Her Christmas Earl (17 page)

Still unwilling to admit that Pen wasn’t the girl he remembered, he looked more closely. To his dismay, the coltish adolescent hovered on the brink of becoming a true beauty. Even more dismaying, he felt the unwelcome, unmistakable prickle of desire.

“Yes, you are. But it’s not totally your fault.” With a grace he hadn’t seen in her before, she gestured toward the leather chairs ranged around the unlit hearth. “Sit down, for heaven’s sake, and stop looming over me.”

Actually he wasn’t looming, although with his height, he loomed over most people. Pen had always been a long Meg, closer to a boy than a girl in his mind. But in this discomfiting instant, when for the first time he saw more than his friend Peter’s occasionally annoying younger sister, there was nothing boyish about Miss Penelope Thorne.

Since he’d last seen her—and for the life of him, he couldn’t recall when that had been, such an ardent suitor he was—she’d grown up. The thin body had gained subtle but fascinating curves. The vivid, pointed face that had always seemed too small for her decisive features had refined into striking attraction. When had she tamed her tangled mane of hair into those gleaming ebony coils?

Apprehension tasted sour on his tongue. God help him, this new Penelope was a bloody disaster. He narrowed his eyes on the siren who had mysteriously supplanted a hoyden as daring as any of his male friends. And saw that she was blossoming into a woman who made men stupid.

Categorically he didn’t want to marry a woman who made men stupid, the way his mother had made his father stupid. How insulting to his chosen bride that part of her appeal had been her lack of overt attractions.

His father’s example proved what catastrophes resulted from choosing a tempestuous beauty as a wife. Cam had grown up hearing salacious gossip about his mother’s affair with her husband’s younger brother. Nobody, including Cam, knew who had fathered him. He was a Rothermere, but not necessarily the late duke’s son.

Long ago Cam had decided to marry someone he could be friends with, not who became a challenge to every deuced roué in London. Cam wanted a wife who would help him establish the Rothermere name as one to be respected, not a cause for snickering and dirty jokes as it had been all his life.

Gossip about his parentage had dogged Cam from boyhood. School had been a nightmare, and while he made a fair job of pretending he no longer cared, he knew whispers of his bastardy still spiced the tattle whenever his name was mentioned. He’d be damned before he subjected his own children to similar torments.

He reminded himself that this was brave, honest Penelope Thorne, she who risked her neck to save a kitten from village boys twice her size. But looking at her now, he didn’t see the girl who had launched a hundred escapades. Instead, he saw a woman who other men would pursue. A woman who perhaps would succumb to temptation, as his mother had done. Pen’s burgeoning loveliness made Cam burn to bed her, but it beggared any chance of an unexceptional domestic life.

Feeling slightly ill, Cam accepted Pen’s offer of a seat and watched her take the chair opposite. Dear heaven, when had that smooth glide replaced her eager gallop? This was Pen, yet it wasn’t.

Even as he questioned his old playmate’s suitability as a bride, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. When had she become this intriguing creature? Where the hell had he been when the transformation took place? At nineteen, she was a little late to be approaching her first season, but he could already see that she’d set society on its ears. She’d prowl into London’s ballrooms on those long legs, like a tigress set loose amid a host of pretty little butterflies.

“I appreciate that you’re doing your duty by your mother and mine. A match between us was always their greatest wish.” The earnestness in Pen’s regard was familiar, but still he felt as if he’d been tossed high into the air and come to land in a different country. “But let’s be realistic. I’m not the woman for you.”

While today’s misgivings hinted that Pen might be right, his pride flinched under her rejection. “We know each other so well—”

“Which is why I’m convinced that any match between us would be a debacle.”

“Why?”

Her lips twisted, and he realized that her earlier bitterness hadn’t entirely vanished. “Isn’t that my question?” She sighed. “Cam, you need a duchess with dignity and decorum. You must have forgotten all the times you dragged me from disaster.”

“You’re still young. You can be trained,” he said, before he recognized that such a comment would hardly forward his suit. Usually he said exactly the right thing, but this encounter rattled his sangfroid.

Her momentary softening congealed to frost. “I’m not a hound to come at your whistle.”

He sighed again. “You know that’s not what I want in a bride.”

