One Wicked Sin

by Nicola Cornick

  Ethan caught her angrily flailing hands and placed a kiss in her palm. “You enjoyed it,” he said. “Admit it.”

  Her fingers curled over to trap the kiss. “I enjoyed besting Gregory with a cooking dish. That is true.” She hesitated. “I suppose it was rather fun….” A reluctant smile tilted the corner of her lips. “You do fight awfully well, Ethan Ryder. I am glad I have seen it or else I might never have believed your legend. How you managed not to kill any of those soldiers is beyond me.”

  “It was difficult,” Ethan said. “I am afraid that I seem to have stolen this rather excellent sword,” he added. He placed the rapier gently on the floor of the carriage. “Perhaps I should return it?”

  “I wouldn’t bother.” Lottie raised one shoulder in a light shrug. “Gregory could never use it anyway. He could not fight his way out from behind a newspaper.” Her eyes narrowed. “If you had permission to come up to Town, Ethan, why would the authorities think that you did not?”

  “A fair question,” Ethan said. “I imagine that someone has been trying to stir up trouble for me.”

  He lay back against the seat. The smooth movement of the carriage rocked him, soothing the fever in his veins, blunting the edges of his bloodlust. Kill or be killed. Fight and escape. There lay the key, he thought. Someone had set a trap for him. Someone had wanted him to fight and to be killed.

  “I think someone sent word to the authorities in London that I had broken parole,” he said slowly. “I think they were hoping that I would not have the chance to proffer my papers, that because I am considered dangerous they would come for me with swords or pistols, and I would not have a chance.”

  Lottie’s gaze was narrowed on him. She sat forward. “A trigger-happy soldier, or a stray bullet…”

  “Quite,” Ethan said. “Yes, it would have been very easy to have been killed back there. My papers would have been found to have been in order, of course, but by then it would have been too late.”

  “Clever,” Lottie said. Her eyes were bright on him in the darkness. “Who?”

  Ethan shook his head. “Who knows? We have discussed before that there may be a spy within the ranks in Wantage.” He hesitated. “It could be Purchase. As an American he is more the natural ally of the British than he is of the French.”

  Lottie shook her head stubbornly. “Purchase is an honorable man,” she said. “He would not sell you out.”

  “Northesk, then,” Ethan said. “He plays some interesting games.”

  Lottie’s eyes opened wide in genuine shock. “You cannot believe that of him! He helped us! You said yourself that he was the only good one in your entire family.”

  Ethan shrugged. He felt tired. The taste of betrayal was in his mouth again and he hated it. This was such a dirty business, using people, trusting no one, not knowing who was friend or foe. He raised his gaze to meet Lottie’s.

  “Perhaps it was you,” he said softly. “This London trip of yours—perhaps it was a suggestion of your brother’s? You told him about Chard’s death, didn’t you? Even though you had promised me you would not, you wrote to him to tell him of my involvement in it.”

  There was such a long silence, stretching taut as a straining rope. The carriage was out of London now and rolling along at a dangerous pace. In the skipping lamplight he could not read Lottie’s expression. She shifted restlessly on the seat.

  “Yes, I did tell Theo,” she said, and oddly, given that she was confessing to another betrayal, Ethan felt relieved. At least she did not lie to him.

  She cleared her throat. Her voice was husky, underscored with some emotion he could not interpret. “Why should I not?” She sounded tired, too, and there was nothing of justification in her voice, merely a simple question. “You have offered me nothing, Ethan.”

  It was true. It was exactly what Ethan had been thinking earlier, before he had nearly—oh so nearly—asked her to come away with him. Lottie had no loyalty to him. He paid her to warm his bed, no more. So why did the realization hurt so much? He shook his head sharply to try to dispel the ache, but it was in his heart, not his mind.

  “By the time Chard died,” he said, “I was in your bed, not lurking in the jakes of some seedy inn with a knife. They will not be able to pin that one on me.”

  Lottie shrugged. “Then it does not matter, does it?”

