What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

Sick anger flooded him. Not with Pen. With himself. He couldn’t bear to be a bad job.

He shook his head at Thomas and climbed the stairs two at a time toward his wife’s ornate bedroom. Fleetingly in the carriage, the possibility of genuine honesty had hovered. Then Pen had backed away. Cam couldn’t accept that.

Tonight he wouldn’t give her a chance to prepare for him the way a city prepared for siege. Tonight, he’d mount a surprise attack and see what lay hidden behind the city walls.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Pen sat at her dressing table as her maid brushed her hair. The activity didn’t soothe as it usually did. Instead a headache beat at her temples and the gaze she met in the mirror was defeated. Three weeks married and she felt like she’d aged twenty years. Heaven help her if she lasted to Christmas.

Troubling memories from the night circled like growling dogs. Harry’s palpable desperation. The Hillbrooks’ politely concealed wariness. The avid curiosity in every face at the musicale. Her noxious argument with Cam. The familiar emptiness in her soul.

The door opened and hit the wall with a very un-Cam-like bang. Pen started, wrenching against Jane’s downward stroke. “Ouch!”

“Your pardon, Your Grace,” Jane stammered to Pen. She curtsied to Cam. “Your Grace.”

In the mirror, Cam’s expression wasn’t reassuring. Still Pen’s voice emerged with commendable steadiness. “You may go, Jane. I’ll finish here.”

“Very well, Your Grace.”

Cam hardly glanced in the girl’s direction as she slipped past. Instead his attention fixed on Pen.

Sick of confused emotions, she set the heavy brush down with an audible click. “There’s no need to terrify the staff, Your Grace.”

With his jaw set in adamantine lines, he shut the door. He was careful closing it, which struck her as more alarming than another show of temper. She recalled the days when she’d believed that Cam had no temper to lose.

“If you ever call me ‘Your Grace’ again, I’ll have the press-gangs kidnap Harry and send him to a mosquito-ridden swamp in Panama.”

That didn’t sound like a joke. “I’m trying to be a proper duchess.”

To fit in with his image of the ideal wife, tonight she’d minded her manners, she’d smiled like a fool, and she’d kept any controversial opinions to herself. Even worse, she’d worn a dress for her London debut that she wouldn’t put on a scarecrow.

Everyone had seemed to approve. Everyone except Cam. Clearly he had impossibly high standards.

“A proper duchess pleases her duke.”

Once she’d have treated that arrogant statement with the contempt it deserved. But that was before she’d saddled Cam with her wanton reputation. “I’m sorry I’m not ready,” she said dully, standing. “Would you like help undressing?”

He scowled as he leaned against the door frame and folded his arms. “I’d like you to talk to me,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Her jaw dropped in astonishment. “Talk?”

For three weeks, he’d come to her room in a lather of passion. His unsteady breathing and the color lining his slashing cheekbones betrayed that he wanted her now. Yet he wanted to talk?

“Yes.”

She backed against the dressing table, hooking her hands over the polished mahogany edge. “What on earth can we talk about?”

His eyebrow rose in that superior expression that always made her itch to clout him. Or at least it had before she’d sworn to become a conformable spouse. “I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “What could two people linked together for life and with no idea of what the other one is thinking say? Perhaps we could discuss the weather.”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“I think there is.” He sauntered in her direction.

To her relief, he stopped a few feet away, although his searching regard stirred terrified flurries in her belly. She’d learned to hide her emotions in bed, and she stayed out of his way during the day. His actions tonight set a precedent, one that troubled her.

“You’re never rude,” she said despairingly. “You’re a model of behavior.”

He frowned. “I never thought you were.”