The Darkest Sin

by Caroline Richards

  A sharp evening breeze fanned Rowena’s cheeks, bringing her back to the present and away from her moment’s self-indulgence. She could no longer afford to believe in the carelessness of youth, not when that easy, oblivious innocence had been taken from her over a year ago. For the past twelve months, a yearning for retribution had forced her up in the morning and kept her from sleep at night. Anxiety burned in her throat at the thought of her aunt and sister and the danger that pressed close to them from all sides. The high stone walls and thick hedges surrounding Montfort could no longer protect them. She was their only bulwark now against danger.

  During those missing weeks after her abduction, she had been suspended between life and death, imprisoned in darkness, but the threat, the voice and words, had survived along with her, haunting every waking hour. She remembered no face or place but merely the voice, speaking sometimes in French, sometimes in English, but always silken with evil intent. The menacing sound insinuated itself into her consciousness, allowing her no freedom from fear.

  Fear for Meredith and Julia. “The Woolcott women. Faron will not rest—until they are made to suffer. Until they are dead.” The voice spooled relentlessly in her mind.

  Sinking into helplessness was not in her nature, making her all the more determined to piece together the shards of her broken memories. The dampness of the night curled underneath the collar of her cloak, but she merely stretched her arm higher, grabbing the next rung in the trellis, her feet confidently finding the level of stone upon which to rest. She knew enough not to look down, having climbed trees, and the gazebo in the east garden of Montfort, too many times. From her current vantage point, craning her neck, she saw the still heavy curtains framing the second-floor windows, the rooms beyond obscured by darkness. The third floor, under the eaves, would house some of the servants, which left the second floor, with its empty bedrooms, as the best entry point.

  A long narrow window, the casement slightly ajar to reveal the weak glow of a gas-lit wall sconce, beckoned. Rowena took careful steps sideways along the ledge until her hands gripped the casement. All was silent, and if she squinted intently, she could discern the endless black and white tiles of a lengthy corridor typical of Georgian townhomes. Seconds later, she eased open the window and quickly pushed herself through the opening, her feet landing silently on the highly polished floor. Twin sconces burned dully, the hallway flanked by a military row of chairs draped with ghostly drop cloths.

  No one was about, as one might have suspected judging the shuttered façade of the town house. Over the past two days, she had studied the exterior from the mews, watching its lone occupant, discovering the solitary rhythms of his life. He was a tall man, his features obscured by the collar of his greatcoat, his strides long and sure. He kept few servants and entertained no visitors. Rowena fingered the information like a blind woman as she glided noiselessly down the hallway, instinct and heedless courage leading the way. It took her but a few moments more to find the double doors of the master bedchamber. The encounter, she told herself, stopping on the threshold, would be awkward, difficult at best, convincing a stranger that she required his clandestine aid. She paused for another moment, her ears straining for footsteps or voices as she quietly eased open the door.

  The milky light of dusk filtered through the room, the generous proportions holding a handsome four-poster bed, two matching armoires flanking a window, and a heavy gilded mirror. Rowena shut the door noiselessly behind her, catching a glimpse of her face in the glass. Her eyes were large and shadowed, her hair scraped back into a tight knot at her nape. She was thinner than usual, her collarbones accented by hollows that the simple lace fichu at her neck could not conceal. Reluctant to contemplate the time lost to her, and the alarming gaps in her memory, she stood in the center of the room before surrendering to the need to sit in a high backed chair by the dressing room screen. Now all she had to do was wait and desperately collect the thoughts that seemed scattered to the wind.

  Images crowded her vision. Meredith and Julia, their expressions clouded with worry, on one of the last afternoons in the library at Montfort. Julia’s voice uncharacteristically sharp, demanding that Meredith allow her to undertake her proposed expedition to photograph Eccles House, Sir Wadsworth’s estate. Meredith’s anxious reluctance had radiated from the set of her shoulders, the rigidity of her spine. Rowena’s hands twisted on her lap, aware now that it was too late, that they had kept too much from her, the younger sister, who was deemed too free spirited, too distracted by life to be freighted down with heavy secrets and dark threats. She had never known anything but life with Lady Meredith Woolcott and Julia, a universe unto itself, protected, guarded, secure. Until that day over a year ago. Behind her closed eyes, Rowena summoned the memory of her last ride at Montfort, followed by the darkness, the heavy current of water carrying her away, the flooding in her lungs. And the dreams. Dear God, the dreams.

