One Wicked Sin

by Nicola Cornick

  Lottie sighed again, threw open one of the portmanteaux and extracted a gown in lime green with white spots. It was a most fashionable cut, but decidedly more respectable than the white muslin she had barely been wearing when she arrived.

  “That’s pretty, ma’am,” Margery said, staring. “Don’t see gowns like that around here.”

  “All my gowns are from London,” Lottie said. “Where do the ladies of Wantage shop for their clothes?”

  “They make their own clothes, ma’am,” Margery said.

  “Make their own clothes?” Lottie sat down rather abruptly on the second step. “Good lord! From what?”

  “Mr. Mattingley sells the material, ma’am,” Margery said, as though explaining to a slow child. “He has superfine and satin and muslin and corduroy. And Mistress Gilmore in the Market Square sells ribbon tiffany and cambric bonnets. Ever so pretty, they are.” Her gaze fell again on the lime-green gown. “Not so pretty as that, mind you. The ladies will be even more envious of you now, ma’am.”

  “Even more envious?” Lottie raised her brows. “I see little to be envious of in my situation.”

  “No, ma’am,” Margery said, “but Miss Goodlake of Letcombe Regis—she’s the daughter of the Justice of the Peace, ma’am—well, she wanted to marry Lord St. Severin before you came along. Proper put out she was to discover he was setting up a mistress.”

  “Well, she can still marry him,” Lottie said. “A mistress need not interfere with the taking of a wife. Indeed in some circles the two work closely together so that neither has to endure too much of the husband’s company.”

  “That sounds like London talk to me, ma’am,” Margery said incontrovertibly. “All clever words and no morals.”

  Lottie smiled to be so neatly put in her place by her new maid. “Yes, well it is,” she conceded. “But in any language, I doubt that Lord St. Severin is the marrying kind. And anyway, I thought that he was vastly disapproved of? Is he not the Enemy?”

  “Oh, he is, ma’am, in a general way,” Margery nodded. “But he is also rich and titled and handsome, and all the ladies have a tendre for him. And the officers are gentlemen, after all, and dine with the best families in the neighborhood and the war cannot last forever, can it, ma’am?”

  “An admirably practical approach,” Lottie said, “by which the gentry of Wantage can enjoy some new society and catch rich husbands for their daughters. What is the small matter of a war between friends, after all?”

  She rested her chin on her hand. She was beginning to see how it would be now. Ethan would be out dining with the local gentry—as a rather dashing and dangerous character he was a positive addition to slow country society—whilst she would sit here alone because she was a fallen woman and no one would take her money, let alone speak to her. Society in the provinces was very much like society in London, only more narrow-minded. Lottie thought of Lady O’Hara administering the cut direct to her when they passed in the street in London and knew that the malice of a small country town would be even more concentrated and poisonous. In Wantage one could not be anonymous and melt into the crowds for there were none. There would be no escape and nowhere to hide.

  Ethan had brought her here but he could not protect her. He probably saw no need to do so. After all, she was Lottie Palliser, brazen and worldly. And if that were merely a defense, a facade she hid behind, then it was a facade she would need every day of her time here in Wantage. She had to protect herself not only from the small town disapproval of her new neighbors but also from her stubborn desire to ask more of Ethan than he was prepared to give. She knew how undemanding the perfect mistress had to be.

  She thought of her brother, Theo, and the commission he had placed on her to spy on Ethan for the good of her country. She tried to think of Ethan’s callous usage of her as justification for her betrayal of him, but still it was unexpectedly difficult for her to excuse, even with her rather flexible sense of morality. Theo’s last note, left at her lodging on the morning she had quit London, burned a hole in her conscience if not her pocket. She had sewn it into her cloak lining because that was the sort of thing she imagined spies and conspirators did. Unfortunately her sewing was so wayward that the lumpy stitches would soon give away the fact that something was hidden there should anyone be suspicious. There was little incriminating in the note anyway. It was merely a contact address for her to send any information, a post office situated in the town of Abingdon some ten miles away. Theo wrote that he would keep in contact, and Lottie clung to this small flame of comfort and tried not to let the disillusionment creep in, tried to block her ears to the little voice that whispered that her brother was only staying close to her because he wanted something from her and if she did not prove useful he would discard her.

