What a Duke Dares by Anna Campbell

Author:Anna Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Romance, Georgian, Fiction
ISBN: 9781455557882
Publisher: Forever
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

When Cam passed the blue salon on his way inside from checking his new colt, he heard gusts of feminine laughter. Since his sister’s marriage two years ago, Fentonwyck had been a bachelor establishment, so the sound struck him as unexpected. Pen, to his bitter regret, hadn’t laughed much lately.

Curiosity made him pause. Curiosity and a determination to rescue his wife. If county society descended, having decided that a week was sufficient privacy for the newlyweds, this would be Pen’s first solo encounter with the English upper classes since her return. His wife would be a lamb in a den of wolves.

Cam had spent a lifetime countering spite, starting with savage bullying at Eton over his mother’s adultery. He’d learned the hard way how to handle trouble. His gut knotting with worry, he stepped into the room’s azure and gold splendor. And stopped dead.

The neighbors ranged around the tea table. The Countess of Marley. Lady Greene and her two daughters. The three Misses Moulton-Brent. Lady Gregory Fulham and her spinster sister. All cats to their last breath. All hanging entranced on whatever Pen described in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

She’d been uncharacteristically quiet all week. He almost wondered if he’d married two completely separate women. One by day was prudent and obliging and almost demure—a word he’d never thought to associate with Penelope Thorne. By night, the other Pen was endlessly responsive. It was like living with the perfect wife and the perfect mistress, all wrapped up in one spectacular package. Every man’s dream.

And Cam could hardly endure it.

This new version of his wife confused him, sparked his impatience, obsessed him—which bolstered his impatience. Both with Pen and himself.

He’d attempted to break through to the vibrant woman he’d known in Italy. But she’d greeted his fumbling efforts to establish some ease between them with cool disinterest. Even when he was so far inside her he felt like their blood flowed through a single heart, Pen held herself tantalizingly separate.

The real Pen, the Pen who infuriated and fascinated and challenged him, remained hidden behind those brilliant black eyes. And every breathtaking climax seemed to edge her more out of reach. It was enough to drive a man to drink. Longingly Cam thought of the brandy in his library, even if it was only early afternoon.

While he’d never wanted an emotional connection in his marriage, he had imagined that sharing a home, however large, would result in friendly intimacy. But he felt further from Pen than he had when he’d saved her from the bandits.

Despite this polite estrangement, their sexual encounters transcended his experience. Every time he spilled into her body, he felt like he surrendered part of his soul. He hated to be in thrall to a woman determined to remain elusive. She turned his nights to flame, and his days to mere intervals of waiting before he joined her on that wide bed upstairs.

He felt like a satyr. He felt out of control. He felt like she hovered just beyond his grasp, even when she stirred to his most daring caresses.

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