Slightly Sinful

by Mary Balogh

  “It does not matter, Uncle Richard,” she said. “It does not. He did not hurt you, and that is all that matters. I have never even seen the jewels. I will not miss what I have never had. I am almost glad they are gone.”

  “Perhaps you do not realize what a vast fortune was there,” he said, his hand resting on her head. “How can I forgive myself for the deception I have perpetrated against you ever since you arrived here? I ought to have told you immediately. I ought to have sent in search of you as soon as I missed them.”

  “Uncle Richard,” she said, “you know nothing about deception.”

  His hand smoothed over her hair. Jonathan at the window cleared his throat. Rachel’s heart hammered against her ribs.

  “If you were betrothed to Crawford or Crawley or whatever his name is,” her uncle said into the silence, “then how—”

  “Sir,” Jonathan said, “it was Rachel who introduced Crawley to her friends. He took their life savings, with their blessing and hers, supposedly to invest the money safely for them at a London bank. Rachel blamed herself for their considerable loss and vowed to herself—without their knowledge—that she would pay them back every penny. To do that she needed her inheritance. She needed to sell a few pieces of the jewelry.”

  Rachel had closed her eyes.

  “And what is your part in this, Smith?” Uncle Richard asked.

  “I owe Rachel my life,” Jonathan said. “She found me abandoned and close to death after the Battle of Waterloo and nursed me back to health. She needed a husband if she was to persuade you to allow her to have her inheritance early.”

  “And you are not her real husband?” Uncle Richard asked.

  “No, sir.”

  It was unfair to allow him to do all the explaining after all, Rachel thought. She really had not intended for it to happen. But she kept her eyes closed. This whole ghastly morning seemed to have moved out of her control.

  “Why not?” Her uncle’s voice was low and stern.

  “I regained consciousness to find myself without memory,” Jonathan explained. “I know nothing about my past. I do not even know if I am married to someone else.”

  “You are not Sir Jonathan Smith, then?” Uncle Richard asked.

  “No, sir,” Jonathan said. “I do not know my real name.”

  “And you do not have an estate and fortune in Northumberland.”

  “No, sir.”

  “It was all my fault,” Rachel said. “Jonathan felt he owed me his life, and he knew that I wanted to get my hands on my jewels more than anything else in life. And so he offered to help me. It is all my fault. Absolutely all of it. He is in no way to blame. But I could not keep up the deception, especially after last night. I never ever knew about the birthday gifts and the offer to send me to school and the offer to give me a Season. I thought you had completely forgotten about me. I thought you hated me. And I could not bear it when you gave me my aunt’s necklace and earrings and then told everyone that you had decided to leave everything to me because you loved me. I came here this morning to confess everything to you. Jonathan insisted upon coming with me.”

  “Well, bless my soul,” her uncle said after a short silence.

  Then he did something so unexpected that Rachel jumped in alarm.

  He started to laugh. At first it was a mere tremor that might have been fury, then it was a low rumble of sound that might have been a death rattle, and then it was a hearty bellow that was unmistakably laughter.

  She sat back on her heels and looked up warily at him. But she had always found laughter infectious even when she did not know its cause. She certainly did not know the cause of this. But her lips twitched, she felt a giggle bubble up inside, and then she covered her face with her hands as she dissolved into laughter.

  “There is a truly marvelous absurdity about it all,” Jonathan said dryly.

  And then they were all off into whoops of merriment over matters that had seemed enormously tragic just a short while ago—and surely would again when they had calmed down and thought everything through.

  Sometimes, though, Rachel thought later, when she had a chance to think, farce merely breeds farce. Before any of them had quite sobered in order to face reality, the door crashed open without any heralding knock, and Flossie strode into the room, Geraldine, Phyllis, and Bridget on her heels. Flossie was waving a sheet of paper in one raised hand.

  “He is in Bath, Rachel,” she announced. “The villain is in Bath, charming all the old dowagers out of their pittances and going by the name of Nicholas Croyden. But it’s him, right enough.”

