Anna Campbell: What a Duke Dares

“From boyhood.” The response was a papery whisper. “Although you’ll wish me to the devil tonight.”

“Never.”

“Don’t speak… too soon.” He closed his eyes and Cam wondered whether he slept. The doctor had said that the end would come tonight. Looking into Peter’s bloodless features, Cam couldn’t doubt that conclusion.

Grief stabbed his gut, made his hand shake. He placed the cup on the crowded nightstand before he spilled the water. He wasn’t a religious man, but he found himself murmuring a prayer for a swift end to his friend’s sufferings.

“I need your help.”

Cam started to hear Peter speak. Spidery hands plucked fretfully at the threadbare covers drawn high on this cold night. If Cam thought it would do an ounce of good, he’d shift his friend to the best inn in town. But even without the doctor’s warning, he saw that Peter’s time was measured in hours, perhaps even minutes. Relocating him would be cruel rather than kind.

“It’s Pen.”

The moment he’d received Peter’s summons, Cam had harbored a sinking feeling that it might be. “Your sister?”

“Of course my damned sister.” Another coughing attack rewarded Peter’s irritable response.

Cam slid his arm behind Peter’s back to support him while he caught his breath. “The doctor left laudanum.”

Peter coughed until Cam thought surely he must suffocate. The cloth pressed to his mouth came away bloody. Rage at a fate that turned a once-vital young man into a barely breathing skeleton clutched at Cam’s gut.

When Peter could speak again, it was in a whisper. Cam leaned close to hear.

“I don’t want to sleep.” He winced as he drew a breath. Cam saw that every second was excruciating. “I’ll have rest enough soon.”

Staring into his friend’s face, Cam recognized the futility of a comforting lie. They both knew that Peter wouldn’t see the dawn.

“Pen’s in trouble.” Peter fumbled after Cam’s hand, gripping with surprising strength. His clasp was icy, as though the grave already encroached into this room.

Cam’s expression hardened. He hadn’t seen Pen in nine years, since his proposal. The only proposal he’d ever made, as it had turned out. If the chit was in trouble, she probably deserved to be. “I’m sure that she’s been in tight spots before.”

Penelope Thorne had never had the chance to make a splash in London society. Instead, she’d joined her eccentric aunt on the Continent and stayed there. She hadn’t returned to England even after her parents’ death in a carriage accident five years ago. Cam gathered she’d been somewhere in Greece at the time.

He hesitated to admit that her refusal had undermined his confidence to such an extent that he only now seriously contemplated marriage again. He needed a wife to help restore his family’s reputation, which was even more appalling than the Thornes’, and at last he’d found the perfect candidate. His recently chosen bride was as dissimilar to his hoydenish childhood playmate as possible.

Thank God.

By all reports, Pen had become rather odd. There had been nasty rumors from Sicily about her sharing a shady Conti’s bed, and of a liaison with a Greek rebel. Goya had emerged from seclusion to paint her both clothed and naked in imitation of his famous majas. Not to mention her week’s sojourn in the Sultan’s harem in Constantinople.

She’d published four volumes of travel reminiscences, books Cam had read over and over, although he’d face the stake before confessing that publicly. A man would rather be flayed than claim a taste for feminine literature.

Peter’s hand tightened. The desperation in his old friend’s face was unmistakable. Unfortunately. “Lady Bradford died last October. Pen’s gone from disaster to disaster since. She’s on her way north to Paris to meet me, but she’s a woman alone on a dangerous journey.”

Serves the hellcat right, Cam wanted to say, then wondered at his spite. He was accounted an equable fellow. The last time he’d lost his temper was when Pen had refused him. If she’d lost her chaperone, however inadequate, Pen should easily find alternative protection. And he meant that in the Biblical sense.

“Peter, I—” Cam began, not sure how to respond. He guessed that his friend meant to charge him with rescuing Pen from her irresponsibility. Although, hell, after a lifetime of friendship, how could he say no?

As if reading Cam’s reluctance, Peter spoke quickly. Or perhaps he knew that he had too few breaths remaining to waste any. His urgency seemed to suppress his cough so he managed complete sentences. “In her last letter, she was in Rome and running out of money. That was a month ago. God knows what’s befallen since.”

“But what can I do?”

“Find her. Bring her back to England. Make sure she’s safe.” Peter regarded Cam like his last hope. Which made it damned difficult to deny him. “Elias will have his hands full inheriting and Harry’s not up to the job, even if I could get him away from the fleshpots.”

Peter forestalled Cam’s suggestion that another Thorne brother could undertake this task. Cam rose to pace the tiny room. “Confound it, Peter. I’ve no authority over Pen. She won’t pay a speck of attention to me.”

“She will. She’s always liked you.”

Not last time they’d met. “I can’t kidnap her.”

Shaking, Peter shoved himself higher against the pillows. His black eyes, so like his sister’s, burned in his ashen face as if all the life concentrated in that blazing stare. “If you have to, you must. I won’t have my sister bouncing all over Europe, called a whore by ignorant pigs who should know better.”

Bloody hell.

His stare unwavering, Peter clawed at the blankets. He gulped for air and gray tinged his skin now that brief vitality faded. “There’s no man I trust more than you. If you’ve ever considered me a friend, if you’ve ever cherished a moment’s affection for my sister, bring Pen home.”

A moment’s fondness for his sister? Aye, there was the rub. Until she’d treated him like an insolent lackey, he’d been fond of Penelope Thorne.

Pausing by the window, he stared into the stormy night. An endless forest of masts ranged against the turbulent sky. It was a night for making deals with the devil. Except in this case, Cam would wager good money that the devil was the woman at the end of the wild goose chase.

He caught his reflection in the glass. He looked like he always did. Calm. Controlled. Cold. The habit of hiding his feelings had become second nature. But he was sorrowing and resentful—and that resentment focused on one troublesome woman. Behind him, hazy in the glass, he saw Peter watching him, suffering stoically through his last hours.

How could Cam refuse? Futile as the quest was. Pen would go her own way, whatever her dying brother asked, whatever pressure her childhood friend placed upon her.

Cam leveled his shoulders. Duty had guided him since he’d been old enough to understand the snide whispers about his mother’s affair with her brother-in-law. Duty insisted that he accept this task, however unwillingly. Slowly he faced his friend. “Of course I’ll do it, Peter.”

And was rewarded by an easing in Peter’s painful tension and a hint of the formerly brilliant smile. The Thornes were a famously handsome family and fleetingly, Cam glimpsed his rakish old companion. “God bless you, Cam.”

God help him, more like.

Val d’Aosta, Italy, February 1828

During nine years of travel, Penelope Thorne had been in more tight spots than she cared to remember. None quite so restricted as this one in the rundown common room of a flea-ridden hostelry high in the Italian Alps.