What a Duke Dares Read Free

Shame knotted his gut. With regret, he recalled the days when in her eyes, he could do no wrong. He drew himself up to his full height and glared.
    “There’s no point going all ducal, Cam,” she said curtly, not, blast her, remotely cowed. “That look lost its power over me before you went to Eton.”
    She shifted closer, stretching one hand toward the mantel. When he noticed how her fingers trembled, he faced the unpleasant truth that despite outward calm, this encounter upset her.
    Of course it did. She felt things deeply. More than once, he’d caught Pen crying alone after her brothers’ teasing had struck a painful spot. She was proud, Penelope Thorne. Another desirable quality in a cracking duchess.
    But clearly not his duchess. Pen didn’t have a monopoly on pride. Cam regarded her down his long nose and spoke as coldly as he’d speak to an overweening acquaintance. “I gather that you’re refusing me.”
    The knuckles on the hand clutching the mantel turned white, although her voice remained steady. “Yes, I am.” She paused. “I appreciate your condescension.”
    That was so obviously untrue that under other circumstances, he’d have laughed. But pique shredded his sense of humor. Through his outrage, he knew that he behaved badly. However unfairly, he blamed Pen for that unprecedented state of affairs too.
    He bowed shortly and spoke in a clipped voice. “In that case, Miss Thorne, I’ll waste no more of your valuable time. I wish you well.”
    Something that might have been pain flared in her dark eyes, but he was too angry and, much as he hated to admit it, wounded to pay heed. She stepped toward him. “Cam—”
    “Good day, madam.”
    He turned on his heel and stalked off.
    Pen watched Cam march out of her father’s library, his back rigid with displeasure, and told herself that she’d done the right thing. The only thing she could in honor have done.
    Right now she didn’t feel that way. She felt like she’d swallowed toads. She clung to the mantel to stay upright on legs likely to crumple beneath her.
    Her anguish didn’t change merciless reality. Cam didn’t love her. Cam would never love her. Nothing in today’s awkward, painful encounter had convinced her otherwise.
    As a foolish child, she’d dreamed of him tumbling head over heels in love with her. What girl brought up in close proximity to the magnificent Rothermere heir wouldn’timagine a fairy-tale future? Especially when her mother encouraged her.
    But that was before Pen had grown up and recognized the stark truth. A truth ruthlessly confirmed when she was sixteen. One summer at Fentonwyck, she’d overheard Cam talking to his best friend Richard Harmsworth about discouraging a local belle’s advances. When Richard had blamed the girl’s antics on love, Cam had responded with cutting contempt and said that was even more reason to steer clear of the unfortunate lady.
    Romantic love has no place in my life now or ever, old chap. Let other fellows make asses of themselves. I’ve seen too much of the damage that poisonous emotion can wreak. It’s a trap and a deceit and a damned nuisance. I’ll never marry a woman who expects me to love her.
    Pen felt sick to recall that self-assured pronouncement. Perhaps she might have dismissed his remarks as a young man’s bravado, except that in the three years since, everything she’d seen of Cam confirmed that he’d meant every word.
    Even with those closest to him—Richard, his sister, Pen—he kept some element of himself apart, untouchable. Over the years that distance had only grown more marked.
    Camden Rothermere was rich, handsome, clever, honorable, and brave. And completely self-sufficient.
    Pen had prayed that Cam would ignore his late mother’s matchmaking, but of course, he considered it his duty to offer for Penelope. Just as he considered it his duty to inform her that his interest was purely dynastic.
    If she’d harbored the tiniest shred of hope of melting the