One Little Sin

by Liz Carlyle

  Her hand fisted in the drapery behind her. “With my choice—?” Somehow, she choked out the words. “But I did not have a choice, Alasdair. Don’t you remember? No one asked me what I wanted. No one ever does. And I am growing just a little tired of everyone else deciding what is best for me. I think you know what I mean.”

  Alasdair opened his mouth, then shut it again. He held her gaze warily for a long moment, his hand still braced beyond her shoulder. Esmée willed him to speak—then willed herself to break the silence—but no words came.

  Her choice? What a joke that was. He was her choice, though the realization brought her no joy. She burned to kiss him, or to slap him, or just to tell him to burn in hell. But she did neither. Instead, Sorcha saved her by shrieking with glee and sending a stack of blocks tumbling across the floor.

  It was as if a spell had been broken. Alasdair dropped his gaze and drew away. “I am sorry, Esmée,” he said again. But this time, she hardly knew what he was apologizing for. For wanting her? For not wanting her? Or something else entirely? Despite all her grand talk of wanting a life of her own, Esmée suddenly felt very young, and very inexperienced.

  Alasdair had crossed the room to survey the damage. “Well done, minx!” he said, his voice composed. “How many did you have? Shall I count them?”

  “Count dem,” Sorcha agreed, pointing imperiously at the disarray.

  He counted aloud, Sorcha repeating the numbers after him. “Eleven!” he finished as he restacked them. “What a great many blocks that is! And what a clever girl you are.”

  “Clever!” said Sorcha, knocking them down again.

  Alasdair lifted her chin with one finger and swiftly kissed her atop the head. Then he stood and held Esmée’s gaze, his expression guarded now. “I must go,” he murmured. “Indeed, I did not mean to stay at all. May I return for Sorcha in two hours’ time?”

  Esmée focused her gaze on a point somewhere beyond his shoulder. “Yes, of course,” she agreed. “Whatever is convenient.”

  He picked up his hat and stick, which he’d left beside the chair. “In two hours, then,” he said with a curt bow. “Thank you. I shall let myself out.”

  And before she could think of anything haughty and dismissive to say, he had vanished.

  Chapter Eight

  In which Sir Alasdair gives Advice to the Lovelorn

  Sir Alasdair MacLachlan stormed out of Lady Tatton’s house and down the street without any explanation to his coachman, who stood by his horses’ heads, watching his master’s backside as he strode off in the direction of Piccadilly.

  Along the streets, the morning’s costermongers were departing with their carts and barrows, giving way to the press of carriages which conveyed the aristocracy to their morning calls, and the shouts of newsboys as they hawked their lurid tales. A stabbing in Southwark. Rumors of Wellington’s resignation. Another damned riot some damned place. Alasdair ignored it all.

  Damn it, how dare she! How dare that mere chit of a girl make him question his own judgment! How dare she make him fear he’d made such a stupid, revocable decision! And how dare she look so damned beautiful and so damned angry, all in the same breath?

  To his left, down an alley, someone tossed a bucket of water from a garret window. Somewhere, church bells were ringing. A disheveled young blade in a half-buttoned waistcoat lifted his top hat, greeting Alasdair by name as they brushed past one another. Alasdair pressed on, oblivious to the grind of daily life even as he shouldered through it.

  Yes, damn and damn and damn her! Esmée Hamilton had become the bane of his existence; an existence he’d once thought comfortable and uncomplicated. Well, by God, it was neither now. Perhaps it never had been. And now that the scales had been lifted from his eyes; now that he began to comprehend the sheer triviality of the life he’d been living, he had to do something—for Sorcha’s sake, if not his own. He had to think about the future and stop obliterating life’s nothingness with cheap pleasure and costly improvidence. It was going to require an awful lot of effort, something Alasdair did not normally exert.

  At the corner of Mount Street, he turned on impulse toward Hyde Park, hunching his shoulders against the sharp autumn air. He had not thought to bring his greatcoat. Indeed, he had not thought at all. If he had considered for one moment the folly of his errand to Grosvenor Square, he would have sent someone else. Wellings. Hawes. Anyone could have accompanied Sorcha in the carriage.

