Anna Campbell - What a Duke Dares

Cam’s lips tightened. “I’ve got business in Town.”

“You’re worried about Leath?”

“Shouldn’t I be?” Cam sipped his wine and cursed the interfering marquess. “He’s working to oppose my canal bill. I can weather the loss, but Elias Thorne has invested in the hope of restoring the family fortunes.”

“You made a bad enemy in Leath.”

“We made a bad enemy.” Cam scowled into his champagne. “He’s always had a reputation for upholding the law. One would assume he’d want to end his uncle’s criminal rampage.”

Jonas’s expression remained brooding. “I doubt it’s sympathy for his uncle that ranges him against you. Neville Fairbrother was a blackguard of the first water.”

“Leath should thank us for lancing the infection at the heart of his house.”

Jonas’s laugh was grim. His humor tended toward the black. “You know as well as I do that Leath wants to rip out your liver because you made everything public. Gentlemen handle scandal between themselves.”

“Fairbrother’s evil extended beyond the scope of a quiet handshake.”

“We didn’t give Leath the option. I suspect he particularly resents our failure to contact him before involving the authorities.”

“Are you saying his campaign is justified?”

Jonas shrugged. “I’m saying that a scandal of this magnitude so close to a man who’s spent his life angling for political influence has done damage that the powerful marquess won’t forgive in a hurry. Or allow to go unrequited.”

“Let Leath maneuver. Nobody crosses me lightly.”

The arrogant declaration, as Cam should have expected, won no points. “You might find Leath’s enmity cuts closer to home than a few business schemes going astray.”

Even knowing him as he did, Cam still sometimes found Jonas difficult to read. “What do you mean?”

“The word around Town is that Harry Thorne pursues Leath’s sister.”

“I didn’t know Leath had a sister.”

Another flash of sardonic humor. “She’s new this season. Pretty blond chit who’s got the fortune hunters in a lather.”

Cam didn’t smile. “I can’t see Harry Thorne playing fortune hunter.”

“The tattle is that he fancies himself in love. He’s chased her all over London making sheep’s eyes.”

Cam was relieved. For a moment there, he thought Jonas might have some genuinely bad news. “He’s a pup. He’ll get over it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Jonas said without great conviction. “The girl’s making sheep’s eyes back, although Leath’s earmarked her for Desborough.”

“Desborough must be forty if he’s a day,” Cam said in surprise. “Leath never struck me as a domestic tyrant.”

“This scandal has shaken him.”

Cam frowned. “It’s unjust to blame Leath for an uncle who should have been hanged years ago.”

Jonas’s lips twisted with old bitterness that not even his current happiness had quite extinguished. “I hardly need to point out that when it comes to sin at the highest levels, people are too eager digging up dirt to worry about fairness.”

Of course Cam knew that. So did Jonas and Richard. All had been branded bastards. All had countered the shame as best they could. Jonas was probably the luckiest of them all. The world now acknowledged his legitimacy.

Cam had given up hope of unraveling the tangled threads surrounding his parentage. All three players in the drama were long dead. Even if they weren’t, hard facts were impossible to establish. When Cam had finally summoned courage to ask his mother who had fathered him, she’d claimed ignorance. His mother was a practiced liar, but on the subject of which Rothermere had planted the future duke in her womb, Cam had believed her.

Jonas went on. “If Leath wants to lead the country, he needs to keep his nose clean—even at a remove. Neville Fairbrother’s crimes cast doubt on the entire line.”

Grimly Cam remembered Harry’s insistence on speaking to Pen at the wedding. Had that been about the Fairbrother chit? This unpleasantness with Leath was complicated enough. The last thing Cam needed was his wife encouraging two young fools to play Romeo and Juliet.

Harry slouched against the back wall of Oldhaven House’s ballroom and moodily surveyed the crowd. Returning to the place where he’d met Sophie, memories inevitably assailed him. Since leaving for Northumberland, she’d managed three letters, each promising eternal love. All three rested in the pocket nearest his heart.

The concert was packed to the gunwales. Although the famous Dutch soprano and the Italian tenor had sung their lungs out, tonight’s principal entertainment was always going to be the new Duchess of Sedgemoor.

His sister, Penelope, who sat in the front row displaying less animation than the average statue.

Harry had caught a few comments before the speakers noticed the duchess’s brother within earshot. Surprisingly, most people had expressed grudging approval. Along with the inevitable dollop of spite. His sister’s elevation to the highest levels wouldn’t pass without a serving of jealousy.