  But it did matter, Ethan thought. It mattered that she would promise him one thing and then so casually break her word to safeguard her future.

  “And tonight—” He shifted. “Did you and Theo hatch this plot together? Did you tempt me up to London in pursuit whilst he called in the soldiers? Did you pretend to help me escape, thereby making it all the more likely that someone would try and shoot me…?” He waited. “No one but Margery knew where you had gone,” he said gently. “You must be the one who betrayed me again.”

  She moved before he even realized what she was doing, grabbed the rapier from the floor of the carriage and held it to his throat.

  “You think I seek your death?” she said. He could feel the anger in her, burning like brittle sticks on the fire. “Then what is stopping me from killing you now?”

  Ethan spread his arms wide. “Nothing but your lack of courage, I would think. Or perhaps your desire to screw more money from me before you do the deed?”

  The light shifted, the carriage jolted and the blade pricked his throat. “Have a care, sir.” She sounded furious. “I am the one holding the weapon here.”

  “But you won’t use it.” Ethan raised his hand to flick the blade aside. He was rewarded by a cut to the palm.

  “You were right,” Lottie said. “It is a fine sword.” She took a breath. “I had nothing to do with betraying you tonight. I have never sought to kill you. Spy on you, inform on you, yes. Kill you, no. Believe me.”

  “Believe you at the point of a sword?” Ethan said. He shrugged. “We have never trusted one another. Why does it matter?”

  Lottie’s expression puckered. He could sense both anger and distress in her now. “It matters,” she said.

  “Why?” He watched her face, the chase of emotions across it that betrayed every element of the conflict raging inside her.

  “Why,” he repeated softly.

  “Because,” Lottie burst out, “sometimes I do not know if I love you or hate you, Ethan!” She brought the sword down in a slice that cut through his jacket and the shirt beneath. He felt the cold blade against his skin, felt it drop to skewer his pantaloons and damn near skewer him. His beautiful handmade evening coat split apart. A button was cut free and rolled noisily across the floor of the carriage. His shirt was in shreds, his pantaloons gaping open. The cool caress of the rapier tickled his inner thigh.

  “Oh…” There was a world of discovery in Lottie’s voice. “I like this.”

  “Be careful with that blade,” Ethan said, “or you’ll get precious little more pleasure from me.”

  She laughed and raised the rapier to flick aside the tattered rags of his once-pristine neck cloth. The blade caressed his throat. Hell, the woman was mad. In the light of the carriage lamps he could see the vivid flare of excitement in her eyes and a wicked smile on her lips. The rapier menaced him again.

  “Strip for me,” she said. “Last time we were in a carriage you made me suffer your demands. Now it’s my turn. Take off your clothes.”

  “You’ve done a pretty good job of that already,” Ethan said. He kept a wary eye on the point of the sword. The lurching of the carriage and Lottie’s inexpert aim threatened to take away more than his decency. He ripped the ruins of the cravat from his neck and shrugged off his shirt. The sword danced across his chest like a rain of kisses.

  “Very nice,” Lottie said. “Your pantaloons.”

  Ethan stepped out of them. There was no concealing his monstrous erection, no concealing anything.

  “I do believe,” Lottie said, staring, “that danger excites you.”

  Ethan moved fast then, wrapping the remains of his jacket about his
hand, catching the end of the rapier and twisting it out of her hand with a strength and speed that left her gasping.

  “Never point a sword at a trained soldier,” he said pleasantly, reversing the rapier into his own hand. “It is asking for trouble.”

  With a swift slash he cut the ribbons of the domino and sliced straight down the front of the silver gown. Lottie screamed.

  “Ethan, no! This was made by Madame Celestine and cost you a fortune—”

  Too late. The gown crumpled from her like a broken shell, leaving Lottie, lusciously curved and indecently clad, bursting out of her chemise in all her beautiful opulence. Ethan lost his powers of concentration completely. He dropped the rapier with a clatter and caught hold of Lottie about the waist, pulling her to him, kissing her fiercely until everything dissolved into heat and blinding light and driving lust. They tumbled down onto the seat where the roll of the carriage and the urgent press of their bodies came together in a spectacular explosion that had them both crying out in ecstasy. It was over in seconds.