  It was a short walk in an ill wind, but he ignored the blasts which kept gusting down his coat collar. Indeed, it felt almost invigorating to be cold. He felt as if he’d been caught in a hot, emotional rush for weeks now. Ever since Esmée Hamilton, damn her, had inveigled her way into his home and his heart. A curricle came tooling down Park Lane, harnesses jangling. He jerked back onto the pavement and watched it roll past, its wheels flinging up bits of mud and manure. It was not an especially close call, but it reminded him yet again of the hazards which seemingly surrounded him.

  Once inside the park, he headed directly to the bench near the Serpentine; the very bench where he and Esmée had sat on the dreadful day of Sorcha’s accident. The day everything had changed. And nothing had changed. Absently, he prodded at the turf with his shoe, and to his shock, saw a pearl in the matted grass beneath. It was filthy. He picked it up, rolled it between his fingers, then dropped it into his pocket anyway. A keepsake. A reminder, perhaps, that he’d best be keeping his wits about him.

  No, he’d had no business going to Lady Tatton’s. But damn it, he had wanted to see those pearls around Esmée’s neck. He had wanted her to wear them every evening as she was wined and dined by the highest of the haut monde. He had wanted to take a secret pleasure in knowing that it was his gift which encircled her throat, even as other men drank in her quiet beauty. It was a small, pathetic thing, to be sure. But he had wished it nonetheless.

  Well, it did not matter. She was not going to wear them. For whatever reason. He watched dispassionately as a gull wheeled over the Serpentine, piercing the air with its forlorn cry. The bird had likely been blown about by last night’s squall and was now just a little lost. Alasdair knew the feeling. He thrust his hand into his pocket, and felt about for the comfort of his little pearl.

  Esmée was sorry when Alasdair’s coachman rang the bell two hours later and asked for Sorcha. He carried the child down to the waiting carriage and handed her through the open door. From the gloomy depths, Alasdair reached forward to take her, the familiar signet ring on his left hand catching the midday sun as he did so.

  He did not acknowledge Esmée’s presence in any way. Indeed, he did not even lean forward far enough to reveal his face. She felt the warm weight of tears behind her eyes and spun around, ruthlessly shutting the door. The situation felt suddenly so ugly to her, as if she and Alasdair were some miserable married couple trotting a beloved child back and forth because they were too antagonistic to live beneath the same roof.

  After brooding on it for a time, she was mercifully distracted by an afternoon filled with surprises, some more pleasant than others. The first was a bouquet of yellow roses from Mr. Nowell, along with a note asking her to drive with him in the park the following afternoon. The second was an invitation from Miss Smathers to accompany her and her brother to an exhibit of new landscapes at the Royal Academy.

  She was penning acceptances to both when her aunt returned from Madame Panaut’s with a bandbox containing a beautiful dress of dark, bronze-colored satin.

  “It perfectly matches your hair!” her aunt declared. “Oh, I knew it would! I asked Madame to make it up as a surprise.”

  Esmée fingered the exquisite fabric. “Aunt, you are too kind.”

  But Lady Tatton brushed aside the remark. “Now, we have only to get it fitted, and you may wear it to the theater next Wednesday.”

  “To the theater?”

  Lady Tatton smiled knowingly. “We have been invited to share Lady Kirton’s box,” she said. “And I am most keen to go. She has invited La
dy Wynwood and her son. I wish to see what that young man is made of.”

  “But the theater?” said Esmée again.

  “Well, it is not as if we’re to see a farce,” said her aunt. “We’re to see The Wicket Gate, an adaptation of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a most upright and edifying work.”

  Esmée thought it sounded deadly dull. She was also reluctant to spend an evening with Wynwood and his mother. Even the ten minutes she had spent strolling on his arm after dinner in Lady Gravenel’s withdrawing room had severely taxed her conversational skills. She had been unable to keep from imagining what Alasdair might have told Wynwood about her. Then there was that embarrassing memory of her outburst in the dining room not so many weeks ago.

  Dear heaven. She had called Mr. MacLachlan a midge-brained maundrel, and told Lord Wynwood he had the manners of pig. The latter had not been true. He had been the only one of the three gentlemen not to behave as if she and Sorcha were pieces of furniture, to be discussed, and even quarreled over, as if they had no feelings of their own. And afterward, he had been perfectly pleasant. Why did it trouble her now?

