her until he got her safely back to England. What a hellish situation.
No matter what she’d got up to over here, she was his childhood companion and his friend’s sister. She deserved courtesy and respect. If he took Pen for one night, he was honor-bound to take her for life. He’d grown up enough to recognize his foolishness in offering for her all those years ago. The last thing he needed was a permanent entanglement with a notorious Thorne.
Empty glass dangling from one hand, Pen slumped against the wall. The brandy had restored some color to her cheeks.
“It isn’t a coincidence, is it?” Pen’s voice was flat. The maid slipped from the room.
“No.”
“Why are you here, Cam?”
Like a coward, he reached for the brandy bottle and refilled his glass. And hers. “Peter sent me. He was worried about you after Lady Bradford passed away.” He paused. “I’m sorry about that.”
Something that might have been grief flashed in the remarkable black eyes. She’d learned to guard her thoughts.
“Thank you.” A hint of warmth entered her voice. “I miss her. She was excellent company.”
As a boy, Cam had met Isabel, Lady Bradford. She’d possessed a vast fortune, and after a short, disastrous marriage, no interest in a second husband. Cam had liked her. She’d been eccentric and funny and opinionated. But nobody would consider her a suitable companion for an impressionable girl.
“Pen, I’ve got sad news.” His gut cramped with regret and pity. Pen loved her brother dearly. “I’m so sorry, but Peter died a month ago in Calais.”
Pen sucked in a breath. Her eyes went blank. What color she’d regained faded to ash.
Curse him, he was a bumbling idiot. He should have broken the news more gently.
Cam sat beside her on the bench, curling his arm around her shoulders. She was as stiff as a corpse. He firmed his grip, worried at her rigidity.
“Pen?” He hadn’t thought about her seriously in years, except as the woman with the temerity to refuse him. This enforced intimacy revived older, sweeter memories of comforting her as a child. “Pen? Speak to me.”
Slowly, she turned, blinking as though waking from bad dreams. “I was meeting him in Paris.” Her voice was thready and raw. He wished he could do something to help instead of feeling so confounded helpless. “That’s why I’m traveling at this ridiculous time of year.” She sucked in a breath as if she needed to make a conscious choice to take in air. “What happened?”
“He collapsed on the quay.”
“Oh, dear God.” She started to tremble. “I didn’t know he was ill. He should have told me.”
“You know Peter.”
“He wouldn’t want to burden anyone.” Tears thickened her voice as her unnatural composure cracked.
“He was a brave man.” Peter might have been a numbskull in worldly terms, but at heart, he was as true as an oak tree. Once Cam had thought much the same of Pen.
“Yes.”
Cam shifted closer. His heart ached with sorrow for her. She’d hardly come to terms with shooting a man. Now she faced the loss of a beloved brother.
She wriggled free. “Please—”
As he stood, he stifled a pang that she rejected his sympathy. He had no right to touch her. And given his unwilling attraction, it was better for both of them if he didn’t. “What can I do?”
Usually he knew how to handle any situation. Not in this case. Not with this woman so familiar, yet essentially a stranger.
The glassy look in her eyes made him wonder if she saw anything. His gut knotted when he saw how bravely she battled to dam her tears.
“Cam, can you please leave me alone?” Her hands twisted in her lap.
He shouldn’t be hurt. Clearly she was distraught. But as a little girl, she’d always turned to him with her troubles. “I can’t abandon you.”
She shook her head and her voice cracked. “Just a little privacy, for pity’s sake.”
Inwardly he flinched, although he retained his cool exterior. “Of course.”
He turned to go, before recalling that he had more to tell her. He caught her curling up against the wall as if shutting the world away. The impulse rose to haul her into his arms. He beat it back. She’d made it clear that he was the last man she wanted to touch her. “Pen, there’s something else.”
She didn’t glance up, but her hands stiffened into talons in the dark blue skirt over her upraised knees. “Not now.”
“I must.” He felt like the world’s biggest bastard. For once, not just because of the doubt surrounding his parentage. He straightened as if facing a dangerous foe. “Peter asked me to fetch you back to England.”
“I don’t need an escort.” Her voice was lackluster as she stared blindly at the shutters.
Sarcasm tinged his response. “That was apparent when I arrived.”
The tilt of her chin lacked defiance. “That’s never happened before.”
Any fool could see that she was near breaking. “I just wanted to say that we’ll go on together.”
He knew he’d said the wrong thing the moment the words left his mouth. Her eyes flashed with anger. It was an improvement on dumb grief. “Still giving orders, I see, Your Grace.”
“Don’t cross me on this, Pen,” he said steadily.
She cast him a look of pure dislike. “Go away, Cam.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_b6ff0e3e-9b3d-54a7-8733-d2e4170f5c23)
The problem with small inns in the back of beyond was that one had a devil of a job finding somewhere private to observe comings and goings. Particularly during an ice storm of Biblical proportions.
Even after weeks of rough lodgings, this shabby inn was the worst Cam had encountered. He was reluctant to intrude upon Pen’s grief. But nor did he want to sit outside in the snow, turning into an icicle. He couldn’t retreat upstairs to his room for fear that the bandits might return. The villagers had rallied, but he couldn’t entrust Pen’s safety to people he didn’t know.
Now he roamed the rooms like a lost dog, hungry and cold and unaccountably depressed by his reaction to Pen. And by her unenthusiastic reaction to him.
When she finally appeared, Cam was in the kitchen, suffering a glass of the pungent local red. The landlord’s wife cooked dinner and the savory smell made Cam’s stomach grumble. Confounding malefactors gave a man a powerful appetite.
“Good evening, Pen,” he said evenly, standing. “Would you like some wine?”
“Perhaps later,” she said without venturing inside.
She’d tucked her torn bodice into the neck of her shift. It reminded him, should he need reminding, that she’d faced down violence. It also reminded him, sod it, of her sweetly curved body. This continual, itching awareness of Penelope Thorne was tiresome. It wasn’t the response he’d expected—or wanted. “Are you looking for me?”
“I want Maria. I’d like to wash and change.” Her tone was almost as frigid as the weather.
“If you aren’t using the taproom, let’s bring our guardians inside for a meal. It’s a perishing night.”
“Noblesse oblige, Cam?”
He tried not to prickle under her mockery. Care for those who served him was bred into him. “If you wish to put it like that.”
“Poverina, poverina.” Their landlady abandoned the stove and bustled forward to place her arms around Pen. Pen sagged against her substantial bosom and Cam caught unguarded vulnerability in her expression.
No wonder she’d skulked in the doorway. She’d made a valiant effort to hide her grief, but he immediately saw her red eyes and spiky eyelashes. While he’d cursed the inconvenience, she’d been crying her heart out. He felt like a rat.
He watched, admiring her strength, as she gathered herself and straightened, towering over the dumpy, gray-haired woman. Their landlady gently led Pen to the table. Within moments a glass of wine and a bowl of steaming soup sat before her.
“Grazie.” Pen’s thanks were husky. She stared at the meal as if expecting poison.
“Eat it while it’s hot.” Cam cut her a slice from the hearty loaf in the center of the table.
Pen dipped her spoon in but nothing more. “Isn’t eating in the kitchen beneath the superb Camden Rothermere?”
“Stop trying to skewer me. You’re giving me indigestion.” Despite her bristling hostility, he touched her hand. The contact shivered through him, even as he told himself he offered comfort. “Eat, Pen. It will work out.”
“To your advantage, you think.”
Silence fell, thick with animosity. Such a pity. He and Pen had always got along famously. Until he’d proposed.
“I’m sorry about Peter,” he said quietly. He spoke in English to create some privacy. Around them, the business of the inn continued with maids carrying trays to the taproom.
“So am I.” She didn’t glance up, but her tone was less confrontational. “Thank you for saving me.”
He didn’t want gratitude, although God knew what he did want. “Any man would do the same,” he said uncomfortably.
“Noblesse oblige again?”
He didn’t respond. Instead he cut himself more bread. “Peter thought you were in trouble. From what I saw today, he was right.”
“You must have cursed him for involving you. Seeking out an old friend’s wayward sister wasn’t on your agenda. Especially when we didn’t part under the best circumstances.”
Just like Pen to refer so bravely to their last awkward meeting. Cam sipped his wine and decided to be equally frank. “You needn’t have run away. I had no intention of pestering you.”
Color tinged her cheeks and to his relief, she ate a little, if only to avoid his gaze. “I wasn’t running from you. I was running from my mother.”
Ah. He should have guessed. “She bullied you?”
Pen’s laugh was acerbic. “Into the ground. She even told my father to beat me until I agreed to marry you.”
He should have approached Pen before seeking her father’s permission. But in his arrogance, it had never occurred to him that she’d refuse. “Hell, Pen, did he?”
“Of course not.” For one poignant moment, they shared a knowing glance like the friends they’d once been. “Can you see my father raising a hand to me?”
The late Lord Wilmott had been a weak man who had avoided his shrewish wife. “No. He’d scuttle up to London and hide in his club.”
“He went to ground with his latest mistress. Mamma was not pleased.”
“I’m sure.” Just as he was sure that Lady Wilmott would take that displeasure out on her daughter. “So your aunt’s offer arrived at the right moment.”
“I’d always wanted to travel and I was rather dreading my season.”
He wondered why. “You would have been the toast of London.”
“I doubt it.” Her lips twisted in wry denial. “The consensus in the county was that I was too headstrong for my own good. I can’t imagine that the London beaux would have differed.” She paused before he could protest. “I had no idea that I’d wounded your vanity so badly.”
He shrugged, resenting the effort it took to speak lightly. “I daresay the experience was good for my soul.”
Her expression didn’t ease. “I’m sorry, Cam.”
“You’re not sorry you said no.” He should drop this subject. Harping upon her refusal smacked of injured pride.
“It’s a long time ago,” she said softly. That was something new in her. The Pen he’d known would have met that incendiary remark head on. She bent to her soup again and ate with more relish.
“Will you fight me on returning to England?” he asked once she’d emptied the bowl.
He was pleased that she didn’t look nearly so defeated. He hated to see her proud spirit cowed. “Do you want me to?”
He frowned. “However my high-handedness annoys you, I gave Peter my word that I’d take you back.”
“Peter wasn’t my keeper.”
Although you need one. “Perhaps not, but he loved you and wanted to see you settled.”
The bitter laugh reminded him of the day he’d proposed. “With a husband and children, no doubt.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” Cam asked sharply.
“It would be wrong for me. I’ll never marry.”
She sounded so certain. And why shouldn’t she? She’d established a life she liked, doing exactly what she liked with whom she liked. He’d almost applaud her audacity. Except that illogically, her impudence made him want to punch something. Preferably one of her damned cicisbei.
She cast him an assessing glance. “I’m well past my majority and as I have neither husband nor father to compel me, I’m a free agent.”
He kept his voice even. “I intend to honor my promise.”
The dangerous glint in her black eyes was familiar. “By hitting me over the head and tying me up?”
“If necessary,” he said in a hard voice. Although God knows what he’d do if she refused to cooperate.
Her body sagged and he saw again the grief-stricken girl who had come into the kitchen. “It won’t be necessary.”
A mixture of surprise and pity made him set his glass down so roughly that wine sloshed onto the pine table. “What the hell?”
Faint amusement curved her lips. Those damnably kissable lips. “You’re easier to tease than you once were, Cam.”
“Why, you—”
She pushed back the rickety wooden chair and stood. In spite of her smile, sorrow dulled her eyes. “Peter and I were meeting in Paris to discuss Aunt Isabel’s will. He was to be my legal representative in London. Now I must represent myself. You have my word I’m going home. But if we travel together, people will gossip.”
Even before meeting this disturbingly attractive version of Penelope Thorne, he’d devised a strategy. “We’ll avoid the cities until we reach my yacht at Genoa.”
“Genoa? That means retracing my steps.”
“Be damned if I’m crossing the Alps in February, Pen. We’re heading south.”
“I can head south on my own.”
He was tempted to agree, if only to escape this attraction that had him counting her every breath. Some corner of his mind kept exclaiming in astonishment, But this is Pen Thorne! With her untidy plaits and her muddy dresses and her skinned knees. How can Pen Thorne throw me into such a lather? “You’ll run into trouble. You were careless to set off with only that spineless coachman as escort.”
Her eyes turned to black ice. “I don’t owe you excuses or explanations.” She turned to go. “I wish you good evening, Your Grace.”
He surged to his feet. “Wait.”
He caught her arm. When she was younger, he’d touched her a thousand times. Still, her soft warmth shuddered through him. Dear God, this was a catastrophe. He struggled to bring Lady Marianne’s face to mind, but instead of her cool beauty, all he saw was gypsy-dark hair and eyes flashing insolence.
She stopped. “Let me go, Cam.”
“Do I have your word that you won’t disappear into the night?”
She jerked her arm and he released her, if only because touching her threatened his precarious control. “The snow has closed the roads north. I wouldn’t be surprised if the roads south are impassable too.”
“So we’re trapped.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Exactly, Your Grace.” Drawing her cape around her like an ermine cloak, Pen marched out, spine straight and hips swaying with a sinuous impertinence that set his heart cartwheeling.
Damn her.
Chapter Four (#ulink_4b32e0f6-8c71-51b5-8861-a60046598933)
Oldhaven House, London, February 1828
Harry Thorne took one last puff on his cheroot and tossed it with a contemptuous flick into the bushes lining the terrace. He hadn’t enjoyed it, although smoking was the craze for the young bucks he ran with.
Just lately he didn’t enjoy much. The malaise had set in last month after his older brother Peter’s death. The exciting life that a fellow of twenty-three with no responsibilities led in the capital had lost all savor.
Guilt added to his depressed spirits. Hell, if he’d known the truth about Peter’s troubles, he’d have rushed to his brother’s side. But Peter had kept his difficulties to himself. Still, it was a damned bitter pill to swallow that his brother had breathed his last, alone in a foreign country, and Harry hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye.
Harry wandered away from the ballroom into the dark garden. The violins scratching out the latest waltz faded until the music was a whisper.
Somewhere out here Lady Vera Standish waited, finally ready, if he read the signals, to surrender her plump prettiness. She’d challenged him to find her. After months of dogged pursuit, he damn well hoped she wasn’t trying too hard to hide.
Except even the prospect of exploring Lady Vera’s much admired, and much caressed charms didn’t dispel his megrims. He reached the garden wall, well away from the house. When he heard a rustle, he turned, struggling to muster a flicker of excitement.
Then a sound he didn’t expect. A sniff and a muffled sob.
Not Lady Vera.
He retreated to grant some privacy to whoever huddled in the bushes.
Another sniff. Another choked sob.
He took a couple of steps down the white gravel path. If someone cried out here alone, it was none of his damned business. If he delayed, Vera Standish would turn to some other swain. She wasn’t noted for her patience.
His shoe scraped across a rock. Silence descended. Whoever was hiding now knew that she wasn’t alone.
Harry recognized that he was incapable of leaving someone to suffer. As a rake and roué, he was a rank failure. With a sigh, he turned toward the holly-smothered alcove. As he battled through the prickly greenery, he couldn’t help thinking of the prince struggling through thorns toward Sleeping Beauty.
“Please don’t come any closer,” a soft, broken voice whispered from mere feet away.
“Too late,” he muttered, bursting through the hedge into an enclosed hollow. His eyes had adjusted and he easily made out the girl in a light-colored gown cowering against the wooden seat.
“Go away.” Although he couldn’t see her face, she sounded very young. Her lace handkerchief twisted in her hands.
“Are you all right?” He ventured closer and she pressed back.
“Perfectly.”
There. He’d asked. She was fine. He could now find Lady Vera. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.” Her quaking voice proclaimed her a liar.
“You sound like you are.”
“It’s a bad cold,” she said stiffly.
“You shouldn’t be sitting outside, then.”
“And you shouldn’t be talking to strange women without an introduction.”
The show of spirit intrigued him. He could make out very little apart from her slenderness and the constant tugging at the handkerchief.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked with a hint of snap.
He hid a smile. “Strange.”
She stood. The full moon chose that moment to emerge from behind a cloud, granting his first glimpse of his damsel in distress.
He felt like someone had punched him in the gut.
How in hell had he missed her before this? Had he been so fixated on the pinchbeck of Vera Standish when somewhere in that ballroom waited pure gold?
“I’m not strange.” She surveyed him with wide eyes in a delicate face under a pile of thick golden hair. “I’m beginning to think you might be.”
His damsel was breathtakingly lovely. “Why the devil are you sitting out here all alone?” he asked roughly. “You don’t know who might come upon you.”
Tentative mischief lit her expression. He’d been right to suspect liveliness beneath her distress. “Well, you did.”
He should say something rakish. But when he looked at her, his heart stopped. She was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Who on earth was she? Damn it, he’d been out in society since leaving university and he had a reputation as a dog with the ladies. But this girl stole his ability to do more than mumble and act the looby. He managed a smile, quite a feat when his heart performed somersaults in his chest. “I’m generally accounted quite benign.”
She stared at him as if she’d never seen a man. “I should go.”
He chanced a step nearer and felt a surge of triumph when she didn’t retreat, although even in the uncertain light, he saw her wariness. Not quite as innocent as all that, apparently. “You don’t want to go back into the ballroom with red eyes.”
“Nobody would notice.”
His laugh was short. “This is your first season, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then take advice from someone older and wiser—the old tabbies notice everything. And they pass it on. If you don’t want the world to know that you’ve been crying, you’ll enter that room utterly composed.”
Her lush lips turned down. “I don’t like London.”
“You will.”
Daringly he reached for one of her gloved hands. She started, but even through two layers of fabric, he felt her warmth. The urge to strip away both gloves and test the softness of her skin beat like a war drum in his head. But one false move and she’d scarper for the ballroom, red eyes or not.
“I’m not so green that I don’t know a stranger shouldn’t hold a lady’s hand,” she said drily.
“Yes, remiss of you not to tell me your name.”
To his surprise, she laughed. He was glad to see her regain her cheerfulness. “It’s better that you don’t know who I am.”
“Won’t you tell me why you’re crying?”
She raised shining eyes to his and he suffered another blow from an invisible assailant. “You’ve just told me I can’t trust anyone.”
Hoist by his own petard. “You can trust me.”
An unimpressed look crossed her face. “I’m sure every untrustworthy person in the world says that.”
Good Lord, she was sweet. “Where does that leave us?”
“With plans to return to the ballroom?”
“Are you deserting me?”
Another faint smile. He had a delicious sense that she tested her power. “Yes.”
He fleetingly wondered whether perhaps he’d dipped too deeply into the punch. But when her smile widened and his heart lurched like a drunken sailor, he recognized that this intoxication reached far beyond lowly alcohol’s power. “Cruel beauty.”
“How can I be cruel when you’ve been so very kind?”
He groaned. “That makes me sound like an aged uncle.”
This time when she tried to withdraw, he let her. “Nevertheless, it’s true.”
“Will you save me a dance?”
Her poise revived with every second. “My card is full.”
“What about tomorrow night?”
“We mightn’t be at the same party.”
It was his turn to smile. “Oh, that we will, my mysterious miss.”
The moonlight was bright enough to reveal the flash of unhappiness that crossed her face. “There’s no point flirting with me.”
“There’s every point.”
She shook her head and he wished he believed that she teased him. “I’m spoken for.”
Spoken for? “You’re not married?”
Thick sheets of lead coated the heart that had been lighter than air. Something had happened to him tonight in this garden, something momentous.
“Not yet.”
Not yet? What the hell did that mean?
Before he could question her, she turned and hared off through an opening in the hedge that he’d missed. And bugger it, he still didn’t know her name.
Something in him insisted that she’d seen him as clearly as he’d seen her. That she’d felt the immediate connection. Stronger than attraction. Affinity, and an odd recognition, as though their encounter was preordained.
He sighed and sank onto the seat. Could a man’s world change in an instant?
When Harry rejoined the party, he immediately located the girl. He’d wondered whether to blame the moonlight for his enchantment. Now that he saw her clearly, she still took his breath away. Candlelight revealed details that he’d missed. The precise shade of her gold hair. The creamy skin. The pink flush on her cheeks.
A pink flush that heightened when she cast one nervous glance to where he stood near the doors.
Satisfaction that she’d sought him out flooded him. His eyes followed her as she twirled around the room, graceful as a flying bird in her white dress. She was dancing with the Marquess of Leath. Could his rival be James Fairbrother? The man was filthy rich and from a powerful family.
Across the crowded room, Lady Vera scowled at him as if she’d like to skin him alive. He shrugged and sent her a regretful smile. How could he explain that after a chance meeting, he was no longer the same man?
“Who is that pretty girl with Leath?” he asked with studied nonchalance when his friend Beswick sidled up.
Beswick took a few moments to locate her. The man must be blind. She outshone every woman here the way the sun outshone the moon. “The blonde?”
The goddess. “Yes.”
“That’s Sophie Fairbrother.” Beswick regarded him in disbelief. “That’s setting your sights too high for a penniless younger son with no prospects, chum. She’s Leath’s sister. Word is that she’s promised to Desborough, although nothing official’s been announced.”
Another punch in the guts. Was that why his beauty had been crying? Her family forced her into an unwanted match? “Earl Desborough?”
Beswick laughed derisively. “Is there another? He and Leath are political pals and this will unite the two great fortunes. The chit comes with a fat dowry. Surprised you haven’t heard talk of her.”
“Does she love Desborough?” Harry asked, then cursed himself for the betraying question.
Another scoffing laugh from Beswick. “Who cares when she brings all that gold? Good God, I’d make a play for her myself if Leath didn’t know that my pockets are to let. Wish he’d forget about fortune hunters and concentrate on his spat with Sedgemoor.”
Without shifting his attention from Sophie Fairbrother, Harry asked, “What spat?”
“Have you been living under a rock?”
Harry cast his friend a look of cordial dislike. “No, just attending Peter’s funeral and helping Elias settle into his role as the new Lord Wilmott.”
Dismay filled Beswick’s good-natured face. “Beg pardon, old man. I forgot. Blame it on my frustration at seeing such a fat pigeon fly to someone who already has a full dovecote.”
Reluctantly Harry smiled. Beswick’s financial woes were long-standing. “Buck up, Beswick. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“Especially if you can’t afford candles,” his friend replied glumly. “You must have heard about Richard Harmsworth and Sedgemoor exposing Neville Fairbrother, Leath’s uncle, as a thief? Fairbrother shot himself before charges were laid, but the investigation has filled the papers. Jonas Merrick gathered most of the evidence—as you’d expect with his contacts. That man knows before a mouse farts in the wainscoting, I vow.”
Perhaps Harry had been living under a rock. “The uncle’s doings have tainted all the Fairbrothers?”
“Pretty much. The word is that Leath hopes this spectacular marriage will restore the family prestige.”
“So she’s a sacrificial lamb.” Poor Sophie. The dance finished and her brother returned her to a group of grandees including, he noticed, Desborough.
“Sacrificial virgin, more like.” Beswick’s voice lowered. “Desborough’s a lucky dog. Brass doesn’t usually come in such an appealing package.”
“Watch your mouth, Beswick,” Harry snarled.
Even without looking, Harry knew his friend regarded him like he was going mad. The way he felt, perhaps his friend was right. “Steady on, man. She’s a pretty girl who’s completely out of reach. We’ve admired plenty of those in our time.”
The Thornes were inclined to sudden, but lasting passions. Sophie Fairbrother had no idea what she’d sparked tonight. As if she sensed his thoughts, Sophie looked up sharply and immediately found him. Even across the room, he saw the hectic color in her alabaster cheeks. Dear Lord, she was a peach.
Harry held her eyes. He meant to make her his. Let the rest of the world go hang.
Chapter Five (#ulink_97b57bc0-dee0-5809-9e76-6856b3ab94e6)
Val d’Aosta, February 1828
Very carefully, Pen inched open the door from her chamber on the upper floor. Despite exhaustion, roiling turmoil had stopped her sleeping. Grief for Peter. Anger that he hadn’t confided in her about his illness. Resentment at Cam’s arrogance. Impatience with herself for finding Cam as compelling as ever, even when she burned to crown him with the nearest stewpot.
