Slightly Sinful

by Mary Balogh

HALF AN HOUR LATER, ALMOST BEFORE RACHEL had properly composed herself after the quarrel, which had seemed to come out of nowhere and had provoked her into a physical attack upon another human being, there was a tap on her door, and Geraldine came inside without waiting for a summons.

  “Such a to-do, Rache,” she said. “Phyll is in the kitchen doing battle. She has taken command of the kitchen maids and the food and the ovens, but the cook has only retreated to recoup her forces for a counterattack. She and the housekeeper are fortifying themselves on gin. Then the pots and the language are going to fly, let me tell you. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds, so I’ll hurry with my message. The baron wants to see you in his private rooms. You had better go. Maybe you can discover where he keeps your jewels and I can don my black cloak and mask, stick a knife between my teeth, and find a stretch of ivy to climb tonight when the moon is down.”

  Rachel laughed despite herself, but as she hurried along to her uncle’s apartments she really wished she were anywhere else on earth. Suddenly all the lies and deceptions seemed despicable. But what could she do now but forge ahead with the plan? She was not the only one involved in the trickery, after all. She could not expose her friends as frauds.

  She hated Jonathan. She hated him. He must have been wealthy, arrogant, insensitive, and heartless in his other life. She ignored the fact that he had not shoved her back but had apologized instead.

  “Come in and have a seat, Rachel,” her uncle said after his valet had admitted her.

  He did not rise from his chair. His feet were resting on a padded stool. He looked weary, and yet his eyes watched her keenly from beneath his bushy brows as she crossed the room and took the offered chair. They both sat facing a low window, which looked out onto the parterre gardens and the lawns beyond.

  “Uncle Richard,” she asked him, “how are you? I mean really, how are you?”

  “It is my heart,” he told her. “It is giving out on me slowly—or rapidly. Who knows? I have had a few seizures over the past three years, the most recent last February. I was recovering well enough, but then something happened to upset me. And then yesterday you arrived here.”

  And she was being lumped in with whatever it was that had upset him recently? Well, she could hardly complain. She had invited herself here after refusing his invitation last year. She had not even written to warn him that she was coming. And she had brought a whole crowd of other people with her.

  It had not really occurred to her that he would have aged in sixteen years. She had certainly never considered the possibility that his health might be gone. She had expected him to be the same robust, confident man—except that she would be armed against him this time.

  “We will leave tomorrow if you wish,” she said. “Or even today.”

  “That was not my meaning,” he said. “How well do you know Smith, Rachel? How much do you know of him? He is handsome and charming, I will confess—at least, he is charming when it suits him to be. Did you marry him, perhaps, because you were a lady’s companion and your choices seemed few? But that would have been foolish of you. You will be a wealthy woman one day. You could have been wealthy anytime during the past year if you had married with my approval.”

  “I love Jonathan,” she said. “And I know he is a man with whom I can live happily and securely for the rest of my life. You could not have chosen more wisely for me than I have done for myself, Uncle Richard.”

  “And yet,” he said, “you have quarreled quite violently with each other this morning. He insulted you, I suppose, and you pushed him over.”

  Rachel closed her eyes briefly. Of course! He would have had a bird’s-eye view of their altercation out of this window. She could see the seat on which they had been sitting without even having to stretch her neck. All she could be thankful for was that the window was closed and therefore he could not have heard a word of what they had said.

  “It was nothing,” she said. “A sharp exchange, soon made up. That is all.”

  “But you did not make up your quarrel,” he said. “You left him when you were still angry, and he let you go.”

  “It was not serious,” she insisted. She spread her hands across her lap.

  “I sincerely hope you have not made the mistake your mother made, Rachel,” he said.

  She looked up sharply at him.

  “How do you know it was a mistake?” she asked him. “You disapproved of her marriage and then, after she had eloped, you cut her off and never saw her again until after she was dead. How do you know she was not deliriously happy all those years? How do you know she would not have remained happy until Papa died last year?”

  He sighed. “I would not speak ill of York,” he said. “He was your father, Rachel, and I daresay you were fond of him. It would be unnatural if you had not been.”

  “I adored him,” she said fiercely, though she was aware, of course, that she was protesting too much. She had loved her father to the end, but it had not been easy to do so. Sometimes she had hated him.

  “What gives you the right to stand in judgment?” she asked him. “To cut off all contact with your only sister because you disapproved of her choice of husband and then to come and gloat over her grave when she died? What gave you the right to win a child’s affection—to buy it with ices and a doll and rides on your horse—and then to disappear from her life and leave her with the growing conviction that she must have proved unlovable? I was your own niece. I could not help it that you disapproved of my paternity. I was still your sister’s child. And I was still a person in my own right.”

  “Rachel.” He closed his eyes and set his head back against the cushions of his chair and one hand over his heart. “Rachel.”

  She stood up on shaky legs.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I am so very sorry, Uncle Richard. Please forgive me. I never quarrel—but I have done so twice this morning, with two different people. I came to Chesbury of my own free will. It is unpardonable of me to rip into you as if it were you who had invaded my home. All that happened was a very long time ago, and you did offer me a home here after Papa died, even if you did tie it to a threat to marry me off to someone of your choosing.”

