Chest heaving as he rose, Cam caged her between his arms. “You drive me insane.”

Gasping, she hooked her hands around his neck and held on hard. Making love in this storm was like embracing on a galloping horse. “I think we’re both insane.”

Lightning flashed again and again, turning the room continually bright. He looked desperate, as she’d never seen him. She thrilled to think that she, Penelope Thorne, did this to him. He dipped his hips until he rubbed against the place where she wanted him.

“I need more than this.” Urgency made him sound angry.

“Don’t talk.” She pressed higher into that intriguing hardness, gathering her courage to unbutton his breeches. Above, there was a deafening crash as if a mighty tree fell. The yacht plunged, setting Pen bouncing. If Cam had been naked, he’d be inside her.

His hands on her waist were insistent, holding her firm against the shifting mattress. “Say you’ll give me more than this.”

What on earth? She frowned at him, struggling through her lunatic arousal to understand what he asked. “Of course I’ll give you more than this.”

“Having you once isn’t enough. Give me a month.” He pressed his face to her naked breast. “We’ll go somewhere. Somewhere nobody knows us. Cornwall. The Highlands. France. A month will make no difference to your aunt’s bequest.”

Bewilderment, passion, recklessness vanished within the second. Like freezing seawater, stark reality crashed down. “A month,” she repeated flatly.

He didn’t notice her tone or that her body no longer curved toward his in welcome. Instead, she lay stiff as the planking on the deck.

“A month. Say you’ll give me that much.” He shifted to cradle her face in his elegant hands. “I promise you more pleasure than you’ve ever known.”

Quickly and thoroughly, he kissed her. There was still no tenderness. Minutes ago, she wouldn’t have minded. Stupid, brainless, needy little fool she was. Even now, her heart raced, her skin yearned for his touch.

“What’s wrong?” He raised his head and stared at her in concern. “Is it the storm? This is hardly the best place to start an affair, but I see you and I can’t keep my hands to myself.”

“Apparently.”

This time, he noted her tone. Slowly he sat back on his knees and she stole the chance to scramble up against the bedhead. She curled one hand over the carved top while the other clumsily struggled to restore her dress.

Lightning revealed Cam’s wary expression. The flash also showed her how she’d devastated his clothing. How mortifying. His shirt hung in tatters over his powerful shoulders and chest. She struggled not to glance at his breeches, after a nervous glance revealed that he was still mightily aroused.

He ran a hand through his hair and his lips twisted in self-castigation. “You told me not to talk.”

“You should have listened.” She blinked back corrosive tears of anger and frustration. And hurt. When would she learn to keep her distance? Venturing closer to Cam always shredded her into bloody gobbets. But never so agonizingly as today when he’d asked her to be his temporary mistress before he married another woman.

“What did you think I offered?” He no longer sounded like her ardent lover, but like the authoritative man who had escorted her through the Alps.

“I didn’t think,” she admitted grudgingly. She still had trouble making her mind work. Anger and pain had doused passion, but her blood still pumped hot and ready.

“What in Hades is this, Pen?” Cam growled low in his throat. “You don’t want to marry me. You made that clear nine years ago. I can’t believe you’ve changed your mind.”

Had she changed her mind? The awkward truth was that if he loved her, she’d swim a mile through the heaving ocean outside to marry him. With one arm tied behind her back.

The even more humiliating truth was that if he loved her, she’d sneak away in the blink of an eye to his love nest. If he loved her, she’d give up her last drop of blood to make him happy.

But the sad and unalterable reality was that he didn’t love her. He’d never allow himself to love anybody.

He suffered a bad case of unsatisfied desire, a stronger reaction than she’d expected from phlegmatic Camden Rothermere. But love had never been part of the equation.

She spoke stiffly. “No, I don’t want to marry you.”

Another crash from above, violent enough to shake the deck. It sounded like a herd of elephants thundered up and down playing football.

“If you don’t want an affair, what the hell do you want?” Because of the noise, his voice emerged more aggressively than perhaps he intended.

A fair question. So fair that it made her lash out in disappointment. “I don’t want you to relieve your itch for me in some shabby little hideout before you go straight to Lady Marianne.”