Just seeing Cam confirmed that agonizing truth. She hated to admit that she was still that most pathetic creature, the lovelorn female yearning after a man who would never love her back.
Since refusing his proposal, she’d done her damnedest to forget Camden Rothermere. Her aunt had led an active and interesting life, mixing with people who found English manners too restrictive. In the past nine years, Pen had met poets and painters and musicians, wandering aristocrats and antiquarians, travelers and scientists.
She’d learned that her idiosyncratic character, too individual to meet approval at home, appealed to those who appreciated intelligence and spirit. Her broken heart had found some small solace in the admiration of brilliant, sophisticated men. Cam didn’t want her, but that didn’t mean she was undesirable.
Occasionally she’d wondered if someone might usurp Cam’s place in her affections. But to her despair, she was a true Thorne. She loved once and she loved deeply.
Which meant she couldn’t bear to spend the next weeks cooped up with Cam. Last night, she’d told Giuseppe and Maria to be waiting at five, whatever the weather. Luckily, the storm had died overnight and when she checked out her narrow bedroom window, the road from the village looked passable. Even if it wasn’t, she’d damn well walk rather than suffer Cam’s company all the way back to England.
Now that Peter wouldn’t meet her in Paris—she stifled a pang, she’d grieve once she was out of this pickle—she’d go south as Cam suggested. Then she’d make her way to London.
The corridor outside her room was black as a cave in Hades. She edged forward. Once she made it downstairs and outside to the stables, she was on her way.
“Going somewhere?”
She jumped and dropped her bag to the wooden floor. Gasping, she whirled toward the shadows near the door. “You scared me.”
“Not enough, apparently,” Cam said drily.
She ignored the remark. “What are you doing outside my room?”
“What are you doing dressed for travel?”
“How do you know I’m dressed for travel?”
“Aren’t you?” he asked coolly. “Shall we continue this discussion in private?”
“We have nothing to say to each other,” she said crisply, marching past.
“After so long? You wound me.” He caught her arm and bustled her into her room.
“You have no right.” She struggled to break free. He’d touched her too often since he’d saved her. And every time he set her pulse racing.
“Perhaps not. Will you stay and listen?”
“You’re such a bully,” she said sullenly.
“Sticks and stones. Do I release you?”
She wanted to kick him. “Yes.”
Cam let her go and moved past. He paused before the window, his tall, lean shape silhouetted against the light reflected from the snow outside. After some clicks and scrapes, the candle on her nightstand bloomed into light.
“I hate to mention your dignity again, but isn’t it degrading for a duke of the realm to sleep across a lady’s threshold like a servant?” she asked with pointed sweetness.
He glanced up with a faint smile. Despite her irritation, her heart lurched. How she wished he wasn’t so beautiful with his narrow, intense face and his glinting green eyes and his level dark brows. After nearly ten years without him, he still dazzled her. It just wasn’t fair.
“I didn’t have to prostrate myself on your doorstep.” He paused. “Giuseppe told me your plans.”
Blast Giuseppe and his flapping gums.
She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Cam laughed. “You should give him his marching orders. He’s worse than useless.”
“Perhaps you should offer him a place in your household,” she asked with more of that dangerous sweetness.
“Not on your life. I value loyalty too much to employ that weasel. Pen, do you really want me trailing you all the way back to Dover?”
He made her sound absurd. “You’d do that?”
“I would.”
Of course he would. He’d accepted the obligation of her safety and he wouldn’t relinquish the burden short of death. Cam’s principles were a deuced nuisance. She released a long-suffering sigh. “Were you always this annoying?”
“Probably.” He glanced around. “Shall we go?”
“Now?”
He lifted the candle. “Your carriage awaits. I paid the landlord last night.”
“What about your carriage?”
“I rode.”
Aghast, she stared at him. “Through the snow?”
“Through the snow.” He paused. “You’ve put me to a deal of trouble, Pen.”
Her lips tightened even as guilt pricked her. It had been a horrific winter. He’d faced weeks of peril on her behalf. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“Perhaps not, but set aside your stubbornness and admit that you’ll be better off with a man to ease your way.”
Patronizing swine. She left the bedroom and gingerly descended the insecure staircase, careful not to grip the makeshift banister too hard. “What a typically male thing to say.”
“Which makes it no less true.” His voice warmed a fraction. She wished to heaven she wasn’t so attuned to every nuance. She wished to heaven she’d never met him again.
On the ground floor she faced Cam, illuminated in candlelight at the top of the stairs. God save her, could he look any more appealing? She bit back a bitter laugh.
If he’d suborned her coachman, she didn’t have much choice about going with him. Still, she didn’t like to admit defeat any more than His Grace, the Duke of Sedgemoor. “We need to set some rules.”
He cocked his eyebrow with familiar mockery as he descended, carrying her bag. “That’s not like you, Pen. You usually prefer everything free and easy.”
Ouch. “Just because I didn’t settle into middle age before I hit twenty doesn’t make me a complete flibbertigibbet. I’ve traveled for years without major problems.”
“Yesterday was a close call.”
She wished he hadn’t arrived to find her at such a disadvantage. On the other hand, without his intervention, she doubted that she’d be here this morning. “Are you going to dine out on that rescue all the way to England?”
“You’ve got a nasty tongue, my girl.” He sounded like he appreciated her barbed responses.
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. They weren’t falling into the habit of private little messages. They weren’t going to act like intimate friends. She glared. “I’ve developed many unfortunate habits,” she said flatly. “Are we going?”
“Your eagerness for my company fills my heart with elation.”
“Give yourself a day or so in a carriage with me and see if you feel the same,” she snapped and flounced outside to where the perfidious Giuseppe waited in the driver’s seat. A high-bred bay gelding was tied to the back of the coach. The snow might have stopped, but it was bitterly cold. Pen hoped Giuseppe froze.
When Cam entered the vehicle, she was bundled under fur throws with Maria beside her. The lamps inside were lit. He settled with his back toward the horses. Again, the perfect gentleman.
He banged on the ceiling to tell Giuseppe to go. Pen bit back a snide comment about him taking charge. Even as a small boy, Cam had been inclined to command. Seven years as Duke of Sedgemoor had only fortified his dictatorial tendencies. If she bridled at every order, she’d be a wreck before they reached the foot of this mountain, let alone England.
Maria curled into the corner and closed her eyes. Cam shot the girl a disapproving glance. Servants at Fentonwyck displaying such lèse-majesté would be dismissed without a character. Pen stifled the impulse to justify herself. In Maria’s defense, Pen saw little point making the girl sit up when she had nothing constructive to do.
Already Cam threatened to become a tyrant. If he was hers, she’d bring him down a few pegs. But to her everlasting regret, he’d never be hers.
“Does your maid speak English?” he asked once they were on their way.
“No.” The mountain road was bumpy. Pen grabbed the leather strap against the jolting.
“Good.” He extended his closed hand. “Here.”
Automatically she reached for what he offered. He dropped something small and round and warm onto her palm. She looked down. It was the Sedgemoor signet ring, carved with two rearing unicorns, their horns crossed to make an X.
Shocked, she looked up. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a loan.”
Her fingers closed around the ring. For centuries, it had been the tangible symbol of Rothermere power. “Why?”
To her surprise, he looked uncomfortable. He hadn’t looked at all awkward when he’d pushed her around. “Wear it on your ring finger. I don’t imagine anyone will recognize us and we’ll use false names. But we’ll attract less attention if people think we’re married.”
Feeling sick, she stared at the gold ring gleaming in the lamplight. It taunted her with the cruel reality that she’d never be his bride. “How … practical.”
He heard her implied criticism. His lips tightened. “You know the consequences if we’re discovered.” His tone bit. “It’s not as if you want to marry me.”
She sighed, depressed that he held a grudge when they both knew she’d done him a favor by refusing him. “Cam, you can’t still be angry about the proposal. That makes no sense. Especially when now we’ve met again, you must see that I’d make the worst wife in the world.”
His jaw hardened. “Don’t flatter yourself, Pen. I got over any youthful pique years ago.”
She wasn’t convinced, although it seemed out of character for Cam to be such a poor loser. Mostly he’d won their various games, but if he hadn’t, he’d taken defeat in good spirit.
“Well, stop harking back to it,” she snapped.
“I’m offering you a ring. I’m inevitably reminded of the last time I did that.”
Her heart lurched with futile longing. If he’d offered love along with the ring, they’d have been married nearly a decade. Gracelessly she shoved the ring onto her finger. “Life was easier when I traveled alone.”
“Stow it, Pen. We’re together until we reach home soil. You’re always cranky when you lose.” He settled into his seat, folding his arms across his powerful chest. His black superfine coat was so beautifully cut, it didn’t strain against the movement. The boy she’d known had been quick and strong, but nine years had turned Cam into a man ready to take on the world and win.
“I haven’t lost,” she said coolly. “I’ve retired to regroup.”
More displeasure blasted her way. He’d perfected the crushing effect of his stare since their last meeting. “Don’t cross me on this, Pen. I promised Peter I’d get you to England.”
She strove to remain uncrushed. “What happens when we arrive? Will you dog my footsteps until I perish of old age? Or irritation, which is more likely.”
His smile held no amusement. “Once you’re safely home, as far as I’m concerned, you can go to the devil.”
Chapter Six (#ulink_dfed4153-0b6b-5c1e-883c-9bee7d36b2ca)
Chetwell House, London, February 1828
Harry marked the moment that Sophie slipped from the crowded ballroom. Hardly surprising when he’d observed her every move.
All week, he’d waited impatiently to catch her alone. The burning need to speak about something more significant than the weather had built until it threatened to explode.
The night they’d met, he’d obtained a formal introduction. He’d managed a country dance and a schottische with her since—quite a feat when she rapidly became the toast of London. During their dances, he’d confined himself to platitudes. He’d had to be satisfied with touching her hand and delighting in the shy attraction glittering in her blue eyes.
Tonight, neither the watchful marquess nor Lord Desborough attended. Under other circumstances, Harry might admire Leath’s protectiveness. In worldly terms, an undistinguished younger son from a ramshackle family was no fit match for the Marquess of Leath’s sister. But surely Sophie should marry a man who adored her, rather than one who treated her as Desborough did, like a pretty pet to fuss over or ignore at his whim.
Harry didn’t move in Desborough’s exalted circles. But he had eyes and a brain, however rarely he’d exerted it. While he discerned no dislike between Sophie and the man touted as her husband, he discerned no genuine attraction either.
Damn it, she deserved better.
Whether she deserved Harry Thorne, well, that was her choice.
Harry tracked Sophie into the gallery. The long room faced the gardens with doors open onto the terrace. Fortunately, for February, it was a mild night, but even so, away from the crush, he shivered in the chill air. At the far end of the room, a couple he didn’t know bent their heads toward each other.
Sophie paused before a portrait of a bewigged, double-chinned gentleman. She looked beautiful tonight in rose silk and with pearls tangled in her upswept hair. Harry stopped a few feet away, waiting until the couple wandered into the garden without sparing him a glance.
“You followed me,” Sophie said, without turning.
What point prevaricating? “Yes.”
As he’d stalk a skittish animal, he edged closer. He stared at her vulnerable nape, wanting desperately to kiss her there. Wanting to kiss her everywhere.
It was too soon.
Still she didn’t glance back. “My brother warned me against you.”
Did the bastard, by God? “What did he say?” Harry kept his voice soft. He and Sophie might be alone, but they were still in public.
“That you’re a fortune hunter.”
He laughed dismissively. “You know I’m not interested in your money.” While he’d love to see her face, there was a delicious suspense in standing so near, catching the soft drift of her fragrance, flowers and beautiful girl.
“That’s what a fortune hunter would say.”
“Probably. But in my case it’s true.” He paused. “That wasn’t all he said.”
She shifted and spoke reluctantly. “He said your family was—”
“Shady?”
Finally she turned. She didn’t look annoyed or flustered. She looked curious. “After Uncle Neville’s villainy, our family can’t boast.”
He was impressed that she broached the scandal. Harry had always sensed that Sophie Fairbrother was made of stronger stuff than society suspected. Which meant that something more important than a petty disappointment had made her sob her heart out in the Oldhavens’ garden.
Despite his determination to remain within the bounds of propriety—just—he took her arm. She gasped in surprise without pulling away. Beneath his touch, her skin was smooth and cool. A bolt of heat sizzled through him, startling him with its power.
“If I drag you into a private room, will you scream?” he murmured.
He wasn’t sure what reaction he expected. Certainly not a soft giggle. “That depends on what you intend to do.”
For a beat, shock held him silent. She wasn’t afraid. Instead she looked interested and eager. Heaven help him. Clasping her slender arm and drowning in eyes as blue as a summer sky, he didn’t feel like a gentleman. He felt like a starving man presented with a table groaning under lashings of food.
“Not as much as I want to,” he admitted.
He whisked her behind the nearest door. The latch’s click sounded like thunder. His heart thudded with excitement and uneasiness. If they were discovered, there would be the devil to pay.
“This is dangerous.” His grip softened to a caress and instinct alone led his hand to her other arm. This room was as dark as a coalmine.
“It is. My brother is a famous shot.”
The warmth of her skin under his hands set him trembling. “For a few minutes alone with you, I’ll take any risk.”
“Will you think that when he puts a bullet into you?” In the quiet gloom, the rasp of her breathing was audible. She was more nervous than she pretended. That hint of vulnerability contained Harry’s rocketing desire as nothing else could.
“Even then, it’s worth it.”
“Such a flatterer.”
He knew he deserved the mockery, but he couldn’t like it. How to explain that this time everything was different? Sophie wasn’t one of his women. She was the woman.
“I’ll be missed if I stay too long.”
He smiled. “That sounds promising.”
“How so?”
“That you mean to stay at all.”
She offered no coy protests. The more he saw of her, the more he liked her. “Are you a fortune hunter?”
He breathed unsteadily too. Not because of fear, but because her nearness set his heart galloping like a wild horse across the moors. Her scent tinged the air. Something fresh like running water. “What do you think?”
“I think I’ve spent far too long thinking about you.”
Triumph flooded him. He exhaled and cupped her face, feeling her silky cheeks beneath his palms. “I can’t stop thinking about you either. Are you going to marry Desborough?”
She started, but didn’t move away. “My brother wants me to.”
“Do you?”
“It’s a good match,” she said unenthusiastically.
He released her. “So good it makes you hide away and cry.”
“That wasn’t—”
“Don’t lie, Sophie. Not to me.”
“You can’t call me Sophie.”
He laughed softly. “I can’t address the woman who shares my cupboard by her title. It’s a rule of society.”
Her gurgle of amusement made his blood fizz with happiness. “You don’t strike me as a man who follows rules, Mr. Thorne.”
The need to kiss her surged, but despite her unexpected if hesitant cooperation, he didn’t want to frighten her away. “You’ve listened to too much gossip. And my name is Harry.”
The pause that followed vibrated with significance.
“Harry …” she breathed, turning his prosaic name into music.
His heart crashed against his ribs. Dear God, he was in trouble. “Lovely, lovely Sophie,” he whispered and despite the risk of taking everything too far too fast, he curled his arms around her.
“Oh!” She jerked from the brush of his lips.
He set her free and withdrew as far as the cupboard allowed. “Forgive me.”
To his astonishment, she caught his shirt. “You took me by surprise.”
“I had no right—”
“You’re a very chivalrous rake, Harry Thorne,” she said drily.
Her tone piqued his curiosity. Ignoring common sense and self-preservation, not to mention the gentleman’s code, he placed his hand over hers. “Don’t you want me to be chivalrous?”
“Not right now.”
“You deserve better than a furtive courtship,” he said helplessly, even as his other hand snaked around her slender waist to arch her against him. “But since the day we met, I’ve dreamed of you.”
Her sigh conveyed wonder. “Really?”
His voice deepened into urgency. “I’ve dreamed of kissing you.”
And other things, but he couldn’t sully her innocence with his wanton fantasies.
“I’d like to make your dreams come true.” She leaned closer, her breasts grazing his chest. “Will you kiss me, Harry?”
“Sophie—” Her scent filled his head like wine, overwhelmed thought. His hand tightened around her waist.
“Don’t you want to?” she asked in a small voice.
“Of course I bloody want to,” he said roughly, then dragged in a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not acting the gentleman.”
This time her sigh was disgruntled. “You’re acting too much the gentleman.”
“Sweetheart—”
She interrupted before he pointed out that he cared for her reputation. After all, how convincing could any avowal sound when he embraced her in a cupboard in the middle of a ball?
“I don’t want to hear it.” Her voice softened. “Unless it’s ‘Kiss me, Sophie.’ “
Oh, hell. How could he resist? “Kiss me, Sophie.”
Harry lashed her to him and pressed his mouth to hers. Her lips trembled beneath his. Her fluttering uncertainty hinted that this was her first kiss. Tenderness stabbed at his heart.
Automatically he gentled, nipping and licking at her, until her breath hitched and she leaned closer. His tongue slid into her mouth, tasting her fully. Her flavor blazed through him like lightning.
The world beyond Sophie’s clumsy but ardent responses vanished. All Harry knew was her warmth and the way her tongue danced around his. Her broken moans. Her soft, quivering body pressed into his.
It took him longer than it should to realize that she’d stopped participating. He raised his head and struggled to see her through the darkness. “What—”
“Shh!” Her hands formed claws in his shirt. Now she trembled not with passion, but with terror.
There were voices outside. Damn. His arms tightened and he drew Sophie against him. Anyone within a mile’s radius must hear his heart. He wasn’t frightened for himself but for her. Only a bloody fool would risk this encounter.
He strained to hear if the people outside mentioned the Marquess of Leath’s sister. They discussed supper arrangements. If Harry hadn’t been thickheaded with delight, he’d have recognized his hostess’s voice immediately. She seemed to be talking to her butler.
Fleetingly, he relaxed. Until he wondered if the butler needed supplies from this tiny storeroom.
In vibrating silence, Harry and Sophie clung together until the voices faded. Eventually he whispered in her ear. “I need to get you out of here.”
With a trust he didn’t deserve, she laid her cheek upon his chest. “I thought I’d die when I heard them.”
“I shouldn’t have brought you in here. But I’ve been desperate to see you, and your brother’s like a collie with a ewe lamb.”
“He’s terrified of fortune hunters spoiling his plans.”
“To be fair, that’s his duty.”
“But you’re not a fortune hunter.”
“I’m not.” He paused. “I’m not?”
“A fortune hunter wouldn’t hesitate to ruin me to force a marriage.”
Marriage? The word clanged through him like a great bell.
The malaise dogging his heels disappeared in Sophie’s company. The sight of her turned his day to brilliance. That left the choice of taking himself off and leaving her to the man her brother chose. Or ruining her. An idea which made every cell in his body revolt.
Or marriage.
“Harry?” she asked on a thread of sound. “What’s wrong?”
It was too early to mention lifelong commitment. Already she’d surrendered more than he’d hoped. His heart kicked as he remembered those wondrous kisses.
He eased his grip. “We’ve been here too long.”
“Yes.” Regret weighted her voice. “Will I … will I see you again?”
Despite the last fraught moments, he couldn’t contain a laugh. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I’m not experienced with flirtation.”
Another pang of painful tenderness. He wasn’t experienced with love. In this glorious new world, they were both innocents. “When can I meet you?”
“The park.” She sounded relieved. “I ride tomorrow morning.”
“With your brother?”
“He’s away this week.”
“I’ll find you.”
“I hope so.” He caught a quiver of uncertainty.
“I swear it,” he said.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
How he basked in hearing that, however difficult it made this parting. “I don’t want to let you go. But I must.”
He kissed her quickly. He meant the contact to be sweet and brief, but he found himself drowning again.
Luckily for failing willpower, she broke away and opened the door a crack. “Tomorrow,” she whispered, slipping outside.
“Tomorrow,” he confirmed, then waited in the dark while she shut the door with a soft snick. Right now he wasn’t fit for civilized company. He hoped Sophie was. He had a horrible feeling that she’d look mussed and thoroughly kissed.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_ff7437db-68e4-5577-b1dd-af63d508d3e5)
Fontana dei Monte, Italian Alps, February 1828
It was snowing again. As this purgatorial week proceeded, Pen began to think that the world contained only snow and ice and wind. And flea-ridden inns. And rude servants.
And men who tried to push her around.
Or more accurately, one man who pushed her around. His overbearing Grace, the Duke of Sedgemoor.
Pen and Cam traveled as Lord and Lady Pembridge, using the Sedgemoor heir’s courtesy title. She supposed that now they left the mountains behind, the inns would become busier. She and Cam would need to be more discreet than ever in case they met someone who knew them.
Their coach bumped its way into the tiny hillside village where they would spend the night—or rather where the man who had assigned himself lord and master had decreed they’d stay. Idly Pen wondered when she’d finally break. Would this be the day when she pushed Cam headfirst into one of the towering snow drifts lining what was optimistically termed a road?
Cam sat beside her now, staring out the window as if the acres of white formed a glorious vista considerably more appealing than his companion. They’d had a long day. Not that they’d covered much ground. It was discouraging how much time they took to traverse every mile. Cam had been right, much as she hated admitting it. Crossing the Alps in February had been an asinine plan.
Over the last days, the temperature inside the carriage had been colder than outside. In public, Cam might treat Pen with deference that set her teeth on edge, but their infrequent private conversations had been stilted and tinged with hostility.
The coach shuddered to a stop, jerking Maria awake on the seat opposite. Pen had developed enormous envy for her maid’s ability to sleep through anything. Strangely Maria had immediately accepted the news that her mistress and the duke traveled as a married couple.
Desperate to stretch her cramped legs, more desperate to escape the oppressive atmosphere, Pen opened the door and jumped out before Paolo, their new coachman, could help her. Despite herself, she glanced back at Cam, expecting the usual disapproval.
But the expression in his watchful green eyes troubled her. In another man, she’d interpret the gleam as reluctant interest. But Cam treated her as a troublesome obligation, not a woman he wanted. Still, that level gaze made her shiver like someone brushed an icy hand across bare skin.
After weeks of rough travel, Cam was no longer a polished specimen of British manhood. His linen was grubby, his clothes crumpled, his boots cloudy with dirt. And he looked tired. He pretended that he rose above human weakness, but the man in the carriage looked exhausted to the bone. She’d always thought his impossible pursuit of perfection made for a lonely life. Right now, he looked heartbreakingly alone.
She resented Cam’s bossiness. She resented, much good it did, his inability to love her. Even so, he’d undergone considerable trouble for her and she’d rewarded him with a fit of the sullens. Her tone was friendlier than usual. “Cam, are you coming inside?”
Paolo disappeared to secure rooms. Cam regarded her with familiar coolness. “Of course.”
He sounded assured and dismissive. Much as he’d sounded all week. She bit back a sigh. Their easy communication had gone forever. She should be glad. The last thing she needed was a reminder of what a wonderful companion Cam could be. But good sense was difficult when one was stuck with a grumpy nobleman on an endless road to perdition.
“Well, do it soon. I’m freezing.”
Grim humor lit his face as he left the carriage and extended his arm. “As you command, my lady.”
Reluctantly she laid her hand upon his forearm, disturbingly aware of the muscles beneath her gloved palm. His physical reality was a perpetual torment. Over the years, he’d faded in her memory to an over-idealized cipher. Real Cam was more complex, more powerful, and more compelling than any fantasy.
Paolo chose that moment to return, his round, good-natured face troubled. “Milord, milady, there is a question.”
Surprised, Pen turned to the man she’d learned to respect for his ability to make the best of unpromising circumstances. However arrogant Cam had been to dismiss the craven Giuseppe without her permission, he’d unearthed a treasure in Paolo. “What is it?”
“A storm has hit the inn and only one room is fit for sleeping.”
“That’s unacceptable,” Cam said sharply while the nightmare ramifications of Paolo’s news invaded Pen’s mind.
Paolo flinched at Cam’s displeasure—and looked understandably puzzled. He’d never shown any curiosity when his employers requested separate rooms. He probably attributed it to English eccentricity. But surely at a pinch, a married couple could share a bed.
A freezing February night with deteriorating weather counted as a pinch.
“We shall travel on,” Cam said coldly.
