Title Sinful Tales of Desirable Ladies

by Lucinda Nelson

  But because he didn’t really have visitors anymore. He told himself that he preferred to be alone, so that he could keep people at arm’s length.

  They chatted for a while longer. Rachel complimented the food and asked Maggie a little about Alicia.

  “Is she still running off everyday?”

  “Less so lately,” Maggie answered. “Actually, I haven’t spent much time with her in these last few days. She has been with her father.” As Maggie said this, she looked at Henry.

  “Is that true, Henry?” Rachel asked, with clear astonishment.

  Henry nodded slowly as he chewed.

  “That’s wonderful. Is this your influence, Miss Riley?”

  “Not in the least,” Maggie said.

  Henry didn’t correct her on this matter, because she didn’t want Rachel to suspect that a governess had been having such a profound influence over him. What would she think if she knew the truth?

  “And her manner? Still mischievous? I do love that about her. So much like Henry.”

  Maggie quirked a brow and looked at Henry. “Mischievous?”

  Rachel laughed. “Do you find that hard to believe? I suppose he’s become rather serious lately, but as a child, Henry was extremely mischievous. It drove our father to distraction.”

  “I am quite sure that Miss Riley doesn’t want to hear about our childhood,” Henry interjected.

  “On the contrary,” Maggie said, as she started to smile. “I’d love to.”

  Absolutely thrilled, Rachel launched into a long narrative detailing each of her favorite memories of Henry’s mischief. His face warmed as she spoke, but he didn’t discourage her, simply because Maggie looked so intrigued. She told Maggie about the time that he’d buried some bones from a chicken carcass, which he’d snatched from the kitchen, and tried to convince everyone that he’d discovered an ancient burial ground beneath Radingley. No one had believed him, but he’d had a great deal of fun.

  She also told her about a fight Henry had gotten into with a neighboring lord who’d been unkind to Rachel. “I remember him standing in the drawing room with a purple eye, looking like a sullen warrior. A few years later, I learnt that the boy who’d been unkind had been harboring a secret affection for me. Isn’t that always the way, Miss Riley?”

  Before Maggie answered, Henry said, “Are you not tired, Rachel? You’ve had a long journey.”

  This seemed to remind Rachel of the fact. “Terribly tired,” she said, as if she’d just realized it. “I think I’ll retire for the night, if you don’t mind.”

  Rachel stood as she said this, and Maggie quickly followed suit. “Yes, I’d like to retire too.”

  She was avoiding him. Henry remained seated and stared at her for a moment, before nodding. “Alright,” he said. “Then I bid you both goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Henry,” Rachel said, smiling at him as she passed.

  Maggie followed close behind her, keeping her head low. “Goodnight, my Lord,” she muttered. As she moved passed him, Henry reached out and touched her wrist. He didn’t stop her. It was just the softest glide of his fingers along the back of her hand.

  Their eyes met, and she hesitated in her stride. “Goodnight, Miss Riley” he said, in a deep and velvety voice.

  He saw her swallow, before continuing to bed.

  Chapter 18

  Miss Magdalene Riley, Daughter of the Baron of Brambleheath

  It was all a terrible mess as far as Maggie was concerned. Having spent the evening dining with Henry and his sister, Maggie was pleased to be going to bed.

  His sister seemed lovely, and Maggie had enjoyed her company, but she’d hated being around Henry after the kiss they’d shared. She was kicking herself for kissing him at all, but her impulses had run away with her.

  She’d felt the surprise in the pliancy of his lips. She knew that he hadn’t been expecting it. If anything, he surely thought that she hated him. And that wasn’t exactly untrue, which only contributed to how confusing their circumstances had become. Henry had done little else but hurt and frustrate her.

  Then why did she imagine having him kiss her again? Again and again, and to never stop. That night, she dreamt that he did just that. But it wasn’t like the tender kiss they’d shared by the lake. In her dream, they tangled together in a wild passion, gripping each other like they’d die if they didn’t.

  She woke from the dream in a sweat, feeling hot all over. She threw the covers back and went to the sink, where she splashed her face with cold water. “Calm down, Maggie,” she whispered to herself. “He’s just a man.”

  Maggie took a seat on the edge of her bed and expelled a slow breath. She tried to remind herself of all the things she disliked about Henry. His temper, his surliness, his lack of humor.

  The trouble was that Maggie wasn’t convinced anymore that those things were even real. She’d seen the smallest glimpses of contradiction in him; moments of tenderness with his daughter, of warmth and passion. She was even sure that she’d seen amusement in his face at times.

