“There was something wrong with that bloody brandy,” he grumbled. “There had to ’ave been.”
But what? And how?
For the first time, a rather sinister thought rose in his mind. Now that it had taken up residence there, he was not sure why the possibility had not occurred to him sooner.
“The brandy was drugged,” he said, making the realization aloud.
At his side, Miss Wren had stiffened. “Why should you think so?”
It was the only explanation for his complete lack of recollection. Rafe was no swill tub, though he was hardly a stranger to the drink. “Because I can’t recall a single damned moment beyond brandy and you.”
Had he kissed her that night? Not to have taken those lush lips with his would have been a sin. Rafe would have sworn kissing her was an experience he would not forget, regardless of how soused he had been.
It was difficult indeed to imagine this prim woman welcoming him into her bed. She was so bleeding icy. And despite her undeniable beauty, she was also the last sort of female he would have tumbled. He had never been stirred by ladies with precise well-bred accents and manners. Lusty, knowledgeable widows were his standard fare.
“Six!” Anne cried, her cheeks rosy, her dark hair flying wildly behind her.
The girls looked as if they were losing some of their vigor, which meant he needed to conduct this conversation with haste before his curious nieces would interrupt.
“What was my behavior like?” he asked their governess.
“It is far better for it to remain unmentioned.”
“Hmm.” He leaned nearer, realizing his mistake as he did so. Miss Wren smelled bloody delectable. Winter’s soap, unless he missed his guess, all flowers and sunshine and everything the East End was not. “Did I touch you, Miss Wren?”
Because if he had not, and she had been willing that night, by God, he was a bigger fool than he had believed.
“Not in the manner you are suggesting,” she said, keeping her gaze averted, as if watching a pair of children racing wildly about a small London garden were the most riveting of sights.
“Seven!”
“And what manner am I suggesting?” he could not resist prodding, hoping to watch the color rise to her creamy skin once more.
Scarcely any of it was visible—not enough. He would dearly love to unwrap her himself. Pity she was the twins’ governess. She would have made a wonderful challenge.
“The lascivious manner, sir.” She turned toward him, and he noted the remarkable striations in her eyes. Flecks of gold ornamented the wide discs of her pupils. “Do not think to play your seducer’s games with me, Mr. Sutton. I have no wish for trouble.”
“But you have already found a great lot of it, have you not?” He rubbed his jaw, considering her. “All that mayhem with Lady Octavia must have left you ill at ease. And then what happened between us…”
Which remained a mystery on his part.
“Perhaps we should agree never to speak of that awful night again,” she suggested coolly.
“Eight!”
Blast. The girls were over halfway through their paces.
“There is one thing I cannot understand, Miss Wren. Who would have drugged Jasper’s bingo, and why?”
“Bingo?” She blinked, her lashes glinting with gold in the afternoon light.
“Brandy,” he explained.
This conundrum had him so flummoxed that he had failed to suppress the cant from his speech. Or perhaps it was not the conundrum, but rather, the woman.
“Surely you had partaken before your arrival,” she said.
A sudden memory hit him, of pacing up and down the thick woolen carpets, the brandy abandoned atop a table at his back. He had turned, worried over his sister-in-law, who had been slashed by a blade, and there had been Miss Wren, hovering near his glass. She had moved swiftly, away from it.
“You,” he said, stunned.
“What of me?” she asked, her tone as calm as ever.
But he did not miss her sudden pallor.
“You are the one who drugged me, Miss Wren,” he said, knowing it was true when he spied the flash of fear in her gaze.
But he still had no notion why.
Why would this proper, elegant governess he had only met for the first time two days ago have drugged his brandy? What possible purpose had it served?
“Eleven!” Elizabeth’s triumphant call severed the moment.
Rafe discovered he had been so absorbed in his dialogue with Miss Wren that he had failed to hear the girls call out nine and ten.
“That is quite enough locomotion, Anne and Elizabeth!” The governess returned her attention to his nieces swiftly, the snap of authority ringing in her voice. “We must return to our lessons.”
“But we haven’t reached fifteen,” Anne said, pouting.
What the devil?
Miss Wren was hurrying away from him now, moving toward the garden and the girls. He followed in her wake, confusion and anger swirling and fogging up his mind. The cunning wench had drugged him. And now she was fleeing as if she were a thief who had been caught pilfering the silver. Just who was Miss Wren, anyway?
“We have not finished our discussion,” he warned grimly.
“Yes we have.” She cast a glance at him over her shoulder, and he did not miss the fear in her expression. “You are playing a dangerous game, and I want no part of it, Mr. Sutton. I need this position, and I shall not allow you to ruin it with your spurious delusions.”
Spurious delusions indeed.
The wench was dicked in the nob, and she was looking after his nieces.
He was going to have to tell Jasper about this.
But how?
CHAPTER 4
Persephone passed the days following Rafe Sutton’s garden visit and subsequent accusations in a state of tense anticipation. Each time she spoke to Mr. Jasper Sutton or Lady Octavia, she expected to hear the damning words telling her she would need to find another situation. That she would be relieved of her position without a written character to recommend her as she struggled to find yet another post.