The prospect of driving further prompted even imperturbable Paolo to protest. “Signore, the next village is ten miles away, over the mountain. There will be heavy snow tonight.”
“With fresh horses—” Cam began in his “I won’t shift even for stampeding elephants” tone.
“Cam, we can’t go on. It’s dangerous.”
“Your courage fails?” He turned a supercilious expression upon her and Pen suppressed a shiver unrelated to the rapidly dropping temperature. “You were all set to drive single-handed across every glacier between here and Paris.”
Oh, how she itched to shove him into the snow. Deciding that convincing Cam would take too long, she spoke to Paolo. “If there’s only one room, we’ll take it. Thank you for your care.”
Paolo went pink with pleasure. “Grazie, milady.”
“Shall we go inside, madam?” Cam continued in an undertone, “I thought you’d be the last person to welcome tonight’s arrangements.”
She snatched her hand from his arm and cast him a fulminating glare. “It’s stupid to struggle on in the dark through an ice storm.”
“It’s stupid to share a room.”
“Perhaps you can sleep in the taproom,” she said sweetly.
“Perhaps you can,” he sniped back.
Fortunately the innkeeper arrived to greet his distinguished guests, rescuing Pen from divulging her opinion on that suggestion.
After a surprisingly good dinner in the taproom, Cam climbed the oak staircase to the single habitable chamber. So far, this establishment proved an advance on the other places they’d stayed.
Apart from that one impossible circumstance.
That one impossible bedroom.
Despite his threat to make Pen sleep in the public room, crammed with stranded travelers—Paolo had been right about the snowstorm—Cam had always intended her to have the bedroom.
Which left him at a loss.
He’d checked if the damaged rooms were as damaged as reported. They were. He’d tried to sleep in the taproom, but it was unbearably crowded and his failure to join his wife in comfort and privacy upstairs stirred curiosity that, even in this obscure hamlet, he wanted to discourage. English travelers attracted enough attention anyway. An English husband refusing to sleep with his beautiful wife became a little too remarkable.
The irony was that he’d cut off his right arm for the right to sleep in Pen’s bed. Desperately, he summoned thoughts of Lady Marianne Seaton. While he was yet to propose, his marked attentions had signaled his intentions to the lady, her family, and society. Nobody would be surprised when Cam returned to London and requested the Marquess of Baildon’s permission to marry his daughter.
But during this journey, Marianne became increasingly difficult to remember as more than a shadow. The only face in Cam’s mind was Pen’s.
Damn it all to hell.
And damn his protective urge. His fellow travelers looked exhausted, but villains might lurk among them. So here he was ascending the stairs. Expecting a scolding for his good intentions. Pen wouldn’t want him sharing her room. Even if he wasn’t the first man to enjoy that privilege.
He’d spent far too long stewing over her lovers. Surely he was better off not knowing details. But not knowing allowed imagination free rein. He loathed where his imagination roamed.
Outside the closed door, he inhaled deeply and reminded himself that he was a gentleman. He’d hoped that the rigors of travel would stifle this inconvenient yen. He’d hoped that Pen’s unfeminine independence and sharp tongue would shift fascination to dislike. He’d hoped that his managing manner would keep her at a distance.
There at least he’d been successful.
The unwelcome truth was that a prickly Penelope was just as alluring as a polite Penelope. God help him if she moved from politeness to amiability. His goose would be well and truly cooked.
She might choose her lovers where she pleased, but she was still a girl from a good family. If the Duke of Sedgemoor bedded Lord Wilmott’s daughter, he’d pay with a wedding ring. Standing outside her room all hot and bothered, he almost thought that price might be worth it.
On a sudden fit of temper—confound her, she treated him like a beggar—he crashed the door open and barged into the candlelit room.
And stumbled to a standstill as if struck with an ax.
Rising from a small wooden tub like a goddess from a spring, Pen was all gleaming white skin. Naked as the day she was born.
His heart slammed hard and heavy. Lust pounded in his ears.
Her back was to him. Her thick dark hair gathered untidily, revealing her elegant neck. The straight, stubborn shoulders. The graceful spine. The subtle curve of her hips. And God help him, a perfect pear-shaped arse.
His hands curled at his sides, preparing to frame that luscious roundness. He’d never seen anything so beautiful as Penelope Thorne in the bath.
Until she turned.
Perhaps he’d made a sound, although the breath jammed in his throat. Perhaps cold air eddied through the open door.
“Maria, I—” Black eyes huge with horror, she stared at him.
For a second that extended into eternity, they regarded one another. He should leave. He had no right to absorb every glorious, forbidden detail and imprint it on his mind to remember forever. The wet skin shining like a pearl; the high breasts crowned with beaded raspberry nipples; the delicate triangle of dark hair guarding her sex. Cam had never suspected what bounty lurked beneath her dark, plain jackets and narrow skirts.
Outrage replaced her shock. With a dizzying mixture of relief and disappointment, he watched her fumble for the worn towel on the small table beside her.
“Close the door.” Her voice was low and shaking.
Without shifting his attention, he reached behind him to obey. Penelope’s violet soap scented the air. Until now, he hadn’t realized how her perfume had permeated his senses.
“With you on the other side,” she said sharply, hitching the towel.
He could have told her that she wasted her time covering herself. Transparent with dampness, the skimpy towel extended from breasts to thighs. She looked more sexually available in the strip of linen than standing naked.
Her throat moved as she swallowed. She eyed him as if expecting him to pounce.
“I’m sleeping here,” he said gruffly.
“Over my dead body,” she snarled, trembling hands gripping the towel.
Perhaps discretion was the better part of valor. “I’ll come back in ten minutes.”
“I don’t want to see you tonight.”
He shrugged. It felt unreal to argue as they’d argued so often on this journey, while she stood before him like every dream come to vibrant life. “If you’re asleep, you won’t see me.”
She grabbed for the soap dish and raised it in a threatening gesture. He just reached the corridor before pottery shattered behind the hurriedly closed door.
Damn her for a shrew.
A beautiful shrew.
A shrew whose eyes, for one blazing moment, had flared with desire.
Even as Pen lay in bed struggling to sleep, she was still blushing. Despite his threat, Cam hadn’t reappeared. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or piqued. And still those incendiary moments played over and over in her mind, making her stomach lurch with horror. And forbidden excitement.
For one stolen moment, she’d read desire in his eyes.
In that searing instant, she’d seen endless hunger beneath his cool manner. Then good old common sense had asserted itself. She was a naked woman. His reaction was a purely physical reflex.
On that sour reflection, she sat up and reached for her thick blue robe. It was a bitterly cold night. Even in this room with its fire and blankets, she shivered. Cam might want her, but she trusted his self-control. It was churlish to leave him freezing while she kept the bed.
She wrapped herself in a paisley shawl, as much for modesty as warmth. She hoped to encounter an obliging maid before she braved the taproom. Carefully she opened the door and checked the lamplit hallway.
Time reversed, leaving her giddy. It was like the morning when he’d caught her trying to escape.
“What’s wrong, Pen?”
She scowled at where he huddled against the opposite wall, using his greatcoat as an inadequate blanket. “Are you afraid I mean to run?”
“No.” With one hand, he rubbed his eyes.
Even in the dim light, she noted his weariness. Did endless craving play on his nerves? Or was that wishful thinking? “Then what are you doing here?”
One eyebrow tilted. “I’m not welcome inside.”
Guilt stabbed her. The corridor was considerably colder than the bedroom. “I thought you’d go downstairs where there’s a fire.”
“And about a thousand people, most of whom have fleas and only passing acquaintance with soap and water.” With a wince, he stretched against the wall, then stood without his usual lithe smoothness. Her guilt strengthened. He hadn’t said so, but she guessed that he stayed close to protect her.
“I don’t have fleas,” she said softly, hitching the shawl around her shoulders. Despite the velvet robe and the grandmotherly flannel nightdress, she felt naked when she looked into his eyes. She couldn’t help recalling his gaze on her body. Dear Lord, if this awkwardness persisted until they reached England, she’d go stark, staring mad.
“Not yet,” he said drily. “It’s miles to Genoa, with lavish accommodations every night.”
She’d have to speak plainly. Which was strange. With Cam, she rarely needed to spell things out. Squaring her shoulders, she told herself to forget that he’d seen her in the bath. “You can come in.”
To her surprise, he didn’t leap at her invitation. “I’m safer out here.”
She sighed and stood back, leaving him space to enter the firelit room. “I haven’t got another soap dish.”
His lips twitched, although the tension across his broad shoulders hinted that he too felt the swirling undercurrents. “Instead you’ve got armor.”
How she wished his eyes didn’t crinkle when he smiled. How she wished his face didn’t brighten to brilliance. How she wished her heart wasn’t so susceptible. “Armor?”
“The head to toe covering.” He didn’t approach. “What changed your mind about inviting me in? Earlier you looked ready to flay me.”
The heat in her cheeks could warm the inn. “I’d rather ignore that incident.”
The smile lines around his eyes deepened. “I can imagine.”
“So are you coming in? I’m getting cold.”
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned with elegant nonchalance against the wall. “In that get-up? No chance.”
She growled deep in her throat and started to shut him out. Let the rogue freeze.
“Wait,” he said softly. He caught the door.
For a blazing interval, they were close enough to touch. Looking deep into his eyes, she couldn’t mistake his desire. He wanted her, all right. A question sizzled in the air. A question that made her skin tighten with yearning.
Fleetingly she considered yielding to what they both wanted. Then she recalled her misery after leaving England, her futile attempts to forget him, the emptiness she carried with her constantly. If Cam used her body, she’d never escape this agonized longing.
Worse, if he besmirched his honor in his childhood playmate’s bed, he’d never forgive himself. Then she’d never forgive herself. He had enough burdens without despising himself as yet another Rothermere scoundrel.
What a damnable mess.
She nearly left him shivering, this time from cowardice rather than exasperation, until she told herself that she was better than that. Not entirely convinced that she was, she gestured him inside. This time he cooperated.
“You can sleep on the right,” she said irritably, slipping the shawl from her shoulders and dropping it over a chair. “I hope you don’t snore.”
He looked troubled. “You’d share the bed?”
She glowered. “Purely a humanitarian gesture. It’s as cold as charity.”
“Do you trust me that much?”
Oh, God save her. She’d always trusted him. She’d trusted him before she loved him. Nothing since had shaken either trust or love. Even his recent arrogance. Even tonight’s revelation that he wanted her. “I promise not to demand my wicked way. Would you rather sleep on the floor? I’m not giving up any of my blankets.”
Grimness thinned his mouth. “We need to talk.”
She stopped straightening a bed chaotic with her restlessness. “It’s the middle of the night.”
He stood as straight as a soldier on parade. “I must say this now.”
A bleak premonition knotting her belly, she sat on the bed. Nobody said “we need to talk” before good news. “How very ominous, Your Grace.”
His expression didn’t lighten at her mockery. “Listen to me, Pen.”
Fear made her rush into speech. “What happened tonight was an accident. Better to forget it.”
He shook his head and stepped forward. “I can’t forget it.” He paused. “And forgive me if I’m presumptuous, but I doubt you can either.”
“You’ve seen a naked woman before, Cam.”
“We’ve traveled in close confines—”
“And very annoying it’s been too,” she said quickly.
One commanding hand rose to silence her. “Something unexpected has happened. When I saw you again, I—”
Cam was never lost for words. With another man in other circumstances, she might believe he meant to declare his love. “Can’t this wait until morning?”
Or forever?
Stubbornness firmed his jaw. “No.” He stared hard at her, green eyes opaque. “Pen, God forgive me, but I never expected to want you.”
Like a seedling reaching for the sun, joy unfurled. Until native cynicism made her hesitate. “You don’t sound very happy about it.”
His lips flattened. “I’m not.”
Her laugh was acid. “So this isn’t the prelude to another proposal?”
He flinched. “You had good reason to refuse me.”
Yes, she did. She still did. “A lucky escape for you.”
“I wouldn’t be so ungallant.”
Her lips twisted and she stared into her lap, covered in thick white flannel. Strangely, this was the closest they’d ventured to a frank conversation in a week. “Never you, Your Grace.”
“Stop sniping. I’m struggling to do what’s best.”
She regarded him with dislike. “You always do.”
Her ironic tone nettled him. “Our circumstances are trying, but not impossible.”
“Glad to hear it.”
He plowed on. “I’ve always tried to be honorable.”
Of course he had, she thought wearily. Another snide remark rose, but his expression stifled it. “That’s good.”
“Pen, I have to keep my hands off you.”
Pain crunched her heart. “Because I’m an unsuitable bride?”
Waiting for agreement felt like the pause before someone punched a bruise.
He shook his head. “Because I’m courting another lady.” He stared over her head as if the crucifix on the wall provided enormous interest. “When I return to England, I’m marrying Lady Marianne Seaton, the daughter of the Marquess of Baildon.”
Chapter Eight (#ulink_cf852bcb-52ac-51dd-9581-29745a9bb81a)
Hyde Park, London, February 1828
After that miraculous encounter in Lord Chetwell’s cupboard, Harry was too restless to sleep. Too restless and too happy. Sophie mightn’t love him yet, but she was interested. To the point of defying her powerful brother.
Harry had wandered home from the ball in a daze. The memory of Sophie’s kisses fizzed in his blood. The sound of her voice filled his ears like music. Her scent haunted him.
He was head over heels, madly in love. And he didn’t give a tinker’s curse.
Anticipation had him saddling his horse—he wasn’t selfish enough to wake a groom so early—and riding to the park before dawn. He settled his mount under a tree with a view of Rotten Row. There was a special luxury in being here on a misty February morning, knowing that his beloved might appear any moment. The sun just peeped above the horizon, shooting long golden rays through the bare trees.
Into this magical glade trotted his Sophie, controlling a fine gray mare with a light touch. She wore a neat dark blue riding habit, and the jaunty angle of her hat made him want to kiss her.
Harry straightened from his slouch, an uncontrollable smile spreading across his face. His heart performed a jig.
She smiled back. “Mr. Thorne, what a surprise,” she said in an unnaturally lilting voice for the benefit of the groom plodding behind.
Stifling a laugh, Harry doffed his hat and bowed. What a hopeless conspirator she was. “Lady Sophie, a delightful chance.”
“The park is quiet this morning.” She glanced at Harry under her long lashes. “Are you alone?”
“Yes. Perhaps we could ride a little way.”
“Your ladyship, I’m not sure—” the groom began before Sophie cut him off with a laugh. A very unconvincing laugh.
“Mr. Thorne and I are old chums, Jones. Why, we danced together only last night.”
“Very well, my lady.” The man settled into the saddle, his stare unwavering. Leath had chosen a diligent guardian.
Harry had hoped for more kisses. What man wouldn’t? But he saw that a brief and decorous conversation was all he could expect. “It was quite a party, wasn’t it?”
He wheeled his horse to amble in the same direction as Sophie’s. The park must contain other people, but as far as he was concerned, he was alone with his beloved.
“I enjoyed myself immensely,” Sophie said with another sideways glance. “A memorable occasion.”
Harry was more convinced than ever that she was a minx. He liked her all the more for it. The thought of her harnessed to a dry stick like Desborough made the gorge rise in his throat. “Is this your first visit to London?”
“No, my brother always comes up for parliament. The last few years, he’s brought me too.”
Leath was touted as a future prime minister, wasn’t he? Or at least he had been, until his uncle’s criminal activities had stained the family name. The marquess must be seething over the gossip, and all of it so public, thanks to Sedgemoor’s intervention.
Leath would place Harry in the Sedgemoor camp. After all, the Rothermeres and Thornes had grown up together. Years ago, there had even been talk of marriage between Cam and Harry’s sister, Penelope. What a disaster that would have been. Pen was headstrong and unconventional, whereas Cam was the model of gentlemanly restraint.
“That explains the town bronze. Most young ladies are wide-eyed with wonder during their first season.”
She giggled delightfully. “I’m quite the sophisticate now that I’ve seen Astley’s Circus and the menagerie at the Tower of London.”
Color brightened Sophie’s cheeks. She had the most exquisite skin. Harry’s blood heated when he imagined that skin bare to his exploration. As his hands tightened on the reins, his horse shifted.
They’d moved ahead of Jones, who seemed prepared to give Harry the benefit of the doubt. For now. Harry leaned to pat his horse’s gleaming neck and spoke in a murmur. “I want to touch you.”
She responded in a whisper. “I couldn’t get away on my own.”
“Neither you should. London’s full of scoundrels.”
“Including you?”
“Yes, including me,” he said gloomily. Then more loudly for the sake of Jones who edged closer, clearly suspicious, “Do you live in the country the rest of the year?”
“I’ve been at school in Bath. Now I live with my mother at Alloway Chase in Yorkshire.”
“Your mother doesn’t come to Town?”
“She isn’t well.” She stared at his black armband. “I’m sad to see that you’ve recently lost someone.”
“My brother died in January. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.” If Leath had warned Sophie away, surely he’d mentioned Peter’s financial woes. Peter’s calamitous mismanagement of the already sparse Thorne coffers threatened the family’s ruin, making Harry an even more unsuitable match for this lovely girl.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” He met her compassionate blue stare and his love, already powerful, deepened into something richer. “He was marvelous company and he’d go to the wall for the people he loved.”
“He sounds wonderful.”
“He was.” Harry found himself saying what he hadn’t said to anyone else since Peter’s lonely death. “I’ve lost my taste for pleasure. The whole world is gray.” Except when he was with Sophie.
“I felt like that after my father died.”
The late marquess had passed away four years ago. The nation had mourned the loss of a brilliant politician. As with his son, there had been talk of him becoming prime minister. Just up from Oxford, Harry had paid little heed. He’d been too busy kicking up his heels and adding a few more smears to the family reputation.
He reached to comfort her before Jones cleared his throat. Winning Sophie from the dragons who protected her wouldn’t be easy. For the first time in his shallow life, Harry burned to meet a challenge.
He glanced around and noticed that full day had broken. Riders emerged for their morning exercise. To save Sophie from talk, he must ride on. “It was a pleasure seeing you.”
She bent her head with a grace that hinted at the grand lady she’d one day become. Under the brim of her stylish beaver hat, Harry caught a gratifying flash of longing in her eyes. “I’m engaged for Lady Carson’s ball tonight.”
“Perhaps I’ll see you there,” he said, not meaning perhaps at all. He bowed. Jones’s watchful expression warned him that a kiss on her hand would take things too far, damn it. “Good morning, Lady Sophie.”
Hills above Genoa, early March 1828
Pen stood on the inn’s terrace and stared at the rugged coastline below. The night was clear and she easily made out Genoa’s lights in the distance. Around her bloomed pots of spring flowers. After the frozen wastes, this seemed nothing short of miraculous.
The grueling journey drew to a close. Tomorrow, they embarked for home. This last week had been almost easy. The weather had been kinder and the roads in the more heavily populated areas showed considerable improvement from the goat tracks higher up. Even the inns were more luxurious, saving her from sharing a room with Cam again. Thank God. She still remembered lying awake, eaten with useless jealousy, while he’d stretched silently beside her, no more asleep than she.
The announcement of Cam’s marital plans should have eased the tension between them. She’d always known he’d marry, and now that his bride had a name, she should finally be able to crush her painful longing.
Instead, since that endless night, the atmosphere had weighed heavier and heavier. Until tonight it had become so unbearable, she’d barely finished dinner before rushing outside to escape him.
She flattened her unsteady hands upon the stone balustrade and stared blindly into the night. She wore a favorite gown, a sea-green silk purchased last year in Florence. Even as she’d asked Maria to find it, she’d recognized her pathetic purposes. She flaunted herself, taunting Cam. This will never be yours, however much you want it.
Definitely pathetic.
“Has my conversation driven you to throw yourself off a cliff?” a low voice asked behind her.
Slowly Pen turned. She should have guessed that Cam would follow. Lamps lit the terrace, lending enough brightness for her to see him in the shadows near the doorway. He’d dressed with care too, as if aware that tonight marked some kind of ending.
She’d been so reluctant to travel with him. It seemed absurd to be sad that their time together was nearly over. “You don’t talk enough to drive me to self-harm.”
He approached with the loose-limbed stroll that always set her heart racing. She really was a besotted idiot. He passed her one of the glasses of red wine he carried. “Let’s toast old acquaintance.”
For once, prickling hostility was absent. Instead, Cam seemed like the kindhearted boy she’d known years ago. Her determination to maintain her distance faltered. She raised her glass. “To friendship.”
“Our journey ends,” he said musingly.
“We have the voyage ahead.”
“We’re safe from scandal on the Windhover. My crew is paid to keep their mouths shut.”
How he must want this marriage with Lady Marianne. Unworthy chagrin cramped Pen’s heart. She wanted to tear every hair from the woman’s no doubt perfectly coiffured head. Pen had devoted too many futile hours to wondering about Cam’s choice. Beautiful, Pen was sure. Impeccably behaved. Circumspect.
“We’ve made it.” She tried and failed to sound happy.
Thankfully Cam didn’t appear to notice her glumness. He sipped his wine and stared out to sea with a pensive expression. “Yes. And without killing each other.”
“We’ve come close.”
He studied her. “I wish you well, Pen. I’ve only ever wished you well.”
She knew that. Her rejection of his proposal might sting. Her independence and obstinacy undoubtedly infuriated him. Perhaps he even regretted that they’d never explore the desire simmering between them. But the bonds of childhood affection persisted.
“I wish you well too, Cam,” she said softly.
“What do you intend to do when you get home?”
“Settle my aunt’s affairs.”
“After that?”
She shrugged. “Return to Italy. I have friends here and places I’d like to see.”
“You won’t stay in England?”
And witness, even from afar, Cam’s wedded bliss? Cam becoming a father? She’d rather cut out her liver with a paperknife. “No.”
“Elias and Harry would love to have their sister home.”
“They have their own lives. They’re used to doing without me.”
“Now they have to do without you and without Peter.” He flinched at her distressed inhalation. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive.”
She stared at him. “Goodness, Cam, was that an apology? I thought you’d lost the knack.”
His lips firmed, but he remained calm. Pity. Her longing was so much easier to control when dislike crackled. Except what vibrated between them wasn’t exactly dislike.
“I’ve been a brute.”
Her laugh was wry. “Not by anyone’s definition but your own.”
His gaze remained unwavering. “You know why I’ve been difficult.”
“You told me.”
Then he’d retreated to silence on the subject. Thank heaven. It was excruciating, knowing that he wanted her, but knowing also that only a fool would succumb.
“I’d hoped honesty would simplify things.”
“It didn’t.” The air tautened until she felt suffocated. Would he kiss her? Just one kiss to last a lifetime wasn’t too much to ask. Except she already had too much to remember.
“Is that because you don’t want me?” The flickering light was more deceptive than true darkness. She could almost imagine desperation in his eyes. Cam was never desperate. He’d never let himself become desperate. “Or because you do?”
She jolted back, spilling wine over her hand. “Cam, I—”
“God knows this is wrong. I’m courting another woman. You’re my friend’s sister. We grew up together.” His voice shook. “But tell me you want me. Not knowing is driving me mad.”
She didn’t want to hear this, partly because a wicked, wanton part of her burned to fling herself into his arms and beg him to do a thousand wild and forbidden things to her. She retreated against the balustrade. Fear beat high and fast in her throat.
The threat of betraying her secret hovered close. He must never know she loved him. His pity would be worse than death. “There’s no point to this.”
Cam took her glass and placed it with his on the balustrade. “I need to know.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, then groaned when satisfaction flooded his face. On this breezy terrace, with his usually immaculate dark hair ruffled and his eyes glowing with passion, he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
He grabbed her hand. “If you don’t want me, you’d say so.”
She knew to her bones that if he kept touching her, she’d lie in his bed tonight. “Someone might see.”
“I don’t care. Tell me.”
His touch set her blood ablaze, shooting hot and urgent to the pit of her belly. “What use is this?” she asked in angry despair, struggling to withdraw. “You’re marrying Lady Marianne.”
His gaze focused on her lips, making them tingle as if he kissed her. “Once, I wanted to marry you.”
Bitterness welled. “When you thought you could mold me into what you wanted. Before my family’s eccentricities tumbled over into full-scale scandal with Peter’s ruin.”
