Captive of Sin (9 page)

“How are you feeling?” He surveyed her with an impersonal concern that made her want to shrivel up in the corner.

“I’ll be glad to stay put for a little while,” she said. “How are you?”

He frowned as if the reminder of his illness rankled. “I’m perfectly well, thank you.” He swung away, discourag
ing further inquiries after his health. “You should rest and regain your strength. I’ll send Mrs. Pollett to you after we’ve eaten. She’s not Akash, but she knows most of the country remedies.”

“Thank you.” She had no right to mind his eagerness to consign her to other people’s care. Frightening how much power a glance or a word from him had over her emotions. She tried to set up self-protective barriers, but they crumbled to rubble the moment she looked at him.

She sneezed again and muttered her thanks as she accepted the handkerchief Gideon extended in her direction. Through watery eyes, she watched him prowl the room, lifting items seemingly at random and inspecting them.

How curious he was so ill at ease in his own house. Why was his homecoming so strained? He’d dropped hints of a clouded family history. Did old memories torment him? Something did. Tension stiffened his back, and deep lines bracketed his expressive mouth.

The door opened to a girl carrying a tray. The cups didn’t match. One was Meissen, one was Sèvres. Both were exquisite. Once, someone at Penrhyn had had taste and money to indulge it.

Sharing the tray was a plate of roughly hewn cheese sandwiches. To Charis’s embarrassment, her stomach growled. She flushed. Great-aunt Georgiana would be mortified at such a faux pas.

Sir Gideon replaced a small marble bust of Plato on the windowsill and turned to the maid. “What’s your name, lass?”

The musical baritone worked its usual magic. Even Charis, who should by now be inured to its allure, shivered in sensual reaction to that deep, musical sound. The girl’s thin shoulders relaxed, and she sent Sir Gideon a shy smile as she slid the tray onto a dusty rosewood side table.

“Dorcas, Sir Gideon.” She curtsied. “I be Pollett’s granddaughter. Ee mightn’t remember me, sir, but I remember ee, though I were only a ween of five when ee left.”

“You used to churn the butter for your mother.”

“Aye, sir.” The girl flushed with surprised pleasure. “Fancy ee remembering that.”

Gideon tilted his head toward Charis. “Miss Watson needs a maid. Would you be interested in helping, Dorcas?”

The girl curtsied to Charis. “Oh, aye, miss. But I bain’t never been a lady’s maid afore.”

“I’m sure you’ll be splendid, Dorcas,” Charis said. Again, she had reason to be grateful for Gideon’s thoughtfulness. She was wicked to want more than he offered.

The girl grinned with gap-toothed delight. “Thank ee, miss. Thank ee.”

When Dorcas had gone, Gideon glanced across at Charis. “She’ll be clumsy at first, but she was a quick child. I imagine she’ll learn fast.”

“There’s no need to make excuses. You’re kind to think of my convenience. My step…my brothers…” Dear heaven, the false intimacy of being alone with Sir Gideon in this beautiful, neglected room made her forget she lived a lie. She needed to watch her tongue, or she’d reveal her true identity. “My brothers deprived me of my maid over the last weeks.”

It infuriated her to recall Felix and Hubert’s petty tyrannies. As though lacking a servant’s attentions would convince her to marry the foul Lord Desaye.

Gideon strolled across to the table. He lifted the plate of sandwiches and extended it toward her. “You’re hungry after your journey.”

She stood, ignoring a yelp of discomfort from her abused body. This at least she knew how to do. Something familiar in the sea of unfamiliarity. “Shall I pour your tea?”

“Thank you.” Gideon put down the plate as Pollett entered the room. Charis concentrated on fiddling with the tea things, her color rising as she recalled Pollett’s quick assumption that she was Sir Gideon’s mistress.

“Is all in order, sir?”

“We need a fire,” Gideon said, taking a seat near the table.

As Pollett left, Charis passed Gideon his tea and a plate with two sandwiches arranged upon it. Her left arm made the simple duty more trouble than usual, but she managed. Such a small achievement, but enough to revive her spirit.

He smiled almost naturally. “So this is what it’s like to be under a lady’s dominion.”

She frowned with puzzlement. “Surely you’ve taken tea with a female before.”

“Never alone. Never in my own house.” He swallowed a mouthful of tea and lifted his chunky sandwich for a healthy bite. Whatever his illness of yesterday, it seemed to have passed.

“What about your mother?” She took the chair opposite. As she sipped from her cup, she stifled a sigh of pleasure. It was a small luxury, yet one she’d missed.

His face became expressionless. “My mother died at my birth. My father didn’t remarry, having already sired two sons and seeing no need to submit himself again to the yoke of matrimony.”