When Harry was sixteen, he and Peter had met Pen in Rome. He recalled an independent woman widely admired for her sparkle. Even as a self-centered adolescent, Harry had recognized that all the men were mad for her. Penelope had remained strangely unaware of her effect.

Like everyone else, he’d heard rumors of love affairs. A few liaisons with glamorous Continental gentlemen would hardly blot the cloudy Thorne escutcheon. But occasionally he’d wondered about that curiously innocent girl in Italy. She’d always struck him as a one-man woman. Was she in love with her husband? At her wedding, she hadn’t been a glowing bride. But she’d just survived a shipwreck and worn a dress twenty years out of date.

The marriage had surprised Harry. However hard Lady Wilmott pushed Pen at the Sedgemoor heir, Cam was always going to choose a wife who catered to his arrogance. Someone like Lady Marianne Seaton, who sat a few rows back from the Sedgemoors.

Tonight people had prepared not only to scorn Cam’s unconventional duchess, but to gloat over Lady Marianne’s disappointment at losing such a prize. But to the chagrin of the old tabbies, both ladies had behaved perfectly. In his sister’s case, too perfectly. Seeing Pen like a doused candle, for all her diamonds and finery, deepened Harry’s suspicion that the Rothermere marriage wasn’t all rainbows.

Damn it, Pen deserved rainbows. If Cam hurt Pen, Harry would kill the bastard.

The Hillbrooks sat beside Pen. On Cam’s other side ranged arbiter of elegance Sir Richard Harmsworth and his lovely new wife. If nastiness became overt, Pen had powerful defenders. Harry almost found himself in charity with his brother-in-law. Until he glanced again at Pen’s set features.

Right now, she looked…

He struggled for some description that wasn’t inexpressibly sad. But the only word that came to mind was “cowed.” He glowered at Cam, lounging beside her with his usual insufferable pride. Harry had a fancy that if he took a razor to the duke’s aristocratic hide, iced water would flow.

“What the devil’s biting you, Harry?” Elias asked from beside him. “You look ready to shoot someone. Or yourself.”

Harry forced a smile to his lips. “I’d rather shoot the damned soprano.”

Elias, the most musical of the Thorne siblings, regarded Harry with disdain. “You’ve always had a lead ear. Waste of time explaining why that was a transcendent experience.”

“Transcendent?” Harry said snidely. “Good Gad, you’ll be writing poetry next. Does Byron know he’s got competition?”

Harry didn’t know why he jabbed at his brother. Elias hadn’t done anything wrong, apart from the inarguable fact that he wasn’t Peter. If Harry was angry with anyone, he should be angry with Peter for being so bloody careless with his life.

Not that Harry’s needling cast Elias down. “You’re an ignorant puppy. Byron died four years ago, as you’d know if you expressed a shred of interest in anything beyond playing the dashed fool.”

Elias was out of touch. Since Sophie’s departure, Harry had only shown his face at the most respectable gatherings. He knew his reformation wouldn’t change Leath’s mind. Leath had undoubtedly dismissed Harry Thorne from his thoughts even more quickly than he’d dismissed Harry Thorne from his luxurious house. But behaving himself was all Harry could do at present to forward his courtship.

“Boys!” Pen said, coming up to them. Lost in his brooding, Harry had missed the end of the concert and the room clearing. “Stop it.”

“Now you’re a duchess, you imagine you can order us around,” Elias said drily.

Harry bristled before he caught the amusement in Elias’s face. Pen was smiling, although without the brilliance that Harry recalled from Rome.

“Only when you’re likely to compromise my duchessly reputation,” she said lightly as Cam joined her. “I hear you’re making your maiden speech in the House this week.”

Elias nodded. “Will you be in the gallery to support me?”

Because Harry watched so closely, he caught the quick glance she shot Cam, as if unsure whether to request his permission. Harry’s displeasure with his brother-in-law deepened. Devil take Cam for bullying her.

“I hope she’ll come to see us both in action.” Cam slipped his hand around Pen’s arm. Pen started as though her husband’s touch was unfamiliar. Unwelcome?

Oh, Pen, what the deuce have you got yourself into?

Cam squeezed Pen’s arm and released her, asking Elias about his parliamentary debut. The two wandered toward the door. It was the opportunity Harry sought.