She’d cut off her right hand to hear him deny her assertions, but of course, he didn’t. He wouldn’t lie to her. She respected that even as she loathed it. “Lady Marianne will make the perfect duchess.”
Pain lanced through her as she acknowledged that he’d never have said that about Penelope Thorne, even before her bohemian wanderings. “Do you love her?”
He snatched his hand free and his jaw hardened with the rejection familiar whenever anyone mentioned love. “You’re mistaken to think that love is a requirement for a happy marriage.”
“You’re mistaken to think that it’s not,” she snapped back.
“My parents were in love. For a short time.”
“Your parents were always children dressed as grownups.”
He glared down his daunting nose. “You venture on dangerous territory.”
She drew herself to her full height. Temper made her speak in a rush. “Why? You speak freely to me.” Her tone eased. “Cam, I know this … attraction is a pest. But it’s not so surprising. We’re two healthy adults confined to each other’s company. It would be unnatural not to demonstrate a little curiosity.”
A bitter smile twisted his lips. “That’s a facile explanation.”
For a sizzling interval, their eyes met. She knew that, like her, he remembered her standing naked before him.
Then the shutters crashed down over his expression. She felt disoriented. He’d lured her up to a door, then slammed it in her face.
Still, she was grateful when Cam’s fierceness ebbed. It had been torture to hear him speak his need aloud and know that it wasn’t enough, it could never be enough.
As if by common consent, they turned toward the sea that tomorrow became their highway. Somewhere down there his yacht lay at anchor. If winds were favorable, they’d be in England within a fortnight.
A silence descended. At first, it was heavy with suppressed passion, but gradually it became something softer and kinder. As his voice was softer and kinder when he spoke. “Pen, why are you so determined to go into exile? What are you running away from?”
You.
She’d spent the last nine years fleeing this man she loved but who could never love her. Despite excitement and adventure, despite playing a sophisticate in a sophisticated world, she hadn’t run toward anything. What a lowering admission.
“I enjoy my life.” Apart from a constant ache that no spectacular scenery or charming admirers or glamorous intrigues banished.
“You’d enjoy London.”
“I doubt it. People at home are more conservative than here. English society won’t accept me with open arms.”
“I would.”
Pen couldn’t help herself. She laughed. It was either laugh or cry. If she cried, he might guess how it would crush her to leave him. “No, Cam. I’m not throwing myself into your arms under any circumstances.”
He didn’t laugh. He looked disturbed and angry. That dangerous hum in the air returned. Fatalistically she recognized that it had never gone away. “Pen, I’m trying my best to remember that I’m an honorable man.”
She sobered, telling herself that she couldn’t allow him to compromise his principles. But how easy it would be to ignore what was right when for the sake of a little sin, he could be hers. However briefly. Physically if not emotionally.
She could cross a mere foot of space and kiss him. If she knew anything about men—and at twenty-eight, she should—the slightest encouragement would shatter his restraint.
“Unfortunately,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
The hum rose to overwhelm every other sound.
Then he stepped back and bowed. Even as hunger darkened his eyes, he spoke with the chill politeness she’d heard too often on this journey. This evening, they’d spoken like friends. Or lovers. Now she watched Cam draw the shades over that intimacy. “I won’t act the cad. My family’s reputation is at stake. If I tumble you, I prove that all my work to restore the family honor has been in vain.”
She’d known that. Still, rejection hurt. She bent her head, not wanting him to see how he wounded her.
A couple emerged onto the terrace from the inn. The lady paused and spoke with joyful recognition. Even worse, in the clipped accents of an upper-class Englishwoman. “Miss Thorne, what a wonderful surprise.”
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Anna Campbell
‘I can’t kidnap her!’‘If you have to, you must. Bring Pen home.’Penelope Thorne was in trouble – alone somewhere between Rome and Paris, running out of money, totally vulnerable. Until Camden Rothermere, the Duke of Sedgemoor, arrived to take her back to England, whether she wanted to go or not…The last time Pen had seen Cam, she’d turned down his marriage proposal, shattering their friendship, hurting his pride and secretly breaking her own heart. Cam had lived with scandal all his life and he’d vowed never to marry for love.To protect Pen’s reputation, they travelled as husband and wife and they desired each other more with every mile…Book Three in THE SONS OF SIN seriesA Sensuous Regency DelightTHE SONS OF SINSEVEN NIGHTS IN A ROGUE’S BEDA RAKE’S MIDNIGHT KISSWHAT A DUKE DARESA SCOUNDREL BY MOONLIGHTDAYS OF RAKES AND ROSES (Novella)
PRAISE FOR ANNA CAMPBELL (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
‘Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed is a lush, sensuous treat. I was enthralled from the first page to the last and still wanted more.’ —Laura Lee Guhrke, New York Times bestselling author
‘The fast pace and slightly gothic atmosphere make the pages fly. She keeps readers highly satisfied with the plot’s tenderness and touching emotions that reach the heart.’
—Kathe Robin, RT Book Reviews
‘Campbell matches up two proud, wary victims of abuse in this smart Regency romance … delightful insight and … luscious love scenes. Readers will cheer for these loveable and well-crafted characters.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘Truly, deeply romantic’
—Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author on Captive of Sin
‘Regency noir—different and intriguing’
—Stephanie Laurens, New York Times bestselling author on Claiming the Courtesan
‘I’m not the woman for you.’
While today’s misgivings hinted that Pen might be right, his pride flinched under her rejection. ‘We know each other so well—’
She sighed. ‘Cam, you need a duchess with dignity and decorum. You must have forgotten all the times you dragged me from disaster.’
‘You’re still young. You can be trained,’ he said, before he recognised that such a comment would hardly forward his suit. Usually he said exactly the right thing, but this encounter rattled his sangfroid.
Her momentary softening congealed to frost. ‘I’m not a hound to come at your whistle.’
He sighed again. ‘You know that’s not what I want in a bride.’
‘Do I?’ she asked, arching her eyebrows. ‘You’ve devoted your life to rising above your parents’ disgrace, the scandals have guided your every action.’
He winced under the compassion in her gaze. ‘That makes me sound like a complete idiot.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘You can help me. You’ll make a capital duchess.’
‘You’re mistaken.’ He’d never imagined that worldly smile on Pen’s face. His reluctant desire deepened. ‘I’m too independent to be anyone’s duchess, especially yours.’
THE SONS OF SIN by Anna Campbell
Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed A Rake’s Midnight Kiss What a Duke Dares
ANNA CAMPBELL was the sort of kid who spent her childhood with her nose buried between the pages of a book. She decided when she was a child that she wanted to be a writer. When she’s not writing passionate, intense stories featuring gorgeous Regency heroes and the women who are their destiny, Anna loves to travel, especially in the United Kingdom, and listen to all kinds of music. She has settled near the sea on the east coast of Australia, where she’s losing her battle with an overgrown subtropical garden.
The first book in THE SONS OF SIN series, Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed, has generated some wonderful reviews and a number of awards, including favourite historical romance from the Australian Romance Readers Association. Anna was also voted favourite Australian romance author at the ARRA Awards.
Anna loves to hear from her readers. You can contact her through her website at www.annacampbell.info (http://www.annacampbell.info).
What a Duke Dares
Anna Campbell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u055f6672-9747-51eb-b7c8-6a07158e5759)
PRAISE FOR ANNA CAMPBELL
Excerpt (#u2107bad1-b961-578b-9a15-5247437e4c7d)
About the Author (#uc0c0d084-9eee-540e-bb56-65d3e3bf4ed9)
Title Page (#u7cd891f8-6ef5-5462-be40-84b901ce5cf0)
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Epilogue
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
Houghton Park, Lincolnshire, May 1819
Every young lady dreamed of a proposal from the heir to a dukedom. Especially when the heir was rich, feted, in possession of his wits, and still young enough to have all his teeth.
Every young lady except, apparently, Penelope Thorne.
From the center of her father’s library, Camden Rothermere, Marquess of Pembridge, eyed the girl he’d known from the cradle and wondered where the hell he’d slipped up. He straightened and summoned a smile, struggling to bridge the awkward silence extending between them.
Damn it. He never felt awkward with Pen Thorne. Until now. Until he’d spoken the fatal words.
Until, instead of radiating delight at the prospect of marrying him, Pen’s black eyes sparked with the rebellious light that always boded trouble.
“Why?” It wasn’t the first time this afternoon that she’d asked him the question.
Stupidly he couldn’t summon an adequate answer. He’d blundered into this half-cocked. It was his own fault. Knowing Pen as he did, he should have prepared a comprehensive list of reasons for their marriage before broaching the subject.
Right now, he wished he’d never broached the subject at all. But it was too late to retreat, or too late if he hoped to salvage a shred of self-respect from this dashed uncomfortable encounter.
“Devil take you, Pen, I like you,” he said impatiently. Despite her inexplicable and irritating behavior today, it was true. There wasn’t a girl alive that he liked so much as the chit currently regarding him as if he’d crawled out of a hole in the ground.
He knew her better than any other girl too, even his sister, Lydia. Through their childhood, he’d rescued Pen from a thousand scrapes. She’d been a hellion, riding the wildest horses in her father’s stables, climbing the tallest trees in the park, throwing herself into brawls to defend a friend or mistreated animal. Cam had long admired her spirit, loyalty, and courage.
Those were qualities he wanted in his duchess. And if she needed some guidance in deportment, he was perfectly prepared to teach her proper behavior. She was a Thorne and Thornes weren’t renowned for their prudence, but while Pen might be impulsive, she was intelligent. Once she’d become the Duchess of Sedgemoor, he was sure she’d settle down.
Or he had been, until her unenthusiastic response to his proposal.
“I like you too,” she said steadily, regarding him with unwavering attention.
Cam wondered why her admission didn’t reassure. Inhaling deeply, he strove for forbearance. “Well, there you have it, then.”
That bitter note in her laugh was unfamiliar. He could hardly believe it, but the possibility of failure hovered. Pen was clever, determined, headstrong—he’d get that out of her soon enough—and stubbornly inclined to take a positive view of events. Or at least so he’d believed until today.
He’d also believed that she’d leap at the chance to marry him.
Clearly he’d been wrong.
He wasn’t used to being wrong. Confound her, he didn’t like it.
Her voice remained curiously flat. “I’m sorry, Cam. ‘There you have it, then’ won’t pass muster. You’ll need to do better than that.”
From where she stood before the high mullioned window, she studied him much like a schoolmistress surveyed an unpromising student. He only just resisted the urge to run a finger under his unaccountably tight neckcloth.
Good God, this was Pen. She wasn’t a female who put a man through hoops before she fell into harness. She’d never demand more than he could give. She’d never subject a fellow to emotional storms. She’d never lie and cheat and betray.
She was the absolute opposite of his late mother, in fact.
Cam was unaccustomed to feeling like a blockhead, especially with the fairer sex. By nature he wasn’t a vain man, but he’d anticipated a better reaction to his proposal. Pen’s father Lord Wilmott had been in alt to hear that his daughter would become a duchess.
Most definitely, Pen was not in alt.
And she bloody well should be. After all, she was a mere baron’s daughter—and a ramshackle baron at that—while Cam was heir to the nation’s richest dukedom.
The Thornes were an old family, but had always had a justified reputation for trouble. In times of political unrest, they backed the wrong side. If they managed to lay their hands on any money, they lost it, usually in some disreputable pursuit. “Wine, women, and song” should be the family motto instead of the much more staid and highly inappropriate “steadfast and faithful.”
The previous generation had spawned a handful of eccentrics, including an uncle who had married his housekeeper. Bigamously as it had turned out. Lord Wilmott had squandered his wife’s dowry on a succession of greedy strumpets. Pen’s aunt ran with a dissolute crowd on the Continent. Peter, Cam’s friend and the current heir, was devoted to the gaming tables and disastrous investments. If Cam’s mother hadn’t been great friends with Lady Wilmott, the families would have had little contact.
What made Pen’s tepid response to Cam’s suit even harder to understand was that she’d always worshipped the ground he walked on. Was he a fool to presume on childhood adoration?
A horrible suspicion struck him. Was he presuming on far too much? Despite his parents’ scandalous behavior and the gossip about his legitimacy, the ton lionized Cam as the future Duke of Sedgemoor. Had endless flattery turned him into a self-satisfied ass?
If Pen thought him insufferably arrogant, no wonder his proposal hadn’t bowled her over. He sighed with self-disgust and impatiently ran his hand through his hair. “I’m making a dashed mess of this, aren’t I?”
Pen’s slender body lost its rigidity as a wry smile curved her lips. Lips, he reluctantly noticed, that were pink and full and lusciously kissable.
As shock shuddered through him, he wondered why he’d never noticed before. Pen had been such a constant in his life that he hadn’t taken the time to mark how she’d changed.
Still unwilling to admit that Pen wasn’t the girl he remembered, he looked more closely. To his dismay, the coltish adolescent hovered on the brink of becoming a true beauty. Even more dismaying, he felt the unwelcome, unmistakable prickle of desire.
“Yes, you are. But it’s not totally your fault.” With a grace he hadn’t seen in her before, she gestured toward the leather chairs ranged around the unlit hearth. “Sit down, for heaven’s sake, and stop looming over me.”
Actually he wasn’t looming, although with his height, he loomed over most people. Pen had always been a long Meg, closer to a boy than a girl in his mind. But in this discomfiting instant, when for the first time he saw more than his friend Peter’s occasionally annoying younger sister, there was nothing boyish about Miss Penelope Thorne.
Since he’d last seen her—and for the life of him, he couldn’t recall when that had been, such an ardent suitor he was—she’d grown up. The thin body had gained subtle but fascinating curves. The vivid, pointed face that had always seemed too small for her decisive features had refined into striking attraction. When had she tamed her tangled mane of hair into those gleaming ebony coils?
Apprehension tasted sour on his tongue. God help him, this new Penelope was a bloody disaster. He narrowed his eyes on the siren who had mysteriously supplanted a hoyden as daring as any of his male friends. And saw that she was blossoming into a woman who made men stupid.
Categorically he didn’t want to marry a woman who made men stupid, the way his mother had made his father stupid. How insulting to his chosen bride that part of her appeal had been her lack of overt attractions.
His father’s example proved what catastrophes resulted from choosing a tempestuous beauty as a wife. Cam had grown up hearing salacious gossip about his mother’s affair with her husband’s younger brother. Nobody, including Cam, knew who had fathered him. He was a Rothermere, but not necessarily the late duke’s son.
Long ago Cam had decided to marry someone he could be friends with, not who became a challenge to every deuced roué in London. Cam wanted a wife who would help him establish the Rothermere name as one to be respected, not a cause for snickering and dirty jokes as it had been all his life.
Gossip about his parentage had dogged Cam from boyhood. School had been a nightmare, and while he made a fair job of pretending he no longer cared, he knew whispers of his bastardy still spiced the tattle whenever his name was mentioned. He’d be damned before he subjected his own children to similar torments.
He reminded himself that this was brave, honest Penelope Thorne, she who risked her neck to save a kitten from village boys twice her size. But looking at her now, he didn’t see the girl who had launched a hundred escapades. Instead, he saw a woman who other men would pursue. A woman who perhaps would succumb to temptation, as his mother had done. Pen’s burgeoning loveliness made Cam burn to bed her, but it beggared any chance of an unexceptional domestic life.
Feeling slightly ill, Cam accepted Pen’s offer of a seat and watched her take the chair opposite. Dear heaven, when had that smooth glide replaced her eager gallop? This was Pen, yet it wasn’t.
Even as he questioned his old playmate’s suitability as a bride, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. When had she become this intriguing creature? Where the hell had he been when the transformation took place? At nineteen, she was a little late to be approaching her first season, but he could already see that she’d set society on its ears. She’d prowl into London’s ballrooms on those long legs, like a tigress set loose amid a host of pretty little butterflies.
“I appreciate that you’re doing your duty by your mother and mine. A match between us was always their greatest wish.” The earnestness in Pen’s regard was familiar, but still he felt as if he’d been tossed high into the air and come to land in a different country. “But let’s be realistic. I’m not the woman for you.”
While today’s misgivings hinted that Pen might be right, his pride flinched under her rejection. “We know each other so well—”
“Which is why I’m convinced that any match between us would be a debacle.”
“Why?”
Her lips twisted, and he realized that her earlier bitterness hadn’t entirely vanished. “Isn’t that my question?” She sighed. “Cam, you need a duchess with dignity and decorum. You must have forgotten all the times you dragged me from disaster.”
“You’re still young. You can be trained,” he said, before he recognized that such a comment would hardly forward his suit. Usually he said exactly the right thing, but this encounter rattled his sangfroid.
Her momentary softening congealed to frost. “I’m not a hound to come at your whistle.”
He sighed again. “You know that’s not what I want in a bride.”
“Do I?” she asked, arching her eyebrows. “You’ve devoted your life to rising above your parents’ disgrace. You’ve never made a secret of the fact that your wife must be beyond reproach.”
He bared his teeth at her. Mention of his mother’s adultery always raised his hackles. “Pen, this isn’t something I wish to discuss.”
She made a sweeping gesture. “Whether you want to talk about it or not, the scandals have guided your every action.”
He winced under the compassion in her gaze. “That makes me sound like a complete widgeon.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You can help me. You’ll make a capital duchess.”
“You’re mistaken.” He’d never imagined that worldly smile on Pen’s face. His reluctant desire deepened. “I’m too independent to be anyone’s duchess, especially yours.”
“You can change,” he said desperately, wishing he’d taken Lord Wilmott up on his offer of a brandy earlier. Cam wasn’t used to being so wrong-footed with a woman, with anyone. Where had his famous social assurance buggered off to?
“Perhaps I can. If I wanted to change. I don’t.” She sighed with a tolerance that made his skin itch with resentment. “You’d be trading your family’s scandals for mine, and the rumors would continue to dog you all our lives. I follow my heart before my head. I speak my mind. Before the ink was dry on the settlements, I’d do something to upset the old tabbies. You’d find yourself knee-deep in gossip and you’d hate that. You’d start to hate me.”
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever pictured as my wife. I decided as a boy that I’d marry you.” He straightened in his chair and bit out each word, before remembering that he came to woo, not browbeat her. “Our families expect me to make you my duchess.”
The regret in her smile did nothing to bolster his optimism. “I’m sorry, Cam. For once in your life, you’ll have to disappoint expectations.” Her gaze sharpened in a way that he didn’t completely understand. “I know you don’t love me.”
He flinched back as though she’d struck him. Damn, damn, damn. Love. He’d thought Pen too smart to fall prey to mawkish sentimentality. “I esteem you. I admire you. I enjoy your company. You know the Fentonwyck estate. You know me.”
“All very gratifying, I’m sure.” Her smile turned sour. “But I won’t marry without love.”
He surged to his feet. “We both have parents who married for love. As a result of love, my father descended into cruelty and obsession and my mother became a byword for promiscuity. Pardon me saying so, but your parents aren’t much better. Doesn’t that convince you that friendship and respect form a stronger basis for marriage than passing physical passion?”
“I doubt that either my parents or yours understood what love truly is.” Emotion thickened her voice and strengthened his premonition of failure. “Love means wanting the best for the beloved, whatever the cost. Love means sacrificing everything to achieve the beloved’s happiness.”
“You’re an idealist,” he said disdainfully.
“Yes, Cam, I am.” She rose with more circumspection—an adjective he’d never before associated with Pen Thorne—and regarded him with an unreadable expression. For a woman who confessed lack of control, she was remarkably controlled. “I believe love makes life worth living and nobody should marry without it. You’re too young to settle for second best.”
He placed a short rein on his temper. He was rarely angry, but right now, he wanted to fling one of the smug Ming dogs on the mantelpiece into the fire. “I’m twenty-seven.”
She released an impatient huff. “Well, I’m only nineteen. I’m definitely too young to settle for second best.”
“I hardly think becoming the Duchess of Sedgemoor counts as second best,” he said frigidly, wondering just where his childhood friend had gone.
Pen sighed as if she understood his turmoil. “It is when the duke offers only a lukewarm attachment.”
Resentment tightened his gut. He didn’t want to be understood. He hoped like hell she hadn’t noticed his bristling sexual awareness. Having Pen recognize his unwilling desire just as she sent him away with a flea in his ear seemed the final humiliation.
“Would you rather I lied?” he growled.
She winced as though he’d hit her. “Even if you lied, I wouldn’t believe you, Cam. I’ve known you too long. And you set your mind against love long ago.”
He struggled for a reasonable tone. Blustering would only make her dig her heels in. The encounter verged dangerously close to a quarrel. “Pen, think of the advantages.”
Her jaw set in an obstinate line. “Right now, aside from the obvious fact of your riches, I can’t see any.”
His appeal to her worldly interests disappointed her. Shame knotted his gut. With regret, he recalled the days when in her eyes, he could do no wrong. He drew himself up to his full height and glared.
“There’s no point going all ducal, Cam,” she said curtly, not, blast her, remotely cowed. “That look lost its power over me before you went to Eton.”
She shifted closer, stretching one hand toward the mantel. When he noticed how her fingers trembled, he faced the unpleasant truth that despite outward calm, this encounter upset her.
Of course it did. She felt things deeply. More than once, he’d caught Pen crying alone after her brothers’ teasing had struck a painful spot. She was proud, Penelope Thorne. Another desirable quality in a cracking duchess.
But clearly not his duchess. Pen didn’t have a monopoly on pride. Cam regarded her down his long nose and spoke as coldly as he’d speak to an overweening acquaintance. “I gather that you’re refusing me.”
The knuckles on the hand clutching the mantel turned white, although her voice remained steady. “Yes, I am.” She paused. “I appreciate your condescension.”
That was so obviously untrue that under other circumstances, he’d have laughed. But pique shredded his sense of humor. Through his outrage, he knew that he behaved badly. However unfairly, he blamed Pen for that unprecedented state of affairs too.
He bowed shortly and spoke in a clipped voice. “In that case, Miss Thorne, I’ll waste no more of your valuable time. I wish you well.”
Something that might have been pain flared in her dark eyes, but he was too angry and, much as he hated to admit it, wounded to pay heed. She stepped toward him. “Cam—”
“Good day, madam.”
He turned on his heel and stalked off.
Pen watched Cam march out of her father’s library, his back rigid with displeasure, and told herself that she’d done the right thing. The only thing she could in honor have done.
Right now she didn’t feel that way. She felt like she’d swallowed toads. She clung to the mantel to stay upright on legs likely to crumple beneath her.
Her anguish didn’t change merciless reality. Cam didn’t love her. Cam would never love her. Nothing in today’s awkward, painful encounter had convinced her otherwise.
As a foolish child, she’d dreamed of him tumbling head over heels in love with her. What girl brought up in close proximity to the magnificent Rothermere heir wouldn’t imagine a fairy-tale future? Especially when her mother encouraged her.
But that was before Pen had grown up and recognized the stark truth. A truth ruthlessly confirmed when she was sixteen. One summer at Fentonwyck, she’d overheard Cam talking to his best friend Richard Harmsworth about discouraging a local belle’s advances. When Richard had blamed the girl’s antics on love, Cam had responded with cutting contempt and said that was even more reason to steer clear of the unfortunate lady.
Romantic love has no place in my life now or ever, old chap. Let other fellows make asses of themselves. I’ve seen too much of the damage that poisonous emotion can wreak. It’s a trap and a deceit and a damned nuisance. I’ll never marry a woman who expects me to love her.
Pen felt sick to recall that self-assured pronouncement. Perhaps she might have dismissed his remarks as a young man’s bravado, except that in the three years since, everything she’d seen of Cam confirmed that he’d meant every word.
Even with those closest to him—Richard, his sister, Pen—he kept some element of himself apart, untouchable. Over the years that distance had only grown more marked.
Camden Rothermere was rich, handsome, clever, honorable, and brave. And completely self-sufficient.
Pen had prayed that Cam would ignore his late mother’s matchmaking, but of course, he considered it his duty to offer for Penelope. Just as he considered it his duty to inform her that his interest was purely dynastic.
