Lady of Sin

by Madeline Hunter

  Wheeler felt her swollen belly. Mrs. Brown peered beneath the sheet covering Fleur’s bent legs. Midwife and physician looked at each other with wordless communication.

  “You may stay, Mr. Duclairc,” Mrs. Brown decreed.

  Dante held Fleur as the pains came. Charlotte moved back in the room, useless now that Dante was here. Pen joined her and clutched her shoulder.

  Soon there was little rest between the pains. Mrs. Brown disappeared behind the sheet. Wheeler stood behind her and watched.

  Bianca mopped Fleur’s face with cool water, and then began wiping Dante’s too. “It will not be long now,” she reassured.

  It was not long at all. Fleur knew. A joyful note entered her cries of effort. A new determination lit her eyes. Charlotte silently urged her on and prayed it would be over soon, and safely.

  Wheeler announced the baby was coming. With a triumphant, agonized cry, Fleur collapsed against Dante.

  “A boy,” the invisible Mrs. Brown announced.

  A cry of grateful relief escaped Charlotte before she could catch it. Her body went limp and she hugged Pen for support. She watched through filming eyes as the baby was cleaned and wrapped. Dante’s embrace encompassed Fleur, and supported her arms when the child was given to her.

  Husband and wife looked at the little babe, then at each other.

  Their expressions stunned Charlotte. Their naked love overwhelmed her emotions. She knew they loved each other, but now she glimpsed the depths normally shown only to each other.

  Her brother’s eyes fully revealed his adoration and desire and his promise of endless passion.

  She had never seen anything like it in her life.

  Not in her entire life.

  Something shattered in her. Her tears flowed so violently that the sobs hurt her body. She could not control them and finally gave up the effort.

  She cried out her happiness and relief into Pen’s shoulder, but grief and disgraceful envy poured out too.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  The weeping sickened Nathaniel. He stared at the door, sure a tragedy had just transpired on its other side.

  It was time for him to slip away and leave this family to its grief.

  He had taken two steps when the door opened. Penelope came out, supporting Charlotte in her embrace. Charlotte gasped for breath between her violent sobs.

  Penelope pulled the door closed. She looked over at Nathaniel with a helpless expression.

  Acknowledged, he had to say something. “I am so sorry. I will never forgive myself for—”

  “All is well, I assure you. Wonderfully so. A male child has been born, and it looks as if Fleur will be fine too.”

  Charlotte let loose with another outpouring, smothering the sounds in her sister’s shoulder.

  Penelope patted her head. “She is very tired. She has been here with Fleur from the start. I am sure the strain has undone her, that is all.”

  Charlotte appeared ignorant of his presence, for which he was grateful.

  “Mr. Knightridge, do you think you could sit with her? I would like to go down and tell Laclere and Julian. If they heard this weeping—”

  “Of course. I would have offered, but I did not think . . .” He did not think Charlotte would appreciate his aid, was what he did not think.

  He went to them and Penelope eased Charlotte’s body into his arms.

  “I will return soon,” she promised. She hurried to the stairs.

  Nathaniel looked down at the dark hair on the head pressed to his frock coat. “There is no need to hurry. I will take care of her,” he said, even though Pen was gone.

  Charlotte did not seem to realize she had been transferred. Whatever caused these soul-wrenching sobs, it made the embrace that held her irrelevant.

  He could not say the same for himself. She felt very small in his arms, and very weak. He would never have thought Charlotte would break down so completely, for any reason. She cried her eyes out in a way he had never seen a woman do before.

  He wished he could think of a way to offer more comfort. Instead he stood there, not daring to move, while her tears stained his coat.

  Eventually she began calming down. From the way she tried to stifle the sobs, he guessed that she had realized who held her. She stiffened, as if embarrassed. She battled mightily to collect herself.

  “Come and sit.” He turned her in his arms, guided her to the chair where Dr. Wheeler had been, and set her down.

  She withdrew a handkerchief from her apron pocket and wiped her eyes. She composed herself with several deep breaths.

  “You poor man. Pen should not have thrust me on you.”

  “I did not mind.” He had been glad to hold her. Her vulnerability had touched him. “I am just relieved the reason for your tears was not the one I first feared.”

  She gazed down at the handkerchief crushed in her little fist. She still seemed very fragile.

  He dropped to one knee beside her chair. “Do you want me to call for your maid? Perhaps you should rest in your room.”

  She shook her head. “I am tired, that is true, but my loss of composure was not because of that.”

  Her gaze remained on her hands and lap. A considering expression entered her eyes, as if she assessed an object far in the distance, trying to identify its form.

  “I only understand part of what caused this emotion,” she said. “Mostly I reacted to a happiness that was too sweet and beautiful to be borne. As for the rest of what I experienced, it was not worthy of me, and I am not sure that I ever want to understand it.”

  He placed his hand over her fist. “There is no shame in being human. We cannot summon or reject emotions at will.”

  Her gaze rose to meet his. No armor protected her. No veil obscured what he saw. She still trembled with the helplessness he had held in his arms, and her soul was in her eyes.

