One Wicked Sin

by Nicola Cornick

  Her easy charm was drawing everyone to her. In the space of ten minutes, Ethan thought, they appeared to be eating from her hand. Some other stallholders pressed forward now with produce for Lottie to try. She was haggling good-humoredly over the prices, laughing with them, the maid’s basket now weighed down with fresh bread, fruit, vegetables and meat. Suddenly it seemed that Lottie’s money was in great demand after all.

  “You were splendid,” Ethan said, falling into step beside her as she and Margery finally finished all their marketing and, scattering thanks and smiles on the stallholders, Lottie turned for home.

  She smiled coolly at him. “Thank you, my lord,” she said. Her tone was formal and the smile did not reach her eyes. For a moment her dark gaze searched his face and Ethan felt a disturbing stir of emotion, as though she was seeing far more than he wanted her to see, more than he understood himself.

  “Why did you seek to protect me?” she asked. “That was not part of our arrangement.”

  “Nor was it part of the agreement that you would be lynched in the street,” Ethan said, a little grimly.

  “I did not think you would care,” Lottie said. “Money for scandal was what you wanted.” She gave a quick shrug. “They could have put me in the stocks, could they not? Shown their disapproval for my appalling morals with their rotten vegetables. That would have set the town about the ears—”

  Ethan caught her arm. He had seen the sheen of tears in her eyes and heard the quiver in her voice. She was trembling still. He drew her close. She felt so vulnerable in his arms, small and defenseless, and yet he had seen the strength and courage with which she had faced the crowd.

  “Hush,” he said, pressing his lips to her hair. “I would not have let that happen.”

  She wrenched herself away from him. With a shock he saw that the tears in her eyes were of anger not fear.

  “How singular of you,” she said scathingly. “How singular of you to wish to defend me when surely you seduced me in full public view this morning in order to provoke outrage?” She turned away. Her tone flattened, the anger draining from it. “We should not forget that our association is only business,” she added. “Your money in return for my notoriety. Surely you recall that was our agreement?”

  She started walking but Ethan caught her arm again to stop her. Margery, sensing the palpable antagonism between them, cast one frightened glance from Ethan’s face to Lottie’s and scuttled past them, away down the footpath.

  “You are angry with me,” Ethan said evenly.

  “Why should I be angry?” Lottie maintained a clipped, cool tone. Her profile, still turned away from him, was charming, ruffled and pink with annoyance. Ethan felt a sudden violent urge to untie the bonnet ribbons and throw it aside, grab her and kiss her until he had wrenched a response from her that was neither cool nor unemotional. He wanted to kiss her until she was breathless and flushed and tousled in his arms just as she had been before.

  “You are angry because this morning I treated you badly,” he said. He kept his voice low, very aware of Margery, scurrying away as fast as her legs could carry her. “I apologize,” he said. “It was very wrong of me to use you as I did.”

  Lottie bit her lip. “You pay my bills,” she said. “You are entitled to behave as you please.”

  “That is nonsense,” Ethan said. “You do not believe that and neither do I.” He was surprised at how angry he was starting to feel. He could scarcely deny that he had told Lottie theirs was no more than a business agreement. Those had been his precise words to her in London. And as recently as that morning he had thought he wanted their relationship to be that simple, wanted no more than an emotionless arrangement with her, sex and scandal in return for his cash. Use her, pay her and discard her. That was the way he had planned it. It should have been straightforward. Yet it was not. The notion of a business arrangement repelled him now. And if he were honest, he had wanted more than that from her from the very start.

  “How you feel is important,” he said. “Do not pretend otherwise.”

  “How I feel is of no consequence,” Lottie corrected. She was striving to sound indifferent but there was a spark of pure, hot temper in the look she gave him. “A complaisant mistress does as she is told, as she is paid to do. A complaisant mistress would never reproach you, no matter how you used her.”

  “I don’t want a complaisant mistress,” Ethan ground out. He was aware of feeling immensely frustrated and immensely aroused, both at the same time, and equally unable to explain either reaction.

