Humiliated color seared Pen’s cheeks. The witch’s remarks contained enough truth to cut. She and Cam had struggled so hard to contain any gossip about their wedding. She supposed it was inevitable that they’d failed. But this squalid meanness nauseated her.
“I heard they were at it like rabbits even before she went abroad.” Pen wouldn’t have believed that the first speaker’s voice could become more waspish, but it did. “Everyone knows why she left England before her debut. You mark my words. There’s a Thorne bastard with Rothermere eyes somewhere in France or Italy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s talk in a few years of them adopting some obscure cousin’s child that nobody’s heard of. A bastard spawning another bastard. It would be amusing if it wasn’t such a blow to society’s standards. Heaven knows, one pays respect to the title when one meets the villain face to face, but it becomes tiresome pretending to honor a mongrel, whatever his noble pretensions.”
Pen could take it no longer. She forgot every promise she’d made never to shame Cam. She didn’t care that the ballroom was packed with observers. Such lies couldn’t go unchallenged. Drawing herself up to her full height, she sailed around the palm tree to accost the women.
“Just as it becomes tiresome to follow the dictates of good manners,” she snapped, unfolding her fan in a single movement and waving it as though the air reeked in the vicinity of these two old cats.
To her surprise, she recognized both of them. They’d fawned over her, angling without subtlety for invitations to Fentonwyck.
“Your Grace…” Mrs. Combe-Browne rose and started a curtsy before recalling that if Pen had overheard them, the gesture was misplaced. Instead she staggered like she’d had too much to drink before landing so awkwardly on her spindly chair that she nearly tumbled to the floor. Pen felt no urge to smile.
“Ladies.” Pen focused a hostile eye on the first speaker, Lady Phillips, a woman notorious as the late Duke of Kent’s mistress. “Although I use the term advisedly.”
“Your Grace!” the woman protested. “I have no idea what prompts such discourtesy.”
Pen glared. “Don’t you?”
Lady Phillips was less easily rattled than her companion. Her eyes narrowed as she stood. “Were you eavesdropping on a private conversation?”
“No conversation audible from the other side of the room counts as private.” Pen matched tone to actions by closing her fan with a contempt that the old bat couldn’t miss. “How ironic that a woman of your blemished reputation sees fit to malign the finest man in England.”
Lady Phillips didn’t retreat, although Mrs. Combe-Browne whimpered like a sick piglet and huddled into her chair as if trying to melt into the wall. “A noble title does not of itself denote honor. Nor in this case breeding.”
Pen stepped forward. Unfortunately Lady Phillips was almost as tall and twice her weight. This might be like confronting a bad-tempered rhino, but nothing could calm Pen’s outrage. How dare this raddled hag insult Cam?
“Perhaps a noble title doesn’t. But character and honesty and heart do. And my husband has those in abundance. If courage and intelligence and generosity form no part of a gentleman’s character, he’s no gentleman, whatever his parents got up to. And that counts for ladies too.”
“Well, I never!” Mrs. Combe-Browne bleated behind her friend.
“You never should have, either of you,” Pen snapped. “My husband is a man of influence.”
Lady Phillips sneered. “You dare to threaten me, you trumped-up whore? Don’t imagine your brazen antics across the Channel are any secret.”
Pen squared her shoulders, ready to do battle, but before she could engage, Cam spoke behind her. Usually she was preternaturally aware of his presence. It was one of the burdens of loving him. But she’d been so furious, nothing else had registered.
“That’s quite enough, Lady Phillips,” Cam said in an icy voice.
Pen shivered. She hated that tone. The few times Cam had used it on her, it had scraped the flesh off her bones. She could see that he was seething. Perhaps, she thought with a weight settling in her belly, he was angrier with Pen than with Lady Phillips and her friend. They only repeated rumors that the gossips had spread before and would embroider in the future. Whereas Pen was obliged to uphold the Rothermere name.