  She got to her feet and picked up the first portmanteau, dragging it up the stairs. She could hardly ask Margery to move such heavy luggage. The poor child looked as though a breath of wind would knock her over. She needed feeding up. Looking down at her own generous curves Lottie made a mental resolution to make sure there would always be some spare food for poor Margery to take home to her family. If her brothers were out of work they might all be depending on her wages in order to survive. Lottie knew—none better—how frightening it was to be so close to the edge of despair.

  She wondered if Ethan would return later to dine with her and share her bed. She knew she had to please him, to be the mistress he desired. She had to try to please Theo, too, and pass him any useful information that came her way. She felt chilled when she thought of the price of failure. She was trapped, pulled between an unexpected loyalty to Ethan and a desperate need for self-preservation. In the end she had been used again. It was the only life she knew.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “THERE IS A DISTURBANCE in the marketplace,” Jacques Le Prevost said to Ethan as he slid into the booth beside him in The Falcon and Globe, Wantage’s roughest and dirtiest inn. “I thought that you should know.” He looked around the slatternly taproom. “Mon dieu, you choose low company, my friend. Is this not the place where a woman was murdered a few years ago and they made the crime into a freak show to entertain the visitors?”

  “She probably complained about the quality of the brandy,” Ethan said, gesturing to his glass. “That really is a crime.” He shrugged. “A disturbance, you say? Not the junior officers having a mill with the townsfolk and canal workers again? Have they not learned to bite their tongues or lose their allowances?”

  He did not really wish to be troubled by the ongoing warfare between the younger officers and some of the rougher elements of the town. The apprentices and mill workers had an ancient and rabid hatred of the French and it frequently spilled over into quarrels and occasionally into outright violence. Then there were the navvies who worked on the canals, tough men with a swagger in their step and money in their pocket. It did not pay to get on the wrong side of them, either.

  Generally, though, the different groups all managed to rub along tolerably well, for the prisoners spent a vast amount of their allowance in the town—there was little else to do—and the town was suitably grateful. In some cases the French prisoners also offered tutoring in music and dancing and languages to the socially ambitious daughters of gentry families. And the rich, well-connected senior officers like Le Prevost and Ethan himself were always welcome in the higher echelons of county society. Sometimes, Ethan thought cynically, when one was dining on the lawn with the Earl of Craven or Sir Roger Goodlake, it was easy to forget that there was a war on. Except that he never forgot.

  “The boys are young and hotheaded,” Le Prevost said philosophically, “and so are the youths of this town. It was ever thus. But no, that is not the problem this time.”

  “What then?” Ethan asked. He wondered whether to purchase another brandy. He did not really wish to. He had barely touched the first one because the spirit was too rough and too sharp. He knew he should be working on the next, delicate stages of the escape plan. Matters were r
eaching a critical point where he had to draw together all the threads. He had messengers out across the country, bringing together dates, times, details. A mass uprising of prisoners was an enormous task requiring endless planning and vast resources of money. He could afford no mistakes.

  And yet at this moment when he most needed to focus on his strategy, he was distracted by thoughts of Lottie, which was ironic, he thought, since his plan had been to bring her to Wantage to distract everyone else, and leave him free to concentrate.

  He knew he had treated Lottie badly that morning. Not only had he used her to create a scandal, he had taken her with scant consideration for either her feelings or her response. Ethan was not accustomed to reproaching himself for his actions. Regrets had always seemed pointless to him, a demonstration of weakness. But when it came to Lottie nothing seemed that simple and he did not understand why.

  “It is your chère amie,” Le Prevost said now. “Madame Palliser. It seems she wishes to go shopping but many of the stallholders do not want to take her money. A few moments ago it looked as though there might be a riot in the marketplace.” He smiled. “She is determined, that one. Most women would have backed down and slunk ignominiously away. But not Madame Palliser. She is courageous.”