  When she had finally awakened from the darkness and the fog, it was to the fussing concern of the Watsons, an elderly couple who lived in a small thatched cottage in Kent. Like a foundling, she had been deposited on their doorstep a fortnight earlier with a small sack of gold coins and little else. A month had passed quickly under their kind and diligent ministrations, wherein she found herself quickly regaining her strength and gradually the debris of memories, one more jagged and devastating than the next.

  Someone had wished her dead. Worse still, wished her aunt and sister dead. A permanent heaviness lodged in her chest, pain warring with anger as she dared contemplate the madman, Faron, intent on her family’s ruin. The name conjured a faceless specter who, she now understood, had presided silently over their lives from a distance before descending upon them with ferocious intent.

  Meredith Woolcott believed she could hide forever. Meredith’s beautiful countenance flickered before Rowena’s burning eyelids, her fine features wreathed in concern born of years protecting her wards, secreting them away when they were little more than babes, protecting them from the threat that had overshadowed their lives. It was a shocking realization that the whole of her life, Meredith had been fighting valiantly to keep them safe and in peace. They had all been kept under lock and key, for reasons Meredith had chosen to keep to herself.

  Fate had taken a strange course. Rowena would never have known the name Faron if Meredith could have had her way. If he had had his way, she would never have risen from her watery grave to unmask the man who would do her family harm.

  She took a deep breath, dismayed at what lay behind her and what still lay ahead. She opened her eyes and surveyed her surroundings, impatient to return to the present and intent upon learning something more about the room’s occupant. A pyramid of books rested in a corner by the bed, the embossed titles illegible in the dimness, and the faint scent of vetiver, strangely familiar, hung in the air. A decanter of brandy and heavy crystal glasses sat on a small side table over which two landscape paintings, anodyne in their subject matter, presided on a wall lined with hunter green watered silk.

  The room gave up few of its secrets, not unlike its occupant. Rowena mouthed the question silently. Who was James Lyndon Rushford? Lord James Lyndon Rushford, more precisely, a man who had cared to solve the Cruikshank murders despite the disapproval of his peers, the sensation in the broadsheets, and society’s disapprobation at having one of its own sent to the gallows. Rushford was the second son of an illustrious family, she had learned, who had spent many years in the navy and abroad and whose subsequent years might well have been spent gambling away his patrimony, nodding off in the House of Lords, or burying himself in brandy and horses at his family’s countryside estate.

  No answer to the enigma was forthcoming save for the heavy quiet of the house. To Rowena’s jangled nerves, time seemed suspended despite the steady rhythm of the mantel clock. She could no longer stand to wait idly for its main occupant. She took another slow look around the bedchamber, the corners shadowed by the moonlight streaming through the tall windows
. The clock chimed close to one in the morning. The chair creaked as she rose to tiptoe over to the oak chest of drawers. Her hands shook as she imagined quietly opening the top drawer to reveal snowy linens redolent of the same vetiver scent that haunted the room. But she would do anything to keep her sister and aunt safe, and surveying a stranger’s personal items was the least of it. The more she learned about Rushford, the better she would be able to enlist his assistance. Not knowing exactly what she looked for, her eyes swept across the mahogany finish, expecting to see a brush, a comb, a watch fob, at the very least.

  It was bare except for a small, velvet-covered box. With a will of its own, her hand reached out to pick it up. The box seemed to pulse with significance, although she couldn’t articulate why. It lay heavily in her hands and she hesitated only for an instant before prying it open. Her breath stopped in her throat as she surveyed the delicate oval of a small portrait nestled against pale rose silk. The subject was a woman of remarkable beauty, with shining dark eyes, a mobile mouth, and a luxuriance of wheat-gold hair. Rowena stared long and hard, unable to look away from the fine portrait, her mind grasping at possibilities.

