Her Christmas Earl (18 page)

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, 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.”

“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.

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