Engaged in Sin

by Sharon Page

  It was a final command, issued by a gentleman who had sent soldiers into battle. But terror put words on her lips. “I cannot, Your Grace. I can’t return to London.”

  Perhaps her tone made his head jerk up. “Why not?”

  Oh, goodness, what was she doing? Telling the truth, like an utter fool. But she dared not tell him all of it—he would have his servants drag her to the nearest magistrate. No one there would believe her. No one would take the word of a whore. Not one who had been forced to hit her madam with a poker to save the life of an innocent girl and was now considered guilty of murder. She hadn’t meant to do it. She had only wanted to stop her vicious madam from shooting a fourteen-year-old girl. She had meant to hit the pistol from the woman’s hand. But she had killed Madame, and she would be convicted of murder and swing for it.

  “I—I lied to you, Your Grace,” she said shakily. “I’m not a courtesan. I was employed in a brothel and I escaped. If I return to London, I do not doubt the madam of the brothel will find me. Or send a footpad to murder me, as an example to the other girls.” Heavens, how easy it was to lie. When one’s life depended on it.

  “Angel, I doubt she would kill you. I doubt she would be so concerned—”

  “She would.” But Madame could not anymore. The woman was dead, and the lurid tale of her death was in the news sheets. Perhaps the duke had not yet received the London news or had it read to him. But even if he knew nothing about Madame’s murder, he might hear about it soon. Was she mad to tell him she’d run away from a brothel? Wouldn’t he naturally reach the conclusion she was the whore suspected of murder?

  She swallowed hard. If he didn’t already know, maybe she could prevent him from finding out. She might be safe as long as he hadn’t heard the story. “Please, Your Grace. Please let me stay and pleasure you as Lord Ashton wished. You cannot see them, but I—I still have bruises on me from my madam’s beatings.” She must be truly desperate to have told him she was damaged, but she took his hand and touched her waist, her low back, her shoulders. “There. I’m bruised in all those places.” Then she held her breath.

  Her heart almost dissolved in pure relief as he held out his hand. “Come here, Cerise.”

  Surely he wouldn’t be so gentle if he thought her a killer. Still, she quivered as she went.

  With gentlemanly aplomb, he lifted her hand to his lips. He couldn’t know about Madame’s murder. How could he and brush such a soft kiss to her fingers?

  “You can spend the night,” he growled. “Tomorrow I’ll decide what to do with you.”

  Chapter Three

  OMETHING EXPLODED RIGHT in front of him, and Devon Audley, the Duke of March, did what any soldier with sense would do—he launched himself at the ground.

  His hands and chin hit soft carpeting. Instant recognition hit him harder than the floor. He wasn’t on a battlefield, the sound hadn’t been cannon fire, and the French army wasn’t firing on him. He couldn’t see anything but a blue-gray void, yet he knew he’d just leapt to the floor of his hallway in front of a servant—a servant who must have dropped something.

  Devon tried to slow his breathing, tried to relax the instinctive hammering of his heart.

  “Yer Grace! A thousand apologies. Clumsy oaf that I am, I dropped me tray and the brandy snifter landed on the floor. No worries though—it was the empty one.”

  The apology came in Treadwell’s roughly accented voice. A hurried shuffling moved toward him from down the hall. Devon recognized his butler’s limping footsteps. Treadwell had a deformed right leg, and his foot dragged along the floor. Devon used to assume walking was a torture for the man, but the butler bore his affliction with surprisingly good cheer.

  Hell, Treadwell would try to help him up, and the man was in no shape for that. Devon grabbed his walking stick and levered to his feet. He jumped up as gracefully as he could. No doubt he’d done this enough times that his butler was accustomed to his mad behavior, but it didn’t make it any less humiliating. By now Treadwell must be convinced he was completely out of his wits.

  “Well,” Treadwell said amiably, “I was coming to tell ye that yer supper’s prepared. I took the liberty of having it served in the dining room. Is the … yer guest going to join ye for the meal, then, Yer Grace?”

