What a Duke Dares

Chapter Nine

Prescott Place, Wiltshire, March 1828

She came to him through the sweet new greenery like a forest spirit, although there was nothing unearthly about the woman he seized in his arms. She was all warm, passionate femininity.

Harry kissed Sophie until they were both breathless. Then he kissed her some more. “You got away.”

His asinine comment sparked amusement. “Obviously.”

This past week, Sophie had joined a house party given by one of Leath’s political cronies. Despite Harry’s best efforts, his pursuit of Sophie had attracted attention. Leath had removed her from London to separate her from young Mr. Thorne. A note channeled via Sophie’s maid had put paid to that plan.

Harry kissed Sophie again. His blood heated as she answered with eager dips and swirls of her tongue. Still a little unsure of herself but gaining in confidence every minute.

“Sweetheart, I’ve missed you so much,” he said brokenly, punctuating every word with kisses.

They’d only kissed once before, and the craving to do it again had kept him sleepless and grumpy. They’d managed three more meetings in Hyde Park and a couple of circumspect dances. Here in Sir Garth Burton’s woods on a sleepy afternoon, nobody was likely to interrupt. Harry had sworn he wouldn’t lose his head. But after one glimpse of his beloved, moderation flew to Hades.

“I’ve missed you too,” Sophie murmured unsteadily, her hands working on Harry’s shoulders as if she hardly believed that he was there.

“It’s been an eternity.” He trailed his lips down her throat, nipping the curve of her shoulder until she trembled.

“It’s only a week.”

“You speak lightly of my pain,” he whispered into her skin.

“I’ve thought of you every minute.” She slid her hands under his coat, bringing him closer.

“I’ve thought of you too.”

He backed her into a conveniently placed tree and touched her in earnest. Learning the curve of waist and hip, the slender line of her back. Careful of her innocence, he kept his hips from sliding against hers.

Her hands slid daringly lower. Astonished gratification shook him, although those eager fingers digging into his buttocks threatened control.

He stared at her through dazed eyes. Passion flushed her creamy skin and her blue eyes were heavy with desire. She looked rosy and approachable, a different creature from the golden-haired debutante he’d first met. She wore a cobalt walking dress, fastened down the front with hussar frogging and with a high collar, askew thanks to Harry’s attentions.

He rested his forehead against hers, sharing her breath. She smelled marvelous. Like the vibrant spring that burst into life around them. She’d brought him to life. He wondered if she knew.

“Harry?” He caught the confusion in her voice.

He lifted his head. “Sophie, I’m trying to act the gentleman.”

She smiled, her lips moist and swollen. “You don’t have to.”

He groaned. He really didn’t need to hear her say that. Not if he meant to retain some honor. “Of course I do.”

Her smile broadened and the light in her blue eyes filled his world with color. More, painted his world with rainbows. “I want you to touch me.”

“You test my restraint.” He kissed her again, hot and voracious. His heart crashed against his ribs as she curled into him.

“I don’t want to be restrained.” She clutched his shoulders.

With shaking hands, he parted the frogging on her dress. He’d take things a little further then stop. Dear heaven, let him find the strength to stop.

Control shuddered closer to fraying as her dress sagged open. The pink pearls of her nipples pushed against her delicate shift. With a groan, he bent and sucked one perfect bud. Her choked cry echoed in his ears. Knowing he ventured toward the point of no return, he cupped her other breast and rubbed his palm across her nipple. She arched until her belly bumped him.

With sudden ruthlessness, he pushed the lacy edge down to reveal her breasts. Better than his dreams. Thoughts of her nakedness had fueled his fantasies, waking and sleeping, since he’d found her crying in Lord Oldhaven’s garden. He drew back to feast upon the sight.

“You’re so beautiful.” Reverently he stroked her pale skin.

He kissed the tip of her breast. The act conveyed homage more than desire, although desire surged powerful enough to shake his principles.

She breathed unsteadily. “I feel beautiful when I’m with you.” She bit her lip. “I never have before.”

Her vulnerability defeated the ravening beast inside him. Grateful and disappointed in equal measure, he sighed and stepped back. Because he loved her, he said what he’d always known to be true. “You deserve better than me.”