  “So,” he said, when his breathing had steadied sufficiently to speak, “have you decided? Do you love me or hate me?” He drew her closer and pressed his lips to the silken swathe of her hair.

  He felt her smile against his neck. “Oh,” she said. “I hate you. Most definitely.”

  He wrapped them both in the scarlet domino and also a black cloak, which Northesk had thoughtfully provided in the carriage and which had fortuitously survived Lottie’s slashing blade. He drifted off to sleep, lulled by the rhythm of the coach and by Lottie’s scent, and the feel of her body, soft and warm in his arms. There was a sense of rightness about it that troubled him, because beneath the surface of peace and contentment he knew that nothing had changed between them. One of them was always destined to be the betrayer and the other the betrayed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LOTTIE WOKE TO DAYLIGHT and to the slowing of the carriage as it approached Wantage. She remembered the night like a flying dream: the journey; the inns where they had stopped to change horses; even a brief, blurred moment when, half-asleep, she had struggled back into the tatters of the silver dress and had wrapped herself in Ethan’s jacket in order to go inside to wash and take a hasty cup of chocolate. The landlord and the sleepy hostlers had stared at her and little wonder. She peered into the speckled mirror in the ladies’ withdrawing room and recognized that she looked a fright. For once she had not cared.

  She raised the blind. Ethan was still sleeping like the dead. She had tried to make him respectable again by wrapping him in the remnants of his clothes but it was a lost cause. Both of them, she thought, looked utterly disreputable. Both of them were utterly disreputable. Soon people would be talking about their exploits this night from London to Land’s End; the way in which they had secretly infiltrated Gregory’s masked ball, the dramatic entry of the troops and their even more colorful escape, the wild lovemaking in the carriage… That was what Ethan would want, of course. And though she had thrived on being outrageous for what seemed a very long time now, Lottie’s heart felt bruised to think that there was no more than scandal between them.

  Money for scandal… That had been their agreement. Nothing had changed.

  She looked at Ethan’s profile etched in the pale morning light. His cheek was darkened with stubble—she shivered a little as she remembered the brush of it against her bare skin—and his black hair was tousled. He lay a little uncomfortably, for the seat was too short to accommodate his height. She suspected he would be aching when he awoke, and not simply from the discomfort of his position.

  Sometimes I do not know if I love you or hate you….

  That had been a lie. She knew she loved him. She loved him not with the desperate pleading need that she had felt for some of her lovers, begging for their attention, wanting to matter to them, but with a deeper and more profound feeling she had never experienced before in all her thirty-three—not twenty-eight—years. She loved him so much that when he had accused her of conspiring to seek his death she had thought her heart would break in two with the pain of the deceit and betrayal that lay between them, with despair over her own perfidious nature and the desperate need for security that drove her always to put herself first. She knew it was impossible that they could ever trust one another. She could not even trust herself.

  The carriage rattled over the cobbles of Wantage’s market square, slowed and drew to a stop outside The Bear Hotel. Well, Lottie thought, this should be another arrival that the good people of Wantage could dissect and gossip over for a twelvemonth.

  Then she saw that there was a welcoming party outside the coaching inn. Duster, the Parole Officer, was there, turning his hat around and around in his fidgeting hands. There was Jacques Le Prevost, looking urbane and handsome but also severe, and Owen Purchase, his fair open face set and dark for once. A sliver of apprehension touched Lottie’s spine.

  Ethan opened his eyes. The sleep in them fled. Within a moment he was awake and alert, his gaze riveted on her face.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Lottie said. “But I think that there is something wrong.”

  Ethan had a hand on the catch of the door before the coach had come to a halt and was jumping down onto the cobbles, and, despite his haste, turning to swing Lottie down before he turned from her with a word of apology to address Mr. Duster.

  “Sir?” he said. “I did not expect a reception party.”

