What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

“He wouldn’t want to burden anyone.” Tears thickened her voice as her unnatural composure cracked.

“He was a brave man.” Peter might have been a numbskull in worldly terms, but at heart, he was as true as an oak tree. Once Cam had thought much the same of Pen.

“Yes.”

Cam shifted closer. His heart ached with sorrow for her. She’d hardly come to terms with shooting a man. Now she faced the loss of a beloved brother.

She wriggled free. “Please—”

As he stood, he stifled a pang that she rejected his sympathy. He had no right to touch her. And given his unwilling attraction, it was better for both of them if he didn’t. “What can I do?”

Usually he knew how to handle any situation. Not in this case. Not with this woman so familiar, yet essentially a stranger.

The glassy look in her eyes made him wonder if she saw anything. His gut knotted when he saw how bravely she battled to dam her tears.

“Cam, can you please leave me alone?” Her hands twisted in her lap.

He shouldn’t be hurt. Clearly she was distraught. But as a little girl, she’d always turned to him with her troubles. “I can’t abandon you.”

She shook her head and her voice cracked. “Just a little privacy, for pity’s sake.”

Inwardly he flinched, although he retained his cool exterior. “Of course.”

He turned to go, before recalling that he had more to tell her. He caught her curling up against the wall as if shutting the world away. The impulse rose to haul her into his arms. He beat it back. She’d made it clear that he was the last man she wanted to touch her. “Pen, there’s something else.”

She didn’t glance up, but her hands stiffened into talons in the dark blue skirt over her upraised knees. “Not now.”

“I must.” He felt like the world’s biggest bastard. For once, not just because of the doubt surrounding his parentage. He straightened as if facing a dangerous foe. “Peter asked me to fetch you back to England.”

“I don’t need an escort.” Her voice was lackluster as she stared blindly at the shutters.

Sarcasm tinged his response. “That was apparent when I arrived.”

The tilt of her chin lacked defiance. “That’s never happened before.”

Any fool could see that she was near breaking. “I just wanted to say that we’ll go on together.”

He knew he’d said the wrong thing the moment the words left his mouth. Her eyes flashed with anger. It was an improvement on dumb grief. “Still giving orders, I see, Your Grace.”

“Don’t cross me on this, Pen,” he said steadily.

She cast him a look of pure dislike. “Go away, Cam.”

Chapter Three

The problem with small inns in the back of beyond was that one had a devil of a job finding somewhere private to observe comings and goings. Particularly during an ice storm of Biblical proportions.

Even after weeks of rough lodgings, this shabby inn was the worst Cam had encountered. He was reluctant to intrude upon Pen’s grief. But nor did he want to sit outside in the snow, turning into an icicle. He couldn’t retreat upstairs to his room for fear that the bandits might return. The villagers had rallied, but he couldn’t entrust Pen’s safety to people he didn’t know.

Now he roamed the rooms like a lost dog, hungry and cold and unaccountably depressed by his reaction to Pen. And by her unenthusiastic reaction to him.

When she finally appeared, Cam was in the kitchen, suffering a glass of the pungent local red. The landlord’s wife cooked dinner and the savory smell made Cam’s stomach grumble. Confounding malefactors gave a man a powerful appetite.

“Good evening, Pen,” he said evenly, standing. “Would you like some wine?”

“Perhaps later,” she said without venturing inside.

She’d tucked her torn bodice into the neck of her shift. It reminded him, should he need reminding, that she’d faced down violence. It also reminded him, sod it, of her sweetly curved body. This continual, itching awareness of Penelope Thorne was tiresome. It wasn’t the response he’d expected—or wanted. “Are you looking for me?”