She looked suddenly distraught. “Have I disgusted you?”

Harry’s gut lurched. If anyone should feel ashamed, it was him. “Hell, no, Sophie. You’re glorious, perfect, an angel.”

With shaking hands, she tugged at her bodice but the complicated fastenings were beyond her. “No angel lets a man strip her naked in public.”

“Sophie, you’re human.” Very gently—and with a wicked regret that he couldn’t stifle—he restored her to respectability.

“A little too human today,” she muttered.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Desire is perfectly natural.” It was too early for declarations. They’d only known each other a few weeks, and their meetings had been short and snatched from the teeth of scandal. But she needed to know that he wasn’t toying with her. “Desire is part of… love.”

She went completely still. Her hands dropped to her sides and her eyes opened wide as if she strove to see him with absolute clarity, perhaps to check whether he lied. “Love, Harry?”

Hell, he hadn’t blushed since he was in the nursery. Meeting her eyes, he spoke with the steadiness of complete conviction. “I love you, Sophie.”

To his consternation, she didn’t smile.

She took a long time to answer, which worried him even more.

Had he mistaken her? Trepidation sank sharp teeth into him. She could be flirting. After all, she enjoyed her first season and flattery had turned the heads of girls less admired than Sophie. Perhaps she collected hearts like trophies. The thought made him feel sick.

The delay became unbearable. “Say something, darling.”

Still she didn’t smile as she straightened away from the tree. Her shoulders were level, her chin was up. She looked every inch the young aristocrat. “I love you, Harry.”

For a moment, he stared at her in disbelief. Could he be so fortunate? She looked like she meant it.

Another close examination of her expression. By God, she meant it. Troupes of angels danced a gavotte in his soul.

What could a fellow do when the woman he adored told him she loved him? Nothing except sweep that woman into a wild kiss.

Harry surfaced from joy to discover that he lay over Sophie on the soft grass and that her hands tangled in his hair. “We have to stop.”

She pouted in a way that made him desperate to go further, but some thread still moored him to reality. That reality didn’t encompass Harry Thorne taking the Marquess of Leath’s sister in the woods like an amorous gypsy. “I can’t believe the world talks about you as such a rake. I’m disappointed.”

His laugh cracked as he rose on his hands. “Shall I promise to be rakish only with you until death do us part?”

She went rigid and the teasing light drained from her eyes. “What… what do you mean?”

He should be nervous. But he’d been committed to this woman since their first meeting. Everything following had only confirmed that he was eternally in her thrall.

“I mean—” Even when he was certain, a man tended to stumble at such a moment.

Poised over her like this, he couldn’t do justice to his intentions. Struggling to ignore how beautiful and damnably available she looked spread out on the grass, he rolled away and kneeled beside her. He tugged a crushed daisy from her wantonly tumbled golden curls. “Sit up, Sophie.”

She frowned in puzzlement. “What is it?” Nonetheless, she sat, folding her legs beneath her.

Taking her hand, he rose on one knee. “Lady Sophie, I knew the moment I saw you that I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He swallowed and stared into her shining eyes. “Will you do me the inestimable honor of marrying me?”

Hills above Genoa, early March 1828

Damn, damn, damn.

Cam knew he was devilish reckless playing these games in public. And now the time had come to pay the piper.

As the horse-faced woman with the loud voice and deplorable taste in hats bustled toward them, he stepped away from Pen and tried to act as though their acquaintance was purely casual. At least, thank God, the woman hadn’t appeared while he’d been manhandling Pen.

He’d battled so hard to keep his distance, but in the end, the temptation had proven too strong. Especially now he knew that Pen wanted him too. Even when there was bugger all he could do to satisfy his craving and still call himself a gentleman.

Awake, Pen was constantly in his mind. Even worse, he dreamed about her at night. Hot, sweaty, ribald dreams, where he used her hard. Like an experienced woman, not a delicate lady of his class. He woke shaking and ashamed, hard as an oar.

If he could make his yacht fly back to England, he would. Surely once he didn’t see Penelope every day, he’d become again the measured, sensible man he’d been before he fell under this gorgeous termagant’s spell. Part of him still looked at her with astonishment. This is Pen of the scraped knees and broken dolls. You have no right to tumble the girl whose childhood tears you dried. Not only tumble her, but have her in every filthy way your imagination can conjure.