Lightning revealed him looking particularly ducal, all supercilious lowered eyelids and lips curled in aristocratic disdain. “My dear girl, you do me an injustice. There would be nothing shabby about our retreat. My mistresses never complain of my generosity. You won’t surrender your doubtful virtue for a mere shilling.”

She slapped him hard enough for the impact to echo over the wailing wind. Glaring, she rubbed her palm. It stung like the devil. She hoped his cheek felt worse.

Despite the noise, a vibrating silence descended.

When lightning streaked through the sky, she clearly saw the imprint of her hand on his face. He looked ready to murder her.

Good. She felt the same. If she could arrange it, she’d happily push him into the ocean and laugh while he drowned.

She should feel horrified at hitting him. But outrage still writhed in her stomach like a cobra, making her feel sicker than the rolling ship ever could. She’d never imagined him addressing a woman of his own class like a courtesan.

Damn Camden Rothermere to hell.

Another crash from above shattered his paralysis. He rolled off the bed to stand, clinging to the base of the bed. The rage drained from his expression, leaving him tired and unhappy. She told herself she didn’t care.

“I’m sorry, Pen.”

Pen wished he’d go, then realized that he awaited absolution. He could wait until hell turned into green meadows. “There’s no excuse.”

Her uncompromising response flattened his lips. “I haven’t acted as a man of principle.”

“And that irks you,” she snapped.

He looked surprised, although to do him credit he didn’t sidle away from responsibility. “Yes, it does. You know how I’ve struggled to prove that a Rothermere isn’t necessarily a scoundrel.”

She sighed, suddenly deathly sick of it all. “Cam, grow up and accept that you’re not perfect. You made a mistake.”

He knew he wasn’t off the hook. “Around you, I make nothing but mistakes.”

“Then perhaps it’s better that we never meet again,” she said dully.

“That might be best.”

His ready agreement shouldn’t sting. Of course he wanted to be rid of her. She’d been nothing but trouble, and now she’d teased him into a lather, then clouted him for good measure. “So get out of my cabin.”

A lurch of the ship had him grabbing for the bedpost. Fortunately the furniture was nailed down. “You said you were frightened.”

“Now I’m frightened of you,” she said with a spite that later she’d regret.

He paled and his hand clenched on the carved column. “Pen, I—”

She stared blindly at the paneled wall, hoping he’d take the hint. Still he didn’t go. Couldn’t he tell that she didn’t want to see him?

A splintering sound rent the air. A more fanciful woman might say it marked the splitting of her heart.

“Pen, I never meant it to be like this. Please forgive me.”

Cam sounded like the boy she’d grown up with. She’d fallen in love with that boy. She’d trust her life to that boy. She turned ready to scream like a harpy, then stopped astonished as the door behind Cam slammed open and an oilskin-covered Goliath barged in.

“Your Grace, Your Grace, come above. The lady too. Cap’n says the Windhover’s about to founder on Goodwin Sands. The mast’s gone and we’re taking water. We must man the boats if there’s hope of saving ourselves.”

For a burning instant, Pen stared into Cam’s eyes. “Cam, are we lost?”

“Never.” The mad courage in Cam’s response made her heart surge, despite all the anguish and hatred of the last hour. “Give me your hand.”

Then the world turned to chaos as the yacht slammed into a solid obstacle.

Chapter Eleven

Leath House, London, late March 1828


By God, Leath’s butler was a superior bugger. Harry fought the urge to stick a finger in his neckcloth to loosen it. He stalked through the door that the haughty fellow held and into an extravagant library.

The tall man who rose from behind a vast mahogany desk bore an expression even more forbidding than the butler’s. By the hard set of his jaw and the shuttered eyes, he looked ready to boot young Mr. Thorne back into Berkeley Square. Harry gulped to moisten a dry mouth, then told himself to buck up.

“Thorne.” Leath’s voice was particularly deep and resonant.

Only with difficulty did Harry stop himself from jumping like a nervous cat. He’d heard innumerable stories of the marquess’s lethal tongue and razor-sharp brain shredding any members of the House of Lords rash enough to set themselves against him. “My lord.”

No invitation to sit. Instead Leath prowled around the desk to prop his hips against the edge. Harry supposed Sophie was upstairs. He hadn’t informed her of this afternoon’s call.