  “You mean she is foolhardy.” Ethan felt a pang of apprehension. He put his glass down with a snap and got to his feet. “Why could she not send the maid and avoid a confrontation?” he demanded.

  Le Prevost looked at him with pity. “Why do you think? Because she has pride, mon brave. She will not accept such shabby treatment. You, of all people, should understand that.”

  Le Prevost had a point, Ethan thought, as he grabbed his jacket and set off down Grove Street toward the market. He had run away from home at the age of fifteen because he was sick of the slights and the insults habitually handed out to him as the Duke of Farne’s bastard child. He had never accepted that he was less worthy than his siblings simply through an accident of birth. So why should he expect Lottie quietly to accept the treatment meted out to her? Admiration and exasperation warred within him, his fear for her razor sharp now.

  Grove Lane opened into the marketplace at the western end, opposite The Bear Coaching Inn and Hotel. Ethan was shocked to see a crowd gathered, far greater than any normally seen on market day. Gentlemen loitered, ladies hung at the back of the crowd wanting to exercise their curiosity without seeming ill-bred. Apprentices and ragged children, with a scent for trouble, were pushing to the front to join in whatever strife was brewing.

  Ethan quickened his pace, pushing through the crowd. Anxiety gripped him by the throat. Whilst he had wanted Lottie’s arrival in Wantage to create a stir, having an angry mob pelt her with rotten vegetables had not been part of the plan at all. He had not anticipated such outright hostility. Gossip and commotion, yes—a public lynching, no. This, he thought, was largely his fault. He had brought Lottie here, deliberately exposed her to scandal in order to create talk and then left her to deal with it all on her own. Remorse gripped him hard and he forced a way through the crowd, suddenly desperate to reach her. He had nothing other than his fists to protect her with. The prisoners were not allowed to carry arms for obvious reasons. Glancing around, he sensed that the mood of the crowd was volatile, not wholly ugly but on a knife-edge. He knew it could turn in a moment. He had seen it happen. Beside him he could feel Le Prevost stiff with the same tension that ran through his veins. Between them they could probably deal with at least half the men in the crowd—bare-knuckle boxing was not exactly his favored sport but he knew the principles well enough. However, that would end with he and Le Prevost clapped in gaol and probably on their way back to one of the prison ships, which did not suit his plans at all.

  Ethan reached the front of the crowd and saw Lottie standing by a trestle laden with fresh fruit and vegetables. She looked both respectable and exceedingly pretty. She was wearing a green-and-white dress that was fresh and bright with a green spencer over the top and a smaller straw bonnet than the one she had arrived in. She could have been any wife out doing the marketing. A small girl in maid’s uniform was standing beside her holding a basket and looking scared. The stallholder, a big man with high color and a mean look in his eye had his arms folded tight across his chest and was evidently refusing to serve them.

  Ethan stepped forward. He felt an extraordinary urge to protect Lottie, who looked so vulnerable and defiant in the face of such outright hostility.

  “Lottie,” he said, taking her arm and trying to draw her behind him, trying to shield her from both the hostile gaze of the crowd and the potential danger of flying objects, “this is foolish. Come away and let the maid do your shopping for you—”

  “I will thank you not to intervene, my lord.” Lottie’s tone was fierce. Her look warned him not to interfere. She shook his hand off her arm and deliberately stepped out from behind him. “This gentleman—” she indicated the stallholder “—and I were having a conversation.”

  “You are about to cause a riot,” Ethan said tightly. Could she not see the danger she was in? Could she not accept his protection?

  “Well—” Lottie shot him another glare “—that was what you wanted, was it not? To cause a stir?” She turned to Jacques Le Prevost. “M’sieur Le Prevost,” she said, “may I trouble you to lend me a shilling?”

  “Of course, madame.” Le Prevost stepped forward. He presented the money to Lottie with a bow. The exaggerated chivalry of the gesture made some in the crowd smile. Ethan could feel the tension easing very slightly though the mood of the crowd was still unpredictable.

  Lottie took the proffered coin with a word of thanks and turned back to the grocer.