  His guest. Devon groped his way to the wall and splayed his hand on it. He had to touch something to orient himself, though he had no idea how far down the hall he was. Damn Ashton and his daft idea that sex was the answer to every man’s problems. Maybe it worked for Ashton, given the fact that Tristan de Gray, Fifth Earl of Ashton, was an even more notorious and frequent visitor to London’s brothels than Devon had ever been.

  Sex without sight hadn’t done what Tris had hoped. Devon couldn’t forget he was blind. He could smell the pretty rose perfume his guest wore, and he could cup her rounded bottom and pert breasts, but he would never forget he couldn’t see any of those delights. Still, he had to admit she intrigued him. She was so determined to get into his bed. Where had Tris found her?

  She claimed she had escaped from a brothel, so where would Tris have encountered her? She didn’t speak like the sort of light-skirts he used to find in whorehouses. There was something surprisingly sweet and innocent about her and her desperate enthusiasm to entice him. Even her attempts to be brash had been … endearing. Could she really think a madam would be willing to hunt her down? In his experience, madams were hard, astute businesswomen. Would one have a girl killed to keep the others in line? But Cerise was genuinely frightened—he’d heard the truth of that in her voice. There had to be more to her story than she’d told him.…

  Hell. He had to send her away and stop thinking about her. He’d told Tris not to send a woman. He could have killed her, the poor foolish chit, as easily as he’d warned her he could. Already he’d snapped his valet’s wrists when the man had done nothing more than remove his coat. Watson, the valet, had quit on the spot and run from the house.

  He was going mad. “Battle madness,” one of the war surgeons had called it as he was recovering in a field hospital. At that time, he’d mocked the idea—he was blind, not insane. How could any man not savor peace once war was over? Now he knew. He couldn’t forget the war. It wouldn’t leave him alone. And he had no intention of making her suffer for it.

  “Yer Grace?”

  Devon cocked his head in the direction of Treadwell’s voice. “No, she will not be joining me for supper. Have a tray prepared with her meal and taken to the bedchamber she will be using. Send a bottle of good sherry as well. Give her one of my robes for her use.”

  “Are ye certain she’ll be needing one, Yer Grace? Shouldn’t ye be keeping her … busy?”

  “Treadwell, bloody hell.” First his friend, now his servant.

  “Beg yer pardon, Yer Grace, but Lord Ashton told me as how he’s worried about ye and the way yer keeping yerself locked away in the house, and I happen to say I agree. It’s not healthy for a young gent such as yerself.”

  “Thank you for your opinion,” Devon growled. “I wasn’t aware the dispensation of unwanted advice was on your list of duties.”

  He’d never been the kind of duke to glower at his servants. It would be impossible to do so now. Hard to strike fear with a ducal glare when one couldn’t even look in the correct direction.

  “It’s not me place to speak, Yer Grace. Yer grandfather would have had me horsewhipped if I talked to him like this. But yer not like yer grandfather, the old duke, Yer Grace. A right tyrant he was, and he would brook no talk from anyone.”

  True, he was nothing like his grandfather, a fact that had annoyed that man a great deal. Nor was he like his father. He was somewhere in between the libertine tyrant his grandfather had been and the kind, scholarly sense of responsibility that had characterized his father.

  “Meself and the others—we know ye’ve been a grand master, and all of us are worried about ye. Now, if ye want to send me to the stables, ye can do so, but I’ve had me say.”

  Trea
dwell had given sixty years of service to Devon’s family, beginning as a boot boy to his grandfather. A man who had to spend his childhood as a servant with an old man’s foot resting on his arse deserved some sort of perquisites in his later years. Letting him speak was the one the old servant seemed to enjoy the most. “Treadwell, you won’t be whipped.”

  “Well, now, Yer Grace, I should fetch ye for yer meal.”

  “I don’t need to be fetched. I do not need to be led to the dining room like a dog on a leash.”

  “ ’Course not, Yer Grace. But let me say one more thing before I leave ye. That girl is a comely lass. Very pretty indeed.”

  He didn’t need to know. For a start, he could not see her, so what did it matter if she was a beauty? But curiosity hammered at him. Relentless curiosity. “All right, what does she look like exactly?”