If she’d harbored the tiniest shred of hope of melting the ice in his heart, she’d disregard questions of her notorious family and headstrong inclinations. She’d even try to make herself anew in the image he wanted.
But she knew Cam as she knew herself, and she’d never been a fool.
Cam wouldn’t countenance a marriage based on love and she couldn’t countenance a marriage that wasn’t. She never went into anything halfhearted, and a loveless union would destroy her.
Pen remained trembling near the fireplace, knowing that her family awaited news of her engagement. Her refusal of the greatest marital prize in the kingdom would set the cat among the Thorne pigeons. Right now, her control was so precarious; she shied from her mother’s bullying.
She fought a childish urge to cry. If she cried, there would be endless questions and more bullying. Her mother saw tears as opportunity for manipulation, not for comfort.
Pen sucked in a shaky breath and although she’d sworn that she wouldn’t, she rushed to the window facing the long drive.
Cam cantered away on his magnificent bay horse. He didn’t glance behind to catch her staring after him. Why would he? He’d want to get as far away from her as he could. For a famously self-controlled man, he’d verged very close to losing his temper this afternoon.
That had been a surprise. She hadn’t imagined that he cared so much about marrying her. In truth, she hadn’t imagined he cared at all.
But then, he’d expected her to say yes without hesitation. Despite the fact that Penelope Thorne was wrong for him on every count.
Except perhaps one.
The fact that she’d love him until she died.
Chapter One (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
Calais, France, January 1828
Through the bleak hours between midnight and dawn, the candles burned low in the shabby room high in the dilapidated inn. Wind rattled the ill-fitting windowpanes and carried the creaking of boats at their moorings and the reek of salt and rotting fish. The man lying in the narrow bed gasped for every breath.
Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, leaned forward to plump the thin pillows in a futile attempt to offer his dying friend some relief. When Cam sank into his wooden chair beside the bed, Peter Thorne’s eyes opened.
Although he and Peter hadn’t been close in years, Cam knew about his friend’s numerous reverses. The Thornes were famously rackety, and a son and heir who gambled away his fortune was hardly the worst of it.
Cam had arrived in Calais a few hours ago and rushed straight here to find the doctor in attendance. He’d cornered the man before he left. The harassed French medico had been blunt about his patient’s prospects.
At first, Peter had drifted close to unconsciousness, but the eyes focusing on Cam now were clear and aware. Eyes sunk in dark hollows in a face that carried no spare flesh. It was like staring into a skull.
“You … came.”
The words were hoarse, slow in emerging, and ended in a fit of coughing. Swiftly Cam fetched some water in a chipped cup. After a sip, the sick man collapsed exhausted against the hard mattress.
“Of course I came.” Anguish and outrage gripped Cam. Peter had been a companion in childhood games, a participant in university hijinks. He was only thirty-five, the same age as Cam, too bloody young to die.
“Wasn’t sure you would,” Peter gasped before succumbing to another coughing fit.
Cam offered more water. “We’ve always been friends.”
“From boyhood.” The response was a papery whisper. “Although you’ll wish me to the devil tonight.”
“Never.”
“Don’t speak … too soon.” He closed his eyes and Cam wondered whether he slept. The doctor had said that the end would come tonight. Looking into Peter’s bloodless features, Cam couldn’t doubt that conclusion.
Grief stabbed his gut, made his hand shake. He placed the cup on the crowded nightstand before he spilled the water. He wasn’t a religious man, but he found himself murmuring a prayer for a swift end to his friend’s sufferings.
“I need your help.”
Cam started to hear Peter speak. Spidery hands plucked fretfully at the threadbare covers drawn high on this cold night. If Cam thought it would do an ounce of good, he’d shift his friend to the best inn in town. But even without the doctor’s warning, he saw that Peter’s time was measured in hours, perhaps even minutes. Relocating him would be cruel rather than kind.
“It’s Pen.”
The moment he’d received Peter’s summons, Cam had harbored a sinking feeling that it might be. “Your sister?”
“Of course my damned sister.” Another coughing attack rewarded Peter’s irritable response.
Cam slid his arm behind Peter’s back to support him while he caught his breath. “The doctor left laudanum.”
Peter coughed until Cam thought surely he must suffocate. The cloth pressed to his mouth came away bloody. Rage at a fate that turned a once-vital young man into a barely breathing skeleton clutched at Cam’s gut.
When Peter could speak again, it was in a whisper. Cam leaned close to hear.
“I don’t want to sleep.” He winced as he drew a breath. Cam saw that every second was excruciating. “I’ll have rest enough soon.”
Staring into his friend’s face, Cam recognized the futility of a comforting lie. They both knew that Peter wouldn’t see the dawn.
“Pen’s in trouble.” Peter fumbled after Cam’s hand, gripping with surprising strength. His clasp was icy, as though the grave already encroached into this room.
Cam’s expression hardened. He hadn’t seen Pen in nine years, since his proposal. The only proposal he’d ever made, as it had turned out. If the chit was in trouble, she probably deserved to be. “I’m sure that she’s been in tight spots before.”
Penelope Thorne had never had the chance to make a splash in London society. Instead, she’d joined her eccentric aunt on the Continent and stayed there. She hadn’t returned to England even after her parents’ death in a carriage accident five years ago. Cam gathered she’d been somewhere in Greece at the time.
He hesitated to admit that her refusal had undermined his confidence to such an extent that he only now seriously contemplated marriage again. He needed a wife to help restore his family’s reputation, which was even more appalling than the Thornes’, and at last he’d found the perfect candidate. His recently chosen bride was as dissimilar to his hoydenish childhood playmate as possible.
Thank God.
By all reports, Pen had become rather odd. There had been nasty rumors from Sicily about her sharing a shady Conti’s bed, and of a liaison with a Greek rebel. Goya had emerged from seclusion to paint her both clothed and naked in imitation of his famous majas. Not to mention her week’s sojourn in the Sultan’s harem in Constantinople.
She’d published four volumes of travel reminiscences, books Cam had read over and over, although he’d face the stake before confessing that publicly. A man would rather be flayed than claim a taste for feminine literature.
Peter’s hand tightened. The desperation in his old friend’s face was unmistakable. Unfortunately. “Lady Bradford died last October. Pen’s gone from disaster to disaster since. She’s on her way north to Paris to meet me, but she’s a woman alone on a dangerous journey.”
Serves the hellcat right, Cam wanted to say, then wondered at his spite. He was accounted an equable fellow. The last time he’d lost his temper was when Pen had refused him. If she’d lost her chaperone, however inadequate, Pen should easily find alternative protection. And he meant that in the Biblical sense.
“Peter, I—” Cam began, not sure how to respond. He guessed that his friend meant to charge him with rescuing Pen from her irresponsibility. Although, hell, after a lifetime of friendship, how could he say no?
As if reading Cam’s reluctance, Peter spoke quickly. Or perhaps he knew that he had too few breaths remaining to waste any. His urgency seemed to suppress his cough so he managed complete sentences. “In her last letter, she was in Rome and running out of money. That was a month ago. God knows what’s befallen since.”
“But what can I do?”
“Find her. Bring her back to England. Make sure she’s safe.” Peter regarded Cam like his last hope. Which made it damned difficult to deny him. “Elias will have his hands full inheriting and Harry’s not up to the job, even if I could get him away from the fleshpots.”
Peter forestalled Cam’s suggestion that another Thorne brother could undertake this task. Cam rose to pace the tiny room. “Confound it, Peter. I’ve no authority over Pen. She won’t pay a speck of attention to me.”
“She will. She’s always liked you.”
Not last time they’d met. “I can’t kidnap her.”
Shaking, Peter shoved himself higher against the pillows. His black eyes, so like his sister’s, burned in his ashen face as if all the life concentrated in that blazing stare. “If you have to, you must. I won’t have my sister bouncing all over Europe, called a whore by ignorant pigs who should know better.”
Bloody hell.
His stare unwavering, Peter clawed at the blankets. He gulped for air and gray tinged his skin now that brief vitality faded. “There’s no man I trust more than you. If you’ve ever considered me a friend, if you’ve ever cherished a moment’s affection for my sister, bring Pen home.”
A moment’s fondness for his sister? Aye, there was the rub. Until she’d treated him like an insolent lackey, he’d been fond of Penelope Thorne.
Pausing by the window, he stared into the stormy night. An endless forest of masts ranged against the turbulent sky. It was a night for making deals with the devil. Except in this case, Cam would wager good money that the devil was the woman at the end of the wild goose chase.
He caught his reflection in the glass. He looked like he always did. Calm. Controlled. Cold. The habit of hiding his feelings had become second nature. But he was sorrowing and resentful—and that resentment focused on one troublesome woman. Behind him, hazy in the glass, he saw Peter watching him, suffering stoically through his last hours.
How could Cam refuse? Futile as the quest was. Pen would go her own way, whatever her dying brother asked, whatever pressure her childhood friend placed upon her.
Cam leveled his shoulders. Duty had guided him since he’d been old enough to understand the snide whispers about his mother’s affair with her brother-in-law. Duty insisted that he accept this task, however unwillingly. Slowly he faced his friend. “Of course I’ll do it, Peter.”
And was rewarded by an easing in Peter’s painful tension and a hint of the formerly brilliant smile. The Thornes were a famously handsome family and fleetingly, Cam glimpsed his rakish old companion. “God bless you, Cam.”
God help him, more like.
Chapter Two (#uddd21a2d-286e-50e6-8f34-61334c450a58)
Val d’Aosta, Italy, February 1828
During nine years of travel, Penelope Thorne had been in more tight spots than she cared to remember. None quite so restricted as this one in the rundown common room of a flea-ridden hostelry high in the Italian Alps.
Battling to steady her hand, she raised her pistol and pretended that facing down a pack of miscreants was an everyday occurrence. Instinct insisted that betraying her fear would only invite rape and robbery—perhaps murder.
A dozen men leered at her. All desperate. All drunk. All drawing courage from their cohorts’ belligerence.
“The first man who moves gets a bullet,” she said in fluent Italian.
Unfortunately the denizens of this godforsaken village spoke some outlandish dialect. Their speech bore little resemblance to the melodious Tuscan that she’d learned in Florence’s salons.
Pen cursed the bad luck and bad weather that stranded her so far from civilization. Behind her, her maid and coachman cowered against the wall. The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen. He was probably in on the plot. He’d looked just as villainous as these thugs.
A heavily whiskered brute swaggered forward, expression contemptuous. Through the blast of incomprehensible patois, she made out the words “one” and “bullet.”
She kept the gun straight, despite crippling fear. “One bullet does a lot of damage.”
His lip curled in disdain and he took another step. She cocked the gun, the sound loud in the fraught silence. “Any nearer and I’ll shoot.”
He proved his scorn by approaching so close that she smelled the stale odor of his hulking body. Her stomach, already churning with dread, revolted and she only just stopped herself from faltering back. Behind him, the others shifted. Whatever the leader said prompted laughter. Laughter that made her skin crawl.
“I warned you.” She forced herself to meet the glittering excitement in his piglike eyes.
Her finger tightened on the trigger and an explosion rent the air. She jerked back and her ears rang. The hot stink of gunpowder filled her nostrils.
“Porca miseria—” He staggered into the gang, who heaved and growled like an angry ocean. A bloody hole punctuated his forehead and astonishment froze his features before his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped motionless.
Dear heaven, he was dead. At her hand.
Pen desperately wanted to be sick. In her twenty-eight years, she’d never killed anyone.
As the rabble coalesced into a menacing unit, she fumbled in her pocket for her second gun. She felt a presence at her shoulder and realized that at last her coachman Giuseppe displayed some backbone. If only he displayed some backbone while carrying a rifle. But his weapons remained in her carriage outside. All he had were his fists.
“Brava, milady.”
The men surged on a wave of rage. Pen raised her pistol with a hand that proved unexpectedly firm. Stinking bodies surrounded her, blocked the air. Cruel hands grabbed her, pinched her breasts. A blow landed hard against her ribs, stealing her breath.
Terror gripped her. She had one bullet left. Was this time to use it?
Giuseppe was somewhere in the melee. She couldn’t help him. She could barely help herself. Gasping and struggling she lifted her gun, bleakly aware that once she shot, she was at the mob’s mercy.
When a gunshot rang out, she first thought she’d fired. Yet the pistol remained cool in her hand.
The groping hands stilled. The angry roar faded to silence. The attack had lasted seconds, but it had felt like a lifetime.
Another gunshot and the horde fell away like a tide withdrawing down the beach.
“Get away from her.”
Cam?
Astonishment turned Pen to stone. Even after nine years, his voice was familiar. The authoritative baritone caught at the heart that she’d kept on ice since their last meeting.
Sullenly her assailants retreated, creating a path between Pen and the doorway where her unlikely rescuer stood. Pen sucked in her first full breath in what felt like hours. Sweat, blood, and the reek of her fear tainted the air.
The tall man wearing an elegant cape and a beaver hat tilted at a rakish angle seemed to belong to a different species from the bandits. Cam carried two horse pistols, a rifle hung over his shoulder and a sword dangled at his hip. Snow brushed his hat and shoulders.
“Get out and don’t come back.” As he stepped forward, his tone sent a chill oozing down her backbone. “This lady is under my protection.”
His Italian was as good as hers and this time the thugs understood. Although his arsenal of weaponry undoubtedly spoke more loudly than words.
One of the men remonstrated about their dead comrade until Cam raised the gun. The fellow skulked off with the rest, the dead man hoisted between them.
Shaky and ill, Pen extended a trembling hand toward Giuseppe. To her consternation, Cam gripped her arm. Even through the leather glove he wore, she felt the heat of his touch. How could he affect her like this after so long?
“I’m all right,” she forced past rising gorge.
“Like hell you are.” His hold tightened.
If only the room stopped revolving. If only she caught a decent breath. If only she saw something other than Cam’s endlessly disapproving expression and the face of the man she’d shot.
“I’ve … I’ve never killed anyone before.”
“Don’t waste your pity.” He sounded livid.
Wonderingly she stared into his face. That beautiful, sculpted, austere face that still haunted her dreams, no matter how she’d struggled to forget him. “You’re angry with me?” she asked in bewilderment.
“Damn right I am.” His mouth flattened. “I’d love to take you over my knee and give you a good spanking.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she said faintly, her voice coming from the end of a long tunnel. Cam’s face became the only fixed point in a reeling world.
She closed her eyes. Then her stomach gave a nauseating swoop as Cam swept her up in his arms. She managed an incoherent protest before blackness claimed her.
“Take this.” Fumbling to hold Pen, Cam shoved the horse pistols at the useless cur who had cowered behind her. He firmed his grip on Pen’s motionless body. She was a bonnie fighter. How his heart had leaped when he saw her courage, even while his belly twisted with terror.
He stared down into her face. The promise of the girl had flowered into the sort of beauty that started wars. He still remembered how disturbed he’d been all those years ago to discover his childhood shadow transformed into a striking woman. Now the long slender body was curved and soft in his arms. Her scent teased him. Something fresh and floral. Warm and womanly. Smoky. A trace of gunpowder, by God.
Long black hair flowed around her. Outrage threatened to choke him as he recalled those savages tearing at it and pawing her. If he’d had more bullets and some men at his back, he’d have done a damned sight more than chase the brigands away.
“Fetch the landlord,” he said to the girl he assumed was Pen’s maid. She hunched on the stairway, dark eyes wide as if expecting Cam to take up where the locals left off. She rose and managed a wobbly curtsy before disappearing down a corridor.
Pen stirred as he laid her carefully upon a wooden bench under a shuttered window. Looking at Pen, a turbulent mix of emotions assailed him. Relief at her survival, of course. Anger at her being in this place at all. An unacceptable physical awareness.
An awareness that only built as he bent over her, checking for injuries. Scratches marked her neck and shoulders. He couldn’t see much else wrong with her. Horror clenched his gut as he imagined what might have happened if he hadn’t arrived.
Inky eyelashes fluttered against pale cheeks, but she didn’t wake. What shocked him wasn’t her sensuous beauty. What shocked him was that she still contrived to look innocent.
His gaze fell to her lips, parted slightly as she inhaled. Something that felt disconcertingly like lust shuddered through him. As he pulled her torn bodice over her shift, he struggled not to notice the satiny skin under the tattered dress. He was a scoundrel to think of her as a desirable woman, rather than as a duty to hand off as soon as possible.
Blast it to hell. The moment his eyes dropped to her breasts, she stirred.
“Have you seen enough?” she asked in English.
The Duke of Sedgemoor was famous for his self-assurance. Nobody made him blush. But heat prickled along his cheekbones as he straightened and regarded Penelope with what he hoped was his usual detachment.
“You don’t appear seriously hurt.” He flung away his cloak and set his sword and rifle on a table. He was prepared for this lawless corner of the world even if Pen wasn’t.
“Not on my bosom at any rate.” Clutching at her bodice, she struggled to sit.
He stifled a quelling response. After all, he had been ogling her. “What in heaven’s name brought you to choose this hovel?”
One slender hand brushed her tumble of hair back from her face. To his dismay, he saw that she was shaking.
“Try the weather.” Her tone was sharper than his sword. “I know you could barge through an avalanche without creasing your neckcloth, but we lesser mortals must seek shelter when snow blocks the roads.”
She was a fool to travel through the mountains in February, but her pallor silenced his scolding. The landlord bustled in, carrying a tray.
“Mi dispiace, mi dispiace …” The fellow burst into an emotive explanation from which Cam gathered that the brigands had locked him in the cellars.
Cam seized the tray, pleased to see a bottle of brandy and two glasses. After the last half hour, he deserved a drink. Once the landlord assured them that he’d arranged for some stout villagers to guard the hostelry—a matter of civic honor apparently—Cam reserved a bedroom and sent him away.
Pen had remained quiet through the innkeeper’s recitation. So quiet that when they were alone, Cam tilted an eyebrow in her direction. Unless she’d changed beyond all recognition, quiet wasn’t her natural state. “Are you all right?”
He had a sinking feeling that the answer was “no,” but typically, she lifted her chin and glared at him. He wondered what she saw. Nothing she liked, if he read her expression right.
“Perfectly.”
He’d believe that if her gaze hadn’t skittered away from the blood on the floor. A girl carrying a bucket crept into the room and kneeled to clean up the mess. The strain on Pen’s face eased.
These flashes of understanding were odd. Cam thought she’d be a stranger after all this time. Yet she wasn’t. In many ways, she was still as familiar as his sister.
Peter had given Cam all Pen’s recent letters so he had an idea of where to seek her. It was how he’d tracked her to this backwater. He’d struggled against falling under the spell of the woman who wrote with such humor and vitality. She hadn’t mentioned any amorous intrigues. But then, she’d been writing to her brother.
She swallowed and stared at him, he suspected in preference to the bloodstains. “What a coincidence that you turned up.”
“A lucky coincidence,” he said drily, lifting the brandy bottle.
“I hope you’re pouring me one.”
Another reminder that she wasn’t the innocent he’d proposed to. “As you wish.”
“I wish.”
He passed her a brandy and tried to hide his surprise when she took a confident swig. In his world, unmarried ladies of good family didn’t indulge in strong spirits. But of course, Pen no longer belonged to his world.
He thought of Lady Marianne Seaton, the woman he’d chosen to marry. Lady Marianne wouldn’t drink brandy. But then he couldn’t imagine Lady Marianne having the fortitude to shoot a bandit either.
He’d never seen Lady Marianne less than perfectly turned out. Pen sat before him completely disheveled. Her bodice sagged, revealing the lacy edge of her shift. It seemed a betrayal to acknowledge that of the two women, Pen struck him as considerably more beddable.
The devil of it was that the years hadn’t diminished his reluctant sexual interest. The moment he’d seen Pen again, he’d wanted her. And now he was stuck with her until he got her safely back to England. What a hellish situation.
No matter what she’d got up to over here, she was his childhood companion and his friend’s sister. She deserved courtesy and respect. If he took Pen for one night, he was honor-bound to take her for life. He’d grown up enough to recognize his foolishness in offering for her all those years ago. The last thing he needed was a permanent entanglement with a notorious Thorne.
Empty glass dangling from one hand, Pen slumped against the wall. The brandy had restored some color to her cheeks.
“It isn’t a coincidence, is it?” Pen’s voice was flat. The maid slipped from the room.
“No.”
“Why are you here, Cam?”
Like a coward, he reached for the brandy bottle and refilled his glass. And hers. “Peter sent me. He was worried about you after Lady Bradford passed away.” He paused. “I’m sorry about that.”
Something that might have been grief flashed in the remarkable black eyes. She’d learned to guard her thoughts.
“Thank you.” A hint of warmth entered her voice. “I miss her. She was excellent company.”
As a boy, Cam had met Isabel, Lady Bradford. She’d possessed a vast fortune, and after a short, disastrous marriage, no interest in a second husband. Cam had liked her. She’d been eccentric and funny and opinionated. But nobody would consider her a suitable companion for an impressionable girl.
“Pen, I’ve got sad news.” His gut cramped with regret and pity. Pen loved her brother dearly. “I’m so sorry, but Peter died a month ago in Calais.”
Pen sucked in a breath. Her eyes went blank. What color she’d regained faded to ash.
Curse him, he was a bumbling idiot. He should have broken the news more gently.
Cam sat beside her on the bench, curling his arm around her shoulders. She was as stiff as a corpse. He firmed his grip, worried at her rigidity.
“Pen?” He hadn’t thought about her seriously in years, except as the woman with the temerity to refuse him. This enforced intimacy revived older, sweeter memories of comforting her as a child. “Pen? Speak to me.”
Slowly, she turned, blinking as though waking from bad dreams. “I was meeting him in Paris.” Her voice was thready and raw. He wished he could do something to help instead of feeling so confounded helpless. “That’s why I’m traveling at this ridiculous time of year.” She sucked in a breath as if she needed to make a conscious choice to take in air. “What happened?”
“He collapsed on the quay.”
“Oh, dear God.” She started to tremble. “I didn’t know he was ill. He should have told me.”
“You know Peter.”
“He wouldn’t want to burden anyone.” Tears thickened her voice as her unnatural composure cracked.
“He was a brave man.” Peter might have been a numbskull in worldly terms, but at heart, he was as true as an oak tree. Once Cam had thought much the same of Pen.
“Yes.”
Cam shifted closer. His heart ached with sorrow for her. She’d hardly come to terms with shooting a man. Now she faced the loss of a beloved brother.
She wriggled free. “Please—”
As he stood, he stifled a pang that she rejected his sympathy. He had no right to touch her. And given his unwilling attraction, it was better for both of them if he didn’t. “What can I do?”
Usually he knew how to handle any situation. Not in this case. Not with this woman so familiar, yet essentially a stranger.
The glassy look in her eyes made him wonder if she saw anything. His gut knotted when he saw how bravely she battled to dam her tears.
“Cam, can you please leave me alone?” Her hands twisted in her lap.
He shouldn’t be hurt. Clearly she was distraught. But as a little girl, she’d always turned to him with her troubles. “I can’t abandon you.”
She shook her head and her voice cracked. “Just a little privacy, for pity’s sake.”
Inwardly he flinched, although he retained his cool exterior. “Of course.”
He turned to go, before recalling that he had more to tell her. He caught her curling up against the wall as if shutting the world away. The impulse rose to haul her into his arms. He beat it back. She’d made it clear that he was the last man she wanted to touch her. “Pen, there’s something else.”
She didn’t glance up, but her hands stiffened into talons in the dark blue skirt over her upraised knees. “Not now.”
“I must.” He felt like the world’s biggest bastard. For once, not just because of the doubt surrounding his parentage. He straightened as if facing a dangerous foe. “Peter asked me to fetch you back to England.”
“I don’t need an escort.” Her voice was lackluster as she stared blindly at the shutters.
Sarcasm tinged his response. “That was apparent when I arrived.”
The tilt of her chin lacked defiance. “That’s never happened before.”
Any fool could see that she was near breaking. “I just wanted to say that we’ll go on together.”
He knew he’d said the wrong thing the moment the words left his mouth. Her eyes flashed with anger. It was an improvement on dumb grief. “Still giving orders, I see, Your Grace.”
“Don’t cross me on this, Pen,” he said steadily.