You slipped laudanum into my brother-in-law’s brandy, she imagined Lady Octavia saying, her voice stern and cold as ice. How dare you betray our family? Leave this house immediately and never return.
Instead, Lady Octavia had praised her over the progress Anne and Elizabeth were making with their letters. No one in the household had seen her alone with Rafe that night or morning as the house had been bustling with frantic activity. Her secret was safe.
But for how long?
That was the question that haunted her even as she walked toward the waiting carriage. This afternoon, she was off to a bookseller where she would seek new reading material for her charges. Ordinarily, she preferred to travel in public infrequently, lest she be seen by someone who might carry word back to Cousin Bartholomew. However, she was wound as tightly as a watch spring, anticipating Rafe Sutton’s blow to her carefully constructed peace at any moment. The twins were in need of more challenging books, and Lady Octavia had offered the use of the carriage and the accompaniment of a groom on her excursion. And leaving the confines of the town house would do wonders to help shake the worries and fears haunting her.
At least, she hoped it would.
A groom opened the carriage door for her, and she stepped up and inside, her mind so filled with thoughts that she failed to realize the conveyance was not empty until she was nearly within.
There, seated in the shadows of the bench to her left, sat Rafe Sutton, long legs crossed at the ankle in an indolent pose. His boots were gleaming, his trousers the perfect complement to his dark, well-cut coat. The hat pulled low over his brow did nothing to diminish the appearance of those blond curls. He looked like a fallen angel come to claim the wicked.
Her heart felt as if it had dropped through her stomach.
“Mr. Sutton!” she said on a shocked gasp, freezing on the step.
“Get in,” he ord
ered her, his voice low and commanding.
The easy flirtation was gone from his mannerism. The charming rogue blessed with dimples who had dared to wink at her was nowhere to be seen.
“What are you doing in this carriage?” she demanded, ignoring his curt directive.
“Come in, and you shall see.” His voice was calm and smooth and yet, there was an underlying hardness to it, the suggestion that he would not accept any outcome other than the one he wished.
“Why should I?” She cast a glance over her shoulder, trying to find the groom who had opened the door and seeing no one.
“You need not worry about young Jonas,” Mr. Sutton said smoothly. “I have greased his hand quite generously.”
He had bribed the servant?
Her heart stuttered and tripped over itself. “What do you want, sir?”
“You know what I want,” he said, his hazel stare traveling down her body in a thorough sweep that left her skin tingling. “Now step inside like a good governess.”
Surely he was not suggesting he wanted something amorous in nature from her. But then, he would hardly be the first. She supposed nothing should surprise her. Her four-and-twenty years may as well have been a lifetime for the experiences she had endured.
And yet despite that… Oh! What is the matter with you, Persephone?
Why did the threat of an impending ride in a carriage with Rafe Sutton make heat blossom in her belly and spread lower, to a far more forbidden place? Why did her body react to his, trusting him in a way her mind did not dare?
Barraged by a rush of confusing emotions—trepidation, longing, curiosity—she hesitated, chastising herself inwardly.
“Get in, or I will pay a call to my brother this very moment,” he added.
Persephone stepped up and into the vehicle, settling herself on the seat opposite his. The carriage door closed with a loud snap. Mr. Sutton rapped on the roof, and it rocked into motion.
He had planned this, she realized. How efficiently and effortlessly he was spiriting her away. She ought to be alarmed, and yet, there was something about this man that felt somehow, inherently, different from the other, far more unscrupulous men she had known.
This man had teased and flirted and was wonderfully sweet to his nieces. Even when he had arisen in her bed, he had never attempted to press his suit.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked him.
He raised a brow. “I’ll be the one asking the questions, Miss Wren. Not you.”
She swallowed a lump of uncertainty. “You do realize my employers will wonder if I fail to return, do you not, sir?”
He cocked his head, considering her with a vibrant regard that made her long to shift on her seat. His hands, large and gloved like a proper gentleman’s, rested on his thighs. The fingers of the right lightly drummed against his trousers. She wished he were not wearing a hat, for it seemed a shame for his golden hair to be confined beneath the brim.
“And you do realize, Miss Wren, that you drugged the brother of your employer with laudanum, stripped him of his clothes, beat him over the head, and spent the night in the same bed as him?” he returned, his tone mild.
She could not suppress her wince at his description of the unfortunate circumstances which had seemed to yoke them. “I did none of those things, sir, and while I must apologize for allowing you to sleep off the ill effects of your brandy drinking in my room, I had no choice.”
Well, that was not true at all, was it? She had drugged him, and she had spent the night in the same bed as well. Her lie was growing weary, as was she. How to extricate herself from this mess she had created with her own reckless panic?
“No choice but to lie there in bed with me all night long, knowing there was nary a stitch to cover my bare arse beneath the counterpane?” he asked.
He was speaking with the accent of a gentleman once more. Aside from the subject matter of his discourse, there was not a hint of the East End in his perfect speech. It was almost as if there were two different Rafe Suttons. Which one of them was real? She could not be sure.
