Anna Campbell: What a Duke Dares

He struggled for a reasonable tone. Blustering would only make her dig her heels in. The encounter verged dangerously close to a quarrel. “Pen, think of the advantages.”

Her jaw set in an obstinate line. “Right now, aside from the obvious fact of your riches, I can’t see any.”

His appeal to her worldly interests disappointed her. Shame knotted his gut. With regret, he recalled the days when in her eyes, he could do no wrong. He drew himself up to his full height and glared.

“There’s no point going all ducal, Cam,” she said curtly, not, blast her, remotely cowed. “That look lost its power over me before you went to Eton.”

She shifted closer, stretching one hand toward the mantel. When he noticed how her fingers trembled, he faced the unpleasant truth that despite outward calm, this encounter upset her.

Of course it did. She felt things deeply. More than once, he’d caught Pen crying alone after her brothers’ teasing had struck a painful spot. She was proud, Penelope Thorne. Another desirable quality in a cracking duchess.

But clearly not his duchess. Pen didn’t have a monopoly on pride. Cam regarded her down his long nose and spoke as coldly as he’d speak to an overweening acquaintance. “I gather that you’re refusing me.”

The knuckles on the hand clutching the mantel turned white, although her voice remained steady. “Yes, I am.” She paused. “I appreciate your condescension.”

That was so obviously untrue that under other circumstances, he’d have laughed. But pique shredded his sense of humor. Through his outrage, he knew that he behaved badly. However unfairly, he blamed Pen for that unprecedented state of affairs too.

He bowed shortly and spoke in a clipped voice. “In that case, Miss Thorne, I’ll waste no more of your valuable time. I wish you well.”

Something that might have been pain flared in her dark eyes, but he was too angry and, much as he hated to admit it, wounded to pay heed. She stepped toward him. “Cam—”

“Good day, madam.”

He turned on his heel and stalked off.

Pen watched Cam march out of her father’s library, his back rigid with displeasure, and told herself that she’d done the right thing. The only thing she could in honor have done.

Right now she didn’t feel that way. She felt like she’d swallowed toads. She clung to the mantel to stay upright on legs likely to crumple beneath her.

Her anguish didn’t change merciless reality. Cam didn’t love her. Cam would never love her. Nothing in today’s awkward, painful encounter had convinced her otherwise.

As a foolish child, she’d dreamed of him tumbling head over heels in love with her. What girl brought up in close proximity to the magnificent Rothermere heir wouldn’t imagine a fairy-tale future? Especially when her mother encouraged her.

But that was before Pen had grown up and recognized the stark truth. A truth ruthlessly confirmed when she was sixteen. One summer at Fentonwyck, she’d overheard Cam talking to his best friend Richard Harmsworth about discouraging a local belle’s advances. When Richard had blamed the girl’s antics on love, Cam had responded with cutting contempt and said that was even more reason to steer clear of the unfortunate lady.

Romantic love has no place in my life now or ever, old chap. Let other fellows make asses of themselves. I’ve seen too much of the damage that poisonous emotion can wreak. It’s a trap and a deceit and a damned nuisance. I’ll never marry a woman who expects me to love her.

Pen felt sick to recall that self-assured pronouncement. Perhaps she might have dismissed his remarks as a young man’s bravado, except that in the three years since, everything she’d seen of Cam confirmed that he’d meant every word.

Even with those closest to him—Richard, his sister, Pen—he kept some element of himself apart, untouchable. Over the years that distance had only grown more marked.

Camden Rothermere was rich, handsome, clever, honorable, and brave. And completely self-sufficient.

Pen had prayed that Cam would ignore his late mother’s matchmaking, but of course, he considered it his duty to offer for Penelope. Just as he considered it his duty to inform her that his interest was purely dynastic.

If she’d harbored the tiniest shred of hope of melting the ice in his heart, she’d disregard questions of her notorious family and headstrong inclinations. She’d even try to make herself anew in the image he wanted.

But she knew Cam as she knew herself, and she’d never been a fool.

Cam wouldn’t countenance a marriage based on love and she couldn’t countenance a marriage that wasn’t. She never went into anything halfhearted, and a loveless union would destroy her.

Pen remained trembling near the fireplace, knowing that her family awaited news of her engagement. Her refusal of the greatest marital prize in the kingdom would set the cat among the Thorne pigeons. Right now, her control was so precarious; she shied from her mother’s bullying.

She fought a childish urge to cry. If she cried, there would be endless questions and more bullying. Her mother saw tears as opportunity for manipulation, not for comfort.

Pen sucked in a shaky breath and although she’d sworn that she wouldn’t, she rushed to the window facing the long drive.

Cam cantered away on his magnificent bay horse. He didn’t glance behind to catch her staring after him. Why would he? He’d want to get as far away from her as he could. For a famously self-controlled man, he’d verged very close to losing his temper this afternoon.

That had been a surprise. She hadn’t imagined that he cared so much about marrying her. In truth, she hadn’t imagined he cared at all.

But then, he’d expected her to say yes without hesitation. Despite the fact that Penelope Thorne was wrong for him on every count.

Except perhaps one.

The fact that she’d love him until she died.

Calais, France, January 1828

Through the bleak hours between midnight and dawn, the candles burned low in the shabby room high in the dilapidated inn. Wind rattled the ill-fitting windowpanes and carried the creaking of boats at their moorings and the reek of salt and rotting fish. The man lying in the narrow bed gasped for every breath.

Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, leaned forward to plump the thin pillows in a futile attempt to offer his dying friend some relief. When Cam sank into his wooden chair beside the bed, Peter Thorne’s eyes opened.

Although he and Peter hadn’t been close in years, Cam knew about his friend’s numerous reverses. The Thornes were famously rackety, and a son and heir who gambled away his fortune was hardly the worst of it.

Cam had arrived in Calais a few hours ago and rushed straight here to find the doctor in attendance. He’d cornered the man before he left. The harassed French medico had been blunt about his patient’s prospects.

At first, Peter had drifted close to unconsciousness, but the eyes focusing on Cam now were clear and aware. Eyes sunk in dark hollows in a face that carried no spare flesh. It was like staring into a skull.

“You… came.”

The words were hoarse, slow in emerging, and ended in a fit of coughing. Swiftly Cam fetched some water in a chipped cup. After a sip, the sick man collapsed exhausted against the hard mattress.

“Of course I came.” Anguish and outrage gripped Cam. Peter had been a companion in childhood games, a participant in university hijinks. He was only thirty-five, the same age as Cam, too bloody young to die.

“Wasn’t sure you would,” Peter gasped before succumbing to another coughing fit.

Cam offered more water. “We’ve always been friends.”