Anna Campbell - What a Duke Dares

“I can walk,” she said, just as she had then.

“Shut up,” he said frostily and carried her into the inn’s blessed warmth. The innkeeper directed them to a private parlor. Over her head, Pen heard Cam questioning him about whether Leath had stopped here. Apparently he had about an hour ago. They still had hopes of catching the marquess.

“We can’t wait,” she said dully. The thought of facing the weather again so soon made her want to cry.

Cam set her on a stool near the hearth. His touch was efficient but without tenderness. She tried not to remember how last night in bed he’d lashed her to his body as if he couldn’t bear to be more than a breath away from her. Knowing that he’d never hold her like that again made her want to curl up and sob.

“I’ll order some food,” he said, still in that emotionless voice.

By the time he returned, she felt more human. Ten minutes near the fire restored her blood to something like its usual temperature.

“I’ve arranged a room where you can wash.”

Surprised, she turned. “That’s very obliging.”

He frowned as if suspecting sarcasm, but she was sincere. She knew he was livid. She was still amazed that she’d won that public battle of wills in London. Although if he hadn’t taken her, she’d have followed on her own.

A maid arrived to escort her upstairs. Aching muscles protested at each step. They weren’t even halfway to Liverpool. Heaven knew what state she’d be in when they arrived.

Although one thing she did know—Cam wouldn’t have come any closer to forgiving her.

Pen stirred. Although the bed shifted in a most bizarre fashion, Cam’s familiar warmth surrounded her. She drew in a lungful of his delicious scent. Leather. Soap. Horses. Perhaps a little heavier on the horses than usual.

Then she recalled that she traveled to Liverpool to save Harry’s hide and that Cam hated her.

Which made no sense when his arm held her safe as they galloped through the night. He’d wrapped his greatcoat around them against the biting wind.

Despite her best efforts, she must have shifted. Cam’s arm stiffened, then in a gesture that cracked a rift across her heart, he disentangled himself and slid away.

“I’m sorry.” She struggled to sit up against the rocking of the carriage. After hours in the phaeton, her muscles ached with weariness, despite her nap.

He didn’t respond. He’d been a remarkably quiet companion. Pen felt so heartsick that at first his silence had been welcome. Now it became oppressive. Some hint that he was capable of speech would be welcome. “Where are we?”

Beyond the frail glow of the carriage lamps, everything was dark. There should have been a moon, but lowering clouds turned the sky black.

“We’ve just left Wolverhampton.” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded tired and fed up and disinclined to conversation.

Too bad. “How far to Liverpool?”

“Miles.”

Well, that was informative. She sighed and huddled into the rug. When Cam withdrew, he’d taken his coat and his heat.

They covered several miles and she fell into a waking doze where the world melted into a dark blur and the only other person alive was the fuming, powerful man relentlessly driving the horses.

He was still angry. Waking in his arms, she hadn’t felt it. But she felt it now. A blast of fury like heat from an open flame.

Eventually she could bear it no more. “Cam, at least let me explain.”

Although he’d never understand why she’d helped Harry. To understand, Cam would need to realize what love was. And for him, that word had no meaning.

She didn’t see him recoil, but the horses’ gait broke. The betraying moment was over in a second, but it confirmed Pen’s impression that his silence was like a volcano waiting to erupt.

“Cam?”

The horses resumed their gallop. Cam stared ahead as if the road provided the world’s most fascinating view. “I don’t want to hear, madam.”

Madam again. The cold address stung. She had an inkling of how he’d felt when she’d Your Grace’d him to death. When she’d tried to play the proper duchess.

He’d told her to be true to herself. As a result, they faced disaster.

“You can’t condemn me unheard,” she said on a surge of desperation.

After a long pause, he said, “Yes, I can.”

They reached Liverpool’s best inn midmorning. Leath was still ahead of them. In fact, he’d made up time. At the last stop, they’d learned that he was at least four hours in advance.

Pen felt sick with guilt. If Cam had traveled alone, he wouldn’t have stopped so often. Not that he’d precisely made the trip comfortable, but he’d pulled back from the punishing pace he’d established leaving London.

Their carriage bowled into the Bear and Swan’s bustling yard. After the lonely road, the noise and crush were dizzying.