“I’m sorry about your mother.” Had his mother bought the pretty china and chosen the delicate, faded fabrics that upholstered the furniture? So much death marred his life. Was this what darkened his soul? Sadness thickened her throat, and the tea abruptly lost its flavor. “No feminine influence at all in the house?”

His lips quirked. “No
ladies
at any rate.”

“Oh.”

She couldn’t control a blush although her heart beat faster at the idea of him with a woman. He wouldn’t sit across the table, drinking tea. He’d snatch her up in his arms and kiss her and…She tamped down the wanton images before she made more of a fool of herself than she had already. Her face felt like it was on fire.

The smile became a smirk. “Indeed.”

She dragged her mind kicking and screaming back to reality and looked around the room. Anything to avoid his knowing glance. Now she thought about it, the house shrieked its
lack of chatelaine. Penrhyn badly needed a woman to take charge and restore its former glory.

Perhaps the absence of early feminine influence explained Sir Gideon’s awkwardness with her. Although he didn’t strike her as an innately shy man. Again, she wondered if he disliked her. The possibility made her belly tighten with denial. She dearly wanted Sir Gideon’s approval.

Surely he must like her just a little. His manner at times such as this was almost intimate. Certainly more intimate than she could remember encountering in other gentlemen. Every time he turned that warm regard on her, she felt like a sunflower opening to the sun. She knew the reaction was improper, dizzying, perilous, but she couldn’t help it.

He broke the tense silence and spoke with a polite formality that chilled the already icy air. “I hope you’ll treat the house as your own, Miss Watson. Go where you please. Read anything in the library. There’s a pianoforte in the morning room—or there used to be. I wouldn’t advise you to stray too far from the grounds in case you’re seen. Although I suspect your injuries put anything too energetic out of reach at present.”

“Thank you,” Charis said dully. Stupid to long for Sir Gideon’s arms to close around her. She forced herself to remember they were chance-met strangers. This silly wayward lilt of the heart was purely one-sided.

All this emotional turmoil on top of the beating and the long days of travel conspired to sap her last ounce of energy. With a tired gesture, she set her cup in its saucer. Every second intensified her multitude of aches. Her head thickened with weariness.

He rose from his chair and moved across to a sideboard, where he splashed some brandy into a glass. “The house and estate will demand my attention for the next few days. Penrhyn’s been too long without a master.” She recognized his tone as a deliberate attempt to put her at a distance.

“You don’t have to entertain me or neglect your duties on my behalf.” Her voice was flat with disappointment. But
what had she expected? That he’d devote his attention to her? Much as she wanted his company as a buffer against the unfamiliarity.

Charis, don’t pretend that’s the reason.

She forced an even tone. “You’ve already done so much for me.”

“Don’t be absurd.” He emptied the glass in a single swallow and set it down with a crack. “I did what anyone would have.”

“You’re too modest, Sir Gideon.”

“Don’t make me out to be more than I am, Miss Watson.” His eyes glittered like obsidian as they focused on her. The tension that extended between them like a thin golden wire tightened to breaking point. “I’m as miserable a sinner as ever walked this earth. Pray remember that.”

The invisible wire linking them snapped. He turned and stalked from the room, leaving her to stare after him in hopeless, hurt bewilderment. The sun turned away from her, and she shivered in the sudden, biting cold.

O
ver the next days, Gideon saw little of Sarah. With his guest recuperating in her room, avoiding her proved a surprisingly simple matter.

They shared dinner under the curious eyes of his servants. Occasionally, they crossed paths in a corridor, and he’d inquire after her health. All perfectly polite, two strangers passing the time of day. Thankfully, there was no hint of the burgeoning, dangerous intimacy that had hovered on the journey to Penrhyn.

With every encounter, he couldn’t help noticing the remarkable beauty that emerged from beneath the disfiguring bruises. It was yet another of fate’s cruel jokes that the desperate, injured girl turned into a woman of spectacular attractions who stirred his sluggish blood.

It was unlikely her brothers would track her this far, but Gideon wasn’t taking chances. He made sure someone always knew where she was. A pack of brawny villagers boosted the household staff, and shifts of men patrolled the approaches to the house.

Even if he’d wanted to play nursemaid, he wouldn’t have had time. He was frantically busy. Mostly he was absent from the house, fielding endless requests and questions, and making decisions about the estate. After years of neglect, there were a thousand matters, small and large, to address.

What became abundantly clear during his first day as its reluctant master was that Penrhyn was in his blood. He was home to stay.

