I—” Cam began, not sure how to respond. He guessed that his friend meant to charge him with rescuing Pen from her irresponsibility. Although, hell, after a lifetime of friendship, how could he say no?
As if reading Cam’s reluctance, Peter spoke quickly. Or perhaps he knew that he had too few breaths remaining to waste any. His urgency seemed to suppress his cough so he managed complete sentences. “In her last letter, she was in Rome and running out of money. That was a month ago. God knows what’s befallen since.”
“But what can I do?”
“Find her. Bring her back to England. Make sure she’s safe.” Peter regarded Cam like his last hope. Which made it damned difficult to deny him. “Elias will have his hands full inheriting and Harry’s not up to the job, even if I could get him away from the fleshpots.”
Peter forestalled Cam’s suggestion that another Thorne brother could undertake this task. Cam rose to pace the tiny room. “Confound it, Peter. I’ve no authority over Pen. She won’t pay a speck of attention to me.”
“She will. She’s always liked you.”
Not last time they’d met. “I can’t kidnap her.”
Shaking, Peter shoved himself higher against the pillows. His black eyes, so like his sister’s, burned in his ashen face as if all the life concentrated in that blazing stare. “If you have to, you must. I won’t have my sister bouncing all over Europe, called a whore by ignorant pigs who should know better.”
Bloody hell.
His stare unwavering, Peter clawed at the blankets. He gulped for air and gray tinged his skin now that brief vitality faded. “There’s no man I trust more than you. If you’ve ever considered me a friend, if you’ve ever cherished a moment’s affection for my sister, bring Pen home.”
A moment’s fondness for his sister? Aye, there was the rub. Until she’d treated him like an insolent lackey, he’d been fond of Penelope Thorne.
Pausing by the window, he stared into the stormy night. An endless forest of masts ranged against the turbulent sky. It was a night for making deals with the devil. Except in this case, Cam would wager good money that the devil was the woman at the end of the wild goose chase.
He caught his reflection in the glass. He looked like he always did. Calm. Controlled. Cold. The habit of hiding his feelings had become second nature. But he was sorrowing and resentful—and that resentment focused on one troublesome woman. Behind him, hazy in the glass, he saw Peter watching him, suffering stoically through his last hours.
How could Cam refuse? Futile as the quest was. Pen would go her own way, whatever her dying brother asked, whatever pressure her childhood friend placed upon her.
Cam leveled his shoulders. Duty had guided him since he’d been old enough to understand the snide whispers about his mother’s affair with her brother-in-law. Duty insisted that he accept this task, however unwillingly. Slowly he faced his friend. “Of course I’ll do it, Peter.”
And was rewarded by an easing in Peter’s painful tension and a hint of the formerly brilliant smile. The Thornes were a famously handsome family and fleetingly, Cam glimpsed his rakish old companion. “God bless you, Cam.”
God help him, more like.
Val d’Aosta, Italy, February 1828
During nine years of travel, Penelope Thorne had been in more tight spots than she cared to remember. None quite so restricted as this one in the rundown common room of a flea-ridden hostelry high in the Italian Alps.
Battling to steady her hand, she raised her pistol and pretended that facing down a pack of miscreants was an everyday occurrence. Instinct insisted that betraying her fear would only invite rape and robbery—perhaps murder.
A dozen men leered at her. All desperate. All drunk. All drawing courage from their cohorts’ belligerence.
“The first man who moves gets a bullet,” she said in fluent Italian.
Unfortunately the denizens of this godforsaken village spoke some outlandish dialect. Their speech bore little resemblance to the melodious Tuscan that she’d learned in Florence’s salons.
Pen cursed the bad luck and bad weather that stranded her so far from civilization. Behind her, her maid and coachman cowered against the wall. The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen. He was probably in on the plot. He’d looked just as villainous as these thugs.
A heavily whiskered brute swaggered forward, expression contemptuous. Through the blast of incomprehensible patois, she made out the words “one” and “bullet.”
She kept the gun straight, despite crippling fear. “One bullet does a lot of damage.”
His lip curled in disdain and he took another step. She cocked the gun, the sound loud in the fraught silence. “Any nearer and I’ll shoot.”
He proved his scorn by approaching so close that she smelled the stale odor of his hulking body. Her stomach, already churning with dread, revolted and she only just stopped herself from faltering back. Behind him, the others shifted. Whatever the leader said prompted laughter. Laughter that made her skin crawl.
“I warned you.” She forced herself to meet the glittering excitement in his piglike eyes.
Her finger tightened on the trigger and an explosion rent the air. She jerked back and her ears rang. The hot stink of gunpowder filled her nostrils.
“Porca miseria—” He staggered into the gang, who heaved and growled like an angry ocean. A bloody hole punctuated his forehead and astonishment froze his features before his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped motionless.
Dear heaven, he was dead. At her hand.
Pen desperately wanted to be sick. In her twenty-eight years, she’d never killed anyone.
As the rabble coalesced into a menacing unit, she fumbled in her pocket for her second gun. She felt a presence at her shoulder and realized that at last her coachman Giuseppe displayed some backbone. If only he displayed some backbone while carrying a rifle. But his weapons remained in her carriage outside. All he had were his fists.
“Brava, milady.”
The men surged on a wave of rage. Pen raised her pistol with a hand that proved unexpectedly firm. Stinking bodies surrounded her, blocked the air. Cruel hands grabbed her, pinched her breasts. A blow landed hard against her ribs, stealing her breath.
Terror gripped her. She had one bullet left. Was this time to use it?
Giuseppe was somewhere in the melee. She couldn’t help him. She could barely help herself. Gasping and struggling she lifted her gun, bleakly aware that once she shot, she was at the mob’s mercy.
When a gunshot rang out, she first thought she’d fired. Yet the pistol remained cool in her hand.