She knew that she’d made a horrible faux pas. In society, one rose above insults. Hadn’t Cam and Richard tried all their lives to prove that the sad old stories had no power? Not that anyone believed that, including Cam and Richard.
At Cam’s reprimand, the woman paled. “Your Grace, I’m sure you misunderstand.”
Pen should have realized that while the Duchess of Sedgemoor wouldn’t foil this tough old vulture, the duke would put her in her place.
“I’m sure I don’t, Lady Phillips, Mrs. Combe-Browne,” Cam responded in a clipped voice.
“I didn’t—” Mrs. Combe-Browne said shakily.
Whatever defense she’d meant to mount evaporated under Cam’s frigid stare. She shrank into herself and looked likely to burst into tears.
Pen was dismayed to notice that this fraught encounter stirred general interest. She cursed her impulsive Thorne blood. She wasn’t born to be a duchess, cool and composed under social fire. And she had a horrid suspicion that Cam reached the same conclusion, despite her efforts to make him proud.
“Your Grace, you’ve fallen in with bad company.” Lady Hillbrook approached to take her arm. “Come, my husband is eager to discuss your brilliant article in last month’s Blackwood’s Magazine. He wants your advice on acquiring artifacts from that excavation in Messina that you describe in such fascinating detail.”
Although she couldn’t imagine that a reminder of her unfeminine interest in scholarship would mollify Lady Phillips, Pen turned to Lady Hillbrook. “I’d be delighted.” The huskiness in her voice betrayed her gratitude.
Cam stared at her, green eyes opaque. Of course, he’d delay a lecture until they were alone. They’d caused enough talk. His anger would likely take the path of coldness rather than a blistering tirade. He couldn’t be nearly as disappointed in her as she was in herself. Harpies like Lady Phillips and Mrs. Combe-Browne weren’t worth fighting. Their poison was so deeply rooted that nothing would excise it.
“Sidonie, my wife and I are leaving. Jonas can talk antiquities some other time.” Like his voice, Cam’s expression was neutral. He was a master at hiding his feelings. From earliest boyhood, he’d had to be.
He extended his hand. Pen swallowed what felt like a boulder stuck in her throat and told herself she could survive this. She’d survived refusing the proposal she’d dreamed of all her life. She’d survived nine years without him. She’d survived his company in the Alps and the travesty of their marriage. She’d even survived pretending that she felt nothing but physical pleasure when he’d shared her bed.
Compared to what she’d been through, tonight was a minor bump in a union that would prove rockier yet.
She lifted her chin, determined to conceal every scrap of vulnerability from the hungry predators otherwise called polite society. She accepted Cam’s hand. The heat of his skin radiated through their gloves.
“Your Grace—” Lady Phillips started in a peremptory tone.
Cam’s glance would wither apples on the branch. His bow was a masterpiece of disdain. “Good evening, my lady.”
“Thank you, Lady Hillbrook,” Pen murmured.
Sidonie smiled without reserve. “I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Please do.”
To her amazement, Sidonie kissed her cheek. The gesture of support bolstered Pen’s failing courage.
Under ranks of avid eyes, Cam tucked Pen’s hand into the crook of his elbow and at a stately pace that was a mark of defiance, he led her toward the doors. The musicians scratched away at an ecossaise, but hardly anyone danced. Instead the guests craned their necks to observe the Duke and Duchess of Sedgemoor.
Cam’s muscles were rigid. The man whose arm she held burned
with deep emotion. Pen didn’t need to be especially perceptive to recognize anger.
Inside their carriage, Pen battled to suck air into starved lungs, but every second’s delay only tightened her nerves. “I’m sorry—”
He raised his hand. His other hand, much to her surprise, still curled around hers. “Wait until we’re home, Pen.”
Apprehension clawed at her, but she supposed that if he intended a full-scale row, he’d want time and privacy. His silence alarmed her more than censure would.
Pen slumped beside her husband and wished she’d had the sense to keep her mouth shut. But it was too late for regrets. She’d said what she’d said. Cam had heard. Sidonie had heard. She had a sneaking suspicion that everyone in that packed ballroom adorned with bedraggled palm trees had heard. Those who hadn’t heard would soon receive an accounting of the duchess bearding the ton’s most vicious gossips.
