What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

While he’d never wanted an emotional connection in his marriage, he had imagined that sharing a home, however large, would result in friendly intimacy. But he felt further from Pen than he had when he’d saved her from the bandits.

Despite this polite estrangement, their sexual encounters transcended his experience. Every time he spilled into her body, he felt like he surrendered part of his soul. He hated to be in thrall to a woman determined to remain elusive. She turned his nights to flame, and his days to mere intervals of waiting before he joined her on that wide bed upstairs.

He felt like a satyr. He felt out of control. He felt like she hovered just beyond his grasp, even when she stirred to his most daring caresses. Nighttime Pen never denied him, physically at least. Daytime Pen seemed set on establishing a life completely apart from his.

Now daytime Pen coped perfectly well with the intrusive curiosity of Derbyshire’s ladies. He prepared to retreat, but Lady Greene saw him. “Your Grace!”

So much silk fluttered as the ladies curtsied that a breeze ruffled Cam’s hair. He greeted them, starting with the countess who considered herself local society’s leader. The Duchess of Sedgemoor trumped the Countess of Marley. Lady Marley wouldn’t like that.

“Her Grace was describing your heroic rescue in the Alps,” Lady Marley said. “No wonder you two fell in love on the spot.”

As usual when he heard the word “love” in relation to himself, Cam’s stomach curdled. How ironic that he’d given his friends romantic advice. Camden Rothermere talking about love was like a blind man describing a rainbow.

“The tale seems to have roused your amusement, my lady.”

With a neutral smile, Pen set down the teapot. She presided with a sureness of touch that even his mother would have envied. She wore one of the dresses she’d ordered from Sheffield to carry her through until they left for London next week. It was conservative in style and color. He’d never have imagined Pen could look dull, but in this drab gray gown, she looked… dull.

“How dashing,” one of Moulton-Brent girls sighed.

“Just like a novel,” Miss Greene added in an equally saccharine tone.

The swooning made Cam bilious, but as he glanced around the group, he commended Pen’s cleverness. These ladies had arrived prepared to despise her, until the stories of his courtship presented this marriage not as a woeful mésalliance but a romantic triumph.

Damn it. He’d been a fool to fret over Pen. He forgot how she’d charmed her way through Europe. He forgot that she was a Thorne. While the Thornes might neglect life’s prosaic elements, they could always woo an audience.

“I told the ladies how shocked I was when my childhood idol marched in at such an opportune moment, Your Grace.”

Daytime Pen always addressed him formally. Each time she said “Your Grace” in that sweet, soft voice, he felt like she struck him with a hammer.

Cam shouldn’t be piqued that she’d been perfectly all right without him. He shouldn’t be piqued, but he was.

His wife smiled at him over the tea as if meeting a mere acquaintance. London’s most perfect gentleman stifled the impulse to fling the priceless china into the fireplace and tell the duchess’s new acolytes to sod off.

He’d known Pen all his life, yet every day, she felt more a stranger.

Merrick House, Mayfair, early April 1828

Cam descended from the luxurious Sedgemoor town coach painted with the Rothermere unicorns. He extended his gloved hand to escort Pen up the short flight of marble steps.

“Thank you,” she murmured in a very un-Penelope voice to the footman who held the carriage door open.

As she surveyed the magnificent home of Jonas Merrick, Viscount Hillbrook, and his beautiful wife, Sidonie, Pen’s grip on Cam’s hand tightened. He glimpsed something in her face that looked like genuine emotion. It said something for his state that her trepidation made him feel better. She’d become such a cipher that he frequently wanted to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Or perhaps pinch Pen to check whether she was alive and not just a lovely automaton.

Because she was still officially in mourning, Cam wasn’t giving a ball to launch her into society. Instead, the new Duchess of Sedgemoor made a low-key arrival. Tonight, Lord and Lady Hillbrook hosted a dinner before the party attended a musicale at Oldhaven House.

“They’ll like you,” he murmured, leading her toward the door, which opened at their approach. “Don’t worry.”

Without hope, he waited for some humorous response. Pen didn’t speak. How lowering to remember that he’d wanted a quiet, perfect wife. Now that he had one, he itched to throw tantrums and shake her until she shouted back.

The odious truth was that Pen was everything that Cam had wished in a duchess. Tranquil. Undemanding. Well behaved. Polite. Cooperative. Who knew unusual, dashing Penelope Thorne would prove such a conformable spouse? Damn it, she’d even been a virgin when he’d married her.

If he told anyone about his increasing dissatisfaction, they’d call him a lunatic.

As Cam handed her into the black and white tiled hall, she stepped ahead wrapped in her new velvet cloak. They’d been in London since Easter and rapidly established the kind of marriage that proliferated in society. Cam saw his wife at breakfast and dinner where they swapped inconsequential information. With every hour, she retreated further.

But what could he say to her? You’re too good, You’re too obedient. You’re like a textbook description of the perfect lady and I loathe it. Do something shocking. At the very least, tell me off when I’m my asinine self.

This husband business was a conundrum. One that deepened every day.