He could no more abandon the place than he could fly to Constantinople. When he’d seen the old house again, a sullen, unwelcome love had flooded him, a bone-deep sense that Penrhyn was meant to be his. Illogical, inconvenient, but undeniable. He couldn’t relinquish this windswept corner of the kingdom to anyone else’s stewardship. Although God knew who he kept it for. He was the last Trevithick. There would be no sons to inherit.

That sad fact haunted him, a mournful threnody beneath his activity. And if the memory of one delicate woman also haunted him, he was too occupied to brood on the fact. At least during daylight hours. Nights were a different matter. He’d throw himself exhausted on his bed, only to lie awake listening to the endless crash of the waves and thinking about Sarah. Or worse, drifting into restless dreams where he was free to touch her as he never could in the harsh light of reality.

With every hour, that hankering to touch her intensified. With every hour, the pain of knowing that he never would lacerated him.

On the morning of his third day at Penrhyn, Gideon shut himself in his library, determined to tame the chaos his predecessors had left of the accounts.

He’d been at work for about an hour when Sarah wandered into view through the tall windows facing the overgrown parterre. The dusty ledger in front of him immediately lost what small interest it held. He watched for Dorcas or one of the men set to guarding Sarah. But his visitor remained alone in the dewy, sunlit garden.

For a forbidden, secret moment, he stared, drinking in her beauty. The bruises were barely noticeable now, and her face resumed its natural shape. Since yesterday she’d discarded her bandage, and she no longer moved as if every step hurt. To his relief, Akash’s assessment of her injuries as looking worse than they were had proven accurate.

Sarah paused in a patch of light and turned her face to the pale February sun. Her lips curved with a natural sensuality.

Gideon’s heart battered his ribs. His breath jammed in his chest. She was glorious. None of the fabled courtesans of India held a candle to her uniquely English loveliness.

Was he so shallow that her pretty face made him want her?

If only the truth were so uncomplicated. He could resist the lure of beauty if beauty alone attracted him. But the waif he’d rescued in Winchester had become a woman of endless allure. Strong. Brave. Tender. Sweet.

Ah, so sweet.

A long plait fell down the supple line of Sarah’s back. Gideon’s hand, lying idle on the desk, flexed as if it tangled in that silky bronze mane. He locked his teeth and cursed himself for a fool. Such fantasies were futile.

Knowing he tormented himself to no purpose, he hungrily watched the subtle sway of her hips as she started walking again. The way the ill-fitting cotton frock skimmed her lissome waist. He frowned. Why was she still wearing the cheap dress from Portsmouth? He’d asked Mrs. Pollett to find her fresh clothing.

He’d sort it out later. He bent to his work, determined to punish himself no further with impossible yearnings. Then, helplessly, he raised his gaze as Sarah strolled through a morning more like April than February and disappeared behind a hedge of overgrown camellias.

A page of figures his eyes failed to register. Another. Another.

From here, the grounds sloped down to the cliffs. Given the decrepitude of the rest of the estate, Gideon guessed the paths were unstable, falling to pieces. There was danger for
someone who didn’t know Penrhyn. Devil take them, where were the people supposed to be watching her?

“Damn it,” he muttered, and shoved the thick ledgers aside. He snatched his gloves from the desk and leaped into a run.

Charis was sitting on a worn stone bench when she heard Gideon’s purposeful footsteps. He was in a tearing hurry. She couldn’t imagine why. Especially as he’d worked so hard to stay out of her way since they’d arrived. She tried to tell herself he was busy, and she had no right to feel slighted, but some instinct insisted the lack of contact wasn’t accidental.

He broke into the cleared space and paused, breathing heavily. He appeared to be searching for something.

Although she’d sworn she’d behave with circumspection in his presence, although she’d preserved a polite façade when encountering him in the house, her heart beat so fast, her greeting stuck in her throat. She hadn’t expected to see him this morning, and his arrival threw her good intentions into disarray.

He looked toward the cliff edge, scanned the clearing, then finally turned in her direction. His face flooded with visible relief. “There you are.”

Every time she saw him, it was like the first time. As she experienced anew the shock of his male beauty, the world seemed to tumble away from her feet, leaving her suspended in space. The sensation was dizzying, scary, overwhelming.

Today, his onyx eyes were clear, and he moved with an easy freedom that fitted his long-limbed body. He’d spent the recent days outdoors, and the exercise suited him.

She swallowed to dislodge the lump in her throat, but her voice still emerged as a croak. “Sir Gideon, what’s wrong?”

“I saw you heading down here.” He ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it into beguiling untidiness. “I wasn’t sure of the state of the cliff edge.”

