Anna Campbell - What a Duke Dares

Cam watched sourly as his beautiful wife sailed into his imposing London house. He felt like a toad for haranguing Penelope. None of this was easy for her.

It wasn’t easy for him either. Ever since he’d discovered her in the Alps, Penelope Thorne had demonstrated an unprecedented and decidedly disagreeable ability to stir his emotions.

He’d spent weeks burning up with lust. Foolishly he’d imagined that appeasing his hunger would end it. Yet he wanted her more now than before. Somehow the simple fact that he wanted his bride—surely a good thing—became just another tangle in the knots she tied him in outside the bedroom.

It was a damnable situation.

He stared like a moonling after his wife. Even worse, he did it in view of the servants. He caught Thomas, the footman’s eye, as he descended from the carriage. The man’s neutral expression must hide a wealth of speculation.

Disheartened, Cam trudged inside. Although the night had been a success. Society seemed willing to wait and see if Pen was ready to put her wild ways behind her. Even the sticklers had admired her poise. His friends had rallied around her. There was some sign that the scandalous Thornes mightn’t be quite so scandalous from now on. Elias had always been the steadiest of the family and his behavior tonight had been commendably restrained. Harry remained unpredictable, but even so, the evening could have gone worse.

So why did Cam feel like his dog had died?

He paused in the hallway under the cold stare of the marble Roman worthies. His habit since his marriage was to have a quiet brandy in his library, then undress before seeking Pen.

Thomas opened the library door. Cam stared into the starkly masculine room as his mind sifted the quarrel—or what they’d managed of a quarrel before reaching home. It was clear that Pen regretted her frankness. Which cut at his heart. Once he’d thought they could share anything. But that was long ago.

She was upstairs preparing for bed, even though within the hour, if every other night was any indication, her nightdress would be a tangled heap on the floor. Right now her maid was brushing out Pen’s shining hair and turning back the covers. There Pen would lie waiting for him. After they’d got past their disastrous wedding night, he’d assumed she enjoyed their encounters, but tonight’s acerbic comment made him wonder.

Damn it, did she welcome him to her bed only to make the best of a bad job?

Sick anger flooded him. Not with Pen. With himself. He couldn’t bear to be a bad job.

He shook his head at Thomas and climbed the stairs two at a time toward his wife’s ornate bedroom. Fleetingly in the carriage, the possibility of genuine honesty had hovered. Then Pen had backed away. Cam couldn’t accept that.

Tonight he wouldn’t give her a chance to prepare for him the way a city prepared for siege. Tonight, he’d mount a surprise attack and see what lay hidden behind the city walls.

Pen sat at her dressing table as her maid brushed her hair. The activity didn’t soothe as it usually did. Instead a headache beat at her temples and the gaze she met in the mirror was defeated. Three weeks married and she felt like she’d aged twenty years. Heaven help her if she lasted to Christmas.

Troubling memories from the night circled like growling dogs. Harry’s palpable desperation. The Hillbrooks’ politely concealed wariness. The avid curiosity in every face at the musicale. Her noxious argument with Cam. The familiar emptiness in her soul.

The door opened and hit the wall with a very un-Cam-like bang. Pen started, wrenching against Jane’s downward stroke. “Ouch!”

“Your pardon, Your Grace,” Jane stammered to Pen. She curtsied to Cam. “Your Grace.”

In the mirror, Cam’s expression wasn’t reassuring. Still Pen’s voice emerged with commendable steadiness. “You may go, Jane. I’ll finish here.”

“Very well, Your Grace.”

Cam hardly glanced in the girl’s direction as she slipped past. Instead his attention fixed on Pen.

Sick of confused emotions, she set the heavy brush down with an audible click. “There’s no need to terrify the staff, Your Grace.”

With his jaw set in adamantine lines, he shut the door. He was careful closing it, which struck her as more alarming than another show of temper. She recalled the days when she’d believed that Cam had no temper to lose.

“If you ever call me ‘Your Grace’ again, I’ll have the press-gangs kidnap Harry and send him to a mosquito-ridden swamp in Panama.”

That didn’t sound like a joke. “I’m trying to be a proper duchess.”

