The Deadliest Sin

by Caroline Richards

  “Yes, of course, Faron’s interest in all things scientific and mathematical,” conceded Beaumarchais drolly, secretly bored by the discussion. “Although, of course, one might add Aristotle’s three dramatic unities to the list. This business is a drama, after all,” he drawled, somewhat eager to demonstrate his erudition in the classical tradition. One day soon, Lowther would regret his unfortunate tendency for underestimation.

  Lowther eyed him speculatively. “As for myself, I cannot help but recall King Solomon in Ecclesiastes—‘a three-ply cord is not easily severed.’”

  “Ordinarily, I would not associate Faron with the Bible.”

  Lowther ignored the remark. “Antiquities then,” he said. “There are the last three labors of Hercules.”

  “Generally considered metaphors about death,” added Beaumarchais helpfully.

  Lowther looked away for a moment, lost in thought, before his head snapped up to meet Beaumarchais’s gaze. “The greatest challenge always remains in interpreting Faron’s motivations.”

  “Never entirely clear, in my experience,” said Beaumarchais, wondering abstractly how long the pastries would last before losing their crispness. “To summarize, then” he began somewhat portentously, “you wish for me to arrange the three challenges for Strathmore’s entertainment.”

  “For Faron’s entertainment, more precisely.”

  “Of what nature, might I ask, although I can surmise, given the general ambiance at Eccles House.”

  “The first must involve a woman,” said Lowther abruptly. “To test Strathmore’s loyalty to the Woolcott girl for whom he has apparently risked much.”

  “Easily accommodated.” Felicity Clarence would be more than eager to tread the boards, particularly where the virile Strathmore was concerned. “And secondly?”

  “The abandoned chalk mines. Arrange for an accident,” he said enigmatically. “Let us see how crafty Strathmore truly is when confronted with elaborate tunnels and grottoes going down three hundred feet.”

  “And should he survive—what is the third herculean challenge?”

  Lowther clasped his hands over his walking stick, his eyes narrowing. “That’s where Faron truly demonstrates his unique genius.” He paused, watching Beaumarchais’s plump fingers momentarily stay over his champagne flute, an answering glint in his eye.

  “Do tell,” he asked softly.

  Lowther gave him a long look surrendering each bit of information slowly rather than simply offering the facts. “It’s quite brilliant,” he said distinctly, aware that he was keeping Beaumarchais from his pastry.

  The Frenchman leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure,” he murmured.

  After several more moments, Lowther relented. “Faron intends to give Strathmore an incredible opportunity.”

  “Not the bloody Ptolemy maps he so desperately wants, surely.”

  “Much too simple, Beaumarchais,” continued Lowther with something akin to admiration in his voice. “Faron intends to give Strathmore the opportunity to kill him.”

  Beaumarchais’s lips were pursed in an expression Lowther often saw when he was confused, which was often enough. “Truly? Isn’t that a trifle perilous even for Faron?”

  “He will have his reasons,” said Lowther, gripping the handle of his walking stick. “But then again, we are not meant to understand. And we never will.”

  Chapter 16

  Alexander Strathmore swore to himself that he would not leave Julia’s side again. She was far enough away from him as it was.

  “She’s quite the piece,” said Robertson, glancing up from his cards to impale Strathmore with a greedy, covetous look. “And quite the delightful handful judging by our last meeting at Eccles House. Although truth be told, she doesn’t appear worse for wear given her brush with death.”

  “Brush with death, indeed.” Simon Wadsworth leered in agreement, tossing several coins onto the pile accumulating in the center of their table. Strathmore grunted something suitable in response and matched the wager wondering about the nature of his gamble in allowing Julia to accompany him to Eccles House in what he realized would be a final reckoning with Faron. However, he knew enough about her to know that resistance was futile. Julia would have made her own way to the estate, with or without him.