  “We are going after him, Rache,” Geraldine said. “Will is going to hold him down while I pull out his toenails one by one.”

  “I am going to batter in his nose until it is poking out the back of his head,” Phyllis added. Appropriately, her arms were liberally coated with flour and she was brandishing a rolling pin.

  “I am going to pull out all his hair and stuff a pillow with it,” Bridget said, “and then ram it down his throat.”

  “This,” Flossie said, waving the letter, “is from one of the sisters. She is going to keep a friendly eye on him until we get there. Are you coming with us, Rachel?”

  Uncle Richard cleared his throat.

  “Rachel,” he said, “I think it is time you introduced me properly to your friends and, er, your maid.”

  THEY ALL WENT TO BATH.

  At first it seemed that Phyllis would remain behind, smitten at the prospect of leaving Lord Weston without proper food to restore his health and fatten his person. And then Rachel tried to insist that Alleyne go to London without further delay, since their masquerade was over. She would remain at Chesbury, she declared, if her uncle would have her. Bridget then announced her intention of staying with Rachel, since she was now officially an unmarried young lady again and needed a chaperon. Strickland, who had been hovering outside the door of Weston’s sitting room from the beginning, explained at great and convoluted length that though he would like to go with the ladies to protect them and pound Crawley to a pulp on their behalf, he felt it his duty, at least until he got his feet properly under him, so to speak, to go with Mr. Smith as his valet. Then Geraldine recalled that she was Rachel’s maid—until she remembered that with all explained and out in the open she no longer was so. Nevertheless, she was reluctant to leave just when she was bringing order belowstairs and was over halfway through the household inventory she was supervising. Flossie then turned all soft-eyed and mentioned the fact that Drummond had taken her out on the lake in the moonlight the night before and proposed marriage to her and that she had not said yes, though she had not said no, either. She had promised him an answer today or tomorrow.

  And then it seemed as if no one would go.

  But Weston spoke up.

  “It is remarkably poor-spirited of everyone to choose to remain here when adventure beckons from Bath,” he said. “I daresay I will have to go alone, then.”

  “Oh, splendid!” Flossie exclaimed, crushing the letter to her bosom. “You are a right good sport, my lord. Mr. Drummond can wait for his answer.”

  And then all the clamor and confusion resumed as everyone suddenly found every reason to go to Bath and none to remain behind.

  Rachel did not take her uncle’s decision lightly, of course.

  “You must remain quietly here, Uncle Richard,” she said. “You are not strong enough to travel. I will remain with you and everyone else can go. Except Jonathan.”

  “Rachel,” he said, “I expected this morning to be one of the darkest of my life. Instead it has given me a new lease on life. Despite the loss of your jewels, which may well never be recovered, I have never been so diverted in my life. I would not for worlds miss the action in Bath.”

  Alleyne’s thoughts had been neither solicited nor offered. But he did find Rachel looking at him wide-eyed after her uncle had spoken—and of course all the ladies followed suit. So did Strickland—minus the wide eyes—from beyond the doorway.<
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  “London can wait just as easily as Drummond can,” Alleyne said, grinning at them all. “So can my memories and my former life. Strangely and somewhat alarmingly, though, I have the feeling that this present life is not so very different from the old one. Being involved with madcap people in madcap schemes appears to come naturally to me—and was not I the one who suggested the last one? I am off to Bath even if no one else is.”

  “Good,” Geraldine said. “Do you hear that, Will? You will be coming too.” And very interestingly, Alleyne noticed, she blushed.

  But his attention was almost instantly diverted. Rachel was smiling at him, her eyes shining with pleasure and dancing with merriment.

  “Bath may very well find,” she said, “that it cannot contain us all.”

  “I certainly hope so.” He winked at her.

  No stranger spirited into the room at that moment would have known that almost all of them were the victims of recent and devastating thefts and that all had been involved in prolonged and complex deceptions until confession time just a few minutes ago. They all launched into mirth at the prospect of what their arrival would do to staid and respectable Bath society.

