What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

And not one he’d solve in Jonas’s impressive front hall while Pen watched with the faint curiosity that counted as interest these days. The old Pen would have told him in no uncertain terms to hurry up. The new Pen waited patiently.

“Your pardon, my dear.” He stepped forward to lift her cape from her shoulders. Briefly he fantasized about Pen in ruby red or deep sapphire. Something to complement the ardent soul that he still, despite all evidence, believed she possessed.

But the dress was gray with long sleeves and a bodice that covered her to the collarbones. Logic insisted that not every gown she’d ordered from the ruinously expensive modiste was gray. It merely felt like it.

He was sure he’d seen some beige.

Pen was still technically in mourning for Peter, although she could wear colors after three months, and her marriage meant that only sticklers would count the days since her brother’s death. But damn it, Cam had married a beautiful, sensual woman, and she dressed like a blasted nun.

The irony struck him that he’d asked fate for a wife who was the opposite of his mother. Fate had very generously granted his wish.

He wanted to plant fate a facer, then kick it in the ribs for good measure.

“Your Grace?” Pen asked softly.

He realized he stared blankly at her. “You look lovely,” he said with the deathly politeness that had infected his behavior too.

Regally she inclined her head. “Thank you.”

Again, Cam questioned his discontent. No woman had ever appeared more the duchess. Yet he wanted to wrench the diamond combs from Pen’s black hair and rend the French silk dress and kiss her until her lips were red and swollen and she never called him “Your Grace” again.

He of

fered his arm. In bed, her exquisite body was his to do with as he willed. During waking hours, she kept physical contact to a minimum. Her hand lay so lightly on his arm that he hardly felt her through his black superfine sleeve.

As if on a royal progress, they ascended the staircase. Cam had no idea what lurked in Pen’s mind. Once he thought he knew her as well as he knew the men awaiting them. Now, thanks to the wedding ring on her slender finger, she’d become an enigma.

The butler flung open the drawing room door. “The Duke and Duchess of Sedgemoor.”

Cam mustered a smile appropriate to a newly married man, even if it threatened to crack his jaw, and ushered his bride forward to meet his dearest friends.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Every person in that drawing room cared for Cam, more than he deserved.

Jonas, Lord Hillbrook, turned from his dark-haired wife Sidonie and strode forward, hand outstretched. A smile lightened his scarred, saturnine features. “Cam! About time you introduced us to your duchess. Sidonie and I were about to set up camp at the gates of Fentonwyck.”

“I suspect your definition of camping would differ from most people’s.” Cam clasped his friend’s hand with a warmth that contained a shaming measure of relief. The last time he and Jonas had met, the encounter had ended in a bitter quarrel over his plans to marry Lady Marianne. “Silk tents, servants, and champagne at the least.”

“I was afraid you didn’t invite us to your wedding because you thought I’d scare your wife.” The humor sparking in his dark eyes softened the remark, although Jonas’s face aroused unease, even now.

“I wanted to keep my bride to myself.” Cam released Jonas’s hand. “Penelope, this is our host, Jonas Merrick, Viscount Hillbrook.”

“My lord.” Pen dipped into a curtsy so graceful that Cam’s heart stopped. The coolness between them didn’t lessen her power over him.

Jonas bent over Pen’s hand with an aplomb remarkable in such a big, heavily muscled man. “Your Grace, welcome to my home.” He straightened and gestured to Sidonie who slid her hand around his waist with a natural affection that pierced Cam’s barricaded heart with envy.

When he’d married Pen, he’d hoped that they’d establish such physical closeness. Whereas for all that they stood together, an invisible chasm a hundred yards wide separated them.

“Your Grace, I’ve been in a fever of curiosity since Cam wrote to tell us of his wedding,” Sidonie said. “And in such haste that we couldn’t attend the ceremony.”

Cam caught Pen’s hunted look, although the meaningless smile remained. It was a smile Cam had never seen until Pen became his duchess. Once, she would have responded with a witty remark. The expression in her eyes now hinted that she considered heading for the hills.

Cam saved her from replying. “Our marriage isn’t as sudden as it appears. Pen and I have known each other since childhood.”

Sir Richard Harmsworth stepped forward to take Pen’s hand. “Pen, dashed good to see you. I thought you were lost to us forever. You’ll adorn London as you’ve adorned Paris and Rome.”

“Richard.” There was no mistaking Pen’s pleasure. An unforced pleasure that Cam couldn’t remember her targeting toward him since her adolescence. “I doubted you’d remember me.”