What a Duke Dares (42 page)
Cam’s touch reminded her too painfully of all she’d lost. She broke away, fighting to keep her voice steady. “What happens now, Cam?”
He frowned. “I take you back to the Bear and Swan and summon a doctor.”
“I’m perfectly all right.”
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Leath landed a hell of a blow.”
“It was an accident.”
To her surprise, a faint smile curved Cam’s lips. “It wasn’t an accident. It was your damned recklessness. You haven’t changed since you were six years old and jumping into the river to save a drowning puppy.”
Cam had rescued her that day. Cam always rescued her. What a crushing realization that he’d never rescue her again. This was like having a limb amputated. Slowly.
“He was going to kill Harry,” she mumbled.
“Undoubtedly.”
“I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you put yourself in danger.”
She sighed. “I wasn’t hurt.”
A flash in his green eyes reminded her of his incandescent anger when Leath clipped her. “Yes, you were.”
“Not seriously.”
“Good luck only.”
“You can’t still mean to shoot Leath. You two sounded almost friendly before he left.”
Cam’s mouth thinned and he sent her a direct stare that she couldn’t interpret. “I won’t shoot Leath. I may want to shoot you.”
That was hardly news. Despairingly she realized that while Sophie and Harry might get their happy ending once they’d weathered the scandal, no such happy ending awaited her with Cam.
“Don’t say that.”
He frowned. “That was a joke.”
“Not a very funny one.”
He looked shocked. “I really don’t want to shoot you.”
No, he just wanted to freeze her out of his life. Shooting seemed kinder. She raised her chin. “You did earlier.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had time to calm down.”
But not to forgive her. She knew that. “Cam, I feel like I’m teetering on a tightrope. Tell me what we do now.”
That oddly direct stare persisted. “We go on, of course.”
She sighed. “I can’t live with you if it means walking on eggshells forever.”
He sighed impatiently. “Then don’t.”
She stiffened as a blade of ice pierced her heart. His rejection was clear. As clear as the shine on a headman’s ax. She drew a breath and squared her shoulders.
“How do you see this proceeding?” She set out the options, every word slicing like a razor. “I can live at Fentonwyck or on another of your estates. Or I can return to the Continent. There will be talk if we separate, but let’s face it, our marriage was always fated to fail.”
P
en wanted to leave him?
Appalled, Cam stared at her. “What’s this bloody nonsense?”
“Cam, I should never have married you.” She stood like she faced a firing squad, pale as milk in her black traveling dress. He should find consolation in her lack of enthusiasm for deserting him. “The events of the last day and a half must convince you if nothing else does.”
He sighed and reached for her. She edged away. “Damn it, Pen. There’s no need for this.”
“Yes, there is.” She inhaled deeply. “I’ve tried. I’ve tried until I’m blue in the face. I’ve tried to be a proper duchess and proved a woeful failure. I’ve tried to be true to myself and in the process I’ve embroiled you in a frightful scandal. I’ll never be the wife you want. I’ve known that since you proposed to me at Houghton Park all those years ago.”
He regarded her steadily. “Just how hard did Leath hit you?”
She didn’t smile. Instead her fists closed at her sides as if
she resisted clouting him. He almost wished she would. At least that would make a scrap of sense. “Don’t treat me like a fool.”
“Can we leave decisions until after a meal and a few hours’ sleep? Preferably in a place that doesn’t stink like something died in the corner.”
She still looked like a medieval martyr going to the stake. Self-disgust welled up. He’d done a brilliant job of convincing his wife that he despised her. How he regretted his temper. But then, he regretted so much. The question was whether he could heal the breach between them, wide as the Atlantic. Something profound and unhappy, a remnant of his horrid childhood, insisted that he couldn’t.
He wanted to shout his denial to the sky.
“This won’t take long,” she said in a hard voice.
They were both exhausted. She was hurt—her head must pound like an anvil under a hammer. He couldn’t bear to see his wife in such poor surroundings. But his arrogance had done enough harm. If she wanted to talk now, he’d talk, even if it felt like she scraped out his guts with a scalpel.
With a sigh, he slumped onto the unmade bed. “Say what you need to.”
“Don’t sound so long-suffering,” she snapped.
Compared to stoic misery, her temper was welcome. He spoke the truth he’d discovered during those nightmare moments in the English Channel. And again when Leath had struck her. Still, he was a proud man. His voice emerged flat and hard. “I don’t want to lose you.”
She didn’t seem to hear. “It’s time to stop playing my knight, Cam. I’m no longer your responsibility.”
“You damn well are,” he said in a dangerous tone, lurching to his feet.
“By helping Harry, I deceived you. I knew how you
abhorred scandal and I went ahead anyway.” She looked more a duchess than ever before, standing boldly in a rundown room in this shabby quarter of Liverpool. “And I’d do it again. So while I’m sorry you’re angry and I’m definitely sorry the story hit the papers, I don’t regret my actions.”
“I forgive you.”
A poignant smile touched her lips. “No, you don’t. And neither you should. I’m doing what’s best for you.”
“Which entails falling on your sword, I gather,” he said acidly. “Pen, I want you to stay.”
“Very kind.”
“I’m not bloody kind.”
She cast him a pitying glance. “Of course you are. But I’m no longer taking advantage of your good nature. I set you free.”
“I don’t damn well want to be free.” He fought the urge to snatch her into his arms and kiss her until she shut up. Instinct warned that he needed to win this battle with words alone.
Words weren’t his
métier
. At least words about emotions.
“Perhaps I already carry your heir.” With an expression he couldn’t read, she placed one hand over her belly. “I know it’s my duty to give you a child.”
