What A Duke Dares. Anna Campbell

       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.

      The groping hands stilled. The angry roar faded to silence. The attack had lasted seconds, but it had felt like a lifetime.

      Another gunshot and the horde fell away like a tide withdrawing down the beach.

      “Get away from her.”

       Cam?

      Astonishment turned Pen to stone. Even after nine years, his voice was familiar. The authoritative baritone caught at the heart that she’d kept on ice since their last meeting.

      Sullenly her assailants retreated, creating a path between Pen and the doorway where her unlikely rescuer stood. Pen sucked in her first full breath in what felt like hours. Sweat, blood, and the reek of her fear tainted the air.

      The tall man wearing an elegant cape and a beaver hat tilted at a rakish angle seemed to belong to a different species from the bandits. Cam carried two horse pistols, a rifle hung over his shoulder and a sword dangled at his hip. Snow brushed his hat and shoulders.

      “Get out and don’t come back.” As he stepped forward, his tone sent a chill oozing down her backbone. “This lady is under my protection.”

      His Italian was as good as hers and this time the thugs understood. Although his arsenal of weaponry undoubtedly spoke more loudly than words.

      One of the men remonstrated about their dead comrade until Cam raised the gun. The fellow skulked off with the rest, the dead man hoisted between them.

      Shaky and ill, Pen extended a trembling hand toward Giuseppe. To her consternation, Cam gripped her arm. Even through the leather glove he wore, she felt the heat of his touch. How could he affect her like this after so long?

      “I’m all right,” she forced past rising gorge.

      “Like hell you are.” His hold tightened.

      If only the room stopped revolving. If only she caught a decent breath. If only she saw something other than Cam’s endlessly disapproving expression and the face of the man she’d shot.

      “I’ve … I’ve never killed anyone before.”

      “Don’t waste your pity.” He sounded livid.

      Wonderingly she stared into his face. That beautiful, sculpted, austere face that still haunted her dreams, no matter how she’d struggled to forget him. “You’re angry with me?” she asked in bewilderment.

      “Damn right I am.” His mouth flattened. “I’d love to take you over my knee and give you a good spanking.”

      “I can’t imagine why,” she said faintly, her voice coming from the end of a long tunnel. Cam’s face became the only fixed point in a reeling world.

      She closed her eyes. Then her stomach gave a nauseating swoop as Cam swept her up in his arms. She managed an incoherent protest before blackness claimed her.

      “Take this.” Fumbling to hold Pen, Cam shoved the horse pistols at the useless cur who had cowered behind her. He firmed his grip on Pen’s motionless body. She was a bonnie fighter. How his heart had leaped when he saw her courage, even while his belly twisted with terror.

      He stared down into her face. The promise of the girl had flowered into the sort of beauty that started wars. He still remembered how disturbed he’d been all those years ago to discover his childhood shadow transformed into a striking woman. Now the long slender body was curved and soft in his arms. Her scent teased him. Something fresh and floral. Warm and womanly. Smoky. A trace of gunpowder, by God.

      Long black hair flowed around her. Outrage threatened to choke him as he recalled those savages tearing at it and pawing her. If he’d had more bullets and some men at his back, he’d have done a damned sight more than chase the brigands away.

      “Fetch the landlord,” he said to the girl he assumed was Pen’s maid. She hunched on the stairway, dark eyes wide as if expecting Cam to take up where the locals left off. She rose and managed a wobbly curtsy before disappearing down a corridor.

      Pen stirred as he laid her carefully upon a wooden bench under a shuttered window. Looking at Pen, a turbulent mix of emotions assailed him. Relief at her survival, of course.