  It really was extraordinary, Alleyne decided. It was also a great relief not to have to pretend any longer, and to know that Rachel had found the home where she belonged and that she would be happy and safe here after this business was all over with—and after he had gone.

  But he would think of their parting when the time came.

  In the meanwhile Baron Weston saw his solicitor, as planned, and rewrote his will.

  And early the next morning they all set out for Bath in a veritable cavalcade of carriages and baggage coaches with the avowed intention of making Nigel Crawley, alias Nathan Crawford, alias Nicholas Croyden, sorry that he had ever been born.

  CHAPTER XX

  BARON WESTON TOOK ROOMS FOR THEM ALL at the York House Hotel, the best that Bath had to offer, despite protests from the ladies that they could not pay for them—not, at least, until they had accosted Nigel Crawley and wrested their savings from him. He would pay the bill, Lord Weston told them all, and that was that. He did not want to hear another word on the matter. At his suggestion they were all to keep the identities they had assumed when they arrived at Chesbury, except for Rachel, who reverted to her real name, and Geraldine, who was elevated to the rank of Miss Geraldine Ness, sister of Mrs. Leavey, whom she resembled about as much as a horse resembles a rabbit.

  Rachel’s uncle took to his bed for the two days following their arrival, desperately weary after his journey and the excitement that had preceded it. Rachel sat with him much of the time, more worried about him than all the jewels and all the villains in the world. But she was cheered to learn from the physician who was summoned to attend him that it was indeed only exhaustion that ailed him and not any descernible recurrence of his heart problems.

  She sat with him, in silence when he needed sleep or merely quiet, and talking to him when he had a little more energy. She even read to him on occasion. She was powerfully reminded of another sickroom she had haunted and another patient she had tended not so very long in the past—though it seemed an age ago.

  She saw very little of Jonathan and resigned herself to the fact that this really was the beginning of the end. He would not return to Chesbury Park with her, she guessed, though that was where she would go. Uncle Richard had already invited her to live there, and she had accepted. There had been no cold duty involved in either the invitation or the acceptance, she knew. Incredibly, he loved her—he still did despite what she had done to him. And perhaps even more incredibly, she loved him. During those days, she bathed herself in the light of a love that was unconditional and made no demands on her.

  He had even accepted her friends, though they had frankly confessed to him just who and what they were. He had done more than accept them, in fact. He actually liked them.

  “Rachel,” he said one afternoon after waking from a nap, “I did not feel any great degree of admiration for your father, but somehow he raised you well. Not many ladies would condescend to befriend four of society’s most shunned members just because one of them had been her childhood nurse, and even fewer would recognize a debt of honor to them or go to such extreme lengths to pay it. But your actions have reaped certain rewards, I believe. They are as true friends to you as any you are like to make among your peers.”

  “They are, Uncle Richard,” she agreed. “They took me in when I was destitute even though they had just lost almost everything they had saved for their retirement.”

  “And Miss Leavey can cook like a dream,” he said with a sigh.

  She was content, Rachel told herself. Whether they found Nigel Crawley or not, whether they recovered any of their property or not, this adventure had turned out far more happily than she had ever deserved.

  And she was glad she saw so little of Jonathan.

  She would be gladder still when he had left for good. Then her heart could begin to heal and perhaps she could look forward to happiness as well as contentment. And yet she dreaded the moment of his leaving. Once it was over, she told herself, she would be fine. It was just the moment itself. She mentally rehearsed what she would say to him, how she would look. How she would smile.

  The ladies meanwhile spent the two days visiting the friends whom they called sisters and gathering more information about the clergyman, Nicholas Croyden, who had taken rooms with his sister on Sydney Place and was often to be seen charming all the widows and unattached ladies of uncertain age with whom the spa abounded. He was reputed to put in an appearance at the Pump Room each morning for the fashionable stroll and drinking of the waters, though none of the sisters consulted had ever set foot in that hallowed place.

