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
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.”
What a Duke Dares Page 3