What a Duke Dares

Chapter Thirty

In the Duke of Matlock’s luxurious library, the ball’s music and chatter formed a distant buzz. At a mahogany sideboard, Jonas poured brandies for Richard and Cam, as well as himself. Cam leaned his elbow on the alabaster mantel. Richard lounged with his usual louche grace upon a leather sofa.

There was no trace of the acrimony that had marked his interactions with Jonas and Richard before Christmas. Cam had been so busy since, he’d had little chance to lament the break. Now that they were reunited, he realized how much he’d missed his friends.

He’d only reluctantly abandoned Pen in the ballroom. In fact, they nearly hadn’t made tonight’s party. Seeing her in that devilish becoming dress, he’d wanted to drag her upstairs, rip away the green silk and pound into her until she screamed his name.

But he was Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, model of behavior, arbiter of manners, and his recent actions had prompted enough talk. The last thing he wanted was the world saying that he was so besotted with his bride that he couldn’t last five minutes at a public event before rushing her home.

Even if it was perilously close to the truth.

After a nervous beginning tonight, she seemed more at ease. Perhaps because Jonas and Sidonie had smoothed her way. Cam appreciated their efforts. Jonas could be a managing bugger, but once he’d pledged loyalty, he didn’t waver.

Cam had restricted himself to one waltz with his wife and the promise of the supper dance. He’d even maintained an expression of polite interest while a line of scoundrels claimed her as a dance partner.

Eventually, because they were overdue for a conversation he didn’t want overheard, he and his closest friends had retreated to this quiet room. Pen was safe with Genevieve and Sidonie and her brothers.

“I vow these melees get worse,” Richard drawled. “I don’t know why we came. Genevieve took one look at the crowd and nearly turned tail.”

“It takes a lot for your wife to show scared,” Jonas said with a wry twist of his lips. He passed the glasses across. A fire and a couple of lamps illuminated the elegant room. The flickering light softened his scars. These days, Cam hardly noticed them.

“Speaking of wives,” Richard said, “Cam, we must raise a glass and wish you happy.”

“You did that last night,” he said.

Richard shrugged with characteristic nonchalance, although since his marriage, there was a substance to his presence that was new. He no longer tried to conceal his sharp brain, or the kind heart beneath his superlative tailoring. “When he forsakes bachelorhood, a man can’t have too many good wishes.”

Cam mustn’t have hidden his wince fast enough, because Jonas sent him a sharp look. “All not bliss in Eden, my friend?”

“Jonas, leave the poor devil alone,” Richard said. “A man’s comrades shouldn’t poke their noses in.”

“They should if they can help,” Jonas responded softly, watching Cam like a cat watched a mouse hole.

Cam shrugged and lied. Although after last night, it wasn’t quite as much a lie as it had been. “Everything is fine.”

“Didn’t look fine yesterday.” Jonas ignored Richard’s glare. “The duchess was afraid to say a word and you acted like you’d made an appointment with the hangman.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Richard said. “Don’t listen to the officious blockhead.”

“Officious?” Jonas raised his glass in Richard’s direction. “Convey my compliments to Genevieve. She’s doing wonders for your vocabulary.”

Richard didn’t smile. “If only Sidonie did wonders for your manners.”

Cam sighed. “Pen doesn’t deserve your criticism.”

Jonas’s gaze was unimpressed. “I’m sure she doesn’t.”

“You think I do,” Cam said grimly, wondering why the devil he’d missed his friends. Although he gave Richard credit for trying to divert Jonas’s awkward questions.

“You’re the only other candidate.” Jonas stood at the mantel’s opposite end.

Cam frowned. “I’m not here for an inquisition.”

“Yes, you are,” Jonas said shortly.

“To be fair, Cam, given you flounced off in a huff because we weren’t keen on Lady Marianne, then the next time we see you, it’s with a different bride in tow, you must expect a few questions.” Richard sipped his drink.

“Whose side are you on?” Cam snapped.

Richard took his time swallowing his brandy, then smiled. “Yours, although you probably don’t believe me.”

“I don’t.”

“Do you want some advice from an old married man?”

“No.”

“All right.” Richard drank some more brandy. “Damn fine drop, this. Must find out where Matlock buys it.”

A prickly silence extended, until Cam could bear it no longer. Jonas had the patience of Job, but Richard’s forbearance surprised and annoyed him.

Cam sighed and spoke less belligerently. “What’s your advice?”

“I’m rather astonished to be counseling the font of all wisdom.” Richard’s mouth stretched in a reminiscent smile. “I remember Pen as a girl. She was plucky and impulsive and full of life.”

“Yes, she was.” Cam too found himself smiling.

