What a Duke Dares

Chapter Twenty-Four

Every person in that drawing room cared for Cam, more than he deserved.

Jonas, Lord Hillbrook, turned from his dark-haired wife Sidonie and strode forward, hand outstretched. A smile lightened his scarred, saturnine features. “Cam! About time you introduced us to your duchess. Sidonie and I were about to set up camp at the gates of Fentonwyck.”

“I suspect your definition of camping would differ from most people’s.” Cam clasped his friend’s hand with a warmth that contained a shaming measure of relief. The last time he and Jonas had met, the encounter had ended in a bitter quarrel over his plans to marry Lady Marianne. “Silk tents, servants, and champagne at the least.”

“I was afraid you didn’t invite us to your wedding because you thought I’d scare your wife.” The humor sparking in his dark eyes softened the remark, although Jonas’s face aroused unease, even now.

“I wanted to keep my bride to myself.” Cam released Jonas’s hand. “Penelope, this is our host, Jonas Merrick, Viscount Hillbrook.”

“My lord.” Pen dipped into a curtsy so graceful that Cam’s heart stopped. The coolness between them didn’t lessen her power over him.

Jonas bent over Pen’s hand with an aplomb remarkable in such a big, heavily muscled man. “Your Grace, welcome to my home.” He straightened and gestured to Sidonie who slid her hand around his waist with a natural affection that pierced Cam’s barricaded heart with envy.

When he’d married Pen, he’d hoped that they’d establish such physical closeness. Whereas for all that they stood together, an invisible chasm a hundred yards wide separated them.

“Your Grace, I’ve been in a fever of curiosity since Cam wrote to tell us of his wedding,” Sidonie said. “And in such haste that we couldn’t attend the ceremony.”

Cam caught Pen’s hunted look, although the meaningless smile remained. It was a smile Cam had never seen until Pen became his duchess. Once, she would have responded with a witty remark. The expression in her eyes now hinted that she considered heading for the hills.

Cam saved her from replying. “Our marriage isn’t as sudden as it appears. Pen and I have known each other since childhood.”

Sir Richard Harmsworth stepped forward to take Pen’s hand. “Pen, dashed good to see you. I thought you were lost to us forever. You’ll adorn London as you’ve adorned Paris and Rome.”

“Richard.” There was no mistaking Pen’s pleasure. An unforced pleasure that Cam couldn’t remember her targeting toward him since her adolescence. “I doubted you’d remember me.”

“Remember you? Why, when you sailed for Calais, you broke my heart.” With his famous urbanity, Richard pressed his lips to Pen’s cheek, the privilege of long-standing friendship.

For one fraught moment, Cam glared at the golden-haired fellow kissing his wife, and he wanted to thump the man who had been his best friend since their miserable days at Eton. With a shock he recognized two unwelcome facts. The first was that despite his plans for a sensible, calm marriage, his wife aroused a jealousy that wouldn’t discredit his father. The second was that the roots of this estrangement with Pen extended to long before his wedding.

“I see you still talk a lot of nonsense.” For the first time that night, Pen’s smile looked real. Cam’s jealousy stirred anew, even though he knew their flirting meant nothing and Richard was devoted to his wife.

“He does indeed,” Genevieve Harmsworth said drily. “Welcome to London, Your Grace.”

Richard kept Pen’s hand, curse him, while he turned to the lovely blond woman he’d married six months ago. “Pen, allow me to introduce my clever wife, Genevieve. The only silly thing she ever did was to marry a dunderhead.”

“Good evening, Lady Harmsworth,” Pen said.

“Your false modesty convinces nobody, darling,” Genevieve told her husband.

“I’m trying to be charming,” he retorted. Luckily for his continuing health, he released Pen’s hand.

“And succeeding,” Pen said quickly. “Lady Harmsworth, I’m a great admirer of your work.”

Genevieve smiled. “You know just the right thing to say. I’m still feeling my way in London. Fortunately everybody is so enamored of my husband that my odd ways go unnoticed.”

Cam glanced across to Jonas and Sidonie. To his dismay, both looked troubled. Did they disapprove of his wife? He had an unwelcome inkling that they didn’t find Pen unsatisfactory, but their old friend Camden Rothermere.

Cam broadened his smile until he grinned like a damn effigy at a fair. Still he knew that his show wouldn’t convince Jonas and Sidonie. They knew how to glean emotion from mere pretense.

Richard and Genevieve still glowed with wedded bliss. It must be perfectly obvious that Cam and Pen… didn’t. Bugger it, he should have avoided introducing Pen in such intimate surroundings. In a public setting, the cracks in their union might be less apparent.

Thank God for Genevieve, who turned out to be familiar with Pen’s writing. She drew his wife toward a chaise longue, asking about some excavations outside Rome.

Cam sucked in his first full breath since arriving. At least Pen wouldn’t feel a complete outsider. Genevieve’s welcome made Pen less the pallid Duchess of Sedgemoor and more like the vivid woman he’d known in Italy.

“Cam?”

