Her Christmas Earl Page 12

  He’d always wanted her. That was part of the problem, God help them. He’d often asked himself if time would erode the attraction.

  Just one touch of her hand on a snowy night and he received his unequivocal answer.

  She swung onto the horse behind him and paused again before looping her arms around his waist. He’d always been hellish aware of her reactions and he couldn’t help but note her reluctance to touch him.

  Good God, what was wrong with the woman? She’d been ready enough to do more than touch rabbit-hearted Fenton. Surely her long-suffering husband deserved a little friendliness after coming to her rescue. With damned little encouragement, too, he might add.

  Compared to the cold night, she felt warm and soft against his back. His lunatic heart dipped at her nearness, even as he told himself that the warmth and softness were lies. Alicia Sinclair was made of stone. Or at least she was when it came to her husband. If he forgot that, she’d drag his soul through the razor-sharp thorns of hell again.

  But the warning fell on deaf ears. When she touched him, he could think of little else but how long it was since he’d held her in his arms and shown her how strongly she inflamed his unruly passions.

  The mare curveted under the double weight, but Kinvarra settled her with a curt word. He never had trouble with horses. It was his wife he couldn’t control.

  “What about my belongings?” she asked, calm as you please. The lady should demonstrate proper shame at being caught with a lover. But of course, that wasn’t Alicia. She held her head high whatever destiny threw at her.

  It was one of the things he loved about her.

  He quashed the unwelcome insight. “There’s an inn a few miles ahead. I’ll get them to send someone for your baggage.”

  He clicked his tongue to the horse and cantered in the opposite direction to the one Fenton had taken. Which was lucky for the weasel. If Kinvarra caught up with Fenton now, he’d be inclined to reach for his horsewhip. What right had that bastard to interfere with other men’s wives then scuttle away leaving the lady stranded?

  Alicia settled herself more comfortably, pressing her lovely, lush body into his back. She hadn’t been this close to him in years. He was scoundrel enough to enjoy the contact, however reluctantly she granted it.

  Maybe after all, he should be grateful to old Harold. He might even send the poltroon a case of port and a note of appreciation.

  Well, that might go too far.

  “Is that where we’re heading?” She tightened her arms. He wished it was because she wanted to touch him and not just because she sought a more secure seat. He also wished that when she said “we”, his belly didn’t cramp with longing for the word to be true.

  Damn Alicia. She’d always held magic for him and she always would. Ten long years without her had taught him that grim lesson.

  The reminder of the dance she’d led him made him respond in a clipped tone. “No, we’re going to Heseltine Hall near Whitby.”

  “But you can leave me at the inn, can’t you?”

  “It’s a poor place. I couldn’t abandon a woman there without protection.” He tried, he really did, to keep the satisfaction from his voice, but he must have failed. He felt her tense against his back, although she couldn’t pull too far away without risking a fall.

  “And who’s going to protect me from you?” she muttered, almost as if to herself.

  “I mean you no harm.” For all their difficult interactions, he’d only ever wished her well. “You didn’t come all the way from London in that spindly carriage, did you?”

  “It’s inappropriate to discuss my arrangement with Lord Harold,” she said coldly.

  He laughed again, against all sense, enchanted with her spirit. “Humor me.”

  She sighed. “We traveled up separately to York.” Her voice melted into sincerity and he tried not to respond to the husky sweetness. “I truly didn’t set out to cause a scandal. You and I parted in rancor, but I have no ambition to damage you or your name.”

  “Whatever your attempts at discretion, you still meant to give yourself to that puppy,” Kinvarra bit out, all amusement abruptly fled.

  Alicia didn’t answer.

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  Continue reading for an excerpt from:

  What A Duke Dares

  Book 3 of the Sons of Sin Series

  Grand Central Forever, New York

  A reputation at risk…

  What woman in her right mind would say no to marrying the dashing Duke of Sedgemoor? Miss Penelope Thorne, that's who. She's known Camden Rothermere since they were children - and she also knows she'd bring nothing but scandal to his name.

  Cam can hardly believe Penelope turned down his proposal. But if she wants to run off to the Continent and set the rumor mill ablaze, he can't stop her. Then her brother's dying request sends him to bring home the one woman he thought he'd finally gotten over.

  The only way they'll both get back to London without their reputations in tatters is to pretend they're married during the journey. That means kissing like they mean it and even sharing a bed - until it becomes hard to tell where the game ends and true desire begins...

  Prologue

  Houghton Park, Lincolnshire, May 1819

  EVERY YOUNG LADY dreamed of a proposal from the heir to a dukedom. Especially when the heir was rich, feted, in possession of his wits, and still young enough to have all his teeth.