“Do I?” she asked, arching her eyebrows. “You’ve devoted your life to rising above your parents’ disgrace. You’ve never made a secret of the fact that your wife must be beyond reproach.”

He bared his teeth at her. Mention of his mother’s adultery always raised his hackles. “Pen, this isn’t something I wish to discuss.”

She made a sweeping gesture. “Whether you want to talk about it or not, the scandals have guided your every action.”

He winced under the compassion in her gaze. “That makes me sound like a complete widgeon.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“You can help me. You’ll make a capital duchess.”

“You’re mistaken.” He’d never imagined that worldly smile on Pen’s face. His reluctant desire deepened. “I’m too independent to be anyone’s duchess, especially yours.”

“You can change,” he said desperately, wishing he’d taken Lord Wilmott up on his offer of a brandy earlier. Cam wasn’t used to being so wrong-footed with a woman, with anyone. Where had his famous social assurance buggered off to?

“Perhaps I can. If I wanted to change. I don’t.” She sighed with a tolerance that made his skin itch with resentment. “You’d be trading your family’s scandals for mine, and the rumors would continue to dog you all our lives. I follow my heart before my head. I speak my mind. Before the ink was dry on the settlements, I’d do something to upset the old tabbies. You’d find yourself knee-deep in gossip and you’d hate that. You’d start to hate
me
.”

“You’re the only woman I’ve ever pictured as my wife. I decided as a boy that I’d marry you.” He straightened in his chair and bit out each word, before remembering that he came to woo, not browbeat her. “Our families expect me to make you my duchess.”

The regret in her smile did nothing to bolster his optimism. “I’m sorry, Cam. For once in your life, you’ll have to disappoint expectations.” Her gaze sharpened in a way that he didn’t completely understand. “I know you don’t love me.”

He flinched back as though she’d struck him. Damn, damn, damn.
Love.
He’d thought Pen too smart to fall prey to mawkish sentimentality. “I esteem you. I admire you. I enjoy your company. You know the Fentonwyck estate. You know
me
.”

“All very gratifying, I’m sure.” Her smile turned sour. “But I won’t marry without love.”

He surged to his feet. “We both have parents who married for love. As a result of
love
, my father descended into cruelty and obsession and my mother became a byword for promiscuity. Pardon me saying so, but your parents aren’t much better. Doesn’t that convince you that friendship and respect form a stronger basis for marriage than passing physical passion?”

“I doubt that either my parents or yours understood what love truly is.” Emotion thickened her voice and strengthened his premonition of failure. “Love means wanting the best for the beloved, whatever the cost. Love means sacrificing everything to achieve the beloved’s happiness.”

“You’re an idealist,” he said disdainfully.

“Yes, Cam, I am.” She rose with more circumspection—an adjective he’d never before associated with Pen Thorne—and regarded him with an unreadable expression. For a woman who confessed lack of control, she was remarkably controlled. “I believe love makes life worth living and nobody should marry without it. You’re too young to settle for second best.”

He placed a short rein on his temper. He was rarely angry, but right now, he wanted to fling one of the smug Ming dogs on the mantelpiece into the fire. “I’m twenty-seven.”

She released an impatient huff. “Well, I’m only nineteen. I’m definitely too young to settle for second best.”

“I hardly think becoming the Duchess of Sedgemoor counts as second best,” he said frigidly, wondering just where his childhood friend had gone.

Pen sighed as if she understood his turmoil. “It is when the duke offers only a lukewarm attachment.”

Resentment tightened his gut. He didn’t want to be understood. He hoped like hell she hadn’t noticed his bristling sexual awareness. Having Pen recognize his unwilling desire just as she sent him away with a flea in his ear seemed the final humiliation.

“Would you rather I lied?” he growled.

She winced as though he’d hit her. “Even if you lied, I wouldn’t believe you, Cam. I’ve known you too long. And you set your mind against love long ago.”

He struggled for a reasonable tone. Blustering would only make her dig her heels in. The encounter verged dangerously close to a quarrel. “Pen, think of the advantages.”

Her jaw set in an obstinate line. “Right now, aside from the obvious fact of your riches, I can’t see any.”

His appeal to her worldly interests disappointed her. 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’t imagine a fairytale 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.