What a Duke Dares (18 page)
“For you, I’d brave a pack of hungry lions. What’s a dog or two?”
“Harry, stop it,” she said on a pleading note. “When we’re parted, you’ll forget me.”
Shock made him drop her hands and step back, drawing up to his full height until he towered over her. “What the hell do you mean?”
She twisted her hands in her filmy skirts. “There are so many pretty debutantes this year.”
“Oh, my darling.” Devastation flooded him. How could she think him so fickle? He caught her in his arms. “Never, never think that.”
“How can I help it? James does nothing but talk about your intrigues.” She stood stiffly in his embrace. “You’re so handsome and charming. Every girl in London wants you.”
He was appalled to realize that this vulnerability predated today’s quarrel. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.” His voice lowered. “I’ve laid my heart at your feet, sweetheart, and there it will stay. I’ll kindly ask you not to kick it.”
“Of course I won’t kick it.” He was mightily relieved to see the doubt fade from her eyes. “I’m glad that you’ll love me forever.”
“Forever. So what’s a month?” Endless purgatory, but he didn’t say that. “We can write.”
She rested her head on his chest. Touching her made Harry’s world revolve in the right direction. Heaven help him if she succumbed to family pressure and accepted Desborough. Harry would be useless to man and beast.
“No, we can’t. I need to buckle down and behave or James won’t let me finish the season. He said he’s happy to let me rusticate until I marry Desborough.”
Harry’s heart pounded in frantic denial against her cheek. “You’re not marrying Desborough.”
“I don’t want to.” She released a broken sigh. “Why is this so difficult? I think I hate James.”
“No, you don’t. He’s just trying to protect you.”
“But he won’t let me marry you. He was scathing about your request to court me.”
Harry grimaced. “I’ll wager he was more scathing to my face. It was perfectly clear that he’d give you to a rabid dog before he’d give you to Harry Thorne.”
She stared at him. “If he knew you as I do, he’d understand.”
“Perhaps.” Harry was far from sure. “He isn’t completely wrong, my darling. I have no fortune and the world considers me a wastrel. Even if we marry, I only have my allowance from Elias and even that’s looking devilish shaky right now.” His voice descended into glumness. “Perhaps you’d be better off marrying someone else.”
She frowned as if he’d offered her an insult. “Do you love me, Harry Thorne?”
“You know I do.”
“Then that’s the only qualification you need to be my husband.” She watched him steadily. “We’ll work the rest out.”
He smiled. “You’ll make a dashed fine wife, Sophie.”
She smiled back. “Because I sew a fine seam and I play the piano like an angel?”
“Do you? By Jove, those are useful skills if we’re left on our uppers.”
“Don’t joke, Harry,” she said.
His smile broadened, even as his heart ached at their looming separation. He’d had three days of living in gray limbo without her. A month seemed like torture. “And because you’re the bravest girl I know.”
The teasing light in her eyes dimmed. “I’ll have to be brave if I’m in Northumberland.”
He couldn’t resist kissing her. “Courage, Sophie. If we’re true to one another, nobody can part us.”
“Do you believe that? It seems too optimistic.”
“I’m a man in love. I eat optimism for breakfast.”
As he’d hoped, his silly response raised a smile. “You’re a fool.”
“I’m your fool.” With one hand under her chin, he tipped her face until he drowned in her huge blue eyes.
He desperately hoped that he deserved the trust he read there. Nobody had ever relied on him. As the youngest and most charming of the reckless Thornes, he’d never taken responsibility for anything. He swore that lack of practice in responsibility wouldn’t scuttle his plans. He intended to become the world’s best husband. If he had his way, Sophie would never suffer a moment’s unhappiness.
“Now kiss me good-bye.” He forced a smile. He wanted her to retain a memory of pleasure amidst all the turmoil. “Make it good. It needs to last me until you return.”
She rose on her toes and laced her hands around his neck. “If you put it like that.”
His brief humor dissolved to ash under her passionate assault. After a surprised hesitation, his arms lashed around her and he pressed her full-length against him. He wanted to remember her warmth and scent, and the soft sounds of her excitement.
His hands firmed on her hips and he kissed her back, telling her with his lips that he loved her and he’d miss her and the hours without her would feel like eternity. He also silently assured her that in time, they’d be together.
Eventually he raised his head, knowing that if he didn’t stop now, he wouldn’t stop until he’d lost all pretensions to honor. He pressed her against his heart, resting his chin on her head. Breathing unsteadily, he struggled for calm.
“You must go,” she said with audible regret. “If James catches us, he’ll send me further than Northumberland.”
Harry kissed her briefly. “I’d follow you to the ends of the earth.”
Disconsolately she surveyed him. “If James gets his way, you may have to.”
Upper Brook Street, London, late March 1828
C
am bowed as Lady Marianne Seaton entered the sunny morning room of her father’s house in Mayfair. He felt damnably awkward. He hadn’t seen her since spending Christmas at the Seaton estate in Dorset. An indication of his intentions and her family’s acceptance of those intentions, although he was yet to make a formal offer.
As Lady Marianne curtsied with her famous grace, he was startled to notice how lovely she was. God forgive him, he’d forgotten. With her widely spaced blue eyes and full lips, she looked like a Renaissance Madonna.
While he might have only a vague recollection of her appearance, Cam had remembered her air of tranquility. It was among the reasons he’d chosen her. After his chaotic upbringing, the prospect of marriage as a haven of calm was devilish appealing.
Ironic that he ended up with an independent miss who stirred turbulent currents wherever she went.
“Your Grace, what a pleasure.” Lady Marianne’s voice was low, like a cello. That voice would never challenge him or tease him or warm with wry humor.