  “No?” Lottie challenged. She spun around on him. “Then what do you want, Ethan?”

  For one long, furious moment they stared at one another, dark eyes locked with blue and then Ethan swore, pulled on Lottie’s bonnet ribbons, cast the hat aside and kissed her hard. Lottie gave a little muffled squeak. Ethan backed her up against the wall of the passageway and kissed her again, his mouth gentling on hers this time, wooing a response rather than demanding one. He felt Lottie’s lips soften against his as she yielded to him and a hot, sweet tide swept through him. This was what he wanted; Lottie Palliser in his arms and in his bed for as long as he needed her.

  He deepened the kiss until they were both breathless, running his hands into her hair, holding her face up to his as he ravished her mouth with his own. His body instantly hardened. Once again, as in London, he felt the profound need he had for her sweep through him like a tide washing into all the dark corners of his soul. It was inescapable, all consuming.

  “What I want,” he said, as his lips left hers, “is you, Lottie Palliser.”

  For a moment her gaze searched his face again and he could not read what she was thinking. Then she sighed. “For an apology, that lacked contrition,” she said, “but I will accept it.” She shook her head. “Damn you, Ethan. I tried to be accommodating and obedient.” She said the word as though it had a bad taste. “I tried very hard. But you will provoke me.”

  Ethan reached for her bonnet and tied it haphazardly under her chin. He dropped another kiss on her lips. Her mouth was soft and full, clinging to his. She raised her hands to his forearms and held him gently, leaning into him this time. Ethan could feel the whole length of her body pressed against his and his desire for her tightened like a ratchet, inexorable need possessing him.

  “Just so we are clear,” he said, “I do not want a meek mistress.” His tone was a little rough. “I want you just as you are, Lottie.” He kissed her again, unable to resist, feeling his blood heat and quicken. “Be open with me,” he said, against her lips. “If I anger you, tell me. Be honest. Don’t pretend.”

  He felt her lips curve into a smile. “Very well,” she whispered. “Then I must be honest and confess that there is something I want from you now.”

  Ethan released her and looked into her eyes and saw the flagrant invitation there. The lust within him was so sharp now that he ached with it.

  “You are the most perfect mistress, Lottie,” he said. “Never doubt it.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look in that gown?” he continued. “Like the most respectable housewife out to do her marketing?”

  “False pretenses.” Lottie’s smile was warm and wicked now, her eyes knowing, tightening his desire notch by notch. She knew he wanted her and it pleased her to be desired. Ethan could see the triumph in her eyes. She ran her tongue over her lower lip and he almost groaned aloud. She was playing him now, toying with his responses, and he was more than willing. She was his weakness but for now he really did not care.

  “Do you want to strip my charming gown off me and make love to me like the Cyprian I am?” she asked lightly. “I thought the idea might appeal to you.”

  Ethan’s breath caught. The dimensions of his world seemed to have narrowed to Lottie and his driving need to remove all her clothes and plunder her lush, curvy body beneath his until he had had his fill. He could not understand her power over him, nor did he like to lack so much control, but he could not figh
t it, did not wish to.

  “Your gown does arouse me,” he rasped. “It is so very modest.”

  “Unlike its wearer,” Lottie said, “who is, I fear, so very brazen.”