  “A threat.” He laughed softly. “Rachel, you were twenty-one years old and had been given no chance, as far as I knew, to meet any eligible suitors. Your father had not arranged any sort of come-out for you. I thought to do you a kindness.”

  “Well,” she said, “I did not get that impression from your letter. But perhaps that was because I was not feeling kindly disposed toward you anyway. You offered no condolences for my loss of Papa.”

  “Because I was glad,” he said wearily. “I thought his passing would finally give you a chance in life while you were still young enough to grasp it. But it was thoughtless of me not to understand that you would be grieving.”

  “It does not matter,” she said. “I have grasped my chance for happiness, but not blindly, Uncle Richard. I chose a man who was both eligible and personable. I chose someone I could love and someone who loved me.”

  For the moment she was so caught up in the part she played that she believed utterly that she adored Jonathan.

  “May I fetch you something?” she asked. “A drink, perhaps?”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “I did not know you were ill,” she said. “I have upset you by coming here. I ought to have stayed away.”

  “It is twenty-three years since your mother left here,” he said. “She was fifteen years younger than I, more like my child than my sister. I loved her dearly. But she was impulsive and stubborn and hopelessly romantic. I mismanaged the situation with York, and though I had a good marriage of my own, there has been an emptiness in my life ever since your mother left. I am glad you have come.” He closed his eyes.

  It was an emptiness he might have filled anytime during the years following her mother’s death, Rachel thought, torn between a terrible grief and a rising anger. But she would not quarrel anymore with him. She re
ally had been an even-tempered person all her life until now. Only so, she believed, had she been able to cope with her father and his friends and all the turmoil of their life.

  “Uncle Richard,” she said, “let me have the jewels. I will treasure them and so will Jonathan. We will stay for a few days longer and then leave you in peace. I will write to you. I will come to visit.”

  She would write to him, she vowed to herself. She would confess all to him. And if he would forgive her, she would come to see him whenever she could. She would try not to hold the past against him. Perhaps they could somehow become uncle and niece to each other.

  “I am not in any hurry for you to leave,” he said. “It is a long time since there were young people in this house, Rachel. And I like your friends. They are charming ladies. It is a long time since I entertained or indeed saw my neighbors except at church. It must be twenty years since there was a ball at Chesbury. There will be one here within the next month. Stay so that we can get to know each other and so that I can get to know your husband.”

  Rachel bit her lip. The enormity of her deception was becoming more obvious and more painful to her with every passing hour, it seemed.

  “And my jewels?” she asked.

  He took his time answering.

  “I will not promise those to you, Rachel, even at the end of the month,” he said. “We will see. Smith is well able to support you if he has represented himself accurately, and so you cannot need the jewels to sell. And as for wearing them—well, they are old, heavy pieces not suited to a very young woman. They are heirlooms and were entrusted to my care—first by my mother and then by yours.”

  And so all this was to be for nothing, she thought—with only the tiny hope offered by his we will see.

  She might have argued. But she noticed that his hand had come up to cover his heart once more and that his complexion again looked gray-tinged. He had not opened his eyes. She looked down at him, alarmed. But though she leaned toward him, she could not bring herself to touch him.

  “I have overtired you, Uncle Richard,” she said. “May I send your valet to you?”

  She hurried from the room without waiting for his answer, but his valet was pacing outside the door and so she did not have to go in search of him.

  What a strange morning it had been, she thought as she went downstairs. It had seemed longer than a normal day—or even a week. She felt emotionally drained. There had been so little passion in her life before now, either positive or negative. Now there was a superabundance of it.

  THE COOK AND THE HOUSEKEEPER FOUGHT BACK BY taking their case in person to Baron Weston. The housekeeper played her trump card immediately. If his lordship could not trust her to hire the best possible employees for each position in the house, she declared, then she would resign on the spot. But she would not tolerate ladies she did not know from Adam—or Eve—invading her kitchen and upsetting her cook to such a degree that the poor woman doubted she would be able to produce a decent meal as long as Mrs. Leavey remained at Chesbury.

  Baron Weston dismissed the cook and accepted the housekeeper’s resignation.

  “I did not fully realize,” he said in the drawing room during the evening, following dinner, “just how unappetizing our meals had become here. I thank you, ma’am. Carlton House cannot have served more delicious fare than you served here tonight. I thought I was off my food, but I have eaten heartily enough this evening.”

  Phyllis blushed.

  “And the cakes at tea this afternoon were as light as air,” he said. “All my neighbors will be trying to steal away my cook.” He chuckled and suddenly looked better than he had in a day and a half, Alleyne thought.

  Mr. and Mrs. Rothe had called during the afternoon with their son and two daughters and had taken tea. So had Mrs. Johnson, her sister, Miss Twigge, and the Reverend and Mrs. Crowell. They had all expressed great delight at making the acquaintance of the baron’s niece and her new husband. All had seemed enchanted by Flossie and Phyllis, who had given herself an hour off from her duties in the kitchen. Mrs. Crowell had enjoyed a comfortable coze with Bridget. They had talked about flowers and vegetables and hedgerows and other related topics, from what Alleyne had overheard of their conversation.