He stared at her aghast, even as the glorious idea of his child inside her shuddered through him. “Would it only be duty, Pen?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she wrapped her arms around herself. The room was chilly, but he knew that more than the temperature made her shiver. “I’m sorry I’ve ruined your life, Cam.”
“What rot.”
Her face was wan. “And I’m sorry I betrayed you. At least let me tell you why I did it.”
His slashing gesture dismissed explanations. “I know
exactly why.” His voice deepened with the certainty that had struck him, vilely late, when she’d flung herself between Harry and Leath. “You did it out of love. You’ve done everything out of love.”
Shock jolted Pen from self-flagellation. “But you don’t believe in love.”
“I believe in you,” he said quietly.
“I don’t understand.” His avowal didn’t soften her attitude. “Not long ago, you hated me.”
He sighed and moved across to lean against the wall, hoping it held his weight. The whole building looked likely to collapse. A bit the way his pride was about to collapse around his ears. “I was angry.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“And I was hurt,” he said with more difficulty.
They were both aware what that confession cost him. From earliest boyhood, he’d done his best to deny his emotions. He had much to blame his parents for, not least the painful gossip about his bastardy. But only in the last hour had he realized that their worst crime against him was the way they’d made him mistrust his deepest feelings.
Pen didn’t speak and Cam realized that to win what he wanted, he had to lay his soul out before her. “All my life I’ve kept people at a distance.”
“I know.”
“I can’t keep you at a distance.”
“That’s desire,” she said flatly. “Once you stop wanting me, you’ll put me back into my place.”
Her voice betrayed how he’d hurt her. Good God, what a selfish swine he was. “Your place is at my side.”
She drifted toward the filthy window, staring outside, although the glass was so dirty he couldn’t imagine she saw much. “You didn’t think that last night.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “Stop using my temper as an excuse to run away.” He was unaccustomed to apologizing. The words emerged awkwardly. “I’m sorry for my tantrum. You’re the only woman in creation who turns me into a lunatic.”
She didn’t turn. “Surely that’s reason to separate.”
He stepped forward. His voice resonated with urgency. “Damn it, Pen, surely that’s reason for you to stay and finish the job of making me human.”
She bent her head, staring down at where her hands flattened on the grubby windowsill. Her upswept black hair seemed too heavy for her fragile neck.
He wanted to bundle her into his arms and promise to be her knight, the man who would keep the monsters away. But again, that niggle of instinct insisted that if he pushed her, she’d walk out. So far, at least she listened. He was an expert on the impermeable doors against emotion. He didn’t want to give Pen a chance to shut hers.
“You’re human,” she whispered.
“Only with you.”
When she faced him, she looked angry. “Why are you saying these things? You don’t mean them.” Her voice lashed like a whip. “Lying won’t change anything.”
“I’m not lying,” he said helplessly. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“What do you want, Cam?” She folded her arms and her tone was uncompromising. The frailty had vanished. She looked like the fierce goddess who had defied the world on his behalf at Lady Frencham’s.
He hadn’t deserved her praise then, but he’d been damned glad to hear it. The memory fortified his resolve. She’d taken risks for him. He’d take risks for her. She was worth it. She was worth it even if he failed ignominiously.
He rubbed his jaw. “Once I thought I knew.”
“Don’t toy with me.”
She’d dragged him into this, kicking and screaming. If he wanted to dawdle over the last few yards before tumbling over the cliff, he would. “I wanted a wife who acted with dignity and decorum, a wife who couldn’t even spell ‘scandal.’ ”
“You wanted a pretty little doll to decorate your playpen,” she said sourly.
“An exaggeration, but only a slight one.” He linked his hands behind his back to hide their trembling. That cliff edge loomed closer and closer. “Instead I got a difficult, pigheaded termagant.”
“Then you should be glad that she’s leaving.”
He smiled. He liked this tougher version of Pen. “Oh, no.”
“No?” she asked on a rising note. At last she stepped forward.
The instincts that guided him through this impossible maze insisted that if she bridged the distance, he’d win. If he pursued, she’d run.
He was a man who seized what he wanted. Playing the cool game nearly killed him. “Because while she’s undoubtedly endless trouble, not to mention inclined to rebel against her lord and master—”
As he’d expected, that prompted a withering glance. To his relief, she was no longer the distraught, lost creature desperate to escape at all costs.
His tone wouldn’t disgrace one of Genevieve’s scholarly lectures. “—she also turns my nights to fire and makes me feel alive every minute of every day.”
Something happened behind her obsidian eyes. He just wished to God he knew what it was. Her lips firmed. Those soft, pink lips he’d kissed until he was drunk with the taste of her. “So you want me in your bed. That means nothing. You’ve wanted me in your bed since we met in Italy.”
He smiled. “I think it means a great deal. So do you. And if we’re being accurate, I’ve wanted you since my first proposal.”
Shock chased away what little color she’d regained. “I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged. “It’s true. Hell, it scared the living daylights out of me. I proposed because we were friends and you understood my horror of messy emotions, not because you drove me mad with desire.” She still struggled to respond. “As you did. As you do.”
“Desire isn’t enough.” Beneath the chilly tone, he caught piercing regret.
“No, it’s not. It matters. But it’s not everything.”
“Because it’s not everything, I can never be what you want.”
“How easily you give up, Your Grace.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What else should I call you? You’re my duchess and my wife.”
“Much as you wish otherwise.”
By all that was holy, she was a tough opponent. While he’d learned to respect her strength, he’d never before realized how adamant she could be.
He poised on the cliff edge and stared at the sharp rocks below. Vertigo sent his belly on a sickening dip. If he jumped, odds were he wouldn’t survive.
“You asked me what I want,” he said slowly.
She stiffened as though bracing for a challenge. She wasn’t nearly as composed as she struggled to appear. Her voice trembled. “Why don’t you tell me?”