  “She’s got lovely silky hair in me favorite shade, Yer Grace. Titian, I think it’s called. Green eyes too. Not a light green, like emeralds, but dark as ivy leaves. A lass that lovely is not going to like having to spend her night alone.”

  He was left stunned by Treadwell’s description but got his wits back and gruffly said, “It’s not a matter of what she likes. It’s for her own good.”

  Anne paced the bedchamber—the duke’s bedchamber. He had ensured her every comfort. A fire crackled in the hearth, warding off the chill of the rainy August night. Candles glowed around the room, the golden light falling on gilt and polished wood. The duke had sent a footman with a robe, one of his own. It was made of soft dark-green velvet, wrapped almost twice around her, and trailed on the floor.

  The same footman had brought sherry and a delicate crystal glass. Another had brought supper. Her heart had dropped to her toes as the servant, his face impassive, placed a large platter on a table by the fire and lifted the silver cover to reveal a gold-rimmed plate heaped with roast beef, boiled potatoes, and vegetables.

  She’d hoped—expected—the duke would summon her for supper.

  Then she’d received the news that had truly whipped the carpet out from beneath her feet. Since returning to this house two weeks before, the footman had told her, the duke always slept in his study. He did not make use of his bedchamber at all.

  The servant then relayed the rest of the duke’s crushing message. She would be spending her night undisturbed and she was not to trouble herself by going to him. His Grace would prefer to be alone, the servant had intoned without expression, until morning.

  Anne walked the length of the room again, her robe dragging behind. Appetizing scents still filled the air from her meal, but she couldn’t eat. Not with a stomach clenched in panic. In the morning, the duke would decide “what to do with her.” Tonight was her last chance to convince him to keep her.

  The only way she could do that involved his bed. She had to do something to him—something carnal—he wouldn’t be able to resist. Something he wouldn’t be able to live without once he’d experienced it.

  But she had made love to the Duke of March with enthusiasm and abandon, and it appeared the earth had not moved for him. He had not begged her to stay.

  How could she get another chance at seduction? He didn’t want her near him.

  She nibbled at her thumbnail. For the first time since she’d decided to seduce the duke, penned a quick note of explanation to Kat, then used all her remaining money to hire a carriage, Anne was beginning to question her plan.

  The Duke of March was a notoriously experienced man. She was a very ordinary woman. She wasn’t a stunning beauty. Her appeal in Madame’s brothel had been her demure ladylike looks, her blond hair, her proper demeanor and speech. At twenty-two, she still looked like the kind of young woman who should be dancing at Almack’s, yet she had been available, for a price, for almost any sin a gentleman desired. Now she was too thin, since she’d been barely able to eat for days, and a henna dye had transformed her once-admired golden hair to a brassy red.

  A little voice whispered deep in her head. You simply weren’t enough. Was she just not very enticing? Or was it possible the duke had sensed she was not feeling anything, even though she’d given a good performance of moans and ecstasy? Kat had told her it was not much different to be a mistress than a prostitute, but now Anne was not so sure.

  Fiercely, she shook her head. She could not give in to doubt. If she did, she was going to end up hanged. She had to be enough, and the next time they made love she would try much harder to entice, dazzle, and enthrall him.…

  She would have to ignore the duke’s command. She had one last throw of the dice. He might toss her out on her backside tonight for disobedience, but she had to try.

  Anne strode to the door and opened it. She stepped out, ready to march to the study, when she heard a loud sound, like a cry of pain.

  Was she imagining things? Had someone really shouted? She waited. No other sound came. No rushing footsteps. No voices. If someone needed help, no one was racing to provide it.

  Then it came again: a deep, hoarse shout. It had definitely come from the first floor of the house. It was most decidedly a masculine sound. It must be the duke. But why weren’t his servants hurrying to help him? What was wrong?

  It took several seconds for her wits to work. This was her opportunity. Whether it was the duke or not, she could say she believed it was, then of course she had to run to him and ensure he was all right. It gave her the perfect excuse to invade his study.

  Goodness, what if he was truly hurt? He might have drunk more brandy. He might be foxed out of his wits. She’d heard of drunken men who fell into their fireplaces and set themselves on fire. He could be in danger.