  She didn’t want to like him. She wanted to hang onto all her preconceived notions of him for dear life. But now that she’d seen some glimpse of gentleness in him, she couldn’t forget it. She rose that morning wanting to see him again.

  Maggie considered what she would wear that morning a lot more carefully than usual. She looked at herself in the mirror and swished her skirt gently from side to side.

  Biting into her lower lip, she pinched her cheeks lightly to make them rosier. Before her parents’ deaths, she’d thought herself rather pretty. It was hard to see that now, when she felt so fraught with stress and confusion.

  Sighing softly, she straightened a wrinkle in her skirt and headed out her bedroom door. She wondered if Henry would be with Alicia again today. If the three of them would spend the day together.

  She hoped so.

  But she felt nervous too. She’d kissed her master. She’d stepped so far out of line that he could fire her if he liked, but Maggie didn’t think he would. Though she was shy and embarrassed by her behavior, she thought that Henry had liked it. More than he perhaps cared to admit.

  The moment Maggie stepped into the hallway, she felt a hand ensnare her wrist and yank her into a corner. She half-expected it to be Henry and felt a sudden flutter of excitement.

  She’d told herself that morning that she wouldn’t kiss him again, not before she figured out what was between them. If there was anything at all.

  Because though Henry hadn’t stopped her kissing him, he also hadn’t expressed any real interest. She felt a spark between them, but perhaps that was just in her own mind, entirely of her own making.

  What if he didn’t feel it too? What if he just missed his wife?

  As she thought that, feeling a stir of jealousy, she realized that it wasn’t Henry who’d pulled her aside. It was her brother. “Joseph?” She said, with a frown.

  “Shh,” he admonished her. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Why are we hiding?”

  “What are you doing?” He hissed through his teeth.

  Maggie blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “With Lord Rivers. What are you doing with Lord Rivers?”

  Maggie’s lips parted. She couldn’t imagine how he’d found out. “I don’t know what you mean…”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. I heard about the kiss.”

  It wasn’t possible. They’d been so deep in the grounds, and the lake was extremely secluded. But it was clear by Joseph’s vicious countenance that he wasn’t playing games. He knew.

  “How do you know?” She breathed.

  “The little girl saw you,” he said, less urgently, but she could hear the rage simmering in his voice. “She told her nurse, who has spread the rumor like wildfire.”

  Maggie closed her eyes. Alicia had seen. And now everyone knew. She put her forehead in her hand and squeezed her temples. “I didn’t mean for her to see. It just happened.”

  “It just h
appened? Why didn’t you stop him?”

  She looked up at him again, frowning. “Pardon?”

  “You should have made your position clear the moment you realized his intention.”

  “He didn’t kiss me, Joseph. I kissed him.”

  This seemed to infuriate Joseph even more. “You kissed him? Why the devil would you do that? Are you mad?”

  “I don’t know why I did it,” she confessed. She didn’t tell him about what had happened in the kitchen. She swallowed and looked down at her hands, wringing them together in front of her. “It just happened,” she said again.

  “Do you have any idea what you might have started, Maggie? His reputation-”

  “What about his reputation?” Maggie interjected.

  Joseph paused, looking incredulous. “Don’t you listen to the people here? He’s a womanizer.”

  Maggie’s lips parted, but she didn’t know what to say at first. She shook her head. “All his staff respect him.”

  “They do,” he agreed. “He’s a fair employer, but that doesn’t stop him from having a new woman every week.”

  “I didn’t realize he was courting…” Maggie murmured, feeling her face go pale while she let that sink in.

  “Don’t be naïve. He isn’t courting. And if you think your kiss with him will develop into anything more than further ruin for our family, then you’re a fool.”

  A womanizer.

  Maggie was hardly listening to Joseph anymore. “That’s what he does in London,” she whispered. She felt her eyes burn a little, but she daren’t cry about it. What did it matter anyway? This was a good thing.

  It made up her mind and made things far less complicated. She didn’t even realize until that very moment that she’d been harboring feelings for Henry, and that those feelings were getting in the way of what she could have with Jeremy.

  She tried to tell herself that this news should relieve her. It should make her feel free of those unwelcome feelings for Henry, but instead… she just felt snubbed and stung.

  “There’s more to it than that,” Joseph added. “Why would she leave, Maggie? How many women do you know who’ll leave a good man?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Just that his wife might have had cause. Perhaps he was intimate with other women. Or he was inattentive.”

  Maggie didn’t want to believe it. “I don’t think he’d do that,” she said, but heard the uncertainty in her own voice.

  “That may be so,” Joseph answered. “I’m just saying that even if he did want more – even if he did want to marry you – is it worth the risk? His wife must have left for a reason.”