“Shouldn’t we go to the docks?” It was the first time she’d spoken in hours. Cam’s discouraging response to her ill-timed attempts to explain had daunted her.

“No.”

She bit back a sigh. The silent treatment had lost its meager charm about twelve hours ago.

Then to her surprise, he went on. “I’ll reserve our rooms and arrange more discreet transport.”

It made sense. She ventured another question. “What about Leath?”

To her astonishment, Cam’s lips lengthened in a smile. A grim smile, but his first sign of amusement since leaving Rothermere House. She wasn’t fool enough to think he was thawing, but nonetheless, she was heartened.

“We have the advantage.”

She was even more astounded to hear him say “we.” But when he looked at her, the real Cam had retreated far, far behind his eyes. So far that she knew she’d never reach him.

A wave of misery overwhelmed her. She’d made so many mistakes. Now she paid the price.

Any further chance for conversation disappeared in the business of arriving. Only when they were inside a closed carriage did Pen pursue the subject of Leath. “Why do we have the advantage?”

From the seat opposite, Cam regarded her with the shuttered gaze that she began to loathe.

Wait until you’ve lived with it for fifty years.

She ignored the bleak little voice and waited, without hope, for Cam’s reply.

“I have shipping interests here. I know the city well. Leath’s business is in mines and property. He’ll need time to get his bearings.”

“And you know where to go?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got a good idea.”

“What if Harry and Sophie have already sailed?”

“Then the New World is welcome to that pair of nitwits.”

Even as she spoke, she knew she wasted her time. “Harry loves Sophie.”

His stare was frigid. “Don’t.”

She bit her lip. She hated Cam’s contempt for love. All her life she’d cursed his self-centered parents for warping Cam’s attitudes. Never so bitterly as at this moment.

He continued. “I doubt they’ll get straight onto a ship. They’re likely holed up in a boarding house.” Another hint of grim humor, but this time she knew better than to take encouragement. “I wonder how Sophie likes life away from the luxury of her brother’s home.”

“Sophie’s stronger than you think,” Pen said, although she too had worried about the girl coping with hardship. The grand romance of running away with her lover might fade in squalid surroundings.

“We’ll see.”

Pen hoped for Harry’s sake that Sophie proved steadfast. She also hoped for both their sakes that they hadn’t left for America. Surely there was a way of unraveling this tangle without crossing the Atlantic.

As he and Pen approached the boarding house where a couple fitting Harry and Sophie’s description rented a room, Cam wasn’t surprised to glimpse a tall man striding ahead. Seeing the marquess, his anger welled anew. He blamed Leath for this farrago, almost as much as he blamed Pen. If Leath hadn’t forbidden Sophie from seeing Harry and in the process, turned them into Romeo and sodding Juliet, the love affair would have petered out. Nothing like opposition to make young hearts beat faster.

Leath glanced back when he reached the door. In his elegant clothing, he looked incongruous against the peeling paint and cracked windows. The bruise on his chin had darkened to angry purple.

His eyes narrowed on Cam and Pen. “They’re booked on the Mary Kate, sailing for Boston tomorrow,” he said as though there had been no break in conversation.

“We’re in time, then,” Pen said.

Cam heard her relief. She’d already lost one brother. The prospect of losing another, even if to distance rather than death, must be agonizing.

Together they climbed the rickety staircase to the top of the tall house. The air outside reeked of rotten fish. The air inside reeked of mold, dirt, misery, and human ordure.

Cam’s conviction firmed that Sophie would object to this foretaste of her new life. Leath should have no trouble persuading her home, after which she became his problem. The runaways couldn’t have married already. Sophie was under twenty-one, and they hadn’t had time to stop and talk a friendly vicar into performing a ceremony of doubtful legality.

“Let’s take them by surprise,” Leath whispered as they stood on the landing below the attic.

Cam was about to agree when Pen spoke. “No, let me talk to them.”

“I’d rather kick the door in,” Cam murmured.

Pen’s quelling glance expressed disdain for dramatics. The exchange was a bitter reminder of their previous wordless communication. Regret pierced him as he counted what he’d lost. He’d been so intent on decrying her betrayal. He’d forgotten that without Pen, he was fated to arctic desolation.