What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

The delay became unbearable. “Say something, darling.”

Still she didn’t smile as she straightened away from the tree. Her shoulders were level, her chin was up. She looked every inch the young aristocrat. “I love you, Harry.”

For a moment, he stared at her in disbelief. Could he be so fortunate? She looked like she meant it.

Another close examination of her expression. By God, she meant it. Troupes of angels danced a gavotte in his soul.

What could a fellow do when the woman he adored told him she loved him? Nothing except sweep that woman into a wild kiss.

Harry surfaced from joy to discover that he lay over Sophie on the soft grass and that her hands tangled in his hair. “We have to stop.”

She pouted in a way that made him desperate to go further, but some thread still moored him to reality. That reality didn’t encompass Harry Thorne taking the Marquess of Leath’s sister in the woods like an amorous gypsy. “I can’t believe the world talks about you as such a rake. I’m disappointed.”

His laugh cracked as he rose on his hands. “Shall I promise to be rakish only with you until death do us part?”

She went rigid and the teasing light drained from her eyes. “What… what do you mean?”

He should be nervous. But he’d been committed to this woman since their first meeting. Everything following had only confirmed that he was eternally in her thrall.

“I mean—” Even when he was certain, a man tended to stumble at such a moment.

Poised over her like this, he couldn’t do justice to his intentions. Struggling to ignore how beautiful and damnably available she looked spread out on the grass, he rolled away and kneeled beside her. He tugged a crushed daisy from her wantonly tumbled golden curls. “Sit up, Sophie.”

She frowned in puzzlement. “What is it?” Nonetheless, she sat, folding her legs beneath her.

Taking her hand, he rose on one knee. “Lady Sophie, I knew the moment I saw you that I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He swallowed and stared into her shining eyes. “Will you do me the inestimable honor of marrying me?”

Hills above Genoa, early March 1828

Damn, damn, damn.

Cam knew he was devilish reckless playing these games in public. And now the time had come to pay the piper.

As the horse-faced woman with the loud voice and deplorable taste in hats bustled toward them, he stepped away from Pen and tried to act as though their acquaintance was purely casual. At least, thank God, the woman hadn’t appeared

while he’d been manhandling Pen.

He’d battled so hard to keep his distance, but in the end, the temptation had proven too strong. Especially now he knew that Pen wanted him too. Even when there was bugger all he could do to satisfy his craving and still call himself a gentleman.

Awake, Pen was constantly in his mind. Even worse, he dreamed about her at night. Hot, sweaty, ribald dreams, where he used her hard. Like an experienced woman, not a delicate lady of his class. He woke shaking and ashamed, hard as an oar.

If he could make his yacht fly back to England, he would. Surely once he didn’t see Penelope every day, he’d become again the measured, sensible man he’d been before he fell under this gorgeous termagant’s spell. Part of him still looked at her with astonishment. This is Pen of the scraped knees and broken dolls. You have no right to tumble the girl whose childhood tears you dried. Not only tumble her, but have her in every filthy way your imagination can conjure.

When the woman reached them, Cam caught speculation in her beady eyes. The man, obviously also English, approached with less dispatch but equal curiosity. Luckily Cam knew neither of them. Although that wouldn’t save him from a scandal, unless he came up with some reason why he and an unmarried girl from a good family were alone together.

“Mrs. Barker-Pratt, what a surprise.” Pen tried to sound enthusiastic.

The two women exchanged kisses on the cheek and Pen turned to Cam. “My lord, permit me to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Barker-Pratt, dear friends of my late aunt.” She paused infinitesimally, but only someone who knew her as well as he did would guess how rattled she was. “Mr. and Mrs. Barker-Pratt, this is Lord Pembridge who has been touring the lakes.”

He bowed, wondering whether the game was finally up. Anyone familiar with noble English families would recognize that heirs to the Sedgemoor dukedom took the courtesy title of Marquess of Pembridge. “Mrs. Barker-Pratt, Mr. Barker-Pratt.”

“My lord.” Mrs. Barker-Pratt curtsied while the husband, a little man who faded into invisibility in his wife’s dominant presence, bowed.

“The Barker-Pratts hail from Shropshire, but have lived in Tivoli for many years,” Pen continued with false brightness. “Mr. Barker-Pratt is an expert on Roman funerary monuments.”

“How interesting,” Cam murmured. Pen’s skill at weaving through the introductions filled him with dreadful fascination. It was like watching someone cross a gorge on a high wire while a river full of hungry crocodiles snapped below.

“We haven’t returned to England in forty years, despite war and revolution. We’d feel quite foreign in London. Although with so many English friends here, it’s like being at home.” Mrs. Barker-Pratt’s laugh could shatter glass. “At home with only the most interesting people, of course. Don’t you agree, my lord, that the best of the English are those who leave the country?”