  It was then she heard the footsteps, and in the next instant saw the doorknob turning, giving her a scant moment to shove the oval back in its velvet box before she slid over to stand behind the screen, both courage and plans momentarily scrambled. She concentrated on steadying and silencing her breath, unwilling for the moment to let James Lyndon Rushford know she was in his rooms. Not to ask for help. But to demand it.

  Rushford moved quietly and fluidly for a man of his size. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a thick head of hair that needed the attention of his valet. He placed a heavy tumbler of brandy on the bedside table and began shrugging off his jacket, discarding it over the end of the bed. Unraveling his cravat with one hand, large but long, elegant fingers extracted a flint from a box on a low table. The candle by the bedside flared to life.

  Rowena stilled. Rushford’s profile was etched in dark and light, a broad forehead, bold nose, wide mouth, and eyes the color of a dark and turbulent ocean. It was a face that one would not readily forget, arrogant and aggressive in its composition. His expression did not augur well, she thought, counseling herself to bide her time and keep panic at bay until the opportunity presented itself to make her presence known.

  Despite her resolve, thoughts skittered through her mind. Would he help her? Could he help her? She had read about Rushford’s exploits in the London papers, scavenged from the breakfast table of her employers, the Radcliffes, whose three charges had been hers to educate for almost a year. He had, it was reported, skillfully hunted down the Cruikshank murderer while gathering evidence to ensure that justice would be done. Rowena had been riveted by the account, convinced this was the man who had the expertise to pursue a faceless specter. Faron. She could not do it alone.

  So much had happened in twelve months, from changing her name and identity, leaving behind the kind shelter of the Watsons, to seeking employment as a governess in a small village in Wales. Without references, she had been forced to take work for modest pay and even longer hours, biding her time until she could scrounge the sovereigns she now intended to offer in return for Rushford’s aid.

  Not that the man required resources, her instincts told her. Clearly from a wealthy family, judging by the appointments of the town house and the commentaries in the broadsheets, Rushford followed his idiosyncratic pursuits for entirely different and possibly unknowable reasons. A fresh worry, she thought, listening to the steady throb of her heartbeat. Swallowing hard, she watched as Rushford began undoing the ivory buttons of his shirt, then pulling the linen from the waistband of his breeches.

  She should have expected something like this. The lateness of the hour. The deserted house. At least he had not retreated behind the screen to disrobe. Heat rose beneath her skin. Rushford’s shirt drifted to the floor, revealing a broad back whose intricate musculature reminded her of the sketches she had seen in one of Julia’s anatomy books. Hard and sculpted as though from stone, he moved to undo the placket of his breeches, half turning toward her hiding place behind the screen to disclose a beautifully delineated chest, tapered waist, and narrow hips.

  Rowena’s mouth was dry, her lips tasting of parchment, and she clenched her hands by her sides. It was the strangest feeling, this desire to absorb the heat and smoothness of his skin beneath her palms, to imagine his hardness next to the softness of her body, his nakedness one with hers. She stilled her breath, trying to stop the flow of images, the chafing of her blood. Wherever were those thoughts coming from? Familiar and terrifying at the same time. Her head began to pound, her pulse fluttering in her throat. She had to stop this now.

  Rushford was facing her. Facing the screen, Rowena reminded herself in a panic, watching one large hand grasp his breeches, inching the material down over lean hips. His eyes were hooded, yet Rowena sensed he was staring at her, through the screen, and into her eyes, prepared to call her out.

  Her shoulders ached with the strain of standing perfectly motionless. Now was the time to say something, to reveal herself, but it was already too late.

  His voice was deep, gravely. “How long do you intend to remain unannounced because, rest assured, I don’t disrobe for simply anyone,” he said.

  Nothing she had read in the broadsheets, or conjured in her feverish imagination, had prepared her for this encounter. And it was then she realized the full force of what she had set in motion with this strangely powerful man, a portrait of contrasts, a combination of overwhelming physicality and concentrated intellect. All of it, suddenly, focused upon her.

