What A Duke Dares. Anna Campbell

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      What made Pen’s tepid response to Cam’s suit even harder to understand was that she’d always worshipped the ground he walked on. Was he a fool to presume on childhood adoration?

      A horrible suspicion struck him. Was he presuming on far too much? Despite his parents’ scandalous behavior and the gossip about his legitimacy, the ton lionized Cam as the future Duke of Sedgemoor. Had endless flattery turned him into a self-satisfied ass?

      If Pen thought him insufferably arrogant, no wonder his proposal hadn’t bowled her over. He sighed with self-disgust and impatiently ran his hand through his hair. “I’m making a dashed mess of this, aren’t I?”

      Pen’s slender body lost its rigidity as a wry smile curved her lips. Lips, he reluctantly noticed, that were pink and full and lusciously kissable.

      As shock shuddered through him, he wondered why he’d never noticed before. Pen had been such a constant in his life that he hadn’t taken the time to mark how she’d changed.

      Still unwilling to admit that Pen wasn’t the girl he remembered, he looked more closely. To his dismay, the coltish adolescent hovered on the brink of becoming a true beauty. Even more dismaying, he felt the unwelcome, unmistakable prickle of desire.

      “Yes, you are. But it’s not totally your fault.” With a grace he hadn’t seen in her before, she gestured toward the leather chairs ranged around the unlit hearth. “Sit down, for heaven’s sake, and stop looming over me.”

      Actually he wasn’t looming, although with his height, he loomed over most people. Pen had always been a long Meg, closer to a boy than a girl in his mind. But in this discomfiting instant, when for the first time he saw more than his friend Peter’s occasionally annoying younger sister, there was nothing boyish about Miss Penelope Thorne.

      Since he’d last seen her—and for the life of him, he couldn’t recall when that had been, such an ardent suitor he was—she’d grown up. The thin body had gained subtle but fascinating curves. The vivid, pointed face that had always seemed too small for her decisive features had refined into striking attraction. When had she tamed her tangled mane of hair into those gleaming ebony coils?

      Apprehension tasted sour on his tongue. God help him, this new Penelope was a bloody disaster. He narrowed his eyes on the siren who had mysteriously supplanted a hoyden as daring as any of his male friends. And saw that she was blossoming into a woman who made men stupid.

      Categorically he didn’t want to marry a woman who made men stupid, the way his mother had made his father stupid. How insulting to his chosen bride that part of her appeal had been her lack of overt attractions.

      His father’s example proved what catastrophes resulted from choosing a tempestuous beauty as a wife. Cam had grown up hearing salacious gossip about his mother’s affair with her husband’s younger brother. Nobody, including Cam, knew who had fathered him. He was a Rothermere, but not necessarily the late duke’s son.

      Long ago Cam had decided to marry someone he could be friends with, not who became a challenge to every deuced roué in London. Cam wanted a wife who would help him establish the Rothermere name as one to be respected, not a cause for snickering and dirty jokes as it had been all his life.

      Gossip about his parentage had dogged Cam from boyhood. School had been a nightmare, and while he made a fair job of pretending he no longer cared, he knew whispers of his bastardy still spiced the tattle whenever his name was mentioned. He’d be damned before he subjected his own children to similar torments.

      He reminded himself that this was brave, honest Penelope Thorne, she who risked her neck to save a kitten from village boys twice her size. But looking at her now, he didn’t see the girl who had launched a hundred escapades. Instead, he saw a woman who other men would pursue. A woman who perhaps would succumb to temptation, as his mother had done. Pen’s burgeoning loveliness made Cam burn to bed her, but it beggared any chance of an unexceptional domestic life.

      Feeling slightly ill, Cam accepted Pen’s offer of a seat and watched her take the chair opposite. Dear heaven, when had that smooth glide replaced her eager gallop? This was Pen, yet it wasn’t.

      Even as he questioned his old playmate’s suitability as a bride, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. When had she become this intriguing creature? Where the hell had he been when the transformation took place? At nineteen, she was a little late to be approaching her first season, but he could already see that she’d set society on its ears. She’d prowl into London’s ballrooms on those long legs, like a tigress set loose amid a host of pretty little butterflies.

      “I appreciate that you’re doing your duty by your mother and mine. A match between us was always their greatest wish.” The earnestness in Pen’s regard was familiar, but still he felt as if he’d been tossed high into the air and come to land in a different country. “But let’s be realistic. I’m not the woman for you.”

      While today’s misgivings hinted that Pen might be right, his pride flinched under her rejection. “We know each other so well—”

      “Which is why I’m convinced that any match between us would be a debacle.”

      “Why?”

      Her lips twisted, and he realized that her earlier bitterness hadn’t entirely vanished. “Isn’t that my question?” She sighed. “Cam, you need a duchess with dignity and decorum. You must have forgotten all the times you dragged me from disaster.”

      “You’re still young. You can be trained,” he said, before he recognized that such a comment would hardly forward his suit. Usually he said exactly the right thing, but this encounter rattled his sangfroid.

      Her momentary softening congealed to frost. “I’m not a hound to come at your whistle.”

      He sighed again. “You know that’s not what I want in a bride.”

      “Do I?” she asked, arching her eyebrows. “You’ve devoted your life to rising above your parents’ disgrace. You’ve never made a secret of the fact that your wife must be beyond reproach.”

      He bared his teeth at her. Mention of his mother’s adultery always raised his hackles. “Pen, this isn’t something I wish to discuss.”

      She made a sweeping gesture. “Whether you want to talk about it or not, the scandals have guided your every action.”

      He winced under the compassion in her gaze. “That makes me sound like a complete widgeon.”

      “No, it doesn’t.”

      “You can help me. You’ll make a capital duchess.”

      “You’re mistaken.” He’d never imagined that worldly smile on Pen’s face. His reluctant desire deepened. “I’m too independent to be anyone’s duchess, especially yours.”

      “You can change,” he said desperately, wishing he’d taken Lord Wilmott up on his offer of a brandy earlier. Cam wasn’t used to being so wrong-footed with a woman, with anyone. Where had his famous social assurance buggered off to?

      “Perhaps I can. If I wanted to change. I don’t.” She sighed with a tolerance that made his skin itch with resentment. “You’d be trading your family’s scandals for mine, and the rumors would continue to dog you all our lives. I follow my heart before my СКАЧАТЬ