  Because she was heartless. She couldn’t even entertain the thought that Henry had treated her poorly or been unfaithful. Yes, he had a temper, but he wasn’t that kind of a man. She’d decided that long ago.

  “Lord Crawley is going to propose, Maggie. You said so yourself. Don’t squander this,” Joseph went on, when Maggie was unresponsive.

  Maggie nodded jerkily, but still didn’t answer. She caught Joseph frowning at her. “I know that you like him, Maggie. Perhaps against your better judgement. But none of this is simple. If you make the wrong choice now, it will affect our entire lives.”

  She knew that Joseph understood, despite his conviction. She recalled a time when he’d been so in love with Sarah, their maid, that he’d thought of throwing caution to the wind and just marrying her. But things hadn’t been simple for him either, and he’d known better.

  Maggie wished she knew why she liked Henry. She wished she could say that he was especially charming, but that wasn’t even true. She didn’t think Henry had made any effort to charm her at all.

  But despite being a surly beast, what she felt for him was very real. And it made her think so little of herself. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Don’t let this go any further, or it will ruin you. It will ruin us.”

  She nodded again. “I understand.” Her voice broke a little as she spoke, but her brother didn’t seem to notice. He was too caught up in his own feelings to recognize hers. After all, he wanted nothing more than to protect her and she was making that extremely difficult. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, as she lowered her eyes to the ground.

  The stress in Joseph’s face faded away for a moment, and he gently tipped up her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “I just want you to be safe, Maggie,” he told her, with a softer tone. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  She hadn’t felt so much like a child in years, but she didn’t mind it. It reminded her that they were in this together, when sometimes it felt like stress divided them. But she still had Joseph, even if she had nothing else. She tried to smile and nodded.

  “Good.” Joseph dropped his hand and looked over his shoulder, down the hallway. “When is Lord Crawley coming next?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “He didn’t say. But if Lord Rivers has had a chance to speak to him, he may not come at all.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He doesn’t want me to marry him.”

  “Because he wants you for himself?”

  Her cheeks went pink with shame and she shook her head. “He doesn’t think I’m good enough for him.”

  Joseph’s face reddened, but not with embarrassment. With anger.

  “Don’t be mad, Joe,” she murmured, before he could respond. “He’s right. Given my circumstances, can you blame him?”

  Joseph expelled a long breath and his shoulders slackened. “No,” he admitted. “But if Lord Crawley wants you, he has no right to intervene.”

  “That won’t stop him from doing so.”

  She should have known that the kiss meant nothing to Henry. After all, if he didn’t think her good enough for Jeremy, he certainly didn’t think her good enough for him.

  “I need to get back to work,” Joseph said. “We’ll talk more later.”

  Joseph walked away, but Maggie remained still, with her back against the wall. Her heart felt heavy, and she dreaded seeing Henry, but she knew she couldn’t hide forever.

  Chapter 19

  Lord Henry Rivers, the Earl of Radingley

  Henry was eating breakfast with his sister. It had been three days since her arrival, during which time Henry hadn’t seen much of Maggie at all. Whenever Henry approached her during her time with Alicia, with the obvious intention of joining them, Maggie would make an excuse to leave. Typically she’d say something like, “I’ll give you some time with your daughter, my Lord.”

  In fact, all of Henry’s efforts to see her – and perhaps speak to her about his revived memory of what had happened in the kitchens – would end with her disappearing. And that was easy to do with Rachel around, who demanded a great deal of Henry’s attention.

  “Miss Riley seems nice.”

  Henry looked up from his breakfast when Rachel said this. He chewed slowly as he wondered how best to respond, then shrugged and looked back down at his food. “Alicia seems to like her.”

  “And you?”

  “What?”

  “Do you like her?”

  Henry stopped eating and quirked his brow at his sister. He knew by her tone what she was implying, but he chose to ignore it. “I like her well enough, for a governess.”

  “And what’s wrong with governesses?”

  Henry sighed and shook his head. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “You kept looking at her during dinner the other night.”

  “Now you’re imagining things,” Henry remarked, flippantly, as he picked up his toast.

  “She was looking at you too.”

  She said this just as Henry was about to take a bite of his toast, but her words stopped him in his tracks. “Was she?” He replied, thoughtlessly.

  Slowly, Rachel started to smile. “So you do like her.”

  Henry’s cheeks warmed. He took a bite of his toast and returned his eyes to his paper, trying to look as disinterested as possible. “Why are you i
nterrogating me?”

  “Because I’ve noticed a change.”

  “I’m the same as I’ve always been.”

  “You’re spending more time with Alicia. That’s Miss Riley’s doing, isn’t it?”