  Le Prevost stepped forward and put a hand on Ethan’s arm. “It is your son, St. Severin,” he said. There was regret in his voice, and compassion. “I am sorry, mon ami. He escaped from Whitemoor gaol last night. They are hunting him now. The orders are to shoot him on sight.”

  THERE WAS A SOLDIER ON DUTY outside the door of Ethan’s room on the second floor of The Bear Hotel. He was slumped on a hard wooden chair but he straightened automatically when he saw Lottie approaching along the corridor.

  “No visitors, ma’am,” he said. “Orders of the Parole Officer.”

  “Yes,” Lottie said, smiling at him, “I quite understand, Sergeant. But Mr. Duster did not mean that to apply to me, I assure you. Who better than I to provide Lord St. Severin with some comfort at this time?”

  The soldier’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully on her as he considered the type of comfort that she might be offering. “Well, ma’am, I suppose…”

  “Oh, thank you!” Lottie said, breezing forward. She turned the door handle. It was locked. “Sergeant,” she prompted, with a pretty gesture of appeal, and the man came forward eagerly enough to unlock it for her. Really, Lottie thought, as she knocked and entered the room, one could go a long way on charm and barefaced cheek.

  She had never seen inside Ethan’s chamber before, for he had never invited her. This, of course, was Ethan’s prison. She realized it with an odd flutter of the heart. He might be given a nominal liberty as an officer on parole, but now she saw the shabby chamber with its bare wooden floor and frayed rug, the battered desk and narrow cot, she knew just how illusory that freedom was. For now he was penned in here as tightly as any inmate at Whitemoor. She could feel his tension and his frustration. The atmosphere was explosive with it as he paced back and forth across the tight boundaries of the room.

  He looked up as she came in. His blue eyes were shadowed and dark, impassive. But the muscles around his eyes were tight and his face pale and drawn with strain.

  “What are you doing here?” He rapped the words out in a voice rough with pain. “Did Duster send you?”

  “No,” Lottie said. “I talked my way past the guard. Ethan—” She put a hand on his sleeve and felt him flinch.

  “I don’t want to talk to you.” He turned his back on her.

  This, then, was the ultimate rebuff, the ultimate expression of his lack of trust in her. He would never turn to her or let her offer him comfort. Lottie knew that the cause was lost.

  Ethan’s shoulders were rigid with rejection. The hurt tumbled over and
over inside her. She could see every single one of her lovers walking away from her, Gregory delivering the crushing news of the divorce, and like a ghost behind them all, her father, leaving on that bright summer day so like this morning in this stiflingly hot little room under the eaves.

  Little Lottie Palliser. No one wanted her. She should go.

  Except that this time she was not going to give in. This time she would take one last gamble because she loved Ethan too much not to try.

  She put out a tentative hand and touched Ethan’s shoulder. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. His muscles felt tight and unyielding beneath her hand. He did not move.

  “Tell me about your son,” she said. She scarcely recognized her own voice because it was shaking, but there was still a thread of strength in it. “Tell me about Arland.”

  FOR A MOMENT Ethan was afraid that he was going to explode with anger and frustration. Could the damned woman not leave him alone? How brutal did he have to be to get rid of her? Fury raked him and beneath it a pain so excruciating he caught his breath. He had never taken comfort from any other human being in his life. There had been no one to offer it. He had wanted no one. He was strong. He did not need protection, succor or consolation.

  He strode over to the window and stared across the rooftops of the town to where the white chalk towers of Whitemoor soared against the blue sky. It looked so beautiful for such a hellhole. He could see the place where they had incarcerated his son but he could never see Arland himself. It was a deliberate torment that the authorities had inflicted on him and he had tried to ignore it, but each and every day it had fretted at him like the flick of a whip. And now his son was alone and unprotected, hunted like an animal, and he was penned here and could not help him. He was the ultimate failure as a father.

  Tell me about your son….

  Ethan closed his eyes. Almost he told her the truth. Almost he exposed all the grief and doubt that he had hidden for so long.