  Strathmore stared at the bald-pated man with the heavy jowls opposite, very much aware that Wadsworth’s beady gaze had settled with typical intensity on Julia. Had he chosen to interpret his host’s thoughts at the moment, he might have found himself lurching from his chair and wiping the slavering leer from the man’s face. Christ, he was besotted, convinced that no man could rest his eyes on Julia without entertaining lascivious thoughts. After days spent in splendid seclusion at his London town house, he was still in feverish thrall to the woman, held hostage by a stinging combination of love and lust that, to his continual wonderment, he had never before experienced.

  He followed Wadsworth’s gaze as he had been wont to do since entering the salon at Eccles House in the late afternoon with Julia on his arm, only to see her spirited away to another side of the vast room where she sat on a divan surrounded by at least five male guests. She was wearing a simple, square-necked cream silk gown that bared her arms, nipped her waist, and fanned in a sweep of flounce at her feet. As was her custom, she wore no jewels, and her hair was simply gathered to the back of her head, the chestnut waves glowing in the afternoon light. The pureness of her profile was enhanced by the unsettling fullness of her lips and thick crescents of her lashes. She shimmered more radiantly than the glittering diamonds encircling the neck of Felicity Clarence, who was watching Strathmore with predatory intent.

  He ignored the sultry actress with a heaviness in his chest as he watched Julia converse in quiet tones with the men looming over her on the edge of the divan. She appeared genuinely immune to the intense regard and the unrelenting attention. But Strathmore knew she was as tightly wound as he, prepared to find answers to the questions that had plagued her for close to a lifetime. It was the sadness he had always sensed lurking beneath her surface. He would have done anything to take the hurt away—he expelled a short breath—or to hurt Faron.

  All the more reason for the sojourn in London where he had deliberately cut them off from painful realities, enveloping them in the reassuring warmth of a lover’s dream. Losing Rowena had all but sent Julia spiraling into a bottomless chasm. It was enough that she had recovered from her self-imposed isolation and from the muteness that threatened to take her away from him more completely than Faron ever could. They had moved closer to finding the answers to painful questions but Strathmore realized if he pressed too hard, Julia could slip away again. It had become a matter of taking time together, while waiting for what they knew would come—a return to the world of Faron’s making.

  Strathmore tossed in his cards, watching the other two men spreading their losing hands on the table. “Damned lucky,” muttered Wadsworth, his gaze again straying meaningfully to Julia. She was being helped from the divan by a number of eager male hands. Wadsworth’s words rang with desire as they all watched Julia maneuver around the ornate occasional table, each movement seeming to bring the curves of her breasts into view beneath the glow of the afternoon light.

  Responding to a riposte, Julia laughed low and Strathmore’s entire body went rigid in a primal reaction that was pure possessiveness. She was his. He had known the truth all along, from the moment he had first touched her. The realization astounded and calmed him, pushing every other earthly consideration he might have had into the ground. The Ptolemy map, the Nile, his ambitions—none of it mattered if he could not have Julia Woolcott. Sometimes life was astonishingly simple.

  Strathmore quickly pocketed his winnings and shoved his chair from the table. “Gentlemen. I believe it’s time to repair to our rooms and prepare for the evening’s festivities.”

  Wadsworth guffawed. “I’m sure you have some interesting ways to prepare for our supper, Strathmore. See to it this time, would you, tha
t our dear Julia is in the proper frame of mind to share her bounteous charms with the rest of us.”

  Not bloody likely, Strathmore thought but gave a patently false smile as he turned to reach Julia who was making her way toward him across the shining parquet floor. Although she stood straight and unbowed, he was aware when she took his proffered arm that her expression held a touch of gratitude and relief. Her fingers lingered on his arm and he resisted the urge to keep them beneath his forever. Her smile was as forced as his.

  His gut wrenched like a man obsessed. In fact—because all logic had not abandoned him—he knew himself to be not simply a man obsessed but a man in love. Wordlessly, Strathmore and Julia deliberately slowed their steps, each moment agony as they made their way up the grand staircase of Eccles House to their rooms, eager as always to be alone. As soon as the heavy doors shut behind them, he placed one hand on her shoulder, on the soft skin where her sleeve ended. She barely breathed when he slid the other hand around her waist, flat against her abdomen, pressing himself against her back.

