Lady of Sin

by Madeline Hunter

  “I do not think that is wise.”

  “I do. Can you find him, Nathaniel? Can you learn where he is now?”

  “Do not do this, Charlotte. It will change nothing.”

  “It will answer questions that I cannot live with forever. Even without Mardenford’s repudiation, I would have sought that man out. My brother-in-law’s fear only makes the mystery bigger, and has me thinking that my new view of the past is not the correct one at all.”

  He understood her need to know, but he wished she would retreat. He had rejected all the questions, to spare her. She had never requested that compromise, but he had embraced it without a second thought when the weight of the answers landed on her shoulders. Now here she was, forcing it forward against his better judgment.

  She gazed at him so earnestly, so honestly. She appeared vulnerable and soft, but the formidable Lady M. still existed beneath the fragility. He saw her determination as well as her confusion.

  With him or without him, she was going to speak with that tutor.

  “I will find him,” he said. “We will listen to his story together.”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  It was not such a small wedding. The family alone made for a good group, and friends had traveled down from London as well. They all filled the small church in a town near the coastal property that Julian Hampton owned in Essex.

  Charlotte watched the ceremony begin, thinking the simplicity of the setting was appropriate. Not because a grand London affair would have been wrong, and not because of the circumstances of this marriage. If ever God had meant a man and woman to be joined in life, it was Penelope and Julian.

  Rather, the quiet nature of the wedding was like their love. The ancient stones of the church symbolized the longevity and faith of their affections.

  Pen looked beautiful in the blush dress she had chosen, and Julian was equally handsome. If they had worn rags, however, Charlotte still would have felt the tears burning her throat. Their expressions garbed them in glory such as no clothing could. Pen glowed, and Julian’s eyes reflected his triumph and awe that the woman he loved was finally his.

  Charlotte was not alone in being moved. Pen and Julian exchanged vows in a church gone silent with emotion.

  Charlotte glanced at the men who had stood by Pen’s side over the years. Laclere’s expression appeared tight, which meant he fought to contain what stirred his heart. Dante, who had left Fleur and the baby at Laclere Park in order to see his sister wed, smiled with contentment that Pen would now know the happiness she deserved.

  Another man caught her eye. Not a relative, but much more than a friend. He sat at the side of the church, his dark eyes on the ceremony, his classical profile carving the air and his golden crown marking his spot. One might think him a casual acquaintance from his place in the gathering among the visitors.

  He did not appear really engaged in the event. His expression seemed distracted. Was he contemplating his visit to her new home two nights ago? As soon as Pen left for the coast, they had arranged an assignation. There had been no conversation upon his arrival, but instead an immediate rush to bed and a tumultuous passion as they both quenched the mad craving that deepened with every separation.

  Perhaps he dwelled on the little journey that would follow this celebration. He had located Mr. Yardley, the tutor, and when he and she returned to town, it would be by way of Hertfordshire.

  She returned her full attention to Pen and Julian. Suddenly Mardenford’s words came back to her. Bad blood wins out eventually. No doubt he would see this marriage that way, as Pen displaying the Duclaircs’ propensity for behavior less than acceptable.

  She found herself smiling. Mardenford was right. Her family did have that tendency, and always had. But it had led her sister and her brothers to happiness that exceeded what most others knew. There was no doubt about the soul-stirring love shared by her sister and Hampton as they were bound by law. It affected the air and the light and gathered everyone inside its awesome power.

  She looked at Pen and Julian with new eyes. How courageous they were. Not in refusing to conform, but in their complete love for each other. How brave to show another your naked heart and soul and embrace the danger as well as the joy. What occurred between naked bodies was a small thing in comparison.

  She felt a stirring within the emotion-laden atmosphere. She looked to its source, and found Nathaniel watching her.

  His gaze communicated more than memories of their recent assignation. There were depths and questions in his eyes that she could not read, but she knew they had to do with her. With the two of them, and what waited within their passion.

  The wedding breakfast was simple but elegant. Nathaniel assumed that Bianca, Viscountess Laclere, had a hand in that.

  The party gathered at tables set in the rustic, whitewashed rooms of the coastal house that Hampton owned. The scent and sounds of the sea flowed in the open windows. The weather proved fair, as if heaven chose to favor the reason for the celebration.

  Hothouse flowers joined native greenery in forcing the season’s images by a month, and servants brought down from London cooked and served, making do with a kitchen never intended for such a fete. There was no attempt to transfer the formalities of a London wedding to this site. Instead it took the tone of an elegant country party being held in Tuscany or Provence.

  Nathaniel discovered that his place was next to Charlotte’s, at the main table that stretched through the sitting room overlooking the sea. They were seated across from the Duchess of Everdon and the financier Daniel St. John.

  “I am honored,” he said to Charlotte as he took his seat. She looked beautiful today. In that sapphire dress, she was a cool lake into which he longed to plunge.

  Charlotte glanced toward her sister-in-law, Bianca. “She knows. I assume she approves, if she placed you here. Laclere must not mind too much if he did not object.”

