What a Duke Dares (3 page)

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.

Chapter Two

Val d’Aosta, Italy, February 1828

D
uring 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.

Battling to steady her hand, she raised her pistol and pretended that facing down a pack of miscreants was an everyday occurrence. Instinct insisted that betraying her fear would only invite rape and robbery—perhaps murder.

A dozen men leered at her. All desperate. All drunk. All drawing courage from their cohorts’ belligerence.

“The first man who moves gets a bullet,” she said in fluent Italian.

Unfortunately the denizens of this godforsaken village spoke some outlandish dialect. Their speech bore little resemblance to the melodious Tuscan that she’d learned in Florence’s salons.

Pen cursed the bad luck and bad weather that stranded her so far from civilization. Behind her, her maid and coachman cowered against the wall. The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen. He was probably in on the plot. He’d looked just as villainous as these thugs.

A heavily whiskered brute swaggered forward, expression contemptuous. Through the blast of incomprehensible patois, she made out the words “one” and “bullet.”

She kept the gun straight, despite crippling fear. “One bullet does a lot of damage.”

His lip curled in disdain and he took another step. She cocked the gun, the sound loud in the fraught silence. “Any nearer and I’ll shoot.”

He proved his scorn by approaching so close that she smelled the stale odor of his hulking body. Her stomach, already churning with dread, revolted and she only just stopped herself from faltering back. Behind him, the others shifted. Whatever the leader said prompted laughter. Laughter that made her skin crawl.

“I warned you.” She forced herself to meet the glittering excitement in his piglike eyes.

Her finger tightened on the trigger and an explosion rent the air. She jerked back and her ears rang. The hot stink of gunpowder filled her nostrils.

“
Porca miseria
—” He staggered into the gang, who heaved and growled like an angry ocean. A bloody hole punctuated his forehead and astonishment froze his features before his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped motionless.

Dear heaven, he was dead. At her hand.

Pen desperately wanted to be sick. In her twenty-eight years, she’d never killed anyone.

As the rabble coalesced into a menacing unit, she fumbled
in her pocket for her second gun. She felt a presence at her shoulder and realized that at last her coachman Giuseppe displayed some backbone. If only he displayed some backbone while carrying a rifle. But his weapons remained in her carriage outside. All he had were his fists.

“
Brava
, milady.”

The men surged on a wave of rage. Pen raised her pistol with a hand that proved unexpectedly firm. Stinking bodies surrounded her, blocked the air. Cruel hands grabbed her, pinched her breasts. A blow landed hard against her ribs, stealing her breath.

Terror gripped her. She had one bullet left. Was this time to use it?

Giuseppe was somewhere in the melee. She couldn’t help him. She could barely help herself. Gasping and struggling she lifted her gun, bleakly aware that once she shot, she was at the mob’s mercy.

When a gunshot rang out, she first thought she’d fired. Yet the pistol remained cool in her hand.

The groping hands stilled. The angry roar faded to silence. The attack had lasted seconds, but it had felt like a lifetime.

Another gunshot and the horde fell away like a tide withdrawing down the beach.

“Get away from her.”

Cam?

Astonishment turned Pen to stone. Even after nine years, his voice was familiar. The authoritative baritone caught at the heart that she’d kept on ice since their last meeting.

Sullenly her assailants retreated, creating a path between Pen and the doorway where her unlikely rescuer stood. Pen sucked in her first full breath in what felt like hours. Sweat, blood, and the reek of her fear tainted the air.

The tall man wearing an elegant cape and a beaver hat tilted at a rakish angle seemed to belong to a different species from the bandits. Cam carried two horse pistols, a rifle hung over his shoulder and a sword dangled at his hip. Snow brushed his hat and shoulders.

“Get out and don’t come back.” As he stepped forward, his tone sent a chill oozing down her backbone. “This lady is under my protection.”

His Italian was as good as hers and this time the thugs understood. Although his arsenal of weaponry undoubtedly spoke more loudly than words.

One of the men remonstrated about their dead comrade until Cam raised the gun. The fellow skulked off with the rest, the dead man hoisted between them.

Shaky and ill, Pen extended a trembling hand toward Giuseppe. To her consternation, Cam gripped her arm. Even through the leather glove he wore, she felt the heat of his touch. How could he affect her like this after so long?

“I’m all right,” she forced past rising gorge.

“Like hell you are.” His hold tightened.

If only the room stopped revolving. If only she caught a decent breath. If only she saw something other than Cam’s endlessly disapproving expression and the face of the man she’d shot.

“I’ve… I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“Don’t waste your pity.” He sounded livid.

Wonderingly she stared into his face. That beautiful, sculpted, austere face that still haunted her dreams, no matter how she’d struggled to forget him. “You’re angry with me?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Damn right I am.” His mouth flattened. “I’d love to take you over my knee and give you a good spanking.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she said faintly, her voice coming
from the end of a long tunnel. Cam’s face became the only fixed point in a reeling world.

She closed her eyes. Then her stomach gave a nauseating swoop as Cam swept her up in his arms. She managed an incoherent protest before blackness claimed her.

“Take this.” Fumbling to hold Pen, Cam shoved the horse pistols at the useless cur who had cowered behind her. He firmed his grip on Pen’s motionless body. She was a bonnie fighter. How his heart had leaped when he saw her courage, even while his belly twisted with terror.

He stared down into her face. The promise of the girl had flowered into the sort of beauty that started wars. He still remembered how disturbed he’d been all those years ago to discover his childhood shadow transformed into a striking woman. Now the long slender body was curved and soft in his arms. Her scent teased him. Something fresh and floral. Warm and womanly. Smoky. A trace of gunpowder, by God.

Long black hair flowed around her. Outrage threatened to choke him as he recalled those savages tearing at it and pawing her. If he’d had more bullets and some men at his back, he’d have done a damned sight more than chase the brigands away.