  At Lady Gravenel’s, Wynwood had tried to entertain her. He had asked after Sorcha, and told her a funny story about his boyhood in Buckinghamshire, and about some of his less scandalous adventures with the jaded-looking Lord Devellyn and the brothers MacLachlan. But just when Esmée felt she might grow at ease in his company, she had noticed the way Lady Wynwood’s keen eyes kept following the two of them around the room.

  “Why, Esmée!” Lady Tatton’s voice jerked her back to the present. “What have you here?”

  She turned to see her aunt standing by the writing desk. “Oh, invitations,” she answered. “I thought I should accept both.”

  Lady Tatton fanned Miss Smathers’s card back and forth. “Now, why do I wonder if this invitation was sent at someone else’s behest?” she teased. “Perhaps Mr. Smathers?”

  Esmée smiled. “I daresay you are right,” she admitted. “At least poor Mr. Nowell had the nerve to send his own.”

  Lady Tatton plucked it from the desk. “Riding in the park with Nowell!” she chirped. “I think you should accept, my dear. He’s too monotonous to marry, but the connection cannot hurt.”

  Just then, the butler entered, carrying a silver salver with two cards. “A lady and a gentleman to see you, ma’am.”

  Lady Tatton tossed down the invitation and snatched up the cards. “Oh, lud, ’tis Wynwood! And his mother!” Her head jerked up. “Quick! We must receive them in the drawing room!”

  At Esmée’s confused hesitation, Lady Tatton seized her by the elbow and dragged her toward the door. “In two minutes, Grimond! Oh, dear, Esmée! Is that a smudge on your dress? Here, take my handkerchief. Dust it off. Quick! Quick! Now, stand very straight, if you please. Height becomes you.”

  Esmée followed her into the parlor and stood very straight. “But why are they here now, if we are to go to the theater together on Wednesday?”

  She did not have to wonder long. Lady Wynwood, a tall, slender reed of a woman, hastened into the drawing room in a rustle of silk and kissed Lady Tatton’s cheeks. Lord Wynwood made his bow to Esmée, a bemused half smile on his face.

  “Oh, Rowena!” said Lady Wynwood, clasping her chest. “The most dreadful thing! Cook has come down with that quinsy which is going round!”

  “Oh! Oh, my poor dear!” Lady Tatton seized her hand and patted it.

  “You don’t know the half!” she wailed. “I’ve a dinner party set for Monday! Oh, will you give me the instructions for that poultice you mentioned last night?”

  “The boiled onion wrapped about the throat? But of course.” Lady Tatton went to a small desk in the corner, and Lady Wynwood followed. “Now, it must be very hot,” said the former, pulling out a sheet of letter paper. “Hot enough to draw the poison, mind! But not hot enough to blister.”

  Esmée smiled at Lord Wynwood and motioned toward the chairs which flanked the hearth. “Will you sit down, my lord, whilst this terrible tragedy is averted?”

  Wynwood’s blue eyes flashed with merriment. “Miss Hamilton, I do like your sense of humor,” he said. “I think it was the first thing I noticed about you.”

  Esmée tossed him a skeptical glance. “How perfectly astonishing,” she remarked. “I should have thought it was my habit of having histrionic outbursts in front of people I hardly know.”

  He threw his head back and laughed again. The two ladies at the writing desk turned round to stare. “I think you make my point, Miss Hamilton,” he answered. “Your sense of humor is perfectly irrepressible, even when you’re in a temper.”

  “Oh, I was very angry that day,” she admitted.

  “It is not the norm for you, I am sure,” he went on. “I think you are probably a very good-natured person at heart. God knows Merrick could provoke a saint, and Alasdair is almost as bad.”

  “I try to maintain a positive outlook, Lord Wynwood,” she said. “Though it has been hard of late.”

  His face fell. “You miss your sister, do you not?” he answered. “I can understand that. She is such a little angel.”

  “Actually, she is an utter hellion.” Esmée smiled tightly. “But I miss her anyway. Desperately. Until now, I have never been away from her. It has been harder than I expected.”

  “Ah, my sympathies, Miss Hamilton,” said Wynwood. “Your predicament is a difficult one. Perhaps I can help take your mind off your troubles for one evening. I understand Lady Kirton has invited you and your aunt to attend the theater with us on Wednesday. Dare I hope that you will join us?”