  Ethan grabbed her hand and pulled her the remaining hundred yards down the street, crashing through the door of Priory Cottage and letting it bang shut behind him, catching a fleeting glimpse of Margery’s shocked face as she dived for the safety of the kitchen. He started to kiss Lottie again with feverish intensity, overwhelmed by the taste and the touch of her, of the sensation of her skin against his fingers and his mouth. He felt drunk with need, desperate, while she laughed at his haste and his clumsiness. He picked her up and carried her up the stairs to the pretty bedroom beneath the eaves, which he had made sure was furnished with an enormous four-poster bed. At this moment, feeling as he did, he could only congratulate himself on his forward planning. Here at last he could strip the elegant green-and-white gown from Lottie’s opulent curves and bury himself inside her. Even as he did so, even as he felt the pleasure cascade through him and burn through to his soul, he knew that he was lost in some way that he did not understand, did not want to understand and could never analyze, for in doing so he would be finally undone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LOTTIE HAD HIRED a coach from the livery stables in Back Street to take her all of the two hundred yards to The Bear Hotel that night to dine with Ethan and the other French officers. It was the best carriage that the stables had to offer. Admittedly they did not have an enormous choice, but it met Lottie’s exacting standards of quality. Ethan had no idea how expensive she was going to be, she thought, as the footman held open the door and she ascended the steps. One simply had to arrive in style even in a little backwater like Wantage. She was amused to see, however, that the livery owner, evidently having heard of her reputation, had sent what appeared to be the oldest coachman in the world, a man who could have passed for her grandfather, and a footman who looked barely a day younger.

  The hotel was quiet and she was led to a private dining room on the first floor. The only occupants were Ethan and his fellow officers, resplendent in their blue uniforms. Lottie had never seen Ethan in his hussars’ uniform before and the deep navy blue with striking splash of red at the shoulder almost stole her breath. He had the broadness of chest and thigh to carry it off, she thought, unlike some of his comrades whose spindly little legs looked rather like frogs in their clinging buckskins.

  “Dear me,” she said lightly, as she approached Ethan and his colleagues, “you are a sight to raise certain emotions in the British, gentlemen. A strong patriotic dislike on the part of the men, I imagine, and something rather different in the ladies.”

  As Lottie had swept in, the officers had fallen silent, then they rose to their feet with remarkable alacrity and a fine show of respect. Everyone vied to bow to her, kiss her hand, find her a place at the table. Lottie’s lips twitched.

  “Never have I entered a room to such a rapturous welcome,” she said dryly, “or at least not since I was about eighteen years old. You quite turn my head.”

  She felt a certain self-satisfaction that their response was not entirely feigned in order to please Ethan. She had dressed with care that night in a gown of vivid midnight-blue that complemented Ethan’s uniform perfectly. It was an elegant gown and yet somehow not quite suitable for a respectable matron. The décolletage was modestly low and edged with sheer transparent lace that lay over her skin like a caress. The silk skirts rustled sinuously about her ankles. Her hair was swept up into a sapphire clasp leaving the nape of her neck exposed but for one curl that fell over her shoulders to nestle between her breasts. The good people of Wantage would be hard-pressed to explain just why this latest outfit was not quite decent, she thought, but it would make them hot under the collar, nevertheless. Indeed, the eyes of a couple of the younger officers were almost popping from their heads and one or two surreptitiously ran their fingers around the inside of their collars as though they were suddenly too tight.

  Ethan introduced her individually to his colleagues. Le Prevost she knew already, of course, and there was another face at the table she recognized. Captain Owen Purchase, late of the ship the Sea Witch, came forward to greet her with his familiar laconic grace.

  “Captain Purchase!” Lottie stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, lingering over the embrace a little longer than was strictly necessary, watching Ethan’s reaction out of the corner of her eye. Owen Purchase, she thought, was as handsome as ever. She had known him before her divorce and would not have been averse to a dalliance with him in those long-ago days. It had not happened, for Purchase had had eyes for no one but her friend Joanna Grant.

  Ethan was watching her with his mocking blue gaze. Lottie knew he was too cool to be thrown out of countenance if she flirted with another man. Nor would he be jealous even if Purchase had indeed been her lover. She had seen that in London, in Ethan’s reaction to James Devlin. He was too confident of himself, too self-assured, to be threatened by anyone. She felt a tiny stirring of chagrin that she could not seem to arouse any possessiveness in him.

  There was a glint of wicked amusement in Owen Purchase’s eyes as he released her and stepped back. “I hesitate to plead a prior acquaintance with you, ma’am, in case St. Severin calls me out,” he said in his rich Southern drawl, casting Ethan a droll sideways look, “but it is a pleasure to see you again.”