  Passion did not interfere with his perceptions this time. He gazed into her tremoring depths and every layer was familiar to him.

  He had seen them before, after all.

  He was sure now.

  Joyful voices came up the stairs. Charlotte glanced in their direction. Nathaniel released her hand and stood. Laclere, Hampton, and Penelope arrived on the landing.

  Penelope came over and gave her sister a critical examination. “You are yourself again, I see. Come, we are going to cajole Mrs. Brown into letting us see the baby.”

  “I do not trust myself to enter again. If I create another scene, it will disturb the child. I think that I will take a turn outside. It is not too cold and I need some air,” Charlotte said.

  “And it is past time that I take my leave,” Nathaniel said. “I have intruded too long.”

  “You cannot go now,” Penelope said. “It is too dark. I have told the housekeeper to prepare a room for you.”

  “Yes, you must stay,” Charlotte said. “You have not yet told me the reason for your visit, and I want to learn all about your journey to Durham.” She rose and walked to the stairs leading to the upper floor.

  He watched her ascend out of sight, wishing now that there were nothing notable to report.

  Laclere was at the bedroom door, holding negotiations with his wife and Mrs. Brown. He turned to the rest of them. “We get to peek, no more. Fleur has fallen asleep.”

  Penelope hurried over with Julian in tow. Nathaniel waited until they dipped into the chamber, then aimed for the stairs to make himself scarce.

  “You do not care for babies?” Laclere asked.

  Nathaniel turned. Laclere was still in the doorway.

  “It is a family time, Laclere. I will go below.”

  “We do not stand on ceremony here, Knightridge. It is true that Charl cannot stand the sight of you, but the rest of us count you as an honored friend. If you suffered in hell with Dante down there, you should at least glimpse his heaven. Come and see his son.”

  Feeling a little coerced, but also a little curious, Nathaniel moved closer and peered into the chamb
er, past Laclere and over Hampton’s shoulder.

  Fleur lay under crisply clean bedclothes. She looked like a dozing angel, peaceful and happy, with her long dark hair streaming over the pillow.

  Dante sat on the far side of the bed, holding a little wrapped bundle. He had it angled so the baby’s pink face could be seen by the audience that had intruded. Dante did not look at them, however. His gaze was on his wife.

  Nathaniel’s chest tightened at the image the new family presented. He understood what Charlotte had meant, about a beauty and sweetness not to be borne. No one could view this and not be moved.

  There was a hollow spot within his joy, however. An empty corner in his heart recognized and resented its deprivation as he glimpsed the love and intimacy in that chamber.

  He wondered if it had been a similar emotion that Charlotte had experienced and did not want to understand.

  The crisp air felt good after so many hours in that chamber. Charlotte inhaled the clarifying cold as she strolled near the stone wall that edged the terrace outside Laclere Park’s drawing room.

  She hoped Nathaniel would join her. If he did, she suspected they would have an argument.

  He had not ridden here from London on a social call. Something must have happened concerning Harry that he wanted to tell her. If the discovery had been impressive enough to bring him all this way, she suspected it would be news she would not like to hear.

  She could use a good argument right now. It would distract her from reflections on what had happened up in that chamber. What she had felt.

  She thought she had reconciled herself to being childless, but this birth had reopened that wound. It might not have been any lack in her, of course. Philip’s illness might have played a role the way everyone pretended to assume.

  She feared not, however. Her heart had accepted that barrenness might follow her into another marriage should she ever have the inclination to wed again. She thought she had found peace with that. Today, however, she had mourned her unborn children as she never had before.

  It was not seeing Fleur’s newborn that had truly undone her, however. Her love for Ambrose had responded to that grief, comforting her, reminding her that she was not really childless in the ways that matter. No, the envy had not been uncontrollable because of the babe. Rather she had been devestated by what she discovered as she watched her brother and Fleur.

  She had always been confident that she and Philip had been in love. Not soul-searing love, perhaps. Not highly dramatic passion. But a love just as worthwhile, and, she had always believed, better in the long term. Not dangerous and tumultuous, but peaceful. Contented. Comfortable.

  Now she suspected that it had not been love after all. Philip had never looked at her the way Dante did Fleur today. Not even in their most private moments together.

  Had he loved her? Really loved her? Or had it been a happy, pleasant affection? Philip had been amiable and polite and . . . passive. Maybe he did not even have it in him to really fall in love.

  Maybe she did not either.

  A sense of loss shadowed her. A picture that she had painted in her mind had been torn, and she was sorry to see it ruined. She suspected that she would begin reassessing all of the images now, and learning that her life had not been quite what she thought.

  She would have preferred to be spared that. Already it was making her feel old and worn and . . . stupid.

  “You appear deep in thought.”

  She turned at the address. Nathaniel stood near the house. The light from the drawing room backed his tall, dark form.

  “Too deep, I am concluding,” she said. “Strange how something as commonplace as the birth of a child can encourage introspection.”

  “A commonplace event, but also a momentous one. It is not surprising that you dwell on it, since you played such an important role.”

  “It is not the happy event of my nephew’s birth that I contemplate, I am ashamed to say. My thoughts are self-absorbed.”