When the woman reached them, Cam caught speculation in her beady eyes. The man, obviously also English, approached with less dispatch but equal curiosity. Luckily Cam knew neither of them. Although that wouldn’t save him from a scandal, unless he came up with some reason why he and an unmarried girl from a good family were alone together.

“Mrs. Barker-Pratt, what a surprise.” Pen tried to sound enthusiastic.

The two women exchanged kisses on the cheek and Pen turned to Cam. “My lord, permit me to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Barker-Pratt, dear friends of my late aunt.” She paused infinitesimally, but only someone who knew her as well as he did would guess how rattled she was. “Mr. and Mrs. Barker-Pratt, this is Lord Pembridge who has been touring the lakes.”

He bowed, wondering whether the game was finally up. Anyone familiar with noble English families would recognize that heirs to the Sedgemoor dukedom took the courtesy title of Marquess of Pembridge. “Mrs. Barker-Pratt, Mr. Barker-Pratt.”

“My lord.” Mrs. Barker-Pratt curtsied while the husband, a little man who faded into invisibility in his wife’s dominant presence, bowed.

“The Barker-Pratts hail from Shropshire, but have lived in Tivoli for many years,” Pen continued with false brightness. “Mr. Barker-Pratt is an expert on Roman funerary monuments.”

“How interesting,” Cam murmured. Pen’s skill at weaving through the introductions filled him with dreadful fascination. It was like watching someone cross a gorge on a high wire while a river full of hungry crocodiles snapped below.

“We haven’t returned to England in forty years, despite war and revolution. We’d feel quite foreign in London. Although with so many English friends here, it’s like being at home.” Mrs. Barker-Pratt’s laugh could shatter glass. “At home with only the most interesting people, of course. Don’t you agree, my lord, that the best of the English are those who leave the country?”

Cam smiled at Pen. “In Miss Thorne’s case, that’s definitely the case.”

Pen sent him a withering glance. “So gallant, my lord.” She turned back to Mrs. Barker-Pratt. “His lordship is a childhood friend. We met by chance this evening.”

If she wasn’t careful, the story would unravel. The staff knew that they’d arrived together. Still, he’d do his best to play along. “A pleasure to see dear Miss Thorne again.”

Mrs. Barker-Pratt looked puzzled. “We heard you were meeting your brother in Paris, Miss Thorne.”

Pen paled. During these last weeks, her grief for Peter had been a palpable presence.

Cam saved her from having to talk about Peter. “Lord Wilmott has passed away.”

“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.”

Mrs. Barker-Pratt might be an unwelcome intruder, but Cam felt a surge of gratitude when the woman swept Pen into a motherly embrace. For weeks, he’d longed to extend a similarly generous response. Once he wouldn’t have hesitated. But they’d both grown up since then, damn it.

Cam stepped back. “I’ll wish you good night. You have much to discuss, I’m sure.”

As he walked away, he couldn’t help wondering what might have happened if he and Pen had remained alone in the lamplight. Nothing to be proud of, that was sure.

Prescott Place, Wiltshire, March 1828

“Yes,” Sophie said immediately and her hand tightened around Harry’s. “I’d love to marry you.”

“Oh, my dear!” Harry raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. He could hardly believe that the space of an afternoon had delivered not just this glorious creature’s vow of love, but also a promise to be his. “I’ll speak to your brother the instant he returns to London.”

Sophie snatched her hand back and regarded him with horror. “No, you mustn’t.”

The abrupt change left Harry bewildered. “You’re under twenty-one, Sophie. I need his permission.”

She scrambled to her feet and stared down at him as if he’d suggested some unnatural practice. “My brother wants me to marry Lord Desborough.”

More slowly, Harry rose from his knees, his gaze never wavering from Sophie. “You can’t marry Desborough. You love me.”

For a moment, he thought she might hurl herself into his embrace, but she curtailed the movement and wrapped her arms around her crushed bodice. “My brother is determined on the marriage.”

“Your brother is a reasonable man. He’ll—”

She interrupted him. “He is a reasonable man. He’s arranged a match with a kind gentleman of great fortune who’s fond of me.”