  “Yes, I believe we mean to,” she said. “Though I confess an unfamiliarity with the play.”

  Wynwood smiled dryly. “The Wicket Gate?” he said. “I believe it is designed to elevate our morals. I only hope that mine do not crack under the pressure.”

  Just then, Lady Tatton closed the desk drawer and began folding the paper. Lord Wynwood rose. “I must go,” he said. “Mamma is having one of her fragile days. I have offered her my arm for the afternoon.”

  “How good of you,” said Esmée.

  Again, he flashed his bemused smile. “Sometimes a man must own his responsibilities,” he said. “Whether he wishes to or not.”

  In a few short moments, Lord and Lady Wynwood were saying their good-byes and promising to see them on Wednesday. “There!” said Lady Tatton, as Grimond pulled shut the drawing room door. “I thought that went very well.”

  “You thought what went very well?”

  Lady Tatton drew back a pace. “Oh, you do not for one moment believe that nonsense about the onion, do you?”

  Esmée blinked. “Should I not?”

  Her aunt patted her gently on the arm. “Ten to one, the cook has nothing but a sniffle,” she said. “Did you not see how Lady Wynwood eyed your attire? My draperies and decor? Even the cut of poor Grimond’s coat? Next she’ll be rubbing my silver to see if it’s plated. No, she wished to catch us off guard. Lady Wynwood is beginning the vetting process.”

  Esmée was aghast. “The vetting process?”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Lady Tatton. “She wishes to reassure herself that you—indeed, that we—are good enough for her son.”

  Esmée was good enough, at the very least, to go riding the following afternoon with Mr. Nowell, who shocked her by arriving in Grosvenor Square in a dashing new cabriolet with a pair under the pole. Perhaps she had misjudged the young politician? She had initially believed him earnest, but dull as ditchwater.

  Unfortunately, on closer acquaintance, she realized his earnestness was intact, and bordered on pomposity. On the way to the park, he treated her to a rant about Wellington’s foot-dragging over parliamentary reform. As they drove along Rotten Row, the topic turned to his traitorous support of the Catholics. Apparently, the end of English civilization as they knew it was upon them, and it was all the Prime Minister’s fault.

  Esmée, who had more than a little sympathy for the Catholics, did not bothe
r to ask Mr. Nowell’s political view on England’s treatment of its more northerly neighbor. Their opinions on that subject would most almost certainly diverge, and Mr. Nowell, she had decided, was not worth the argument. But after tooling the length of the park, he surprised her by dropping the subject of politics altogether and asking if she would like to see his new house.

  “Not that it is quite mine yet,” he admitted almost shyly. “Indeed, it isn’t even finished.”

  Esmée was intrigued. “How far away is it?”

  “Not far at all,” he said. “Near Chelsea.”

  Esmée agreed with alacrity, though she wasn’t perfectly sure where Chelsea was. After scarcely two months in London, she had grown weary of trotting round the same old streets and parks, and waving to the same silly people.

  The streets leading away from Hyde Park were not crowded, and Nowell set his horses at a surprisingly good clip. Esmée clapped one hand on her hat and sat back to enjoy the drive. On the outer fringes of Belgravia, they began to see beautiful new mansions in various stages of construction. “My house is farther on,” Nowell said, as the glorious white edifices breezed past.

  Soon the white mansions vanished. Mr. Nowell made several turns, and they began to pass an occasional open field, tidy church, or quaint manor house—sometimes even a row of shops; the odds and ends, Esmée supposed, of little villages destined to be swallowed up by greater London. Eventually, terraced facades of brick came into view. These houses looked a little like those in Mayfair, but more modern and more imposing. After passing along several finished dwellings, Mr. Nowell turned into what was soon to become, so far as Esmée could surmise, an elegant close.

  The dusty, cobbled space was abuzz with activity. Men wielding shovels, hammers, and trowels were everywhere. In one corner, two surveyors were setting up tripods. Farther along the close sat a cart laden with mortar, a dray stacked with brick, and even a glossy black curricle with a groom carefully attending it. Nowell pointed across the close to a soaring edifice of brick-and-marble glory. The house appeared complete from the exterior, but was surrounded by piles of stone and dirt on one side and an incomplete foundation on the other.