Cam started from studying his wife to see Jonas extending a glass of champagne. He hoped that his expression didn’t betray his thoughts, but he had a nasty feeling that it did. He accepted the wine. “Thank you.”

Richard and Sidonie chatted beside the fireplace. Jonas showed no concern. But then, Jonas knew that Sidonie adored the ground he walked upon. Sourly Cam wondered what that felt like, before he reminded himself that the absence of love in his marriage was a blessing, not a curse. A wife who adored a man who couldn’t love her back would make a damned uncomfortable companion.

After ensuring that his guests had wine, Jonas returned to Cam. Cam braced for an inquisition. Jonas could be ruthless. Otherwise he’d never have survived the horrors of his childhood. But Jonas sipped his wine, then said in a neutral tone, “It’s a pity Lydia and Simon couldn’t join us.”

To save himself from having to discuss his wife, Cam leaped on the subject of his sister and her husband. “Lydia’s doctor has advised her to avoid travel until after her confinement in June. I doubt they’ll be in London for the season.” Not that his sister and Simon gave a fig for society. They were perfectly happy to rusticate on Simon’s estate in Devon.

“Do you plan to visit? I assume the duchess knows them both.”

“Probably in the summer. As girls, Pen and Lydia were as thick as thieves, although usually Pen was behind any trouble.”

Jonas quickly masked his surprise. Tonight’s decorous version of Pen seemed an unlikely hellion. “You’ll wait so long?”

Cam’s lips tightened. “I’ve got business in Town.”

“You’re worried about Leath?”

“Shouldn’t I be?” Cam sipped his wine and cursed the interfering marquess. “He’s working to oppose my canal bill. I can weather the loss, but Elias Thorne has invested in the hope of restoring the family fortunes.”

“You made a bad enemy in Leath.”

“We made a bad enemy.” Cam scowled into his champagne. “He’s always had a reputation for upholding the law. One would assume he’d want to end his uncle’s criminal rampage.”

Jonas’s expression remained brooding. “I doubt it’s sympathy for his uncle that ranges him against you. Neville Fairbrother was a blackguard of the first water.”

“Leath should thank us for lancing the infection at the heart of his house.”

Jonas’s laugh was grim. His humor tended toward the black. “You know as well as I do that Leath wants to rip out your liver because you made everything public. Gentlemen handle scandal between themselves.”

“Fairbrother’s evil extended beyond the scope of a quiet handshake.”

“We didn’t give Leath the option. I suspect he particularly resents our failure to contact him before involving the authorities.”

“Are you saying his campaign is justified?”

Jonas shrugged. “I’m saying that a scandal of this magnitude so close to a man who’s spent his life angling for political influence has done damage that the powerful marquess won’t forgive in a hurry. Or allow to go unrequited.”

“Let Leath maneuver. Nobody crosses me lightly.”

The arrogant declaration, as Cam should have expected, won no points. “You might find Leath’s enmity cuts closer to home than a few business schemes going astray.”

Even knowing him as he did, Cam still sometimes found Jonas difficult to read. “What do you mean?”

“The word around Town is that Harry Thorne pursues Leath’s sister.”

“I didn’t know Leath had a sister.”

Another flash of sardonic humor. “She’s new this season. Pretty blond chit who’s got the fortune hunters in a lather.”

Cam didn’t smile. “I can’t see Harry Thorne playing fortune hunter.”

“The tattle is that he fancies himself in love. He’s chased her all over London making sheep’s eyes.”

Cam was relieved. For a moment there, he thought Jonas might have some genuinely bad news. “He’s a pup. He’ll get over it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Jonas said without great conviction. “The girl’s making sheep’s eyes back, although Leath’s earmarked her for Desborough.”

“Desborough must be forty if he’s a day,” Cam said in surprise. “Leath never struck me as a domestic tyrant.”

“This scandal has shaken him.”

Cam frowned. “It’s unjust to blame Leath for an uncle who should have been hanged years ago.”

Jonas’s lips twisted with old bitterness that not even his current happiness had quite extinguished. “I hardly need to point out that when it comes to sin at the highest levels, people are too eager digging up dirt to worry about fairness.”

Of course Cam knew that. So did Jonas and Richard. All had been branded bastards. All had countered the shame as best they could. Jonas was probably the luckiest of them all. The world now acknowledged his legitimacy.

Cam had given up hope of unraveling the tangled threads surrounding his parentage. All three players in the drama were long dead. Even if they weren’t, hard facts were impossible to establish. When Cam had finally summoned courage to ask his mother who had fathered him, she’d claimed ignorance. His mother was a practiced liar, but on the subject of which Rothermere had planted the future duke in her womb, Cam had believed her.

Jonas went on. “If Leath wants to lead the country, he needs to keep his nose clean—even at a remove. Neville Fairbrother’s crimes cast doubt on the entire line.”

Grimly Cam remembered Harry’s insistence on speaking to Pen at the wedding. Had that been about the Fairbrother chit? This unpleasantness with Leath was complicated enough. The last thing Cam needed was his wife encouraging two young fools to play Romeo and Juliet.