She cast him a look of pure dislike. “Go away, Cam.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_b6ff0e3e-9b3d-54a7-8733-d2e4170f5c23)
The problem with small inns in the back of beyond was that one had a devil of a job finding somewhere private to observe comings and goings. Particularly during an ice storm of Biblical proportions.
Even after weeks of rough lodgings, this shabby inn was the worst Cam had encountered. He was reluctant to intrude upon Pen’s grief. But nor did he want to sit outside in the snow, turning into an icicle. He couldn’t retreat upstairs to his room for fear that the bandits might return. The villagers had rallied, but he couldn’t entrust Pen’s safety to people he didn’t know.
Now he roamed the rooms like a lost dog, hungry and cold and unaccountably depressed by his reaction to Pen. And by her unenthusiastic reaction to him.
When she finally appeared, Cam was in the kitchen, suffering a glass of the pungent local red. The landlord’s wife cooked dinner and the savory smell made Cam’s stomach grumble. Confounding malefactors gave a man a powerful appetite.
“Good evening, Pen,” he said evenly, standing. “Would you like some wine?”
“Perhaps later,” she said without venturing inside.
She’d tucked her torn bodice into the neck of her shift. It reminded him, should he need reminding, that she’d faced down violence. It also reminded him, sod it, of her sweetly curved body. This continual, itching awareness of Penelope Thorne was tiresome. It wasn’t the response he’d expected—or wanted. “Are you looking for me?”
“I want Maria. I’d like to wash and change.” Her tone was almost as frigid as the weather.
“If you aren’t using the taproom, let’s bring our guardians inside for a meal. It’s a perishing night.”
“Noblesse oblige, Cam?”
He tried not to prickle under her mockery. Care for those who served him was bred into him. “If you wish to put it like that.”
“Poverina, poverina.” Their landlady abandoned the stove and bustled forward to place her arms around Pen. Pen sagged against her substantial bosom and Cam caught unguarded vulnerability in her expression.
No wonder she’d skulked in the doorway. She’d made a valiant effort to hide her grief, but he immediately saw her red eyes and spiky eyelashes. While he’d cursed the inconvenience, she’d been crying her heart out. He felt like a rat.
He watched, admiring her strength, as she gathered herself and straightened, towering over the dumpy, gray-haired woman. Their landlady gently led Pen to the table. Within moments a glass of wine and a bowl of steaming soup sat before her.
“Grazie.” Pen’s thanks were husky. She stared at the meal as if expecting poison.
“Eat it while it’s hot.” Cam cut her a slice from the hearty loaf in the center of the table.
Pen dipped her spoon in but nothing more. “Isn’t eating in the kitchen beneath the superb Camden Rothermere?”
“Stop trying to skewer me. You’re giving me indigestion.” Despite her bristling hostility, he touched her hand. The contact shivered through him, even as he told himself he offered comfort. “Eat, Pen. It will work out.”
“To your advantage, you think.”
Silence fell, thick with animosity. Such a pity. He and Pen had always got along famously. Until he’d proposed.
“I’m sorry about Peter,” he said quietly. He spoke in English to create some privacy. Around them, the business of the inn continued with maids carrying trays to the taproom.
“So am I.” She didn’t glance up, but her tone was less confrontational. “Thank you for saving me.”
He didn’t want gratitude, although God knew what he did want. “Any man would do the same,” he said uncomfortably.
“Noblesse oblige again?”
He didn’t respond. Instead he cut himself more bread. “Peter thought you were in trouble. From what I saw today, he was right.”
“You must have cursed him for involving you. Seeking out an old friend’s wayward sister wasn’t on your agenda. Especially when we didn’t part under the best circumstances.”
Just like Pen to refer so bravely to their last awkward meeting. Cam sipped his wine and decided to be equally frank. “You needn’t have run away. I had no intention of pestering you.”
Color tinged her cheeks and to his relief, she ate a little, if only to avoid his gaze. “I wasn’t running from you. I was running from my mother.”
Ah. He should have guessed. “She bullied you?”
Pen’s laugh was acerbic. “Into the ground. She even told my father to beat me until I agreed to marry you.”
He should have approached Pen before seeking her father’s permission. But in his arrogance, it had never occurred to him that she’d refuse. “Hell, Pen, did he?”
“Of course not.” For one poignant moment, they shared a knowing glance like the friends they’d once been. “Can you see my father raising a hand to me?”
The late Lord Wilmott had been a weak man who had avoided his shrewish wife. “No. He’d scuttle up to London and hide in his club.”
“He went to ground with his latest mistress. Mamma was not pleased.”
“I’m sure.” Just as he was sure that Lady Wilmott would take that displeasure out on her daughter. “So your aunt’s offer arrived at the right moment.”
“I’d always wanted to travel and I was rather dreading my season.”
He wondered why. “You would have been the toast of London.”
“I doubt it.” Her lips twisted in wry denial. “The consensus in the county was that I was too headstrong for my own good. I can’t imagine that the London beaux would have differed.” She paused before he could protest. “I had no idea that I’d wounded your vanity so badly.”
He shrugged, resenting the effort it took to speak lightly. “I daresay the experience was good for my soul.”
Her expression didn’t ease. “I’m sorry, Cam.”
“You’re not sorry you said no.” He should drop this subject. Harping upon her refusal smacked of injured pride.
“It’s a long time ago,” she said softly. That was something new in her. The Pen he’d known would have met that incendiary remark head on. She bent to her soup again and ate with more relish.
“Will you fight me on returning to England?” he asked once she’d emptied the bowl.
He was pleased that she didn’t look nearly so defeated. He hated to see her proud spirit cowed. “Do you want me to?”
He frowned. “However my high-handedness annoys you, I gave Peter my word that I’d take you back.”
“Peter wasn’t my keeper.”
Although you need one. “Perhaps not, but he loved you and wanted to see you settled.”
The bitter laugh reminded him of the day he’d proposed. “With a husband and children, no doubt.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” Cam asked sharply.
“It would be wrong for me. I’ll never marry.”
She sounded so certain. And why shouldn’t she? She’d established a life she liked, doing exactly what she liked with whom she liked. He’d almost applaud her audacity. Except that illogically, her impudence made him want to punch something. Preferably one of her damned cicisbei.
She cast him an assessing glance. “I’m well past my majority and as I have neither husband nor father to compel me, I’m a free agent.”
He kept his voice even. “I intend to honor my promise.”
The dangerous glint in her black eyes was familiar. “By hitting me over the head and tying me up?”
“If necessary,” he said in a hard voice. Although God knows what he’d do if she refused to cooperate.
Her body sagged and he saw again the grief-stricken girl who had come into the kitchen. “It won’t be necessary.”
A mixture of surprise and pity made him set his glass down so roughly that wine sloshed onto the pine table. “What the hell?”
Faint amusement curved her lips. Those damnably kissable lips. “You’re easier to tease than you once were, Cam.”
“Why, you—”
She pushed back the rickety wooden chair and stood. In spite of her smile, sorrow dulled her eyes. “Peter and I were meeting in Paris to discuss Aunt Isabel’s will. He was to be my legal representative in London. Now I must represent myself. You have my word I’m going home. But if we travel together, people will gossip.”
Even before meeting this disturbingly attractive version of Penelope Thorne, he’d devised a strategy. “We’ll avoid the cities until we reach my yacht at Genoa.”
“Genoa? That means retracing my steps.”
“Be damned if I’m crossing the Alps in February, Pen. We’re heading south.”
“I can head south on my own.”
He was tempted to agree, if only to escape this attraction that had him counting her every breath. Some corner of his mind kept exclaiming in astonishment, But this is Pen Thorne! With her untidy plaits and her muddy dresses and her skinned knees. How can Pen Thorne throw me into such a lather? “You’ll run into trouble. You were careless to set off with only that spineless coachman as escort.”
Her eyes turned to black ice. “I don’t owe you excuses or explanations.” She turned to go. “I wish you good evening, Your Grace.”
He surged to his feet. “Wait.”
He caught her arm. When she was younger, he’d touched her a thousand times. Still, her soft warmth shuddered through him. Dear God, this was a catastrophe. He struggled to bring Lady Marianne’s face to mind, but instead of her cool beauty, all he saw was gypsy-dark hair and eyes flashing insolence.
She stopped. “Let me go, Cam.”
“Do I have your word that you won’t disappear into the night?”
She jerked her arm and he released her, if only because touching her threatened his precarious control. “The snow has closed the roads north. I wouldn’t be surprised if the roads south are impassable too.”
“So we’re trapped.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Exactly, Your Grace.” Drawing her cape around her like an ermine cloak, Pen marched out, spine straight and hips swaying with a sinuous impertinence that set his heart cartwheeling.
Damn her.
Chapter Four (#ulink_4b32e0f6-8c71-51b5-8861-a60046598933)
Oldhaven House, London, February 1828
Harry Thorne took one last puff on his cheroot and tossed it with a contemptuous flick into the bushes lining the terrace. He hadn’t enjoyed it, although smoking was the craze for the young bucks he ran with.
Just lately he didn’t enjoy much. The malaise had set in last month after his older brother Peter’s death. The exciting life that a fellow of twenty-three with no responsibilities led in the capital had lost all savor.
Guilt added to his depressed spirits. Hell, if he’d known the truth about Peter’s troubles, he’d have rushed to his brother’s side. But Peter had kept his difficulties to himself. Still, it was a damned bitter pill to swallow that his brother had breathed his last, alone in a foreign country, and Harry hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye.
Harry wandered away from the ballroom into the dark garden. The violins scratching out the latest waltz faded until the music was a whisper.
Somewhere out here Lady Vera Standish waited, finally ready, if he read the signals, to surrender her plump prettiness. She’d challenged him to find her. After months of dogged pursuit, he damn well hoped she wasn’t trying too hard to hide.
Except even the prospect of exploring Lady Vera’s much admired, and much caressed charms didn’t dispel his megrims. He reached the garden wall, well away from the house. When he heard a rustle, he turned, struggling to muster a flicker of excitement.
Then a sound he didn’t expect. A sniff and a muffled sob.
Not Lady Vera.
He retreated to grant some privacy to whoever huddled in the bushes.
Another sniff. Another choked sob.
He took a couple of steps down the white gravel path. If someone cried out here alone, it was none of his damned business. If he delayed, Vera Standish would turn to some other swain. She wasn’t noted for her patience.
His shoe scraped across a rock. Silence descended. Whoever was hiding now knew that she wasn’t alone.
Harry recognized that he was incapable of leaving someone to suffer. As a rake and roué, he was a rank failure. With a sigh, he turned toward the holly-smothered alcove. As he battled through the prickly greenery, he couldn’t help thinking of the prince struggling through thorns toward Sleeping Beauty.
“Please don’t come any closer,” a soft, broken voice whispered from mere feet away.
“Too late,” he muttered, bursting through the hedge into an enclosed hollow. His eyes had adjusted and he easily made out the girl in a light-colored gown cowering against the wooden seat.
“Go away.” Although he couldn’t see her face, she sounded very young. Her lace handkerchief twisted in her hands.
“Are you all right?” He ventured closer and she pressed back.
“Perfectly.”
There. He’d asked. She was fine. He could now find Lady Vera. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.” Her quaking voice proclaimed her a liar.
“You sound like you are.”
“It’s a bad cold,” she said stiffly.
“You shouldn’t be sitting outside, then.”
“And you shouldn’t be talking to strange women without an introduction.”
The show of spirit intrigued him. He could make out very little apart from her slenderness and the constant tugging at the handkerchief.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked with a hint of snap.
He hid a smile. “Strange.”
She stood. The full moon chose that moment to emerge from behind a cloud, granting his first glimpse of his damsel in distress.
He felt like someone had punched him in the gut.
How in hell had he missed her before this? Had he been so fixated on the pinchbeck of Vera Standish when somewhere in that ballroom waited pure gold?
“I’m not strange.” She surveyed him with wide eyes in a delicate face under a pile of thick golden hair. “I’m beginning to think you might be.”
His damsel was breathtakingly lovely. “Why the devil are you sitting out here all alone?” he asked roughly. “You don’t know who might come upon you.”
Tentative mischief lit her expression. He’d been right to suspect liveliness beneath her distress. “Well, you did.”
He should say something rakish. But when he looked at her, his heart stopped. She was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Who on earth was she? Damn it, he’d been out in society since leaving university and he had a reputation as a dog with the ladies. But this girl stole his ability to do more than mumble and act the looby. He managed a smile, quite a feat when his heart performed somersaults in his chest. “I’m generally accounted quite benign.”
She stared at him as if she’d never seen a man. “I should go.”
He chanced a step nearer and felt a surge of triumph when she didn’t retreat, although even in the uncertain light, he saw her wariness. Not quite as innocent as all that, apparently. “You don’t want to go back into the ballroom with red eyes.”
“Nobody would notice.”
His laugh was short. “This is your first season, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then take advice from someone older and wiser—the old tabbies notice everything. And they pass it on. If you don’t want the world to know that you’ve been crying, you’ll enter that room utterly composed.”
Her lush lips turned down. “I don’t like London.”
“You will.”
Daringly he reached for one of her gloved hands. She started, but even through two layers of fabric, he felt her warmth. The urge to strip away both gloves and test the softness of her skin beat like a war drum in his head. But one false move and she’d scarper for the ballroom, red eyes or not.
“I’m not so green that I don’t know a stranger shouldn’t hold a lady’s hand,” she said drily.
“Yes, remiss of you not to tell me your name.”
To his surprise, she laughed. He was glad to see her regain her cheerfulness. “It’s better that you don’t know who I am.”
“Won’t you tell me why you’re crying?”
She raised shining eyes to his and he suffered another blow from an invisible assailant. “You’ve just told me I can’t trust anyone.”
Hoist by his own petard. “You can trust me.”
An unimpressed look crossed her face. “I’m sure every untrustworthy person in the world says that.”
Good Lord, she was sweet. “Where does that leave us?”
“With plans to return to the ballroom?”
“Are you deserting me?”
Another faint smile. He had a delicious sense that she tested her power. “Yes.”
He fleetingly wondered whether perhaps he’d dipped too deeply into the punch. But when her smile widened and his heart lurched like a drunken sailor, he recognized that this intoxication reached far beyond lowly alcohol’s power. “Cruel beauty.”
“How can I be cruel when you’ve been so very kind?”
He groaned. “That makes me sound like an aged uncle.”
This time when she tried to withdraw, he let her. “Nevertheless, it’s true.”
“Will you save me a dance?”
Her poise revived with every second. “My card is full.”
“What about tomorrow night?”
“We mightn’t be at the same party.”
It was his turn to smile. “Oh, that we will, my mysterious miss.”
The moonlight was bright enough to reveal the flash of unhappiness that crossed her face. “There’s no point flirting with me.”
“There’s every point.”
She shook her head and he wished he believed that she teased him. “I’m spoken for.”
Spoken for? “You’re not married?”
Thick sheets of lead coated the heart that had been lighter than air. Something had happened to him tonight in this garden, something momentous.
“Not yet.”
Not yet? What the hell did that mean?
Before he could question her, she turned and hared off through an opening in the hedge that he’d missed. And bugger it, he still didn’t know her name.
Something in him insisted that she’d seen him as clearly as he’d seen her. That she’d felt the immediate connection. Stronger than attraction. Affinity, and an odd recognition, as though their encounter was preordained.
He sighed and sank onto the seat. Could a man’s world change in an instant?
When Harry rejoined the party, he immediately located the girl. He’d wondered whether to blame the moonlight for his enchantment. Now that he saw her clearly, she still took his breath away. Candlelight revealed details that he’d missed. The precise shade of her gold hair. The creamy skin. The pink flush on her cheeks.
A pink flush that heightened when she cast one nervous glance to where he stood near the doors.
Satisfaction that she’d sought him out flooded him. His eyes followed her as she twirled around the room, graceful as a flying bird in her white dress. She was dancing with the Marquess of Leath. Could his rival be James Fairbrother? The man was filthy rich and from a powerful family.
Across the crowded room, Lady Vera scowled at him as if she’d like to skin him alive. He shrugged and sent her a regretful smile. How could he explain that after a chance meeting, he was no longer the same man?
“Who is that pretty girl with Leath?” he asked with studied nonchalance when his friend Beswick sidled up.
Beswick took a few moments to locate her. The man must be blind. She outshone every woman here the way the sun outshone the moon. “The blonde?”
The goddess. “Yes.”
“That’s Sophie Fairbrother.” Beswick regarded him in disbelief. “That’s setting your sights too high for a penniless younger son with no prospects, chum. She’s Leath’s sister. Word is that she’s promised to Desborough, although nothing official’s been announced.”
Another punch in the guts. Was that why his beauty had been crying? Her family forced her into an unwanted match? “Earl Desborough?”
Beswick laughed derisively. “Is there another? He and Leath are political pals and this will unite the two great fortunes. The chit comes with a fat dowry. Surprised you haven’t heard talk of her.”
“Does she love Desborough?” Harry asked, then cursed himself for the betraying question.
Another scoffing laugh from Beswick. “Who cares when she brings all that gold? Good God, I’d make a play for her myself if Leath didn’t know that my pockets are to let. Wish he’d forget about fortune hunters and concentrate on his spat with Sedgemoor.”
Without shifting his attention from Sophie Fairbrother, Harry asked, “What spat?”
“Have you been living under a rock?”
Harry cast his friend a look of cordial dislike. “No, just attending Peter’s funeral and helping Elias settle into his role as the new Lord Wilmott.”
Dismay filled Beswick’s good-natured face. “Beg pardon, old man. I forgot. Blame it on my frustration at seeing such a fat pigeon fly to someone who already has a full dovecote.”
Reluctantly Harry smiled. Beswick’s financial woes were long-standing. “Buck up, Beswick. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“Especially if you can’t afford candles,” his friend replied glumly. “You must have heard about Richard Harmsworth and Sedgemoor exposing Neville Fairbrother, Leath’s uncle, as a thief? Fairbrother shot himself before charges were laid, but the investigation has filled the papers. Jonas Merrick gathered most of the evidence—as you’d expect with his contacts. That man knows before a mouse farts in the wainscoting, I vow.”
Perhaps Harry had been living under a rock. “The uncle’s doings have tainted all the Fairbrothers?”
“Pretty much. The word is that Leath hopes this spectacular marriage will restore the family prestige.”
“So she’s a sacrificial lamb.” Poor Sophie. The dance finished and her brother returned her to a group of grandees including, he noticed, Desborough.
“Sacrificial virgin, more like.” Beswick’s voice lowered. “Desborough’s a lucky dog. Brass doesn’t usually come in such an appealing package.”
“Watch your mouth, Beswick,” Harry snarled.
Even without looking, Harry knew his friend regarded him like he was going mad. The way he felt, perhaps his friend was right. “Steady on, man. She’s a pretty girl who’s completely out of reach. We’ve admired plenty of those in our time.”
The Thornes were inclined to sudden, but lasting passions. Sophie Fairbrother had no idea what she’d sparked tonight. As if she sensed his thoughts, Sophie looked up sharply and immediately found him. Even across the room, he saw the hectic color in her alabaster cheeks. Dear Lord, she was a peach.
Harry held her eyes. He meant to make her his. Let the rest of the world go hang.
Chapter Five (#ulink_97b57bc0-dee0-5809-9e76-6856b3ab94e6)
Val d’Aosta, February 1828
Very carefully, Pen inched open the door from her chamber on the upper floor. Despite exhaustion, roiling turmoil had stopped her sleeping. Grief for Peter. Anger that he hadn’t confided in her about his illness. Resentment at Cam’s arrogance. Impatience with herself for finding Cam as compelling as ever, even when she burned to crown him with the nearest stewpot.
Just seeing Cam confirmed that agonizing truth. She hated to admit that she was still that most pathetic creature, the lovelorn female yearning after a man who would never love her back.
Since refusing his proposal, she’d done her damnedest to forget Camden Rothermere. Her aunt had led an active and interesting life, mixing with people who found English manners too restrictive. In the past nine years, Pen had met poets and painters and musicians, wandering aristocrats and antiquarians, travelers and scientists.
She’d learned that her idiosyncratic character, too individual to meet approval at home, appealed to those who appreciated intelligence and spirit. Her broken heart had found some small solace in the admiration of brilliant, sophisticated men. Cam didn’t want her, but that didn’t mean she was undesirable.
Occasionally she’d wondered if someone might usurp Cam’s place in her affections. But to her despair, she was a true Thorne. She loved once and she loved deeply.
Which meant she couldn’t bear to spend the next weeks cooped up with Cam. Last night, she’d told Giuseppe and Maria to be waiting at five, whatever the weather. Luckily, the storm had died overnight and when she checked out her narrow bedroom window, the road from the village looked passable. Even if it wasn’t, she’d damn well walk rather than suffer Cam’s company all the way back to England.
Now that Peter wouldn’t meet her in Paris—she stifled a pang, she’d grieve once she was out of this pickle—she’d go south as Cam suggested. Then she’d make her way to London.
The corridor outside her room was black as a cave in Hades. She edged forward. Once she made it downstairs and outside to the stables, she was on her way.
“Going somewhere?”
She jumped and dropped her bag to the wooden floor. Gasping, she whirled toward the shadows near the door. “You scared me.”
“Not enough, apparently,” Cam said drily.
She ignored the remark. “What are you doing outside my room?”
“What are you doing dressed for travel?”
“How do you know I’m dressed for travel?”
“Aren’t you?” he asked coolly. “Shall we continue this discussion in private?”
“We have nothing to say to each other,” she said crisply, marching past.
“After so long? You wound me.” He caught her arm and bustled her into her room.
“You have no right.” She struggled to break free. He’d touched her too often since he’d saved her. And every time he set her pulse racing.
“Perhaps not. Will you stay and listen?”
“You’re such a bully,” she said sullenly.
“Sticks and stones. Do I release you?”
She wanted to kick him. “Yes.”
Cam let her go and moved past. He paused before the window, his tall, lean shape silhouetted against the light reflected from the snow outside. After some clicks and scrapes, the candle on her nightstand bloomed into light.
“I hate to mention your dignity again, but isn’t it degrading for a duke of the realm to sleep across a lady’s threshold like a servant?” she asked with pointed sweetness.
He glanced up with a faint smile. Despite her irritation, her heart lurched. How she wished he wasn’t so beautiful with his narrow, intense face and his glinting green eyes and his level dark brows. After nearly ten years without him, he still dazzled her. It just wasn’t fair.
“I didn’t have to prostrate myself on your doorstep.” He paused. “Giuseppe told me your plans.”
Blast Giuseppe and his flapping gums.
She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Cam laughed. “You should give him his marching orders. He’s worse than useless.”
“Perhaps you should offer him a place in your household,” she asked with more of that dangerous sweetness.
“Not on your life. I value loyalty too much to employ that weasel. Pen, do you really want me trailing you all the way back to Dover?”
He made her sound absurd. “You’d do that?”
“I would.”
Of course he would. He’d accepted the obligation of her safety and he wouldn’t relinquish the burden short of death. Cam’s principles were a deuced nuisance. She released a long-suffering sigh. “Were you always this annoying?”
“Probably.” He glanced around. “Shall we go?”
“Now?”
He lifted the candle. “Your carriage awaits. I paid the landlord last night.”
“What about your carriage?”
“I rode.”
Aghast, she stared at him. “Through the snow?”
“Through the snow.” He paused. “You’ve put me to a deal of trouble, Pen.”
Her lips tightened even as guilt pricked her. It had been a horrific winter. He’d faced weeks of peril on her behalf. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“Perhaps not, but set aside your stubbornness and admit that you’ll be better off with a man to ease your way.”
Patronizing swine. She left the bedroom and gingerly descended the insecure staircase, careful not to grip the makeshift banister too hard. “What a typically male thing to say.”
“Which makes it no less true.” His voice warmed a fraction. She wished to heaven she wasn’t so attuned to every nuance. She wished to heaven she’d never met him again.
On the ground floor she faced Cam, illuminated in candlelight at the top of the stairs. God save her, could he look any more appealing? She bit back a bitter laugh.
If he’d suborned her coachman, she didn’t have much choice about going with him. Still, she didn’t like to admit defeat any more than His Grace, the Duke of Sedgemoor. “We need to set some rules.”