Whatever else Pen was, she was entertaining. Five minutes with her and his skin prickled with physical awareness, his brain fired with stimulation, he was laughing.
He couldn’t imagine laughing with Lady Marianne. She was too like one of the Meissen figurines that his mother had thrown when no dinner plates or Chinese vases lay to hand. In the Rothermere residences, numerous shepherds lacked their shepherdesses, thanks to the late duchess’s tantrums.
“Good morning, Lady Marianne,” he said.
Lady Marianne sank onto an azure chaise longue. Her back was ruler straight, her hands laced decorously in her lap. She looked like she sat for a painting. Her pale yellow gown complimented her creamy complexion. Immediately Cam pictured Pen as he’d last seen her, wearing an ill-fitting, borrowed dress. She’d been fighting him. Why was that immeasurably more exciting than Lady Marianne’s serenity?
Clearly he was mad.
He’d been set on marrying this lady, to a point where he’d quarreled with his closest friends Jonas Merrick and Richard Harmsworth. Both were converts to the joys of married bliss and they hadn’t approved of Cam’s coldhearted plans for an alliance with the Seaton family.
Yet now he felt like he faced a stranger.
Lady Marianne gestured toward a chair upholstered in matching blue. “Please sit down. I heard about the shipwreck. I’m sorry about the loss of your yacht. And the brave men who perished with her.”
She must have heard about his bride too. He’d expected this, but it was a devil of a way to discover that her suitor jilted her.
Wishing desperately he was somewhere else, he sat. “Thank you. You perhaps also know that I traveled with a lady.”
The steady cobalt gaze didn’t waver. She was better at concealing her emotions than anyone he knew. Or perhaps she had no feelings to hide. Neither had harbored any illusion that their marriage was more than a dynastic merger. Cam had been grateful for that. A wife who wanted his love—even worse, a wife who would be hurt by his inability to love her—was his definition of hell. His father had loved his mother and unrequited passion had warped into anger and cruelty.
At least Pen knew that love wasn’t on the agenda. Lord, she didn’t love him. Most of the time, she could barely stand to have him around. He would never experience that glorious closeness with a beloved partner that Jonas had found with Sidonie, and Richard had found with Genevieve. And from the bottom of his frozen heart, he was relieved.
“Yes, the papers reported the story,” she said coolly.
“The lady is my wife. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before the rumor mill started. It’s been a… hectic few days and I felt I needed to see you in person.”
“I see.” She paused with a delicacy so finely tuned, Cam heard a clear ping in the air. “My congratulations, Your Grace. I hope you and the duchess will be very happy.”
She was a stylish creature, he thought with sudden admiration. And brave. She deserved better than a cold, decorous marriage with a man who didn’t love her. He’d offered her a shabby bargain, however shabbily he now broke it. She was better off without him.
“Thank you. You have every right to be furious, and—”
She raised one hand to silence him. “I’ve enjoyed your company, but there were no expectations on either side.”
A face-saving lie. Guilt and regret flooded him, but her
subtly brittle air hinted that his apology was the last thing she wanted. He’d come to know her better than he’d realized during their circumspect courtship.
He felt like the lowest worm in creation. Because now that he looked closely, a tightness at the corner of her lips and a wariness in her eyes revealed that she was no happier hearing that he’d married another woman than he was telling her. And the hellish reality was that her jilting was no secret. The gossips wouldn’t be kind to the woman Camden Rothermere had passed over.
Her slender throat moved as she swallowed, but her voice emerged with commendable evenness. “There has been no mention of the lady’s name. Is she perhaps Italian?”
“No.”
“An English lady, then.”
The habit of protecting Pen’s identity was so ingrained, he had to remind himself that everything would become public in a few days. “My wife is Penelope Thorne, Lord Wilmott’s sister.”
Shock turned Lady Marianne’s expression blank. “I only know Miss Thorne by reputation.”
Cam could imagine. “We grew up together. I went to Italy to tell her about her brother’s death.”
Lady Marianne studied him before comprehension lit her features. Cam had a nasty suspicion that she put two and two together and got thirteen. “A long-standing attachment, then.”
“Yes,” he said, meaning friendship and knowing that Lady Marianne pictured childhood sweethearts renewing their passion.
Why in Hades was the world obsessed with love? Surely there were more important things to worry about.
“The lady has been away from England for many years. Perhaps she’ll appreciate a friend to help her navigate
London society. I hope Her Grace will call when she’s in Town.”
Good God, Marianne Seaton was tip-top quality from her smooth mink-brown hair to the soles of her yellow satin slippers. Cam was seriously impressed. He wondered why he wasn’t also eaten with regret that instead of claiming this magnificent creature, he married willful Penelope Thorne with her blemished reputation.
“You’re very kind.” He meant more than the social platitude. Again he tried to express how sorry he was. “You and I—”
Again she waved one graceful hand. “Nothing further need be said.”
Lady Marianne’s generosity left him very much on the wrong foot. He’d behaved badly toward this woman, but now he was committed to Pen. He’d been committed to Pen since he’d saved her from the bandits. He’d been a fool to imagine anything else.
He stood. Lady Marianne wouldn’t wish to extend this meeting.
“Is your father in London?” Cam doubted that the old man would take the news as well as his daughter had.
“No, he’s at the family seat. I came up to do some shopping and attend a former governess’s wedding. I’ll return to Dorset next week.”
“I wish you a pleasant stay, then,” he said calmly.
As he left the Seatons’ tall white town house, he exhaled with unworthy relief. Today proved that Lady Marianne was too perfect for him. Pen was woefully far from perfect, but she made his blood sing. That recommended her as a wife, if not a duchess. The promise of finally possessing her set an unaccustomed spring to his step on his stroll back to Rothermere House.