An accounting only likely to grow more flamboyant in the telling.
Her sigh escaped before she remembered to muffle it. To her surprise, Cam’s grip firmed.
Far too quickly, Pen faced Cam in the library where a few nights ago, they’d shared such blazing passion. She tried not to remember how he’d pounded into her. But it was impossible. The experience had marked her soul. She’d treasure it until the day she died.
“Cam, I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she began, still clinging to his hand. Silly to find that innocent contact so affecting after the wanton things they’d done to each other.
He stood close, blocking her view of everything but him. What was new? Since she was a little girl, she’d only ever seen him.
“You’re sorry?” His voice sounded choked.
Oh, no, he really was livid. She braced for temper and closed her eyes.
“Are you afraid?” he asked, still in that raw voice.
She swallowed to moisten a mouth dry with terror. And lied. “Of course not.”
“You looked like you weren’t afraid of anything when you told that cow Lady Phillips to shut her mouth.”
“She made me so angry.” Pen spoke quickly before her courage evaporated. “I know I said I’d behave. I know I said I’d do my best to be a proper duchess. But she was so mean.”
“And you couldn’t bear to hear her deriding me.”
“No.” She opened her eyes, dreading what she’d find.
There was a light in Cam’s eyes that she’d never seen before. He raised his hand to cup her face. “Nobody’s ever defended me like that. You were magnificent.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
My darling, you took such a risk coming here.” In the drawing room of the Russell Square house, Harry flung his arms around Sophie. Outside, everything was quiet. This wasn’t an area that bustled after dark.
“I know.” Trembling with innocent fervor, she pressed against him. “If my brother finds out where I am, he won’t send me to Northumberland, he’ll send me to the moon.”
“When I got your message, I couldn’t believe it.” Harry kissed her softly, then returned to taste her more thoroughly. Her sweet, floral scent made him feel like he’d overindulged in champagne.
“I couldn’t stay away.” Sophie was supposedly at a lecture at the British Museum with a party of friends. At least so she’d told her brother. She’d cried off at the last minute and made her way to this house.
He stared into her face. Guilt darkened her lovely eyes.
“The lies make you feel bad.”
Her jaw firmed. “I’d feel worse if I didn’t see you. Since I promised to consider Desborough’s proposal with a view to acceptance, James hasn’t been nearly so watchful.”
“Which makes you feel worse.”
A hint of her delightful smile curved her pink lips. Pink lips he wanted to spend an eternity kissing. These stolen meetings wore on him too. “I’m hopeless, aren’t I? I pursue a romantic intrigue, but I can’t bear secrets. Yet secrets are at the core of an intrigue.”
Harry laughed, although only the lowest worm in creation would tarnish this girl’s honesty. Then he asked the question that always made him want to smash his fist into the wall. “How long do we have?”
She stroked his face. “A couple of hours.”
“I’ve got things to tell you.” He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. If she kept touching him, any hope of sensible discussion would vanish like dew in sunlight. Or perhaps, given his heated reaction, like paper in fire.
“Talk later. I want to kiss you.”
He smiled at her, dazzled by her beauty and ardor. “Sweetheart, if I kiss you, I’ll forget I’m a gentleman.”
“I’ll remind you.”
He regarded her with a cynical eye. “I don’t trust you.”
“Of course you do.” She pouted theatrically.
The sight of those rosebud lips pursing heightened his arousal. He stifled a groan. He must return Sophie to her brother’s house a virgin or know himself a blackguard.
Love could be hell.
He gave in, as he was always going to, and kissed her. Her mouth opened immediately. Because she’d teased, he’d expected her kisses to tease too. But she responded with wild abandon.
He had enough trouble controlling himself when she was playful. When she acted like the uninhibited woman who haunted his dreams and left him waking ashamed and needy, his principles collapsed.