He cocked his eyebrow with familiar mockery as he descended, carrying her bag. “That’s not like you, Pen. You usually prefer everything free and easy.”
Ouch. “Just because I didn’t settle into middle age before I hit twenty doesn’t make me a complete flibbertigibbet. I’ve traveled for years without major problems.”
“Yesterday was a close call.”
She wished he hadn’t arrived to find her at such a disadvantage. On the other hand, without his intervention, she doubted that she’d be here this morning. “Are you going to dine out on that rescue all the way to England?”
“You’ve got a nasty tongue, my girl.” He sounded like he appreciated her barbed responses.
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. They weren’t falling into the habit of private little messages. They weren’t going to act like intimate friends. She glared. “I’ve developed many unfortunate habits,” she said flatly. “Are we going?”
“Your eagerness for my company fills my heart with elation.”
“Give yourself a day or so in a carriage with me and see if you feel the same,” she snapped and flounced outside to where the perfidious Giuseppe waited in the driver’s seat. A high-bred bay gelding was tied to the back of the coach. The snow might have stopped, but it was bitterly cold. Pen hoped Giuseppe froze.
When Cam entered the vehicle, she was bundled under fur throws with Maria beside her. The lamps inside were lit. He settled with his back toward the horses. Again, the perfect gentleman.
He banged on the ceiling to tell Giuseppe to go. Pen bit back a snide comment about him taking charge. Even as a small boy, Cam had been inclined to command. Seven years as Duke of Sedgemoor had only fortified his dictatorial tendencies. If she bridled at every order, she’d be a wreck before they reached the foot of this mountain, let alone England.
Maria curled into the corner and closed her eyes. Cam shot the girl a disapproving glance. Servants at Fentonwyck displaying such lèse-majesté would be dismissed without a character. Pen stifled the impulse to justify herself. In Maria’s defense, Pen saw little point making the girl sit up when she had nothing constructive to do.
Already Cam threatened to become a tyrant. If he was hers, she’d bring him down a few pegs. But to her everlasting regret, he’d never be hers.
“Does your maid speak English?” he asked once they were on their way.
“No.” The mountain road was bumpy. Pen grabbed the leather strap against the jolting.
“Good.” He extended his closed hand. “Here.”
Automatically she reached for what he offered. He dropped something small and round and warm onto her palm. She looked down. It was the Sedgemoor signet ring, carved with two rearing unicorns, their horns crossed to make an X.
Shocked, she looked up. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a loan.”
Her fingers closed around the ring. For centuries, it had been the tangible symbol of Rothermere power. “Why?”
To her surprise, he looked uncomfortable. He hadn’t looked at all awkward when he’d pushed her around. “Wear it on your ring finger. I don’t imagine anyone will recognize us and we’ll use false names. But we’ll attract less attention if people think we’re married.”
Feeling sick, she stared at the gold ring gleaming in the lamplight. It taunted her with the cruel reality that she’d never be his bride. “How … practical.”
He heard her implied criticism. His lips tightened. “You know the consequences if we’re discovered.” His tone bit. “It’s not as if you want to marry me.”
She sighed, depressed that he held a grudge when they both knew she’d done him a favor by refusing him. “Cam, you can’t still be angry about the proposal. That makes no sense. Especially when now we’ve met again, you must see that I’d make the worst wife in the world.”
His jaw hardened. “Don’t flatter yourself, Pen. I got over any youthful pique years ago.”
She wasn’t convinced, although it seemed out of character for Cam to be such a poor loser. Mostly he’d won their various games, but if he hadn’t, he’d taken defeat in good spirit.
“Well, stop harking back to it,” she snapped.
“I’m offering you a ring. I’m inevitably reminded of the last time I did that.”
Her heart lurched with futile longing. If he’d offered love along with the ring, they’d have been married nearly a decade. Gracelessly she shoved the ring onto her finger. “Life was easier when I traveled alone.”
“Stow it, Pen. We’re together until we reach home soil. You’re always cranky when you lose.” He settled into his seat, folding his arms across his powerful chest. His black superfine coat was so beautifully cut, it didn’t strain against the movement. The boy she’d known had been quick and strong, but nine years had turned Cam into a man ready to take on the world and win.
“I haven’t lost,” she said coolly. “I’ve retired to regroup.”
More displeasure blasted her way. He’d perfected the crushing effect of his stare since their last meeting. “Don’t cross me on this, Pen. I promised Peter I’d get you to England.”
She strove to remain uncrushed. “What happens when we arrive? Will you dog my footsteps until I perish of old age? Or irritation, which is more likely.”
His smile held no amusement. “Once you’re safely home, as far as I’m concerned, you can go to the devil.”
Chapter Six (#ulink_dfed4153-0b6b-5c1e-883c-9bee7d36b2ca)
Chetwell House, London, February 1828
Harry marked the moment that Sophie slipped from the crowded ballroom. Hardly surprising when he’d observed her every move.
All week, he’d waited impatiently to catch her alone. The burning need to speak about something more significant than the weather had built until it threatened to explode.
The night they’d met, he’d obtained a formal introduction. He’d managed a country dance and a schottische with her since—quite a feat when she rapidly became the toast of London. During their dances, he’d confined himself to platitudes. He’d had to be satisfied with touching her hand and delighting in the shy attraction glittering in her blue eyes.
Tonight, neither the watchful marquess nor Lord Desborough attended. Under other circumstances, Harry might admire Leath’s protectiveness. In worldly terms, an undistinguished younger son from a ramshackle family was no fit match for the Marquess of Leath’s sister. But surely Sophie should marry a man who adored her, rather than one who treated her as Desborough did, like a pretty pet to fuss over or ignore at his whim.
Harry didn’t move in Desborough’s exalted circles. But he had eyes and a brain, however rarely he’d exerted it. While he discerned no dislike between Sophie and the man touted as her husband, he discerned no genuine attraction either.
Damn it, she deserved better.
Whether she deserved Harry Thorne, well, that was her choice.
Harry tracked Sophie into the gallery. The long room faced the gardens with doors open onto the terrace. Fortunately, for February, it was a mild night, but even so, away from the crush, he shivered in the chill air. At the far end of the room, a couple he didn’t know bent their heads toward each other.
Sophie paused before a portrait of a bewigged, double-chinned gentleman. She looked beautiful tonight in rose silk and with pearls tangled in her upswept hair. Harry stopped a few feet away, waiting until the couple wandered into the garden without sparing him a glance.
“You followed me,” Sophie said, without turning.
What point prevaricating? “Yes.”
As he’d stalk a skittish animal, he edged closer. He stared at her vulnerable nape, wanting desperately to kiss her there. Wanting to kiss her everywhere.
It was too soon.
Still she didn’t glance back. “My brother warned me against you.”
Did the bastard, by God? “What did he say?” Harry kept his voice soft. He and Sophie might be alone, but they were still in public.
“That you’re a fortune hunter.”
He laughed dismissively. “You know I’m not interested in your money.” While he’d love to see her face, there was a delicious suspense in standing so near, catching the soft drift of her fragrance, flowers and beautiful girl.
“That’s what a fortune hunter would say.”
“Probably. But in my case it’s true.” He paused. “That wasn’t all he said.”
She shifted and spoke reluctantly. “He said your family was—”
“Shady?”
Finally she turned. She didn’t look annoyed or flustered. She looked curious. “After Uncle Neville’s villainy, our family can’t boast.”
He was impressed that she broached the scandal. Harry had always sensed that Sophie Fairbrother was made of stronger stuff than society suspected. Which meant that something more important than a petty disappointment had made her sob her heart out in the Oldhavens’ garden.
Despite his determination to remain within the bounds of propriety—just—he took her arm. She gasped in surprise without pulling away. Beneath his touch, her skin was smooth and cool. A bolt of heat sizzled through him, startling him with its power.
“If I drag you into a private room, will you scream?” he murmured.
He wasn’t sure what reaction he expected. Certainly not a soft giggle. “That depends on what you intend to do.”
For a beat, shock held him silent. She wasn’t afraid. Instead she looked interested and eager. Heaven help him. Clasping her slender arm and drowning in eyes as blue as a summer sky, he didn’t feel like a gentleman. He felt like a starving man presented with a table groaning under lashings of food.
“Not as much as I want to,” he admitted.
He whisked her behind the nearest door. The latch’s click sounded like thunder. His heart thudded with excitement and uneasiness. If they were discovered, there would be the devil to pay.
“This is dangerous.” His grip softened to a caress and instinct alone led his hand to her other arm. This room was as dark as a coalmine.
“It is. My brother is a famous shot.”
The warmth of her skin under his hands set him trembling. “For a few minutes alone with you, I’ll take any risk.”
“Will you think that when he puts a bullet into you?” In the quiet gloom, the rasp of her breathing was audible. She was more nervous than she pretended. That hint of vulnerability contained Harry’s rocketing desire as nothing else could.
“Even then, it’s worth it.”
“Such a flatterer.”
He knew he deserved the mockery, but he couldn’t like it. How to explain that this time everything was different? Sophie wasn’t one of his women. She was the woman.
“I’ll be missed if I stay too long.”
He smiled. “That sounds promising.”
“How so?”
“That you mean to stay at all.”
She offered no coy protests. The more he saw of her, the more he liked her. “Are you a fortune hunter?”
He breathed unsteadily too. Not because of fear, but because her nearness set his heart galloping like a wild horse across the moors. Her scent tinged the air. Something fresh like running water. “What do you think?”
“I think I’ve spent far too long thinking about you.”
Triumph flooded him. He exhaled and cupped her face, feeling her silky cheeks beneath his palms. “I can’t stop thinking about you either. Are you going to marry Desborough?”
She started, but didn’t move away. “My brother wants me to.”
“Do you?”
“It’s a good match,” she said unenthusiastically.
He released her. “So good it makes you hide away and cry.”
“That wasn’t—”
“Don’t lie, Sophie. Not to me.”
“You can’t call me Sophie.”
He laughed softly. “I can’t address the woman who shares my cupboard by her title. It’s a rule of society.”
Her gurgle of amusement made his blood fizz with happiness. “You don’t strike me as a man who follows rules, Mr. Thorne.”
The need to kiss her surged, but despite her unexpected if hesitant cooperation, he didn’t want to frighten her away. “You’ve listened to too much gossip. And my name is Harry.”
The pause that followed vibrated with significance.
“Harry …” she breathed, turning his prosaic name into music.
His heart crashed against his ribs. Dear God, he was in trouble. “Lovely, lovely Sophie,” he whispered and despite the risk of taking everything too far too fast, he curled his arms around her.
“Oh!” She jerked from the brush of his lips.
He set her free and withdrew as far as the cupboard allowed. “Forgive me.”
To his astonishment, she caught his shirt. “You took me by surprise.”
“I had no right—”
“You’re a very chivalrous rake, Harry Thorne,” she said drily.
Her tone piqued his curiosity. Ignoring common sense and self-preservation, not to mention the gentleman’s code, he placed his hand over hers. “Don’t you want me to be chivalrous?”
“Not right now.”
“You deserve better than a furtive courtship,” he said helplessly, even as his other hand snaked around her slender waist to arch her against him. “But since the day we met, I’ve dreamed of you.”
Her sigh conveyed wonder. “Really?”
His voice deepened into urgency. “I’ve dreamed of kissing you.”
And other things, but he couldn’t sully her innocence with his wanton fantasies.
“I’d like to make your dreams come true.” She leaned closer, her breasts grazing his chest. “Will you kiss me, Harry?”
“Sophie—” Her scent filled his head like wine, overwhelmed thought. His hand tightened around her waist.
“Don’t you want to?” she asked in a small voice.
“Of course I bloody want to,” he said roughly, then dragged in a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not acting the gentleman.”
This time her sigh was disgruntled. “You’re acting too much the gentleman.”
“Sweetheart—”
She interrupted before he pointed out that he cared for her reputation. After all, how convincing could any avowal sound when he embraced her in a cupboard in the middle of a ball?
“I don’t want to hear it.” Her voice softened. “Unless it’s ‘Kiss me, Sophie.’ “
Oh, hell. How could he resist? “Kiss me, Sophie.”
Harry lashed her to him and pressed his mouth to hers. Her lips trembled beneath his. Her fluttering uncertainty hinted that this was her first kiss. Tenderness stabbed at his heart.
Automatically he gentled, nipping and licking at her, until her breath hitched and she leaned closer. His tongue slid into her mouth, tasting her fully. Her flavor blazed through him like lightning.
The world beyond Sophie’s clumsy but ardent responses vanished. All Harry knew was her warmth and the way her tongue danced around his. Her broken moans. Her soft, quivering body pressed into his.
It took him longer than it should to realize that she’d stopped participating. He raised his head and struggled to see her through the darkness. “What—”
“Shh!” Her hands formed claws in his shirt. Now she trembled not with passion, but with terror.
There were voices outside. Damn. His arms tightened and he drew Sophie against him. Anyone within a mile’s radius must hear his heart. He wasn’t frightened for himself but for her. Only a bloody fool would risk this encounter.
He strained to hear if the people outside mentioned the Marquess of Leath’s sister. They discussed supper arrangements. If Harry hadn’t been thickheaded with delight, he’d have recognized his hostess’s voice immediately. She seemed to be talking to her butler.
Fleetingly, he relaxed. Until he wondered if the butler needed supplies from this tiny storeroom.
In vibrating silence, Harry and Sophie clung together until the voices faded. Eventually he whispered in her ear. “I need to get you out of here.”
With a trust he didn’t deserve, she laid her cheek upon his chest. “I thought I’d die when I heard them.”
“I shouldn’t have brought you in here. But I’ve been desperate to see you, and your brother’s like a collie with a ewe lamb.”
“He’s terrified of fortune hunters spoiling his plans.”
“To be fair, that’s his duty.”
“But you’re not a fortune hunter.”
“I’m not.” He paused. “I’m not?”
“A fortune hunter wouldn’t hesitate to ruin me to force a marriage.”
Marriage? The word clanged through him like a great bell.
The malaise dogging his heels disappeared in Sophie’s company. The sight of her turned his day to brilliance. That left the choice of taking himself off and leaving her to the man her brother chose. Or ruining her. An idea which made every cell in his body revolt.
Or marriage.
“Harry?” she asked on a thread of sound. “What’s wrong?”
It was too early to mention lifelong commitment. Already she’d surrendered more than he’d hoped. His heart kicked as he remembered those wondrous kisses.
He eased his grip. “We’ve been here too long.”
“Yes.” Regret weighted her voice. “Will I … will I see you again?”
Despite the last fraught moments, he couldn’t contain a laugh. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I’m not experienced with flirtation.”
Another pang of painful tenderness. He wasn’t experienced with love. In this glorious new world, they were both innocents. “When can I meet you?”
“The park.” She sounded relieved. “I ride tomorrow morning.”
“With your brother?”
“He’s away this week.”
“I’ll find you.”
“I hope so.” He caught a quiver of uncertainty.
“I swear it,” he said.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
How he basked in hearing that, however difficult it made this parting. “I don’t want to let you go. But I must.”
He kissed her quickly. He meant the contact to be sweet and brief, but he found himself drowning again.
Luckily for failing willpower, she broke away and opened the door a crack. “Tomorrow,” she whispered, slipping outside.
“Tomorrow,” he confirmed, then waited in the dark while she shut the door with a soft snick. Right now he wasn’t fit for civilized company. He hoped Sophie was. He had a horrible feeling that she’d look mussed and thoroughly kissed.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_ff7437db-68e4-5577-b1dd-af63d508d3e5)
Fontana dei Monte, Italian Alps, February 1828
It was snowing again. As this purgatorial week proceeded, Pen began to think that the world contained only snow and ice and wind. And flea-ridden inns. And rude servants.
And men who tried to push her around.
Or more accurately, one man who pushed her around. His overbearing Grace, the Duke of Sedgemoor.
Pen and Cam traveled as Lord and Lady Pembridge, using the Sedgemoor heir’s courtesy title. She supposed that now they left the mountains behind, the inns would become busier. She and Cam would need to be more discreet than ever in case they met someone who knew them.
Their coach bumped its way into the tiny hillside village where they would spend the night—or rather where the man who had assigned himself lord and master had decreed they’d stay. Idly Pen wondered when she’d finally break. Would this be the day when she pushed Cam headfirst into one of the towering snow drifts lining what was optimistically termed a road?
Cam sat beside her now, staring out the window as if the acres of white formed a glorious vista considerably more appealing than his companion. They’d had a long day. Not that they’d covered much ground. It was discouraging how much time they took to traverse every mile. Cam had been right, much as she hated admitting it. Crossing the Alps in February had been an asinine plan.
Over the last days, the temperature inside the carriage had been colder than outside. In public, Cam might treat Pen with deference that set her teeth on edge, but their infrequent private conversations had been stilted and tinged with hostility.
The coach shuddered to a stop, jerking Maria awake on the seat opposite. Pen had developed enormous envy for her maid’s ability to sleep through anything. Strangely Maria had immediately accepted the news that her mistress and the duke traveled as a married couple.
Desperate to stretch her cramped legs, more desperate to escape the oppressive atmosphere, Pen opened the door and jumped out before Paolo, their new coachman, could help her. Despite herself, she glanced back at Cam, expecting the usual disapproval.
But the expression in his watchful green eyes troubled her. In another man, she’d interpret the gleam as reluctant interest. But Cam treated her as a troublesome obligation, not a woman he wanted. Still, that level gaze made her shiver like someone brushed an icy hand across bare skin.
After weeks of rough travel, Cam was no longer a polished specimen of British manhood. His linen was grubby, his clothes crumpled, his boots cloudy with dirt. And he looked tired. He pretended that he rose above human weakness, but the man in the carriage looked exhausted to the bone. She’d always thought his impossible pursuit of perfection made for a lonely life. Right now, he looked heartbreakingly alone.
She resented Cam’s bossiness. She resented, much good it did, his inability to love her. Even so, he’d undergone considerable trouble for her and she’d rewarded him with a fit of the sullens. Her tone was friendlier than usual. “Cam, are you coming inside?”
Paolo disappeared to secure rooms. Cam regarded her with familiar coolness. “Of course.”
He sounded assured and dismissive. Much as he’d sounded all week. She bit back a sigh. Their easy communication had gone forever. She should be glad. The last thing she needed was a reminder of what a wonderful companion Cam could be. But good sense was difficult when one was stuck with a grumpy nobleman on an endless road to perdition.
“Well, do it soon. I’m freezing.”
Grim humor lit his face as he left the carriage and extended his arm. “As you command, my lady.”
Reluctantly she laid her hand upon his forearm, disturbingly aware of the muscles beneath her gloved palm. His physical reality was a perpetual torment. Over the years, he’d faded in her memory to an over-idealized cipher. Real Cam was more complex, more powerful, and more compelling than any fantasy.
Paolo chose that moment to return, his round, good-natured face troubled. “Milord, milady, there is a question.”
Surprised, Pen turned to the man she’d learned to respect for his ability to make the best of unpromising circumstances. However arrogant Cam had been to dismiss the craven Giuseppe without her permission, he’d unearthed a treasure in Paolo. “What is it?”
“A storm has hit the inn and only one room is fit for sleeping.”
“That’s unacceptable,” Cam said sharply while the nightmare ramifications of Paolo’s news invaded Pen’s mind.
Paolo flinched at Cam’s displeasure—and looked understandably puzzled. He’d never shown any curiosity when his employers requested separate rooms. He probably attributed it to English eccentricity. But surely at a pinch, a married couple could share a bed.
A freezing February night with deteriorating weather counted as a pinch.
“We shall travel on,” Cam said coldly.
The prospect of driving further prompted even imperturbable Paolo to protest. “Signore, the next village is ten miles away, over the mountain. There will be heavy snow tonight.”
“With fresh horses—” Cam began in his “I won’t shift even for stampeding elephants” tone.
“Cam, we can’t go on. It’s dangerous.”
“Your courage fails?” He turned a supercilious expression upon her and Pen suppressed a shiver unrelated to the rapidly dropping temperature. “You were all set to drive single-handed across every glacier between here and Paris.”
Oh, how she itched to shove him into the snow. Deciding that convincing Cam would take too long, she spoke to Paolo. “If there’s only one room, we’ll take it. Thank you for your care.”
Paolo went pink with pleasure. “Grazie, milady.”
“Shall we go inside, madam?” Cam continued in an undertone, “I thought you’d be the last person to welcome tonight’s arrangements.”
She snatched her hand from his arm and cast him a fulminating glare. “It’s stupid to struggle on in the dark through an ice storm.”
“It’s stupid to share a room.”
“Perhaps you can sleep in the taproom,” she said sweetly.
“Perhaps you can,” he sniped back.
Fortunately the innkeeper arrived to greet his distinguished guests, rescuing Pen from divulging her opinion on that suggestion.
After a surprisingly good dinner in the taproom, Cam climbed the oak staircase to the single habitable chamber. So far, this establishment proved an advance on the other places they’d stayed.
Apart from that one impossible circumstance.
That one impossible bedroom.
Despite his threat to make Pen sleep in the public room, crammed with stranded travelers—Paolo had been right about the snowstorm—Cam had always intended her to have the bedroom.
Which left him at a loss.
He’d checked if the damaged rooms were as damaged as reported. They were. He’d tried to sleep in the taproom, but it was unbearably crowded and his failure to join his wife in comfort and privacy upstairs stirred curiosity that, even in this obscure hamlet, he wanted to discourage. English travelers attracted enough attention anyway. An English husband refusing to sleep with his beautiful wife became a little too remarkable.
The irony was that he’d cut off his right arm for the right to sleep in Pen’s bed. Desperately, he summoned thoughts of Lady Marianne Seaton. While he was yet to propose, his marked attentions had signaled his intentions to the lady, her family, and society. Nobody would be surprised when Cam returned to London and requested the Marquess of Baildon’s permission to marry his daughter.
But during this journey, Marianne became increasingly difficult to remember as more than a shadow. The only face in Cam’s mind was Pen’s.
Damn it all to hell.
And damn his protective urge. His fellow travelers looked exhausted, but villains might lurk among them. So here he was ascending the stairs. Expecting a scolding for his good intentions. Pen wouldn’t want him sharing her room. Even if he wasn’t the first man to enjoy that privilege.
He’d spent far too long stewing over her lovers. Surely he was better off not knowing details. But not knowing allowed imagination free rein. He loathed where his imagination roamed.
Outside the closed door, he inhaled deeply and reminded himself that he was a gentleman. He’d hoped that the rigors of travel would stifle this inconvenient yen. He’d hoped that Pen’s unfeminine independence and sharp tongue would shift fascination to dislike. He’d hoped that his managing manner would keep her at a distance.
There at least he’d been successful.
The unwelcome truth was that a prickly Penelope was just as alluring as a polite Penelope. God help him if she moved from politeness to amiability. His goose would be well and truly cooked.
She might choose her lovers where she pleased, but she was still a girl from a good family. If the Duke of Sedgemoor bedded Lord Wilmott’s daughter, he’d pay with a wedding ring. Standing outside her room all hot and bothered, he almost thought that price might be worth it.
On a sudden fit of temper—confound her, she treated him like a beggar—he crashed the door open and barged into the candlelit room.
And stumbled to a standstill as if struck with an ax.
Rising from a small wooden tub like a goddess from a spring, Pen was all gleaming white skin. Naked as the day she was born.
His heart slammed hard and heavy. Lust pounded in his ears.
Her back was to him. Her thick dark hair gathered untidily, revealing her elegant neck. The straight, stubborn shoulders. The graceful spine. The subtle curve of her hips. And God help him, a perfect pear-shaped arse.
His hands curled at his sides, preparing to frame that luscious roundness. He’d never seen anything so beautiful as Penelope Thorne in the bath.
Until she turned.
Perhaps he’d made a sound, although the breath jammed in his throat. Perhaps cold air eddied through the open door.
“Maria, I—” Black eyes huge with horror, she stared at him.