  “That is a relief. I would not want him minding too much.” He had received a speculative glance or two from Laclere since arriving at the wedding. “Lady Laclere has been indiscreet, I think. I suspect she has told your entire family and your closest friends.” There had been additional quizzical looks from most of them. Right now the Duchess of Everdon was assessing him very critically from the other side of the table.

  “We have such a contentious history that they find this friendship odd. Everyone is surprised.” She laughed. “Even me.”

  He tilted his head so he could speak lowly. “I am not. That party was not the first time I desired you. You provoked me during that history in many ways, Charlotte. Perhaps the passionate provocations in turn provoked the history itself.”

  “Perhaps so, for both of us.”

  It was a strange moment to admit to each other that their little battles had been a way to hide other irritations. The ceremony, the fair day, even the joy filling the house made it easy, however.

  She had a right to know his interest was not entirely recent, but he had never expected her to let him know the same thing.

  She smiled impishly. “Now that the first provocation is satisfied, perhaps the others will eventually disappear.”

  “I hope not. How dull. I think you will always provoke me in all kinds of ways. After all, you know my game, just as I know yours. It is disconcerting to be so thoroughly comprehended by another. It is also very . . . compelling.”

  A sweet smile softened her countenance so much it bordered on indiscreet. “Most compelling, Nathaniel. Also a bit frighening. Like being on the brink of a cliff.”

  She looked in his eyes, and the party faded away for a moment. Her gaze shifted, first to Laclere and Bianca, then to Dante, and finally to Pen and Hampton.

  “I realized something today, Nathaniel. There are no neat fits to these things. No smooth roads. A bridge does not appear suddenly to take you forward when you reach a chasm. One either retreats to safety, or one jumps and trusts the stride is long enough. I am thinking that I retreated too quickly,
and too often, in the past.”

  The party intruded again, demanding their attention. He forced the necessary smiles, and joined in conversation with St. John. All the while most of his thoughts dwelled on the woman by his side, and her startling admission of the brink to which their affair had led her.

  He pretended to hear something the duchess was saying, but he angled his head so he could whisper into Charlotte’s ear.

  “Jump with me.”

  Most of the wedding guests left by midafternoon. Finally, the family began taking their leave as well.

  Charlotte strolled out to the terrace that overlooked the sea.

  Jump with me. It was an astonishing invitation. A frightening one.

  At the sound of a step, she looked behind her. It was not Nathaniel. Laclere had followed. He came to her side.

  “This property is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, breathing the sea air deeply.

  “Handsome and private and just a little wild, much like its owner,” he said.

  She laughed at the apt characterization of Pen’s new husband. They enjoyed the view in silence while the vague sounds of final departures leaked from the house and the front drive.

  “He asked me to marry him,” she said. “Nathaniel did. It was out of obligation, of course. I refused.”

  “Obligation? What obligation?”

  “That doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to know that he did offer.”

  “That was very decent of him, I expect.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “If you say so. I wouldn’t know, since I have not heard the story behind this obligation.”

  Nor would he. Ever.

  They watched a few more waves crash against the seawall beneath them.

  “I will not be returning to London with you,” she said. She had ridden down from town in Laclere’s coach, with Bianca and Dante.

  He did not respond. She turned her attention to his harshly chiseled profile. His piercing blue eyes did not show disapproval, just thoughts that made him look serious.

  “I will be making a short journey before returning to town,” she said.

  “That explains the extra portmanteau. I trust you are not traveling alone. Did you tell me he had proposed so I would not object?”

  “In part. You are not going to embarrass me by talking to him about it, are you?”

  “Bianca asked the same thing. How did I acquire a reputation for doing such things?”

  “Perhaps by being overbearing on occasion, especially when we all were younger. Also you look at him as though you disapprove.”

  “So Knightridge has been waiting for me to stick my nose into your affair, has he?” He chuckled. “I neither approve nor disapprove, Charl. I am merely surprised. It is not disapproval he sees when I look at him, but astonishment.”

  “Because we do not like each other?”

  “Because you have favored no man all these years, even though half of London would have pursued you if given the slightest encouragement.”

  He spoke casually, as if they agreed on his observation. In truth, she thought it was a peculiar thing for him to say.

  “I did not notice half of London waiting to pursue me. I did not even notice a tiny corner of London interested in doing so.”

  “Didn’t you? Well, it appears that is over, and I am glad for it. You grieved longer than most, but you are at long last yourself again. If Knightridge finally drew you out of mourning, I have no quarrel with him.”

  He appeared relaxed and conversational. He had no idea he kept saying the most extraordinary things.

  “I was not in mourning. I did not grieve long at all. I resumed my duties and my life faster than most.”

  Her firm tone surprised him. He studied her face with curious, concerned eyes. “Perhaps you would have done better to wail and get sick from it, Charl. If you have not been grieving these last years, what do you call it? What is the word given to the state that causes a young widow to not even notice for six years that other men want her?”