He tore his lips from hers. “Sophie—” he protested, hands clenching in her blue silk dress.
“Don’t stop,” she begged, ripping clumsily at his neckcloth.
He went rigid. All over. And told himself to stop before he did something irrevocable.
Since those torrid moments in that woodland glade, he’d struggled to keep their physical interactions light. That day, the dangers of unrestrained desire had been agonizingly apparent. The problem was that he didn’t feel light with her. He felt like significance weighted every moment.
But Sophie Fairbrother was pure and good. No man had the right to sully her outside the bonds of marriage. Harry must hold back even if he disintegrated into a million smoking embers.
He grabbed her hands. “Sophie, no.”
Her expression was urgent. “I think about you all the time. I think about the things you’ve done to me. I think…” She licked her lips and he closed his eyes and prayed for strength. “I think about the things I’d like you to do.”
“Darling—”
“You want to do more. I know you do.”
“We can’t,” he said in despair, stroking her wrists until she pulled free.
“We can.” She tugged his neckcloth off and tossed it over a chair.
God give him strength. She intended seduction. Then where would they be? Leath would want his guts for garters. And rightly so. “Sophie, you’ll be ruined.”
Damn it, he should pack her into a hackney right now and send her back to Leath House where she was safe from over-excitable young men. But still he stood, breathing her scent as though it kept him alive.
“I don’t care,” she said stubbornly, tearing at his waistcoat buttons. Whatever happened tonight, he’d emerge looking like he’d fought a bear single-handed. “Tonight we have time.”
“How do you know?” He tried to resurrect the teasing, but the question emerged as a strangled yelp.
“I don’t,” she snapped, sounding frustrated and so desperate, his bones dissolved with longing. At this rate, he didn’t have a hope in Hades of resisting.
“Sophie, I can’t deflower the Marquess of Leath’s sister.”
To his surprise, a knowing smile curved her lips. Blazing sensation incinerated scruples when she placed her hand on the front of his trousers. “If you mean you’re incapable of deflowering Leath’s sister, I doubt that’s true.”
He choked and despite every dictate of the code he followed, tilted his hips to increase the glorious pressure. “What the devil is a man to do with you, Sophie? I thought you’d be nervous.”
Lashes flickering, she glanced down to
where she touched him. She didn’t look frightened. She looked like she anticipated a wonderful treat. Harry’s blood pounded hard and heavy as though he’d swallowed a big, noisy drum. Whatever his head commanded, his body prepared for pleasure.
She curled her hand around him. “You’ll think me a wanton.”
“I think you’re beautiful. You know that.” His voice lowered to a growl. “And if you don’t stop touching me, you’ll find you’ve taken on more than you can handle, my girl.”
He grabbed her hand and, ignoring the howling protest of the devil who conspired against every ounce of goodness, he pulled her away. Then he released her. Even holding her hand threatened his resolve.
When he caught the purposeful glint in her blue eyes, he was smart enough to be nervous. In fact, he was bloody terrified.
Because of course, Sophie had an ally. The devil inside Harry that had slavered after her from the first.
She seized the lapels of his coat and pulled him closer. “Let me do what I want, Harry.”
The innocence in her eyes made her brazen statement more provocative. He tried to fight, but they both knew that his honor hung by the slimmest thread. “I’m trying to protect you,” he grated.
“I know you are.” She stared at him like he was Sir Galahad complete with Holy Grail. An impression that sat oddly with the inferno of desire blinding him to everything but Sophie.
“Then let me keep you safe,” he said on a frantic plea.
“I’m safe with you.” She placed her hand on his shirt, where his heart thundered with love for her.
He shook his head. “No. You’re not.”
She didn’t seem to hear. Instead her hand crushed the fine material as she brought him closer. He kissed her, not holding back for the first time since that close call in Wiltshire. He caught her sweet face between his palms and plundered her mouth, sliding his tongue between her lips in imitation of the act he burned to complete. He finally gave himself permission to touch her the way he’d imagined. He shook with the bliss of it.
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