For a second that extended into eternity, they regarded one another. He should leave. He had no right to absorb every glorious, forbidden detail and imprint it on his mind to remember forever. The wet skin shining like a pearl; the high breasts crowned with beaded raspberry nipples; the delicate triangle of dark hair guarding her sex. Cam had never suspected what bounty lurked beneath her dark, plain jackets and narrow skirts.
Outrage replaced her shock. With a dizzying mixture of relief and disappointment, he watched her fumble for the worn towel on the small table beside her.
“Close the door.” Her voice was low and shaking.
Without shifting his attention, he reached behind him to obey. Penelope’s violet soap scented the air. Until now, he hadn’t realized how her perfume had permeated his senses.
“With you on the other side,” she said sharply, hitching the towel.
He could have told her that she wasted her time covering herself. Transparent with dampness, the skimpy towel extended from breasts to thighs. She looked more sexually available in the strip of linen than standing naked.
Her throat moved as she swallowed. She eyed him as if expecting him to pounce.
“I’m sleeping here,” he said gruffly.
“Over my dead body,” she snarled, trembling hands gripping the towel.
Perhaps discretion was the better part of valor. “I’ll come back in ten minutes.”
“I don’t want to see you tonight.”
He shrugged. It felt unreal to argue as they’d argued so often on this journey, while she stood before him like every dream come to vibrant life. “If you’re asleep, you won’t see me.”
She grabbed for the soap dish and raised it in a threatening gesture. He just reached the corridor before pottery shattered behind the hurriedly closed door.
Damn her for a shrew.
A beautiful shrew.
A shrew whose eyes, for one blazing moment, had flared with desire.
Even as Pen lay in bed struggling to sleep, she was still blushing. Despite his threat, Cam hadn’t reappeared. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or piqued. And still those incendiary moments played over and over in her mind, making her stomach lurch with horror. And forbidden excitement.
For one stolen moment, she’d read desire in his eyes.
In that searing instant, she’d seen endless hunger beneath his cool manner. Then good old common sense had asserted itself. She was a naked woman. His reaction was a purely physical reflex.
On that sour reflection, she sat up and reached for her thick blue robe. It was a bitterly cold night. Even in this room with its fire and blankets, she shivered. Cam might want her, but she trusted his self-control. It was churlish to leave him freezing while she kept the bed.
She wrapped herself in a paisley shawl, as much for modesty as warmth. She hoped to encounter an obliging maid before she braved the taproom. Carefully she opened the door and checked the lamplit hallway.
Time reversed, leaving her giddy. It was like the morning when he’d caught her trying to escape.
“What’s wrong, Pen?”
She scowled at where he huddled against the opposite wall, using his greatcoat as an inadequate blanket. “Are you afraid I mean to run?”
“No.” With one hand, he rubbed his eyes.
Even in the dim light, she noted his weariness. Did endless craving play on his nerves? Or was that wishful thinking? “Then what are you doing here?”
One eyebrow tilted. “I’m not welcome inside.”
Guilt stabbed her. The corridor was considerably colder than the bedroom. “I thought you’d go downstairs where there’s a fire.”
“And about a thousand people, most of whom have fleas and only passing acquaintance with soap and water.” With a wince, he stretched against the wall, then stood without his usual lithe smoothness. Her guilt strengthened. He hadn’t said so, but she guessed that he stayed close to protect her.
“I don’t have fleas,” she said softly, hitching the shawl around her shoulders. Despite the velvet robe and the grandmotherly flannel nightdress, she felt naked when she looked into his eyes. She couldn’t help recalling his gaze on her body. Dear Lord, if this awkwardness persisted until they reached England, she’d go stark, staring mad.
“Not yet,” he said drily. “It’s miles to Genoa, with lavish accommodations every night.”
She’d have to speak plainly. Which was strange. With Cam, she rarely needed to spell things out. Squaring her shoulders, she told herself to forget that he’d seen her in the bath. “You can come in.”
To her surprise, he didn’t leap at her invitation. “I’m safer out here.”
She sighed and stood back, leaving him space to enter the firelit room. “I haven’t got another soap dish.”
His lips twitched, although the tension across his broad shoulders hinted that he too felt the swirling undercurrents. “Instead you’ve got armor.”
How she wished his eyes didn’t crinkle when he smiled. How she wished his face didn’t brighten to brilliance. How she wished her heart wasn’t so susceptible. “Armor?”
“The head to toe covering.” He didn’t approach. “What changed your mind about inviting me in? Earlier you looked ready to flay me.”
The heat in her cheeks could warm the inn. “I’d rather ignore that incident.”
The smile lines around his eyes deepened. “I can imagine.”
“So are you coming in? I’m getting cold.”
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned with elegant nonchalance against the wall. “In that get-up? No chance.”
She growled deep in her throat and started to shut him out. Let the rogue freeze.
“Wait,” he said softly. He caught the door.
For a blazing interval, they were close enough to touch. Looking deep into his eyes, she couldn’t mistake his desire. He wanted her, all right. A question sizzled in the air. A question that made her skin tighten with yearning.
Fleetingly she considered yielding to what they both wanted. Then she recalled her misery after leaving England, her futile attempts to forget him, the emptiness she carried with her constantly. If Cam used her body, she’d never escape this agonized longing.
Worse, if he besmirched his honor in his childhood playmate’s bed, he’d never forgive himself. Then she’d never forgive herself. He had enough burdens without despising himself as yet another Rothermere scoundrel.
What a damnable mess.
She nearly left him shivering, this time from cowardice rather than exasperation, until she told herself that she was better than that. Not entirely convinced that she was, she gestured him inside. This time he cooperated.
“You can sleep on the right,” she said irritably, slipping the shawl from her shoulders and dropping it over a chair. “I hope you don’t snore.”
He looked troubled. “You’d share the bed?”
She glowered. “Purely a humanitarian gesture. It’s as cold as charity.”
“Do you trust me that much?”
Oh, God save her. She’d always trusted him. She’d trusted him before she loved him. Nothing since had shaken either trust or love. Even his recent arrogance. Even tonight’s revelation that he wanted her. “I promise not to demand my wicked way. Would you rather sleep on the floor? I’m not giving up any of my blankets.”
Grimness thinned his mouth. “We need to talk.”
She stopped straightening a bed chaotic with her restlessness. “It’s the middle of the night.”
He stood as straight as a soldier on parade. “I must say this now.”
A bleak premonition knotting her belly, she sat on the bed. Nobody said “we need to talk” before good news. “How very ominous, Your Grace.”
His expression didn’t lighten at her mockery. “Listen to me, Pen.”
Fear made her rush into speech. “What happened tonight was an accident. Better to forget it.”
He shook his head and stepped forward. “I can’t forget it.” He paused. “And forgive me if I’m presumptuous, but I doubt you can either.”
“You’ve seen a naked woman before, Cam.”
“We’ve traveled in close confines—”
“And very annoying it’s been too,” she said quickly.
One commanding hand rose to silence her. “Something unexpected has happened. When I saw you again, I—”
Cam was never lost for words. With another man in other circumstances, she might believe he meant to declare his love. “Can’t this wait until morning?”
Or forever?
Stubbornness firmed his jaw. “No.” He stared hard at her, green eyes opaque. “Pen, God forgive me, but I never expected to want you.”
Like a seedling reaching for the sun, joy unfurled. Until native cynicism made her hesitate. “You don’t sound very happy about it.”
His lips flattened. “I’m not.”
Her laugh was acid. “So this isn’t the prelude to another proposal?”
He flinched. “You had good reason to refuse me.”
Yes, she did. She still did. “A lucky escape for you.”
“I wouldn’t be so ungallant.”
Her lips twisted and she stared into her lap, covered in thick white flannel. Strangely, this was the closest they’d ventured to a frank conversation in a week. “Never you, Your Grace.”
“Stop sniping. I’m struggling to do what’s best.”
She regarded him with dislike. “You always do.”
Her ironic tone nettled him. “Our circumstances are trying, but not impossible.”
“Glad to hear it.”
He plowed on. “I’ve always tried to be honorable.”
Of course he had, she thought wearily. Another snide remark rose, but his expression stifled it. “That’s good.”
“Pen, I have to keep my hands off you.”
Pain crunched her heart. “Because I’m an unsuitable bride?”
Waiting for agreement felt like the pause before someone punched a bruise.
He shook his head. “Because I’m courting another lady.” He stared over her head as if the crucifix on the wall provided enormous interest. “When I return to England, I’m marrying Lady Marianne Seaton, the daughter of the Marquess of Baildon.”
Chapter Eight (#ulink_cf852bcb-52ac-51dd-9581-29745a9bb81a)
Hyde Park, London, February 1828
After that miraculous encounter in Lord Chetwell’s cupboard, Harry was too restless to sleep. Too restless and too happy. Sophie mightn’t love him yet, but she was interested. To the point of defying her powerful brother.
Harry had wandered home from the ball in a daze. The memory of Sophie’s kisses fizzed in his blood. The sound of her voice filled his ears like music. Her scent haunted him.
He was head over heels, madly in love. And he didn’t give a tinker’s curse.
Anticipation had him saddling his horse—he wasn’t selfish enough to wake a groom so early—and riding to the park before dawn. He settled his mount under a tree with a view of Rotten Row. There was a special luxury in being here on a misty February morning, knowing that his beloved might appear any moment. The sun just peeped above the horizon, shooting long golden rays through the bare trees.
Into this magical glade trotted his Sophie, controlling a fine gray mare with a light touch. She wore a neat dark blue riding habit, and the jaunty angle of her hat made him want to kiss her.
Harry straightened from his slouch, an uncontrollable smile spreading across his face. His heart performed a jig.
She smiled back. “Mr. Thorne, what a surprise,” she said in an unnaturally lilting voice for the benefit of the groom plodding behind.
Stifling a laugh, Harry doffed his hat and bowed. What a hopeless conspirator she was. “Lady Sophie, a delightful chance.”
“The park is quiet this morning.” She glanced at Harry under her long lashes. “Are you alone?”
“Yes. Perhaps we could ride a little way.”
“Your ladyship, I’m not sure—” the groom began before Sophie cut him off with a laugh. A very unconvincing laugh.
“Mr. Thorne and I are old chums, Jones. Why, we danced together only last night.”
“Very well, my lady.” The man settled into the saddle, his stare unwavering. Leath had chosen a diligent guardian.
Harry had hoped for more kisses. What man wouldn’t? But he saw that a brief and decorous conversation was all he could expect. “It was quite a party, wasn’t it?”
He wheeled his horse to amble in the same direction as Sophie’s. The park must contain other people, but as far as he was concerned, he was alone with his beloved.
“I enjoyed myself immensely,” Sophie said with another sideways glance. “A memorable occasion.”
Harry was more convinced than ever that she was a minx. He liked her all the more for it. The thought of her harnessed to a dry stick like Desborough made the gorge rise in his throat. “Is this your first visit to London?”
“No, my brother always comes up for parliament. The last few years, he’s brought me too.”
Leath was touted as a future prime minister, wasn’t he? Or at least he had been, until his uncle’s criminal activities had stained the family name. The marquess must be seething over the gossip, and all of it so public, thanks to Sedgemoor’s intervention.
Leath would place Harry in the Sedgemoor camp. After all, the Rothermeres and Thornes had grown up together. Years ago, there had even been talk of marriage between Cam and Harry’s sister, Penelope. What a disaster that would have been. Pen was headstrong and unconventional, whereas Cam was the model of gentlemanly restraint.
“That explains the town bronze. Most young ladies are wide-eyed with wonder during their first season.”
She giggled delightfully. “I’m quite the sophisticate now that I’ve seen Astley’s Circus and the menagerie at the Tower of London.”
Color brightened Sophie’s cheeks. She had the most exquisite skin. Harry’s blood heated when he imagined that skin bare to his exploration. As his hands tightened on the reins, his horse shifted.
They’d moved ahead of Jones, who seemed prepared to give Harry the benefit of the doubt. For now. Harry leaned to pat his horse’s gleaming neck and spoke in a murmur. “I want to touch you.”
She responded in a whisper. “I couldn’t get away on my own.”
“Neither you should. London’s full of scoundrels.”
“Including you?”
“Yes, including me,” he said gloomily. Then more loudly for the sake of Jones who edged closer, clearly suspicious, “Do you live in the country the rest of the year?”
“I’ve been at school in Bath. Now I live with my mother at Alloway Chase in Yorkshire.”
“Your mother doesn’t come to Town?”
“She isn’t well.” She stared at his black armband. “I’m sad to see that you’ve recently lost someone.”
“My brother died in January. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.” If Leath had warned Sophie away, surely he’d mentioned Peter’s financial woes. Peter’s calamitous mismanagement of the already sparse Thorne coffers threatened the family’s ruin, making Harry an even more unsuitable match for this lovely girl.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” He met her compassionate blue stare and his love, already powerful, deepened into something richer. “He was marvelous company and he’d go to the wall for the people he loved.”
“He sounds wonderful.”
“He was.” Harry found himself saying what he hadn’t said to anyone else since Peter’s lonely death. “I’ve lost my taste for pleasure. The whole world is gray.” Except when he was with Sophie.
“I felt like that after my father died.”
The late marquess had passed away four years ago. The nation had mourned the loss of a brilliant politician. As with his son, there had been talk of him becoming prime minister. Just up from Oxford, Harry had paid little heed. He’d been too busy kicking up his heels and adding a few more smears to the family reputation.
He reached to comfort her before Jones cleared his throat. Winning Sophie from the dragons who protected her wouldn’t be easy. For the first time in his shallow life, Harry burned to meet a challenge.
He glanced around and noticed that full day had broken. Riders emerged for their morning exercise. To save Sophie from talk, he must ride on. “It was a pleasure seeing you.”
She bent her head with a grace that hinted at the grand lady she’d one day become. Under the brim of her stylish beaver hat, Harry caught a gratifying flash of longing in her eyes. “I’m engaged for Lady Carson’s ball tonight.”
“Perhaps I’ll see you there,” he said, not meaning perhaps at all. He bowed. Jones’s watchful expression warned him that a kiss on her hand would take things too far, damn it. “Good morning, Lady Sophie.”
Hills above Genoa, early March 1828
Pen stood on the inn’s terrace and stared at the rugged coastline below. The night was clear and she easily made out Genoa’s lights in the distance. Around her bloomed pots of spring flowers. After the frozen wastes, this seemed nothing short of miraculous.
The grueling journey drew to a close. Tomorrow, they embarked for home. This last week had been almost easy. The weather had been kinder and the roads in the more heavily populated areas showed considerable improvement from the goat tracks higher up. Even the inns were more luxurious, saving her from sharing a room with Cam again. Thank God. She still remembered lying awake, eaten with useless jealousy, while he’d stretched silently beside her, no more asleep than she.
The announcement of Cam’s marital plans should have eased the tension between them. She’d always known he’d marry, and now that his bride had a name, she should finally be able to crush her painful longing.
Instead, since that endless night, the atmosphere had weighed heavier and heavier. Until tonight it had become so unbearable, she’d barely finished dinner before rushing outside to escape him.
She flattened her unsteady hands upon the stone balustrade and stared blindly into the night. She wore a favorite gown, a sea-green silk purchased last year in Florence. Even as she’d asked Maria to find it, she’d recognized her pathetic purposes. She flaunted herself, taunting Cam. This will never be yours, however much you want it.
Definitely pathetic.
“Has my conversation driven you to throw yourself off a cliff?” a low voice asked behind her.
Slowly Pen turned. She should have guessed that Cam would follow. Lamps lit the terrace, lending enough brightness for her to see him in the shadows near the doorway. He’d dressed with care too, as if aware that tonight marked some kind of ending.
She’d been so reluctant to travel with him. It seemed absurd to be sad that their time together was nearly over. “You don’t talk enough to drive me to self-harm.”
He approached with the loose-limbed stroll that always set her heart racing. She really was a besotted idiot. He passed her one of the glasses of red wine he carried. “Let’s toast old acquaintance.”
For once, prickling hostility was absent. Instead, Cam seemed like the kindhearted boy she’d known years ago. Her determination to maintain her distance faltered. She raised her glass. “To friendship.”
“Our journey ends,” he said musingly.
“We have the voyage ahead.”
“We’re safe from scandal on the Windhover. My crew is paid to keep their mouths shut.”
How he must want this marriage with Lady Marianne. Unworthy chagrin cramped Pen’s heart. She wanted to tear every hair from the woman’s no doubt perfectly coiffured head. Pen had devoted too many futile hours to wondering about Cam’s choice. Beautiful, Pen was sure. Impeccably behaved. Circumspect.
“We’ve made it.” She tried and failed to sound happy.
Thankfully Cam didn’t appear to notice her glumness. He sipped his wine and stared out to sea with a pensive expression. “Yes. And without killing each other.”
“We’ve come close.”
He studied her. “I wish you well, Pen. I’ve only ever wished you well.”
She knew that. Her rejection of his proposal might sting. Her independence and obstinacy undoubtedly infuriated him. Perhaps he even regretted that they’d never explore the desire simmering between them. But the bonds of childhood affection persisted.
“I wish you well too, Cam,” she said softly.
“What do you intend to do when you get home?”
“Settle my aunt’s affairs.”
“After that?”
She shrugged. “Return to Italy. I have friends here and places I’d like to see.”
“You won’t stay in England?”
And witness, even from afar, Cam’s wedded bliss? Cam becoming a father? She’d rather cut out her liver with a paperknife. “No.”
“Elias and Harry would love to have their sister home.”
“They have their own lives. They’re used to doing without me.”
“Now they have to do without you and without Peter.” He flinched at her distressed inhalation. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive.”
She stared at him. “Goodness, Cam, was that an apology? I thought you’d lost the knack.”
His lips firmed, but he remained calm. Pity. Her longing was so much easier to control when dislike crackled. Except what vibrated between them wasn’t exactly dislike.
“I’ve been a brute.”
Her laugh was wry. “Not by anyone’s definition but your own.”
His gaze remained unwavering. “You know why I’ve been difficult.”
“You told me.”
Then he’d retreated to silence on the subject. Thank heaven. It was excruciating, knowing that he wanted her, but knowing also that only a fool would succumb.
“I’d hoped honesty would simplify things.”
“It didn’t.” The air tautened until she felt suffocated. Would he kiss her? Just one kiss to last a lifetime wasn’t too much to ask. Except she already had too much to remember.
“Is that because you don’t want me?” The flickering light was more deceptive than true darkness. She could almost imagine desperation in his eyes. Cam was never desperate. He’d never let himself become desperate. “Or because you do?”
She jolted back, spilling wine over her hand. “Cam, I—”
“God knows this is wrong. I’m courting another woman. You’re my friend’s sister. We grew up together.” His voice shook. “But tell me you want me. Not knowing is driving me mad.”
She didn’t want to hear this, partly because a wicked, wanton part of her burned to fling herself into his arms and beg him to do a thousand wild and forbidden things to her. She retreated against the balustrade. Fear beat high and fast in her throat.
The threat of betraying her secret hovered close. He must never know she loved him. His pity would be worse than death. “There’s no point to this.”
Cam took her glass and placed it with his on the balustrade. “I need to know.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, then groaned when satisfaction flooded his face. On this breezy terrace, with his usually immaculate dark hair ruffled and his eyes glowing with passion, he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
He grabbed her hand. “If you don’t want me, you’d say so.”
She knew to her bones that if he kept touching her, she’d lie in his bed tonight. “Someone might see.”
“I don’t care. Tell me.”
His touch set her blood ablaze, shooting hot and urgent to the pit of her belly. “What use is this?” she asked in angry despair, struggling to withdraw. “You’re marrying Lady Marianne.”
His gaze focused on her lips, making them tingle as if he kissed her. “Once, I wanted to marry you.”
Bitterness welled. “When you thought you could mold me into what you wanted. Before my family’s eccentricities tumbled over into full-scale scandal with Peter’s ruin.”
She’d cut off her right hand to hear him deny her assertions, but of course, he didn’t. He wouldn’t lie to her. She respected that even as she loathed it. “Lady Marianne will make the perfect duchess.”
Pain lanced through her as she acknowledged that he’d never have said that about Penelope Thorne, even before her bohemian wanderings. “Do you love her?”
He snatched his hand free and his jaw hardened with the rejection familiar whenever anyone mentioned love. “You’re mistaken to think that love is a requirement for a happy marriage.”
“You’re mistaken to think that it’s not,” she snapped back.
“My parents were in love. For a short time.”
“Your parents were always children dressed as grownups.”
He glared down his daunting nose. “You venture on dangerous territory.”
She drew herself to her full height. Temper made her speak in a rush. “Why? You speak freely to me.” Her tone eased. “Cam, I know this … attraction is a pest. But it’s not so surprising. We’re two healthy adults confined to each other’s company. It would be unnatural not to demonstrate a little curiosity.”
A bitter smile twisted his lips. “That’s a facile explanation.”
For a sizzling interval, their eyes met. She knew that, like her, he remembered her standing naked before him.
Then the shutters crashed down over his expression. She felt disoriented. He’d lured her up to a door, then slammed it in her face.
Still, she was grateful when Cam’s fierceness ebbed. It had been torture to hear him speak his need aloud and know that it wasn’t enough, it could never be enough.
As if by common consent, they turned toward the sea that tomorrow became their highway. Somewhere down there his yacht lay at anchor. If winds were favorable, they’d be in England within a fortnight.
A silence descended. At first, it was heavy with suppressed passion, but gradually it became something softer and kinder. As his voice was softer and kinder when he spoke. “Pen, why are you so determined to go into exile? What are you running away from?”
You.
She’d spent the last nine years fleeing this man she loved but who could never love her. Despite excitement and adventure, despite playing a sophisticate in a sophisticated world, she hadn’t run toward anything. What a lowering admission.
“I enjoy my life.” Apart from a constant ache that no spectacular scenery or charming admirers or glamorous intrigues banished.
“You’d enjoy London.”
“I doubt it. People at home are more conservative than here. English society won’t accept me with open arms.”
“I would.”
Pen couldn’t help herself. She laughed. It was either laugh or cry. If she cried, he might guess how it would crush her to leave him. “No, Cam. I’m not throwing myself into your arms under any circumstances.”
He didn’t laugh. He looked disturbed and angry. That dangerous hum in the air returned. Fatalistically she recognized that it had never gone away. “Pen, I’m trying my best to remember that I’m an honorable man.”
She sobered, telling herself that she couldn’t allow him to compromise his principles. But how easy it would be to ignore what was right when for the sake of a little sin, he could be hers. However briefly. Physically if not emotionally.
She could cross a mere foot of space and kiss him. If she knew anything about men—and at twenty-eight, she should—the slightest encouragement would shatter his restraint.
“Unfortunately,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
The hum rose to overwhelm every other sound.
Then he stepped back and bowed. Even as hunger darkened his eyes, he spoke with the chill politeness she’d heard too often on this journey. This evening, they’d spoken like friends. Or lovers. Now she watched Cam draw the shades over that intimacy. “I won’t act the cad. My family’s reputation is at stake. If I tumble you, I prove that all my work to restore the family honor has been in vain.”
She’d known that. Still, rejection hurt. She bent her head, not wanting him to see how he wounded her.
A couple emerged onto the terrace from the inn. The lady paused and spoke with joyful recognition. Even worse, in the clipped accents of an upper-class Englishwoman. “Miss Thorne, what a wonderful surprise.”
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Anna Campbell
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: ‘I can’t kidnap her!’‘If you have to, you must. Bring Pen home.’Penelope Thorne was in trouble – alone somewhere between Rome and Paris, running out of money, totally vulnerable. Until Camden Rothermere, the Duke of Sedgemoor, arrived to take her back to England, whether she wanted to go or not…The last time Pen had seen Cam, she’d turned down his marriage proposal, shattering their friendship, hurting his pride and secretly breaking her own heart. Cam had lived with scandal all his life and he’d vowed never to marry for love.To protect Pen’s reputation, they travelled as husband and wife and they desired each other more with every mile…Book Three in THE SONS OF SIN seriesA Sensuous Regency DelightTHE SONS OF SINSEVEN NIGHTS IN A ROGUE’S BEDA RAKE’S MIDNIGHT KISSWHAT A DUKE DARESA SCOUNDREL BY MOONLIGHTDAYS OF RAKES AND ROSES (Novella)