She stroked the side of his face. “Of course I trusted you, Cam.”
Tears loomed close, making her voice sound rusty. But she didn’t feel like crying. She felt like wrapping this precious, magnificent man in her arms and holding him safe.
He shook his head to deny what she said and she watched his joy retreat. So quickly the familiar self-possession returned. Although physically they were as close as two people could be, she sensed that somewhere in his mind, he established a distance.
That breathtaking consummation had convinced her that they were bonded forever. For him, it threatened defenses that he’d spent a lifetime building.
Her impulsive declaration of love died unspoken and her happiness seeped away even as she still quivered with reaction.
Cam had sealed eternal dominion over her soul. In return, she’d fed his physical hunger.
Dear God, she needed to keep her wits about her. All her life, she’d known that confessing her love would at best create restraint, at worst send Cam fleeing what he viewed as impossible demands.
To be fair, he wouldn’t want to hurt her. Although the sad truth was that because he didn’t love her, he hurt her again and again.
The true hell of her marriage struck like a blow. Disgrace and scandal could never match the damage that awaited now that she’d irrevocably tied her life to Cam’s.
She was a damned fool.
And the largest part of her damned foolishness was that despite all she knew, all she’d seen, in some corner of her mind she’d hoped that over time, he might find it in himself to love her.
She stared into his eyes and recognized that the barriers against her, against anyone threatening his self-containment, would always be there. Although she felt like crying, she summoned a smile. “Cam, I promise to be the wife you want. You’ll never regret marrying me.”
He grimaced as if her words held a sting. “I don’t deserve you.”
Even harder than that smile was dredging up the kind of remark he’d expect of sharp-tongued, independent Penelope Thorne. She’d enlisted for a lifetime of lying when she married Camden Rothermere. She refused to stumble at the first fence. “I intend to be the world’s greatest duchess.”
He regarded her searchingly. She saw the moment he decided to accept her humor at face value. “High hopes indeed.”
“Why aim for the ordinary?”
His soft laugh vibrated through her. Despairingly she wondered how he c
ould lie inside her, yet feel a million miles away.
“My dear Penelope, you couldn’t be ordinary if you tried.”
The passion in his kiss made her blood pump. The world’s greatest duchess would never deny the duke his pleasure, even if her heart cracked into a thousand pieces.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Cam passed the blue salon on his way inside from checking his new colt, he heard gusts of feminine laughter. Since his sister’s marriage two years ago, Fentonwyck had been a bachelor establishment, so the sound struck him as unexpected. Pen, to his bitter regret, hadn’t laughed much lately.
Curiosity made him pause. Curiosity and a determination to rescue his wife. If county society descended, having decided that a week was sufficient privacy for the newlyweds, this would be Pen’s first solo encounter with the English upper classes since her return. His wife would be a lamb in a den of wolves.
Cam had spent a lifetime countering spite, starting with savage bullying at Eton over his mother’s adultery. He’d learned the hard way how to handle trouble. His gut knotting with worry, he stepped into the room’s azure and gold splendor. And stopped dead.
The neighbors ranged around the tea table. The Countess of Marley. Lady Greene and her two daughters. The three Misses Moulton-Brent. Lady Gregory Fulham and her spinster sister. All cats to their last breath. All hanging entranced on whatever Pen described in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.
She’d been uncharacteristically quiet all week. He almost wondered if he’d married two completely separate women. One by day was prudent and obliging and almost demure—a word he’d never thought to associate with Penelope Thorne. By night, the other Pen was endlessly responsive. It was like living with the perfect wife and the perfect mistress, all wrapped up in one spectacular package. Every man’s dream.
And Cam could hardly endure it.
This new version of his wife confused him, sparked his impatience, obsessed him—which bolstered his impatience. Both with Pen and himself.
He’d attempted to break through to the vibrant woman he’d known in Italy. But she’d greeted his fumbling efforts to establish some ease between them with cool disinterest. Even when he was so far inside her he felt like their blood flowed through a single heart, Pen held herself tantalizingly separate.
The real Pen, the Pen who infuriated and fascinated and challenged him, remained hidden behind those brilliant black eyes. And every breathtaking climax seemed to edge her more out of reach. It was enough to drive a man to drink. Longingly Cam thought of the brandy in his library, even if it was only early afternoon.