Harry glared at her. “You sound like you want to marry the sod.”

“Oh, Harry,” she said on an exhalation of despair. “You don’t understand.”

He folded his own arms, fighting his hurt. To think, five minutes ago, he’d considered himself the world’s happiest man. “I understand that you said you’d marry me and now seem to say that you won’t.”

She curled her hand around his tight forearm. “Let’s not quarrel.”

“I can’t let you marry Desborough.”

“I don’t want to. But my brother is in a state because of Uncle Neville’s suicide and because Sedgemoor is working against us and because he thinks the scandal may end his political career. It’s not the time to tell him that his carefully laid plans won’t eventuate.”

“You’re frightened of him.”

The suggestion shocked her. “Of course not. But open defiance now, when he feels like the world turns against him, would hurt him.”

What about me?

Harry bit back the childish question. “So what do you propose?” Moments ago, “propose” had conveyed a completely different meaning.

She stared up with a sweet entreaty that, if he was less upset, would have him back on his knees. “We wait.”

“I can’t wait.” He made a sweeping gesture. “I need everyone to know that you’re mine. Living without you this last week nearly broke me.”

“Please don’t be angry,” she said softly, changing her grip into a caress.

“How long until you turn twenty-one?” Although even then if Sophie married without Leath’s approval, there would be a brouhaha.

Devastation darkened her blue eyes. “Nearly two years.”

Two years? That was an eternity. He stared at her in anguish. “I can’t bear to think I might lose you.”

“You’ll never lose me,” she said with a certainty that should have surprised him, but didn’t. She was young, but she was steadfast. Which was a double-edged sword. A flightier girl wouldn’t spare a thought for her brother. “We can continue as we are.”

“Meeting in secret? Lying? Snatching moments that only serve as a painful reminder that moments are all we have?” He swung away. “The longer we wait, the more the world believes that you’ll marry Desborough.”

“Do you want me to release you from our engagement?” she asked miserably, stepping back.

A cold wave of dread turned Harry’s blood to ice. “Do you want that?”

She looked on the verge of crying. “Of course not.”

He crossed the chasm separating them and discovered it only measured a pace. He seized her in his arms and kissed her hard. For an instant that lasted an eon, she resisted before kissing him back with a fervor that threatened to send everything but passion to hell.

She leaned back to see his face. “I want to marry you, but I don’t want my selfish pursuit of happiness to burden my brother with more scandal.”

“Does that extend to marrying Desborough?” Harry asked harshly. “When I met you, you were crying over your brother’s plans. Don’t pretend that suddenly you’re prepared to play the dutiful sister.”

With a sigh, she laid one hand against his cheek. “I was prepared to play the dutiful sister. That’s why I was crying.”

Fear dug its talons into his aching heart. “You can’t enter a loveless marriage to save Leath’s pride.”

She stiffened. “You demand so much.”

His hand tightened on her waist as if Leath emerged from the undergrowth to steal her away. “Meeting like this does us no credit.”

Temper lit her face to vivid beauty. “You should be used to deception. I’ve heard gossip.”

Harry’s resentment of Leath ratcheted up another notch. “I’ll wager most of it came from your brother.”

When Sophie avoided his gaze, he knew he was right. “Did James lie?”

Harry had never been ashamed of all his dashing widows and bored wives before. He was ashamed now. “Hell, Sophie, you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.” His voice shook with sincerity. “That’s what’s important. That, and how these meetings stain your character and mine.”

Resentment shadowed her expression. “You’re cruel.”

“No. I’m a man in love.” He paused. “I want to shout that love from the rooftops, not meet you in corners as if my feelings are a dirty secret.”

“Harry, I’m sorry.” She rose on her toes and peppered his face with kisses. Each one eased his outrage, until he caught her and pressed his lips to hers.

“I can’t be angry when you kiss me.”

“That’s good.” She trailed her lips along his jaw with a tenderness that melted pique. “When we’re married, I’ll kiss you all the time.”

She spoke as if merely by promising to marry him, their difficulties vanished like mist across the morning meadows. He wasn’t nearly so convinced that delay would change her brother’s mind.

For the sake of his future and his love, Harry must brave the dragon and claim the maiden.