  “But I cannot, of course, expect you to continue working in my kitchens, ma’am,” the baron said with a sigh. “I will have to see what my steward can suggest tomorrow.”

  “But nothing would give me greater pleasure, my lord,” Phyllis assured him. “I like to keep busy—as Colonel Leavey would explain to you if he were here. Cooking is my great love, as embroidery or painting is to other ladies.”

  “With your permission, my lord,” Flossie said, “I will step down to the housekeeper’s room in the morning and look over the accounts and organize the household duties of the servants for the day. It will be no trouble at all. Although Colonel Streat employed a full complement of servants whenever we were at home, I always insisted upon keeping a close eye on them myself.”

  “That is a remarkably kind offer, ma’am,” Lord Weston said, looking understandably taken aback. “I am overwhelmed.”

  While he was speaking, Bridget was fetching a cushion to set behind his head and a stool for his feet. She had already told him, while they still dined, that she would mix a special tea for him at bedtime that was good for the heart.

  It amazed Alleyne that they had not all been sent packing long ago for stirring up so many proverbial sleeping dogs so soon after their arrival. But the meals had certainly improved immeasurably. And the stables, Strickland had reported while dressing him for dinner, had had at least a month’s worth of muck raked out of them while the head groom busied himself giving orders and seeing that they were carried out.

  “I told him,” the sergeant had explained, “that he might be depressed on account of the baron has let most of his hunters go and don’t ride no more and don’t even take the carriage out most days. But that is no excuse for losing his pride in a job well done or for not doing his duty for which he gets paid and housed and fed. I told him that if he was a soldier he would be expected to keep his gun cleaned and loaded and his gear in order and his stomach free of too much rum even when he wasn’t in the thick of a war on account of one never knows when our nobs are going to pick a quarrel with the nobs from another country and the guns will be firing again.”

  But they had not been sent packing. Indeed, Weston seemed to be almost enjoying their company. He did watch Rachel much of the time, though, a somewhat brooding expression on his face. Yet Rachel was the only one among them who made little or no attempt to beguile the baron—or to act the part of happy new wife that she had come here to act.

  She was still out of charity with him, of course, Alleyne realized.

  They all went to bed early, as they had done the night before. Bridget commented—out of earshot of Weston—that early nights were a luxury of which she would never tire, and Phyllis heartily agreed, especially as she would need to be up early in order to prepare breakfast.

  Alleyne was not so sure that these country hours suited him. He was restless. He did think of going back downstairs and outside to take a walk, but clouds must have moved over sometime during the evening, he saw from the window of his bedchamber. It was black out there, and he did not know the park well enough to venture out without some light overhead. Besides, if Weston heard him, he would wonder why his niece’s husband had abandoned her bed when their marriage was still in the honeymoon stage.

  Alleyne allowed Strickland to help him off with his tight-fitting evening coat and to chatter for a few minutes, but he dismissed him before undressing entirely. He was aware of silence as he stood at the window. Geraldine must have left too—he had heard her talking and laughing with Rachel a short while ago.

  He walked into his dressing room. There was no light in hers, but from beyond it he could see the faint shifting glow of a candle. She was still up, then. He hesitated for some time. One of their bedchambers late at night was probab
ly not the wisest setting for a tête-à-tête, but at least they could be assured of some privacy.

  “I am coming through,” he said aloud. “If you have modesty to preserve, do it now.”

  She was at her window, as he had been at his a minute or two ago, dressed in a plain, serviceable cotton nightgown in which, of course, she looked quite as alluring as any other woman might look in sheer lace. Geraldine had brushed her hair to a smooth gloss. It hung loose halfway down her back. Her feet were bare. There was a look of surprise and dawning outrage on her face. She was hugging her bare arms with her hands.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I have not come to assert my conjugal rights.”

  “Why have you come?” she asked him, her eyes taking in his shirt and breeches and stockinged feet—he had come without his cane. “You have no business being in here. Go away.”

  “We are supposed to be bride and groom, Rache,” he said. “Ours is supposed to be a love match. We are supposed to be glowing with the newfound dimension of our love that nightly beddings have brought to us. Instead we are silent and tight-lipped with each other and barely civil. Is this the way to convince your uncle that ours is a match made in heaven?”

  She turned away and looked out into blackness again while he propped one shoulder against the empty door frame between her dressing room and bedchamber.

  “The one thing we forgot when we agreed to this,” she said, “was that we were going to have to do it together. You are a far better actor than I am.”

  “Do you hold me in such aversion, then?” He sighed and looked at her in some exasperation. “There was a time not so long ago when the mere sight of you coming into my room brightened my days. I was besotted with you from the moment my eyes first alit on you. Did you know that? And there was a time when you chose my company, coming to sit with me and talk with me and read to me when there was no medical necessity for you to be there. Is it possible for us to forget what happened to change all that?”

  “No,” she said after a lengthy silence. “It is not possible. Things like that cannot be put from mind by a simple act of will. I was gauche and totally unskilled and gave you a disgust of me.”