  Anne gathered up the voluminous hems of her robe and ran for the stairs.

  Warm hands clamped on his arms. Devon’s eyes shot open, but he stared up into darkness. Cannon fire had surrounded him seconds before; now there was eerie silence. He couldn’t mistake the weight pressing on his biceps. Someone was pinning him down.

  He threw all his strength against the soldier holding him. A desperate gurgle of shock came in answer. He had the advantage for a few seconds before the next thing securing him to the ground proved to be a bayonet. In one swift movement, he gripped his attacker by the arms and jerked the man up.

  His brain registered the slender arms, the surprisingly light weight. Boy, his mind screamed at him, guilt rising like bile, but then a voice cried, “Stop!”

  A panicked voice. A feminine one. “Stop, Your Grace! Please stop. You are hurting me.” Her terror cut through the void, sliced through the panic and the deafening pounding of his heart.

  Christ. It was Cerise’s lush and lovely voice. It whisked away the fog in his head, shattered his confusion. He wasn’t on a battlefield; he was lying on his settee in his study. The hands touching him had been hers and not those of someone holding him down to kill him.

  On a desperate groan, he released her. He sank back onto the cushions.

  “What is wrong, Your Grace?”

  Devon sucked in more heavy breaths, trying to slow his heartbeat. “It was just a bad dream,” he managed. Sweat coated him, cooling now that he wasn’t thrashing around in his sleep. A chill washed over his bare chest.

  Her soft hand stroked his cheek. She coasted her fingertips over him tenderly. “I know something about nightmares,” she murmured gently.

  He lifted her hand from his face. Fumbling, he reached for the back of the chair to hoist himself up, but something planted itself on his chest. The surprise of it kept him down, and a warm weight settled across his thighs. He guessed she was straddling him. And he tensed.

  “Are you certain you don’t want to sleep in your own bed?” she whispered. “I would hate to cause you trouble and discomfort, Your Grace.”

  Trouble and discomfort. It brought a dry laugh up from the depths of his throat, one that scratched like glass on the way out. “The reason I’m not in that bed has nothing to do with you, love, so you might as well go back there. I’m not in the mood for more lovemakin
g tonight.”

  “I can get you into the mood.”

  “No.” She didn’t deserve to have her windpipe crushed because he was out of his mind.

  Her weight moved, sliding lightly back down his thighs. He knew her bottom was skimming over his legs. “Go to bed, love,” he growled. “I’m accustomed to the nightmares. I get them almost every night.”

  “Every night? Heavens.”

  He hoped he had shocked her into giving up, but she whispered seductively, “I could tire you out with a climax so you could have a good night’s sleep.”

  His robe twitched open over his hips. A blast of cool night air rushed over his groin.

  He had to stop her, but a warm, wet pressure ran down his sleeping cock. Sensation shot through him. He couldn’t see, couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was running her tongue along his shaft. His head dropped back as the pleasure of it speared him. The soft heat of her tongue caressed his flesh, swirled over the head. Suddenly his cock went hard, proving his words wrong. His body wanted this. Yearned for this.

  “Mmmm.” Cerise gave a moan of approval, then his shaft was engulfed in warm heat. In her mouth.

  He closed his eyes. He did it so he wouldn’t remember he could see nothing but a blue-gray nothingness, but instantly he had a vision of the wild black eyes of a terrified boy soldier and a rifle aimed to blow a man’s head off—

  She suckled, and the suction of her hot lips jerked him off the battlefield, back into the present. Back to his study, where he was sprawled on the daybed and she was lavishing her tongue all over his rigid cock. She was remarkable. Of their own accord, his hips began to rock up, seeking to push him deeper into the welcoming wet heat of her mouth and her delectable sucking.

  “God, angel,” he groaned. “It’s good.”

  “Thank mmm.” Her words came out muffled and he had to laugh—a raw bite of a laugh. She had him smoldering, close to bursting into flame.

  Tentatively, he reached down until his hand collided with silky softness. The long mass of her hair. It spilled over his abdomen. With so much pleasure coming from a few inches below, he hadn’t noticed the sweet, tickling sensation.