  Every young lady except, apparently, Penelope Thorne.

  From the center of her father’s library, Camden Rothermere, Marquess of Pembridge, eyed the girl he’d known from the cradle and wondered where the hell he’d slipped up. He straightened and summoned a smile, struggling to bridge the awkward silence extending between them.

  Damn it. He never felt awkward with Pen Thorne. Until now. Until he’d spoken the fatal words.

  Until, instead of radiating delight at the prospect of marrying him, Pen’s black eyes sparked with the rebellious light that always boded trouble.

  “Why?” It wasn’t the first time this afternoon that she’d asked him the question.

  Stupidly he couldn’t summon an adequate answer. He’d blundered into this halfcocked. It was his own fault. Knowing Pen as he did, he should have prepared a comprehensive list of reasons for their marriage before broaching the subject.

  Right now, he wished he’d never broached the subject at all. But it was too late to retreat, or too late if he hoped to salvage a shred of self-respect from this dashed uncomfortable encounter.

  “Devil take you, Pen, I like you,” he said impatiently. Despite her inexplicable and irritating behavior today, it was true. There wasn’t a girl alive that he liked so much as the chit currently regarding him as if he’d crawled out of a hole in the ground.

  He knew her better than any other girl too, even his sister Lydia. Through their childhood, he’d rescued Pen from a thousand scrapes. She’d been a hellion, riding the wildest horses in her father’s stables, climbing the tallest trees in the park, throwing herself into brawls to defend a friend or mistreated animal. Cam had long admired her spirit, loyalty, and courage.

  Those were qualities he wanted in his duchess. And if she needed some guidance in deportment, he was perfectly prepared to teach her proper behavior. She was a Thorne and Thornes weren’t renowned for their prudence, but while Pen might be impulsive, she was intelligent. Once she’d become the Duchess of Sedgemoor, he was sure she’d settle down.

  Or he had been, until her unenthusiastic response to his proposal.

  “I like you too,” she said steadily, regarding him with unwavering attention.

  Cam wondered why her admission didn’t reassure. Inhaling deeply, he strove for forbearance. “Well, there you have it, then.”

  That bitter note in her laugh was unfamiliar. He could hardly believe it, but the possibility of failure hovered
. Pen was clever, determined, headstrong—he’d get that out of her soon enough—and stubbornly inclined to take a positive view of events. Or at least so he’d believed until today.

  He’d also believed that she’d leap at the chance to marry him.

  Clearly he’d been wrong.

  He wasn’t used to being wrong. Confound her, he didn’t like it.

  Her voice remained curiously flat. “I’m sorry, Cam. ‘There you have it, then’ won’t pass muster. You’ll need to do better than that.”

  From where she stood before the high mullioned window, she studied him much like a schoolmistress surveyed an unpromising student. He only just resisted the urge to run a finger under his unaccountably tight neckcloth.

  Good God, this was Pen. She wasn’t a female who put a man through hoops before she fell into harness. She’d never demand more than he could give. She’d never subject a fellow to emotional storms. She’d never lie and cheat and betray.

  She was the absolute opposite of his late mother, in fact.

  Cam was unaccustomed to feeling like a blockhead, especially with the fairer sex. By nature he wasn’t a vain man, but he’d anticipated a better reaction to his proposal. Pen’s father Lord Wilmott had been in alt to hear that his daughter would become a duchess.

  Most definitely, Pen was not in alt.

  And she bloody well should be. After all, she was a mere baron’s daughter—and a ramshackle baron at that—while Cam was heir to the nation’s richest dukedom.

  The Thornes were an old family, but had always had a justified reputation for trouble. In times of political unrest, they backed the wrong side. If they managed to lay their hands on any money, they lost it, usually in some disreputable pursuit. “Wine, women and song” should be the family motto instead of the much more staid and highly inappropriate “steadfast and faithful.”

  The previous generation had spawned a handful of eccentrics, including an uncle who had married his housekeeper. Bigamously as it had turned out. Lord Wilmott had squandered his wife’s dowry on a succession of greedy strumpets. Pen’s aunt ran with a dissolute crowd on the Continent. Peter, Cam’s friend and the current heir, was devoted to the gaming tables and disastrous investments. If Cam’s mother hadn’t been great friends with Lady Wilmott, the families would have had little contact.

  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 head. I speak my mind. Before the ink was dry on the settlements, I’d do something to upset the old tabbies. You’d find yourself knee-deep in gossip and you’d hate that. You’d start to hate me.”

  “You’re the only woman I’ve ever pictured as my wife. I decided as a boy that I’d marry you.” He straightened in his chair and bit out each word, before remembering that he came to woo, not browbeat her. “Our families expect me to make you my duchess.”