  “You, too, Captain Purchase,” Lottie said, smiling, “although I believe your much-vaunted good luck must have failed you if I am to find you here in this company of miscreants.”

  “You are not mistaken, ma’am,” Purchase said ruefully, drawing out a chair for her to sit beside him. “I was captured on my first engagement. Dashed poor seamanship.”

  “What Purchase does not tell you,” Ethan put in, “is that he took out two British frigates before they dismasted his ship, and then only with a lucky shot.”

  “But surely you fought with the British against the French at Trafalgar?” Lottie said, accepting with a smile the glass of wine that a blushing younger officer was offering her. “Why did you change sides?”

  “I wasn’t fighting for the French, ma’am,” Purchase said, scowling at Le Prevost as he raised a mocking glass in tribute. “I may be an adventurer but I do have some principles. No, I was fighting for the Yankees off New York against Brooke’s British squadron.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “The Brits have become too arrogant at sea, ma’am, and I don’t care who hears me say it. We Americans don’t like them telling us whom we can and cannot trade with, or pressing our citizens into their Navy.”

  “So as a result you end up here rubbing shoulders with the French,” Lottie said. “And the Irish,” she added, looking at Ethan.

  “A good job we’re all gentlemen,” Purchase said, smiling sardonically, “or I’d be having one hell of a time.”

  “There’s a Danish sea captain on parole in Tiverton,” Ethan said. “A famous privateer. All nations unite against the British these days.”

  “Does no one like us very much?” Lottie asked, a little plaintively. Politics had never been a passion of hers but she was beginning to feel like an oppressed minority. She was also remembering Theo’s instructions to gather what intelligence she could. It was decidedly difficult when she had no grasp of the issues involved and even less interest. Really, she thought crossly, Theo should have thought of that before he gave her such an impossible task.

  “No, ma’am,” Purchase said gravely, “no one likes the Brits very much, but we will make an exception for you tonight.”

  The officers fell to talking about the current state of the war and Lottie tried to listen even though it sounded both complicated and boring. It also sounded as though the French were losing, though Le Prevost contended hotly that that was simply the bias of the British newspapers.

  “Since we receive the London papers about three days late, it will all be over before we hear,” Purchase commented dryly.

 
Lottie looked up to see Ethan’s gaze resting on her with amusement. There was something in his eyes that made her feel hot and guilty. It was not as though she had even done anything to betray him, she thought. Not yet. She had intended to write to Theo that very afternoon but Ethan had kept her in bed for several hours and after that she had needed to bathe and wash her hair and dress and prepare herself for this evening. That had taken her another three hours so there was no time for any spying, which was a good job as she had precisely nothing to report to her brother.

  She cast Ethan another glance under her lashes. She had been so angry with him that morning and in the end so incapable of hiding it. For so long she had tried to be what people demanded of her: the good child, the trophy wife, the obedient sister, the conformable mistress. Perhaps it might not have mattered had she liked Ethan less—she could have pretended to be whatever he wanted—but though she struggled with her feelings she could not help herself. She wanted his respect even if she could not have his love. Yet she was prepared to betray him to the British authorities. She knew she was a hypocrite and she hated herself for it.

  As she picked over a dish of frogs’ legs sautéed in butter—utterly revolting but added to the menu at The Bear in tribute to their French guests—Lottie struggled with her feelings of guilt. It should have been easy to inform on Ethan, she thought. Theo was offering her everything that she had lost, or as much of it as she would ever be able to recover—money, a home, the chance to regain a place in society. She ached for that, ached to escape the trap into which she had fallen. In contrast, Ethan offered her nothing but a temporary place in his bed. He promised nothing and she owed him nothing. There was lust between them but little else, no trust and no honesty. That morning when they had quarreled Ethan had told her that he wanted her to be open with him, but of course she could not be, not with Theo’s commission hanging on her conscience like a lead weight.