What A Duke Dares

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.”

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

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.