  Meredith and Julia, Rowena reminded herself. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out from behind the screen.

  Chapter 3

  Regret. Like the metallic taste of blood, it left a bitter taste on one’s tongue.

  Christ, Miss Rowena Woolcott was young. Rushford had forgotten, or more precisely had willed himself to forget. Until now, as she stood on the faded aubusson rug of his bedchamber, wide eyed and without a hint of recognition in that expressive, beautiful face. He swore silently, fluently, all the while considering his rapidly narrowing options like the virtuoso card player and pugilist that he was.

  “I shan’t bother with useless apologies, sir,” she began in that low voice that was an unsettling, indelible combination of innocence and sin. Emerging from behind the dressing screen, clasping her hands to her waist, she met his gaze with a boldness bordering on desperation, studiously ignoring the fact that she had not only broken into his home but also interrupted the intimate process of his disrobing. “I had little choice but to meet with you this way,” she continued. “Please hear me out before you seek to bundle me onto your doorstep.”

  Rushford proceeded carefully, taking quick account of her questioning eyes, the downturn of her full mouth, to confirm that she had yet to recognize him. No small wonder, given the circumstances. He kept his mind deliberately blank, disinclined to dissect the exact state of his memories. “I take it that you are not here to make off with the silver,” he said, sweeping up the shirt he’d discarded and shrugging it on. Ironic that it was he, a decade her senior, a man who had had countless lovers over several continents, who felt the pull of modesty. “Shall we proceed into the drawing room for this discussion?”

  Her eyes widened. They were a dark, impossible blue, he recalled with heavy reluctance.

  “Oh, no, I beg of you,” she said. “I should prefer to remain discreet. I should rather not have any of your servants alerted to my presence.”

  Subterfuge was a hallmark of Rushford’s existence. It always had been, a mordant reminder of a life spent in shadows rather than light. “Then at least sit down,” he said. She startled, stiffening her shoulders, when he moved across the room to drag the chair out from behind the dressing screen. “I won’t ask how you managed to enter my town house without arousing suspicion.”

  “I prefer to stand, sir,” she sai
d, ignoring the proffered seat and backing away from him two steps, staring at him as though he were an apparition. “And just so you know, I found easy entrance through the window at the end of the hallway, which was slightly ajar.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, aware that his shirt was hanging open. Rowena Woolcott believed she owed him an explanation, a cruel irony of which she was obviously unaware. He smothered another curse when in the next moment, he realized exactly how she had stormed his citadel. “You climbed, didn’t you?” For any other woman to do so would have been outrageous. But then again, Miss Woolcott was of another ilk entirely.

  Her eyes flickered over to the wide high windows. “If I can do it, I imagine any number of thieves and cutthroats could do the same. I should have that attended to, if I were you.”

  That scenario was the least of his worries now that this young woman, despite his best efforts over a year ago, had returned to haunt him. She was wearing a simple brown merino day dress, insipid in both color and cut, with a short cloak over her shoulders, none of which gave a hint of the long slender limbs and firm curves beneath. But he knew. He remembered. That was the problem. The warmth of fine French brandy still heated his belly, mingling with a heightened awareness that had everything to do with her presence and his resurrected conscience.

  “Thank you for your concern. I shall have a word with my footmen,” he said with deliberate calm, leaning a shoulder against the bed’s newel post. “But the hour is late, as I’m sure you’re aware, so perhaps the time has come for you to tell me what you’re about. Before I do decide to call upon the good offices of the constabulary.”

  In the light of the single lamp, he could see her turn pale beneath the translucence of the finest skin, skin like silk under his hands. He pushed away the recollection, watching as she straightened her spine, her tone hardening. “I’d prefer that you didn’t,” she said with a shocking arrogance, peculiar for a woman, and for one so young. Unbidden, Rushford heard Kate’s voice intruding, bravado lacing her low contralto, that fluent, fluid confidence that came readily to a duchess assured of her beauty and wit.