  “We will, though,” Flossie said when they were all gathered for dinner in the baron’s private dining room on the second evening. “It is an eminently respectable place for Mrs. Streat, widow of Colonel Streat, to go, and for her sister-in-law and her sister and their dear friend Miss Clover. We will go there in the morning.”

  “Yes, we will,” Jonathan agreed. And he turned his head and inclined it elegantly to Rachel before grinning at her. “May I have the honor of escorting you there, Miss York? With your uncle’s permission, of course, and under the chaperonage of Miss Clover, whose company is much in demand for the occasion.”

  He was enjoying himself, Rachel thought. He really was a daredevil at heart. She guessed that he always had been and felt a pang of regret over the fact that she had never known him then and would not know him after he had returned to that other life.

  “Thank you, Sir Jonathan,” she said. “It would be my pleasure.”

  “And mine too,” her uncle said. “No one is leaving me behind. We must just hope, I suppose, that we will not be faced with the sad anticlimax of the gentleman sleeping in and failing to appear for the morning promenade.”

  “Uncle Richard—” Rachel began. But he held up a staying hand.

  “Most people come to Bath for one of two reasons, Rachel,” he said. “Because they are on a repairing lease or a small pension and Bath is cheap, or because their health is not all it ought to be and they wish to take the waters. I am one of the latter. I will take the waters—in the Pump Room tomorrow morning.”

  “And we,” Geraldine said, quite unabashed, “are the former. Though not for long. I’ll squeeze that villain when I get my hands on him until he spews money.”

  “Very genteel language, Gerry,” Flossie said, clucking her tongue. “Remember who you are, if you please. Ladies do not spew or cause to be spewed. You will squeeze him until he ejects our money. I’ll help.”

  “What I do not understand,” Rachel said, frowning as she cut into her pudding with her spoon, “is why he would appear in a public place like Bath when there must be so many people in England now who will recognize him.”

  “It is a calculated risk,” Jonathan told her. “Remember that most people actually gave him the money
for his charities. Far from pouncing on him with fury if they should happen to see him again, they would probably greet him gladly and make yet another contribution—though they might wonder about his changed name. However, it is unlikely that he meets many people a second time. The sort who were in Brussels during the spring are not the sort who frequent Bath. Next he will probably go somewhere like Harrogate, another spa, of course, but one that is far north of here and unlikely to attract the same clientele.”

  “Well, this time,” Phyllis said, “he has made a big mistake. He ought not to have tangled with us. Though we might not have found him, might we, if he had not used a name so similar to the one we knew him as. I wonder why he did that? If I were him, I would be Joe Bloggs this time.”

  “Who would give a donation for some poor deprived orphans to a Joe Bloggs, though, Phyll?” Geraldine asked. “Use your imagination.”

  “I see your point,” Phyllis said.

  Jonathan excused himself soon after that, and the rest of them retired early.

  BARON WESTON WAS RECOGNIZED AND GREETED BY A number of his acquaintances when he made an appearance in the Pump Room early the next morning. But it was his companions who aroused most interest since all of them, with the possible exception of Bridget, were young, and even she was a good twenty or thirty years younger than most of those who had come there to stroll and gossip and—in a few cases—drink the waters.

  Flossie and Phyllis were soon borne off by a retired general, one on each of his arms, to walk about the room as he asked about their experiences with the armies and shared his own. Geraldine and Bridget were taken under the wing of a haughty dowager distinguished by a tall bonnet with a formidable array of plumes towering above it and a lorgnette that she used expansively as she talked, rather like a particularly flamboyant conductor of an orchestra with his baton. Rachel stood at the water table with her uncle and was made much of by a steady parade of fellow drinkers. Alleyne found himself in conversation with an elderly couple who claimed to know Smiths from Northumberland and persisted in trying to ascertain if they might be of the same family to which Sir Jonathan belonged.