  “Do you observe any difference between these two coins?” she asked the man sweetly, holding up two shillings, one in each hand. The stallholder looked at her suspiciously and then grunted a negative.

  “They are identical,” Lottie said. “Of equal value. And yet—” she smiled “—you will accept the one and not the other. Do you see my point?”

  The crowd was silent.

  “I think,” Ethan said, trying not to smile, “that you may be attempting to explain too complicated a philosophy.”

  “I am explaining some simple economics,” Lottie corrected. “My shilling is worth…a shilling.”

  “It’s not your shilling,” someone in the crowd shouted. They pointed at Ethan. “He’s the one paying you!”

  “And I assure you that I earn every penny,” Lottie said. The appeal to the bawdy humor of the crowd seemed to work. A ripple of amusement ran along its ranks.

  “We know!” Someone else shouted from the back. “We saw you earn it!”

  This time the laughter was louder still.

  Lottie tossed her shilling in the air and there was a scramble as a couple of ragged children rushed forward to grab it. “Some,” Lottie observed, “are not slow to see the value of my money.”

  The crowd was smiling now, the mood turning. The stallholder sensed it. His frown deepened. Lottie turned back to him. “So all I have left is this coin that is not mine. Will you take it in return for the fruit and vegetables I requested?”

  “I’ll not take anything from the likes of you,” the man muttered.

  “For shame, Sam Jones!” someone shouted. “Pretending to be so righteous when you’re no saint yourself! Who was that woman we all saw you with in The Horseshoe last week? Not your wife, and that’s for sure!”

  This time the whole throng erupted into mirth and the stallholder rounded angrily on the heckler. A thin woman pushed through to the front and caught Lottie’s sleeve.

  “I’ll serve you, ma’am,” she said. She shot Jones a look. “Men can be such hypocrites. My vegetables are fresher than his, too, and I won’t try to cheat you on weight. This way, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” Lottie said, smiling as though the sun had burst through the clouds. “Thank you very much.”

  Ethan released the breath he had been holding and felt the tensio
n slide from his shoulders. He could see that Lottie was relieved, too. For a moment her mask slipped and he saw the look in her eyes. For all her bravado, she had been afraid; afraid of humiliation, afraid of being shamed in public again. Her hands, he saw, were shaking. She saw him watching and folded them tightly together, turning away from him, the tilt of her head defiant. Nothing could have indicated more clearly her independence and her rejection of his efforts to defend her.

  Ethan felt something cold and hard twist inside him. He knew he was a scoundrel to inflict this notoriety on Lottie for his own gain. When he had made his plans, Lottie’s feelings had not come into his calculations once. He was paying her, after all; he had a right to demand whatever he wanted from her in return. Yet now, seeing her bright gallantry in the face of the hostile crowd, he felt remorse and regret, bitter and sharp. To use Lottie like this suddenly seemed shabby and dishonorable.

  He shifted, trying to shake off the feeling. He had his plans to fulfill, a clear, cold strategy that allowed for no sentiment. He could not falter now. Nothing must come between him and his scheme to free his son and all the other men locked in the hell of the British prisons.

  “Mon Dieu,” Le Prevost said in his ear, “that was a close run thing. Madame, she takes some risks but she is clever. I like her style.”

  The crowd was dispersing now, returning to their shopping, murmuring amongst themselves over this latest piece of entertainment. In a town with no theater, Ethan thought, Lottie’s arrival was proving as good as a play. The idea should have amused him. Instead he felt protective and oddly unsettled by the whole experience. He looked around for Lottie and saw that she had moved away to another stall, where she was choosing fresh fruit, strawberries that smelled sweet and were jewel bright, plums that were a deep velvety purple.

  “Thank you,” she was saying to the vendor, “I do not need any apples for we grow them in our own orchards. May I try the apricots?” She laughed as the juice ran over her chin and wiped it away with sticky fingers. Ethan could sense her heady relief. Her eyes were vivid and her cheeks bright pink with the release of tension. “Oh, those are delicious!” she exclaimed. “I will take a half dozen.”