  She trembled and he drew her more deeply against him, pressing his mouth to the side of her neck, breathing in her warmth.

  “Julia.” His own voice was unrecognizable to him, harsh. “I love you. I need you to return to Montfort. Nothing else matters to me but your safety.”

  Her waist expanded against the circle of his arm. “You know I can’t do that. Please don’t ask me to.” Her palms smoothed over the length of his arms until his fingers entwined with hers, still pressed against her gown.

  Turning her slowly, he lifted her face into the waning afternoon light. “I made a mistake in allowing you to accompany me. I don’t want to make an even bigger one.”

  Her hands smoothed over his, then up the corded lengths of his forearms beneath his afternoon coat. “You need me here.”

  “I need you safe.” His thumbs brushed in gentle strokes over the soft skin of her arms.

  “No—listen.” She could barely restrain the heat flushing her cheeks. “I am the one that Faron wants.” Her fingers dug into his shoulders.

  “Exactly my point.” What did Faron want with the Woolcotts? Strathmore was not about to let Julia find out alone. That last meeting with Lowther was the turning point and Faron would not take kindly to Strathmore’s demands. Not that he gave a damn anymore.

  Julia interrupted his wayward thoughts. “Without me, you will get nowhere.”

  “That certain, are you? Are you prepared to endure another one of Wadsworth’s eccentric evenings in the hope that the proceedings will somehow lead to Faron?” His jaw tightened. If so much as one man laid a hand on Julia…

  “Don’t look so grim. I don’t think we should do battle over this, Strathmore.”

  “You should have nothing to do with Faron. I’ll handle it.” He straightened away from her suddenly, his features so hardened she drew back in the arms that tightened immediately around her waist. She placed a hand on his cheek, sensing the tension gathering beneath the tightening of his jaw.

  “You will be here with me every moment.” It was a weak attempt to pacify him.

  “You overestimate my abilities.”

  “The intrepid explorer, Lord Alexander Francis Strathmore? Not possible.” She stroked the strong planes of his shoulder, veering in another direction in an attempt at persuasion. “You can hardly participate in Wadsworth’s weekend without an appropriate escort.”

  His smoldering gaze was level with hers. His eyes narrowed. “One of my many worries. I witnessed the near riot your presence caused in the salon this afternoon.”

  “Hardly. And stop being so possessive,” she said lightly.

  “You have yet to see possessive,” he growled.

  “After all, your own reputation in these matters, I gather, is hardly pristine,” she reminded him pointedly. “Your history with the fairer sex is well known, according to Felicity Clarence at least, who at our last meeting here regaled the drawing room with evidence of your excesses. As I recall, she could not wait to learn more about that rather colorful translation of the text we consulted just the other night.”

  “I never said that I was a monk,” he said, his mood darkening. “However, all this discussion is beside the point. You should leave Eccles House now. It’s simple enough to say you have taken ill or that we have had a disagreement.”

  “Please be reasonable.”

  “Not possible.”

  “You are ridiculously stubborn.”

  “I was thinking the same of you.”

  “Yet you still love me?”

  “Strangely enough,” he said drily, “more than ever.”

  “You adore a challenge after all.”

  “Must be true.” It was an attempt at lightness. “But I don’t believe in placing you directly in the line of danger. The only reason you are even here with me in this room and this house is because I didn’t trust you to not slip away and follow me here. You have an annoying streak of independence.”

  Julia’s chin rose. “This is where it all began and where it will all end. You have said as much. I have as much right, if not more, to be here. For Meredith and for Rowena.” She refused to let her voice break. “I must do this. I can do this.” She amended quickly, “We can do this.”

  He shook his head in disbelief.

  “I love you.” She had never said the words before and he wondered if her desperation was making her brave. “If you think that I would leave you alone here…We face Faron together.”