Richard’s smile faded. “That wasn’t the woman I met last night.”

“You knew her many years ago.”

“You need to convince her that you won’t come down in a hail of reproach if she steps out of line. She’s clever; she’ll soon work out what she can and can’t do without upsetting the old biddies.”

“You make me sound like a despot,” Cam protested.

Richard shrugged. “You chose a woman of spirit. Or at least she will be, once she stops fretting about any whisper of disapproval that might inconvenience you. She’s a Thorne. I can’t imagine she’s terrified on her own account. The Thornes drink recklessness with their mother’s milk.”

“Her reputation precedes her,” Jonas said quietly.

Cam set down his glass with a click. “Shall I knock your teeth down your throat, chum?”

“Threaten all you like—not that there’s much of my hide left to mark. I’m just speaking the truth we all know, Cam,” Jonas responded calmly. “You always said you’d marry a woman of unsullied reputation. In fact, that was why you chose Lady Marianne, if I recall our discussion.”

“Not entirely why,” Cam said uncomfortably. Despite his apology, despite fate selecting another bride, he felt guilty about Marianne Seaton. He’d seen the sideways glances directed at her. Society interpreted Cam’s marriage to Pen as a rejection of his first choice.

“She met your standards of beauty and intelligence. But if she’d had the slightest brush with scandal, you’d never have gone within ten miles of her.”

“Then you arrive home with Penelope Thorne, who’s kicked up her heels from Cairo to Stockholm,” Richard said. “You can’t blame us for being curious.”

Cam sucked in a breath and realized that he had to tell his friends the truth. They knew him too well to believe the tale of falling madly in love. He straightened his shoulders. “Pen is the only woman I’ve proposed to.”

Jonas looked unimpressed. “Obviously. You married her.”

Richard already knew the sorry facts, or most of them. Cam had never confessed his unwelcome yen for nineteen-year-old Pen. “Well, yes, I proposed before the wedding. But nine years ago, I asked her to marry me.”

“You’ve been engaged all this time?” Jonas looked astonished, either at Cam’s delay in claiming his bride or, more likely, at discovering something he didn’t already know. Jonas Merrick prided himself on his omniscience.

“Of course not.” Cam disclosed one of his few failures. “She turned me down.”

“Good for her,” Richard interjected, toasting the absent Penelope. “Didn’t I say she had backbone?”

“Penelope Thorne wouldn’t marry you?” Jonas asked. “The family must have already been in financial straits. There’s always been a whiff of notoriety about the Thornes. Superb soldiers in times of crisis. Nothing but trouble in peace.”

Cam’s lips tightened, although it was an opinion he’d grown up hearing. “Peter was my friend.”

“I know the fellow was charming. Too charming for his own good. And they’re a handsome family. You’ve caught yourself a beauty, Cam.”

“Lady Marianne isn’t exactly a pill,” Richard protested.

“Not at all,” Jonas said. “But even an old married man like me can tell that the new Duchess of Sedgemoor will turn heads. Once she gets some confidence and—forgive me saying so—buys some decent clothes, she’ll be so spectacular you won’t get near her for admiring swains, Cam.”

Hell, that was the last thing Cam wanted. He’d decided young that he didn’t want a duchess whom other men panted after. Yet here he was under the sway of a woman who set masculine hearts racing. His lifelong ambitions for a quiet domestic life were doomed.

He bit back a surge of jealousy to think of anyone else touching Pen, of her doing to another man what she’d so breathtakingly done to him last night. His stomach clenched tighter than a fist. Anyone trying to poach Pen away would face annihilation.

He paused in lifting his glass, wondering when he’d turned so primitive. Passions were dangerous, unless leashed. Yet he’d kill any bastard who came sniffing around his wife.

“Are you all right, Cam?” Richard asked.

Cam must be staring at his friends in a complete daze. He felt out of kilter, as if someone had chopped a couple of inches off one leg.

“Of course.” They’d recognize the lie, but surely they’d never guess the reason behind it.

“You looked like you wanted to rip Jonas’s guts out through his waistcoat.”

Cam struggled to smile. “Pen is my wife. She merits my loyalty—and your respect.”

Jonas frowned as that devilish mind whirred. “Of course she does.”

Cam hadn’t expected such ready agreement. “You’ll like her when you know her.”

“I’m sure I will.”

This level of amiability verged on the fantastical. Cam scowled down his long nose at his friend. Unfortunately, Jonas was at least as tall so the withering stare didn’t have its usual effect. “Are you being sarcastic?”

Jonas looked genuinely surprised. “Not at all. I’m delighted that you didn’t marry Lady Marianne. I was against the match from the start. I hated to see you enter such a coldhearted arrangement.”