“I did not peek, sir, if your modesty is what concerns you,” she offered, attempting to deflect the subject.
“It ain’t what concerns me at all. Your motivations do, however.” He paused, his expression growing stern. “Why did you do what you did, Miss Wren?”
Why indeed? Her reasoning in the moment had been abrupt.
She was thinking of her past when she blurted her next question. “Do you believe yourself the first gentleman to force his attentions upon a servant?”
Persephone regretted her choice of words the moment the query left her, for she did not mean to suggest he had forced himself on her. Merely that her experience had left her with a tremendous distrust of handsome rogues who attempted to seduce the governess. One of them had not accepted her refusal. It had not been him, but another.
And Rafe Sutton had paid the price. Guilt skewered her. She had never intended to do him harm. What Lord Gregson had done to her had made Persephone suspicious of every man, and she had reacted with reckless haste.
Mr. Sutton’s jaw went rigid. “What are you suggesting, Miss Wren?”
His voice was silken and yet laden with an inherent hint of menace.
How to explain the sudden fear that had overtaken her, the worry which had been shadowing her every interaction since she had abandoned her previous post? She could tell him, could she not, without mentioning any other details? Surely admitting she was a governess who had been importuned by the eldest son of her former employer was not tantamount to telling him who she truly was and what she had escaped from first.
It was apparent he believed she was accusing him of forcing himself upon her, and that was not what she had meant at all. Her words, like her thoughts, were a jumbled hodgepodge of pure confusion.
Time for the truth.
She took a deep, fortifying breath. “I was not referring to you, Mr. Sutton. I am attempting to explain my actions that night. You were charming and handsome and you were flirting. I…I panicked because of a former, regrettable circumstance. Pray forgive me. You are correct. I did slip laudanum into your brandy when your back was turned. But only out of an instinctive need to protect myself. I did not mean to pour as much into the brandy as I did.”
The silence, when she had completed the swift rush of her confession, was almost deafening, broken by nothing other than the steady rhythm of plodding hooves and the jangle of tack and other street sounds. Mr. Sutton was watching her intently, his expression unreadable. His jaw was clenched, his hazel eyes dark.
How she wished again for the easy, joking mannerism of his arrival at the garden when he had teased his nieces into running about like hoydens. The man opposite her now seemed dangerous, his face all sharp angles and planes.
“You admit to drugging me?” he asked at last.
She inhaled, not realizing she had been holding her breath until that very moment. “Yes. But I did so in fear. I regretted my actions at once.”
“You needn’t fear me, Miss Wren. Not now. Not ever. Rafe Sutton doesn’t need to steal a woman’s virtue. She gives it to ’im freely.”
His low rasp curled around her, wrapping her in warmth and an inexplicable longing. He was not the same sort of man as Lord Gregson. Whilst her initial interaction with him that mad night had led her to react with a frenzied terror, the rational part of her mind could discern the difference. Not every man was a predator.
Only some.
“There are men who prey upon women for reasons other than a lack of charm,” she said quietly, thinking of Lord Gregson.
Hateful thought.
Yet, necessary.
He had been handsome as well, though his looks were diminished in her memory now by his villainous deeds. She had no doubt he could have had his choice of demimondaines or diamonds of the first water. However, he was the sort of man who thrived on power. Specifically, his over others. And that was a different beast entirely. It was a beast
she knew well enough, thanks to Cousin Bartholomew
“I ‘m not such a man,” he said.
She did not doubt Rafe Sutton wielded his charm as if it were a weapon. Between his undeniable good looks and the magnetism of his presence, he could likely woo even the most devout devotee of propriety.
“Nonetheless, I could not be certain of that at the time,” she managed primly.
“And so you took matters into your own hands. A former, regrettable circumstance, you said. What happened?”
There was a hint of menace in his voice, and she could not be certain whom it was directed toward. Persephone shifted, dreadfully uncomfortable in the confines of this carriage, not knowing where he was taking her or why.
Speaking of Lord Gregson was not a particularly easy feat, either.
She inhaled slowly, collecting herself for fear the terror would return, clogging her throat. “My previous situation involved a gentleman who believed it was his right to do whatever he wished with the governess of his younger sisters.”
Her position in the Earl of Landsdowne’s household had been one of many unhappy tenures as governess over the years she had spent running from her cousin. However, it was burned upon her memory for a reason aside from her displeasure.
“Whatever he wished.” Mr. Sutton’s voice was cutting now. “He forced himself upon you?”
Persephone swallowed that rising sense of panic, never far whenever she thought of what had happened in her small room that evening. “He attempted to do so.”
His nostrils flared, his hands clenching into fists—the only two movements he made. He might have been fashioned of stone save for the sound of his voice. “Who?”
“Viscount Gregson.”
Just saying his name made the bitter taste of bile rise in the back of her throat. He was a despicable, vile scoundrel. Little wonder the governesses before her had fled their posts.
Sutton’s Sins: The Sinful Suttons Book 2 Page 4