  “Do you wish to be left with them, or do you require some distraction, as you foresaw earlier today?”

  “Distraction would be welcome.”

  He approached, giving off a magnetic aura that almost had her meeting him halfway. He stood near her differently too. A little closer than in the past. More at ease and familiar, as if what had transpired outside Fleur’s chamber had toppled yet another wall.

  He fingered the hem of her mantle. “Are you warm in that?”

  “Warm enough.” Warm enough to stay out here. She did not want to return to the house just yet. Her heart was still accommodating what she had experienced today.

  “Let us walk in the park,” she suggested. “Laclere will want to celebrate, and I would prefer to avoid him for a short while more.”

  “There is very little moon. I do not want you stumbling and hurting yourself.”

  “I know every inch on the path we will take. I often walked it alone in the dark when I was a girl.” That was its appeal tonight. She might recapture that girl’s courage and honesty if she again trod her path.

  They slipped down the stone stairs and ambled through the garden and out to the broad lawn dotted with trees. They strolled along the left side near the edge of the woods that were home to the estate’s historic ruins.

  The stars shone brightly out here, away from the house. They glinted in the velvet blanket of the night.

  His warmth at her side, his presence and energy, comforted her, just as it had earlier. Comforting, but not comfortable. This man never left her at peace. Her instincts always did a nervous jig when he was nearby. The intrusive stimulation could be annoying, mostly because she possessed no control over it. She had resented the disturbance in the past. It had provoked the impulse to put him in his place, which was distant enough to spare her the sensation.

  She understood the reason for that agitation now, and comprehension only made it worse. The silence did not help. Their quiet walk created a tension that demanded release, and not with words.

  She sought relief in words anyway. “You came down from London to tell me something, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, that was one reason.”

  The other reason was in his tone and in the night. It pulled at her like a tightening tether.

  “Your news must be important.”

  “It seemed so yesterday, but it appears insignificant now.”

  She could not imagine how one day would render important news insignficant. She suspected he was trying to be kind after seeing her in emotional shambles. “Since you made the journey, you may as well tell me. You are supposed to be distracting me, remember?”

  “I will reveal all, if you insist,” he said. “First, however . . .”

  His hand took her arm. He pulled her into an embrace as encompassing as the one outside Fleur’s chamber.

  The goal was not comfort this time. His kiss created clamorous pleasures that aroused her whole body. A silent moan of relief sounded in her heart as he took command of her passion, calling it forth with nips on her lips and the firm press of his mouth and, finally, with the intrusive sweep of his tongue.

  His ravishing mouth sought her ear, then her neck. The kisses produced delicious excitements. He held her so close that she could feel his strength pressed to her breasts and hips. She encircled his neck with her arms so she would be closer still.

  “I wish it were summer, and not so cold. Or that we were in London, and not your brother’s home,” he muttered. His mouth and breath made her neck tingle.

  He kissed her again, releasing a passion that made her senses spin. She did not care that it was cold, and wished he did not either. They could go into the woods, and—

  He broke the kiss and just held her. She huddled against him, her face pressed to his coat, once more collecting herself, finding herself, on this emotionally astonishing day.

  His hand eased her head up. He looked into her eyes, as if he could see everything despite the dark. “You and I have much to discuss, Charlotte,
and my journey to Durham is the least of it.”

  She was not sure she wanted to discuss anything at all. They never seemed of one mind when they did. She rather wished they could just abandon themselves to this madness and live in it forever, separate from the world.

  Impossible, of course. His words reminded her just how impossible.

  “That journey may be the least of it, but it may also be a good place to start,” she said.

  Their desire and that journey were not completely separate, after all. She wished they were, oh, how she did, but they were not.

  He tucked her arm in his, and they began retracing their steps. She waited for him to broach the subject, but her blood was still humming with excitement.

  “Harry told me his story. He revealed a few details on our journey north. I then learned more from him before I left Durham.”

  Her heart sank. She had feared this was what he would say. The effects of their passion lingered, however, and made her truly wish she had been wrong.

  “Am I going to hate you for discovering this information?”

  “It does not concern Mardenford, if that is what you mean. Harry only spoke of his own history.”

  That did not mean it did not concern Mardenford. “What did you learn?”

  The night wrapped them, preserving their intimacy. The lights of the house waited, however, and grew brighter with each step.

  “He remembers living in a village on the coast, one near a major trade route. His mother lived with him there. He also remembers his journey to London with her. And, I fear, he also remembers her suicide.”

  Her emotions were raw and this revelation caused a pang of the worst sadness. Poor Harry. She knew too well the kind of guilt and confusion a child experienced when a loved one died that way. She had been not much older than Harry when her oldest brother took his own life. There were nights even now when the sorrow returned because her thoughts turned to that old tragedy.

  “Does he know she did it? You said you feared he remembered . . .”

  “He calls it an accident, but I think he suspects. They had been in London some time. One day she dressed in her best clothes and took him to the quay near the Thames. She chose a spot a few streets away from the river, and told him to stay there until she returned. He waited a long time, he says. Then a commotion came from the river and people rushed there. He followed the crowd and saw her body being pulled from the river.”