  “Even if it is a trap?” It most likely was, and one set off at his own behest, Strathmore knew only too well, recalling his last meeting with Lowther and Beaumarchais in the carriage.

  “If we truly love one another,” she said with conviction, “we are stronger together.”

  It wasn’t her logic that defeated him but rather but her wide eyes lifted to his. Her fingers began working the silk covered buttons of his vest with a growing confidence. Unable to resist, he bent low and kissed the soft skin of her neck, then freed her hair with a slip of his fingers, releasing the heavy curls to her shoulders. He filled his lungs with the fragrance, watching as she drew her cap sleeve bodice down over her arms as he spoke. “This isn’t going to work—distracting me.”

  “I have learned much these past few weeks,” she said, sweet and provocative simultaneously. Images unfurled in his mind, heating his blood. Strathmore lowered his eyes, as her bodice slipped over her breasts to reveal her tightly laced corset. The flush on her cheeks served to sharpen his appetite. He kept his hands on her bare upper arms, in a show of resistance, redirecting his attention to the sleek slope of her shoulder and beyond to the opulent room, its four-poster bed hung with rich, velvet draperies.

  The husky whisper was close to his ear. “I am not leaving Eccles House.”

  He would not force her, could not force her. Particularly at the moment when she kissed his lips, then his eyes, and then his lips again as she trailed her hand down his stomach. Helpless for the first time in his life, he took her hand in his and drew it lower. His breath halted when her fingers closed around him to find the fastening of his trousers. Once she had him in her hands, she slid from his arms to her knees, between his legs. Under heavy lidded eyes, he saw her sprawled at his feet, half naked, the soft heap of a silk skirt hiked up, leaving a span of slender thigh exposed amidst a flurry of pantalettes, a hint of bottom sheathed in the thinnest cotton.

  The weight of his erection, iron hard and straining for her in the cool smoothness of her hands, almost proved his undoing. Her mouth teased him, pushed him into surrender, toward sensual oblivion. A roar hummed in his ears, warping all reason in a rush of blood and a tangle of heavy silken hair wrapped in his hands. Strathmore’s last thoughts were of a pyrrhic victory with its devastating costs going not to the vanquished but to the victor.

  In the Eccles House dining room a scant two hours later, a moody and smoldering Strathmore sensed the turn of conversation before Julia could possibly respond with anything
resembling equanimity. Her gown, if one could call it that, set his teeth on edge, a diaphanous, flesh-toned sheath that revealed more than it hoped to conceal. Another testament to Wadsworth’s impeccable taste, he thought darkly. Julia’s hair had been returned to a serene knot, only a faint flush to her skin evidence of the tumultuous hours they had spent in their rooms before returning to the dining hall.

  It rankled Strathmore that he had lost. Replaying and then brutally forcing the more recent heated moments with Julia from his memory, he cleared the bitterness from his palate with a swallow of red wine from a heavy lead crystal glass. Through a break in the sea of candlelight, he watched Julia turn to Beaumarchais at her right, before lifting a forkful of pheasant to her lips. The Frenchman had arrived late for dinner in a white cutaway evening ensemble and haughty demeanor. As though that was not enough, Strathmore glanced at the woman opposite Julia. Felicity Clarence was oozing barely concealed envy for the younger woman who seemed, inexplicably, to be robbing her of center stage.

  To Strathmore’s jaundiced eye, Miss Clarence was as indistinguishable from the many women who populated the demi-mondaine, spending their time either on stage or on their backs for remuneration. The hypocrisy of English society never failed to astound him, all the more since his self-imposed exile. It appeared that at any moment, Felicity’s opulent white flesh would snap the elaborate bows and hooks of her crimson red taffeta dress as she directed hard glances at Julia. As expected, Felicity waited until Julia had taken the first bite of her repast to launch her attack.

  “My dear girl,” she began, leaning slightly over the table with a quick slanted glance in Strathmore’s direction, so sly he might have missed it. Taking another draught of wine, It occurred to him the performance might be for his benefit more than anyone else’s.