  Had she been mourning? Was that the name for the even, dulled emotions of those years? If so, had she been mourning Philip, or the safety and comfort she had found with him?

  The house had quieted behind them. She pictured Bianca watching them through the window, and Pen and Julian occupying Nathaniel.

  She should let Vergil go, but it had been a long time since they had spoken like this, honestly and in confidence. Not since before her marriage, now that she thought about it. Not since the day when he had asked her if she truly wanted the man who asked for her hand.

  The memory of that conversation came to her quite vividly. Vergil asked the same question in five different ways, as if he thought she did not understand it. He explained in detail how the family finances were much improved and there was no need to marry at all her first season, let alone grab the first proposal.

  “Vergil, did you think it odd that I accepted Philip?”

  He considered the question. Or else he considered whether to answer it at all. “A little. He was a good man, from a good family, but very sedate. You were brighter than he. Smarter, and far more spirited. I concluded his solidity appealed to you after all the disasters we had been through. Also, he could give you the unquestioned place in society that had been lost to us.”

  “Did you believe he loved me?”

  His gaze pierced her. A subtle frown creased his brow.

  “He did not speak of it to me, Charl. Not beyond expressing his high esteem of you, and his affections.” He glanced to the house. Nathaniel’s blond head was visible through the window. “Let me say, however, that such love manifests itself in many different ways. It is as varied as human nature. It is like music, I think. Some is loud and full of contrast and drama, but the simpler melodies still are meaningful.”

  It was sweet of him to try to help her reconcile how the current loud drama confused the memory of the quiet melody. He did not know that she suspected Philip had known deafening music himself, just with someone else.

  She stretched up and kissed his cheek. “Bianca must grow impatient. We should all depart, and give Pen her privacy.”

  They joined the others. With cheerful confusion the last of the party headed to the front of the house, where the carriages waited.

  Dante strolled beside her and Nathaniel, asking about events in town. When Nathaniel bid farewell, however, she peeled away with him instead of following Dante to Laclere’s coach.

  She entered the carriage and peered out the window. Dante still stood on the drive, looking in her direction with surprise.

  Vergil and Bianca emerged from the house and passed him. Still glancing toward Nathaniel’s carriage in befuddlement, Dante fell into step.

  His complaint carried to Charlotte on the breeze. “I am always the last in this family to learn anything.”

  “You were down at Laclere Park,” Vergil said.

  “You say that like I was in China. Someone could have written.” The carriage door closed on him. “Charl and Knightridge?”

  “I fear meeting him,” she admitted that night. She and Nathaniel ate supper in a small, private room at a large coaching inn near Hertford. They had taken two chambers for the night, but Nathaniel had given false names. Married names.

  Jump with me. If she did, what would it mean? A brief, intense love affair of the heart, or a more permanent alliance?

  She had practiced with the idea of marriage on the ride here, imagining the day-to-day living with this man. It had been a startling experiment that provoked wonder and mystery. All she knew for certain was it would not be like the last time.

  “You do not have to meet with Yardley. I advised against it,” he said. “We will depart for London at once in the morning. Or I will speak with him alone.”

  He had turned her worry into retreat very quickly. “I cannot permit that. It would be cowardly of me. Also, I do not think you would tell me everything.”

  “You think I would lie?” He scowled dee
ply enough for the patrons in the last aisle of a theater to see.

  “I think that you would tell me the truth, just not the whole truth.”

  He puffed up. “I am insulted.”

  She laughed at his theatrics. “No, you are not. It is your kindness that would make you choose which truth I hear, Nathaniel. I would wager that already there are some things you know or suspect but that I have not heard.”

  “No truths have been withheld.”

  “Mere speculations, only?”

  The actor melted into the man. “I speculate a lot and am often wrong. Such speculations led us into this mystery, to my regret.”

  “Not wrong ones, unfortunately.”

  The air got heavy with the truths those speculations had revealed. A little squeeze in her heart reminded her that while she was no longer numb, and she no longer raved, it would be some time before her essence did not grimace when reminded of the shock.

  His hand lay on the table mere inches from hers. A strong hand, masculine and handsome. Just seeing it conjured up sensations of the way he caressed her body, and how quickly she submitted to the exciting power his touch cast.

  The lamp glow made his eyes very dark and his face very handsome. He gazed at her with the all-seeing warmth he so often displayed now, so different from the provoking amusement of the past. Or maybe not different at all. Perhaps the warmth had always been there, subtly, but she was too self-absorbed to notice. Or too cowardly to risk her dull peace for the turmoil that his gaze incited.

  “After the truths of the past are discovered, we need to face the truths of the present,” he said. “You risk much with this affair. I am no prize, but I would like to marry you. I would like to do so as our choice, and not in a rush when you find yourself with child.”

  It was a calm little speech, quietly and casually spoken. The servant standing near the fireplace would never guess it had included a proposal, and so much more.

  She slid her hand over his. “I am flattered, Nathaniel. Truly so. However, since you are serious, I am bound to tell you that there is some question whether I will ever find myself with child.”