Cam started to say that his match with Pen was just as coldhearted until something stopped him. Perhaps an inkling that Jonas waited for an open declaration of his feelings. Or lack of them.

“Pen will make a splendid duchess,” Richard said peaceably from the sofa. “It’s still a puzzle that she didn’t marry you in the first place if the Thornes were in a mess.”

“Are you both suggesting that she’d only marry me for worldly advantage?” Cam’s tone bristled.

Richard regarded him disapprovingly. “You’re deuced touchy, Cam. That’s not what we mean. Anyway, you know that even if you were off your head with opium or inclined to slobber into your dinner, chits would still line up for the duchess’s coronet.”

“Thank you,” Cam said grimly.

“You’re welcome.”

Jonas remained keen to explain himself, which didn’t happen every day. Cam controlled his temper enough to listen. “All those years ago, her family must have pressured her to accept you. Was she in love with someone else?”

“Not that I know.” Cam found the idea distasteful, although he couldn’t say why. If Pen had been in love at nineteen, the affair hadn’t had a happy outcome. “There was never any talk.”

“There was talk on the Continent,” Richard said soberly.

“It was purely talk,” Cam said. He only realized after he spoke how his confidence hinted that he had reason to know. Heat tinged his cheeks and he sipped his brandy to hide his embarrassment. Pen’s innocence was nobody else’s business. He quickly changed the subject. Unfortunately the topic was almost as discomfiting. “Her mother nagged her to the point where Pen canceled her season and scarpered for Italy.”

Jonas burst out laughing in one of those quicksilver changes of mood so characteristic of him. “Oh, Cam. You have my commiserations. But damn it, that’s priceless.”

Cam glowered at his friend. “I fail to see the funny side.”

Jonas took an infuriatingly long time to stop laughing. “You would if you’d been subject to your perfection all these years. I’m liking your bride more and more.”

“Cam, don’t go all haughty on us.” Richard rose and lifted the decanter. “Even I find it a tad amusing that the woman who met your criteria was so horrified at the prospect of marrying you that she fled the country.”

“She escaped her mother,” Cam said stiffly.

“I’m sure.” Richard refilled Jonas’s glass and turned to Cam. “None of this explains how you tied yourself to her after so long and after she’d led a fascinating life, never sparing you a thought.”

Whereas Cam had devoted too much energy to a setback that shouldn’t have mattered. He hid a sigh as he extended his empty glass toward Richard. He should be grateful to have friends brave enough to prick his arrogance. If only they knew that they were nowhere near as skilled at skewering him as his lovely bride.

“Peter asked me on his deathbed to escort Pen to England.” He waited for some response, but he’d captured his friends’ attention so completely that they remained silent. “I found her in the Alps and brought her back.”

“Alone?” Richard replaced the decanter on the table.

“Yes.” Cam paused. “Don’t look like that. I kept my hands to myself.”

“That must have been bloody difficult,” Jonas said.

Cam bared his teeth at Jonas, who seemed remarkably taken with another man’s wife. “She’s my friend’s sister. I’d grown up with her.” He paused. “She didn’t offer much encouragement.”

As he returned to the sofa, Richard studied Cam. “That must have rankled.”

Cam nodded before he thought better of it. He rushed into the rest of his story. “We pretended we were married and avoided places where anyone might recognize us.”

“Until?” Jonas asked.

“Until the ship went down, I imagine,” Richard said. “Good God, Cam, talk about destiny taking a hand.”

“Pen wore the Rothermere signet. The people who fished us out assumed we were married. There was no way to keep the story quiet.”

“So no passion-fueled wedding in an Italian chapel?” Jonas asked.

“No.” Cam resented Jonas’s amused superiority.

“No wonder you didn’t wait to invite us to the wedding. I must admit to being rather… piqued.” He paused. “I worried you’d taken our last discussion to heart.”

Cam’s laugh held no humor. “I was ready to shove your ill-considered opinions down your gullet. But not enough that in normal circumstances, I’d neglect to ask you to my wedding.”

“That’s good to know,” Jonas said without a trace of irony. “I’m not so flush with people I trust that I can afford to lose one.”

Cam’s resentment faded. And his jealousy. Jonas had eyes for only one woman, and it wasn’t Penelope Rothermere. “You spoke with good intentions—and your usual need to run the show.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black.” Richard laughed and drained his glass. “Life has been adventurous lately, my friend.”

“Indeed.” Cam finished his own brandy.

Richard was his friend. So was Jonas. After the recent hiccups, he was relieved that the bonds they’d formed at Eton hadn’t weakened.

It was time to return to Pen. Especially if Jonas was right about her becoming a focus for male attention.