To fit in with his image of the ideal wife, tonight she’d minded her manners, she’d smiled like a fool, and she’d kept any controversial opinions to herself. Even worse, she’d worn a dress for her London debut that she wouldn’t put on a scarecrow.

Everyone had seemed to approve. Everyone except Cam. Clearly he had impossibly high standards.

“A proper duchess pleases her duke.”

Once she’d have treated that arrogant statement with the contempt it deserved. But that was before she’d saddled Cam with her wanton reputation. “I’m sorry I’m not ready,” she said dully, standing. “Would you like help undressing?”

He scowled as he leaned against the door frame and folded his arms. “I’d like you to talk to me,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Her jaw dropped in astonishment. “Talk?”

For three weeks, he’d come to her room in a lather of passion. His unsteady breathing and the color lining his slashing cheekbones betrayed that he wanted her now. Yet he wanted to talk?

“Yes.”

She backed against the dressing table, hooking her hands over the polished mahogany edge. “What on earth can we talk about?”

His eyebrow rose in that superior expression that always made her itch to clout him. Or at least it had before she’d sworn to become a conformable spouse. “I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “What could two people linked together for life and with no idea of what the other one is thinking say? Perhaps we could discuss the weather.”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“I think there is.” He sauntered in her direction.

To her relief, he stopped a few feet away, although his searching regard stirred terrified flurries in her belly. She’d learned to hide her emotions in bed, and she stayed out of his way during the day. His actions tonight set a precedent, one that troubled her.

“You’re never rude,” she said despairingly. “You’re a model of behavior.”

He frowned. “I never thought you were.”

“I’ll do better.” She bowed her head and studied the pink embroidered slippers peeping from under her voluminous white nightdress.

He didn’t immediately respond. He advanced until she saw the toes of his black shoes at the edge of her vision. “Pen, you don’t have to turn yourself inside out,” he said softly.

The patch of floor became watery at the edges. She blinked to clear her sight and mumbled, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I do.” He spoke almost musingly. “Not long ago, you’d have sent me to the devil if I’d said that mutton-headed thing about pleasing me.”

“We weren’t married then,” she said sadly.

The regret in his sigh crushed her soul. “Pen, look at me.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Do you know what I’ve always admired about you?” The sudden change to tenderness slid over her, softer than her lovely velvet cloak.

She tensed. How she wished he’d go away. Or throw her on the bed and thrust into her. Or yell. “I can’t imagine.”

He laughed, still with that affectionate note that reminded her that he was the only man she’d ever held in her heart. Now that he was there, he was like a worm in an apple, gradually destroying her from within. “Well, there’s your complete lack of vanity.”

Eventually curiosity forced her to speak. “Is that what you admire?”

“I admire that. But it’s not what I admire most.”

She sucked in a breath. He was so close that she smelled his sandalwood soap. “Won’t you say?”

“Not unless you look at me.”

Her throat was so tight that it hurt to swallow. “I can’t bear the disappointment I see in your face,” she said on a mere thread of sound.

“Oh, Pen…”

She jumped when one hand caught her chin. “I’m making a mess of this marriage thing.”

“No, I am. We rushed into this.”

She tried to retreat, but the dressing table trapped her. “We didn’t have any choice.” She paused. “You didn’t have any choice.”

This time his sigh held a hint of frustration. “God give me strength, woman. Don’t tell me you’re eating yourself up with guilt.”

Now that he didn’t sound so likely to fold her in his arms, she let him tilt her face up. Then wished to God she hadn’t, that she’d taken to her heels the minute he’d stormed in.

Cam stared at her as if she was his single concern in the world, as though her happiness mattered more than his next breath.

It was a lie, she staunchly insisted. But how could she heed common sense when the man she adored regarded her with such care? She licked her lips again and noticed with sparking heat how his eyes focused on the betraying movement.

“I didn’t realize how much it cost you to save me from ruin until you told me about the gossip. By then it was too late. We were married.”

A flash of bitterness lit his green eyes. “All your escapades were innocent. Nobody knows that better than I.”

She leveled her shoulders and confronted him with the truth. “After a life devoted to restoring the family name, you’ve attached yourself to a woman with a questionable past and rebellious habits.”