“You looked like you wanted to rip Jonas’s guts out through his waistcoat.”
Cam struggled to smile. “Pen is my wife. She merits my loyalty—and your respect.”
Jonas frowned as that devilish mind whirred. “Of course she does.”
Cam hadn’t expected such ready agreement. “You’ll like her when you know her.”
“I’m sure I will.”
This level of amiability verged on the fantastical. Cam scowled down his long nose at his friend. Unfortunately, Jonas was at least as tall so the withering stare didn’t have its usual effect. “Are you being sarcastic?”
Jonas looked genuinely surprised. “Not at all. I’m delighted that you didn’t marry Lady Marianne. I was against the match from the start. I hated to see you enter such a coldhearted arrangement.”
Cam started to say that his match with Pen was just as coldhearted until something stopped him. Perhaps an inkling that Jonas waited for an open declaration of his feelings. Or lack of them.
“Pen will make a splendid duchess,” Richard said peaceably from the sofa. “It’s still a puzzle that she didn’t marry you in the first place if the Thornes were in a mess.”
“Are you both suggesting that she’d only marry me for worldly advantage?” Cam’s tone bristled.
Richard regarded him disapprovingly. “You’re deuced touchy, Cam. That’s not what we mean. Anyway, you know that even if you were off your head with opium or inclined to slobber into your dinner, chits would still line up for the duchess’s coronet.”
“Thank you,” Cam said grimly.
“You’re welcome.”
Jonas remained keen to explain himself, which didn’t happen every day. Cam controlled his temper enough to listen. “All those years ago, her family must have pressured her to accept you. Was she in love with someone else?”
“Not that I know.” Cam found the idea distasteful, although he couldn’t say why. If Pen had been in love at nineteen, the affair hadn’t had a happy outcome. “There was never any talk.”
“There was talk on the Continent,” Richard said soberly.
“It was purely talk,” Cam said. He only realized after he spoke how his confidence hinted that he had reason to know. Heat tinged his cheeks and he sipped his brandy to hide his embarrassment. Pen’s innocence was nobody else’s business. He quickly changed the subject. Unfortunately the topic was almost as discomfiting. “Her mother nagged her to the point where Pen canceled her season and scarpered for Italy.”
Jonas burst out laughing in one of those quicksilver changes of mood so characteristic of him. “Oh, Cam. You have my commiserations. But damn it, that’s priceless.”
Cam glowered at his friend. “I fail to see the funny side.”
Jonas took an infuriatingly long time to stop laughing. “You would if you’d been subject to your perfection all these years. I’m liking your bride more and more.”
“Cam, don’t go all haughty on us.” Richard rose and lifted the decanter. “Even I find it a tad amusing that the woman who met your criteria was so horrified at the prospect of marrying you that she fled the country.”
“She escaped her mother,” Cam said stiffly.
“I’m sure.” Richard refilled Jonas’s glass and turned to Cam. “None of this explains how you tied yourself to her after so long and after she’d led a fascinating life, never sparing you a thought.”
Whereas Cam had devoted too much energy to a setback that shouldn’t have mattered. He hid a sigh as he extended his empty glass toward Richard. He should be grateful to have friends brave enough to prick his arrogance. If only they knew that they were nowhere near as skilled at skewering him as his lovely bride.
“Peter asked me on his deathbed to escort Pen to England.” He waited for some response, but he’d captured his friends’ attention so completely that they remained silent. “I found her in the Alps and brought her back.?
??
“Alone?” Richard replaced the decanter on the table.
“Yes.” Cam paused. “Don’t look like that. I kept my hands to myself.”
“That must have been bloody difficult,” Jonas said.
Cam bared his teeth at Jonas, who seemed remarkably taken with another man’s wife. “She’s my friend’s sister. I’d grown up with her.” He paused. “She didn’t offer much encouragement.”