It hardly hurt to smile now. Just a slight ache. A glimpse in her bedroom mirror before she’d come outside had revealed a face she finally recognized as hers. “So you rushed to my rescue again.” She tamped down a twinge of forbidden pleasure that he’d come seeking her.

He made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “You’re looking better.”

“I’m feeling better.” She fiddled nervously with her mother’s pearl ring and tried to think of something clever to say. Nothing came to mind. Hard to recall she’d been the toast of Bath society. Sir Gideon made her act like a gauche schoolgirl.

“I’m glad.” That half smile appeared. Odd—disturbing—how familiar and dear it was.

A charged silence fell. She knew she devoured him with her eyes. What made no sense was that he seemed to devour her in return. Then it was as if he recalled his resolve to keep his distance.

“Well, my apologies for disturbing you.” He sounded stiff, awkward. “As you’re in no immediate danger…”

“I’ll be careful.”

She wished she could make him stay. Absurd when they were strangers, but she’d missed him in the last days. To her chagrin, Sarah found herself blushing, as though she spoke her foolish yearning aloud.

She waited in tense misery for him to forsake her to loneliness. But he took a step closer and gestured to the glorious view. The sea was blue and calm today. The waves played like soft music under their conversation. “It looks gentle, but don’t mistake its peril.”

“I can hardly resist exploring. I hope you don’t mind. Penrhyn has such fairy-tale charm.” Her instant affinity for this place had only strengthened. Each night, she went to sleep in her paneled corner bedroom listening to the sea. “Like
La Belle au Bois Dormant.”

Again that half smile. Her poor, longing heart skipped a beat every time she saw it. “On my honor, there are no sleeping princesses here, Miss Watson.”

“Perhaps a prince?” she asked lightly, then regretted not keeping her mouth shut.

His expression closed, became remote. “No princes either.”

She waited for him to storm off as he had from the library the last time she’d attempted to share more than platitudes. But he remained where he was, frowning down at the ground.

Eventually, she broke the uncomfortable silence. “What are your plans for the property?”

His eyes were guarded as they focused on her, but to her surprise, he answered readily enough. “There’s potential for the estate to be profitable. It was once. The woods contain good timber and while the land isn’t much use for crops, it will support sheep. Most of the skilled men have gone, but we could set up a fishing fleet again. First I mean to reopen the tin mines.”

“Tin?” She leaned back on her arms. She still wasn’t used to having the full use of both arms. Her wrist gave the occasional twinge, but it was almost back to full working order.

“Yes.” He moved close enough to raise one booted foot onto the far end of her bench. He rested one arm on his thigh and bent toward her. Her skin prickled with awareness, and her breath became shallow and choppy. She prayed he didn’t notice. “The land is littered with worked-out diggings, but there’s still ore to be found. The sea and tin have always kept the Trevithicks.”

He spoke with an odd lack of involvement, but she wasn’t convinced he was as unemotional about his home as he wanted her to believe. She’d seen his face when he glimpsed it for the first time upon his return. “Will you restore the house?”

To her astonishment, a glint lit his dark eyes. “I’ll demolish it and build a modern villa.”

Shocked, she jumped to her feet. “That would be an act of unforgivable vandalism.”

He laughed softly. “Just teasing you, Miss Watson.” To
her regret, he straightened and shifted out of reach. “I’ve remarked your predilection for Penrhyn.”

Her color rose, and she curled her hands at her sides. “I can’t believe you don’t care. The house needs to be loved.”

The more she saw of Penrhyn’s master, the more she believed that was true of him too. How she wished she could restore him to joy. But the last days had made it apparent that he regarded her as a duty and nothing more.

“It’s only bricks and mortar,” he said mildly.

“You’ll feel differently when you have children,” she said fiercely, even as she flinched to contemplate him marrying another woman.

The brief moment of levity evaporated. His voice was terse. “I have no plans to marry.”

“Of course you’ll marry. You’re young, you’re handsome, you’re…”

He silenced her with a cutting gesture of one hand. “Spare my blushes, Miss Watson.”

His sarcasm stung, although she knew she deserved the set-down. Her cheeks stung with humiliated heat. She wished she could keep her impulsive comments to herself, but something about Sir Gideon made her burst into ill-considered speech at the very worst of moments. The merest sight of him, and any pretensions of poise flew into the ether.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a subdued voice. “I had no right to say those things. You must think I’m a rag-mannered hoyden.”

“No.”

Just “no”? What was she to make of that? What
did
he think of her? She stifled the needy, desperate questions that struggled to the surface. She’d already embarrassed him—and herself—sufficiently. Frantically, she cast around for some neutral topic. “When I came out, I was looking for the path to the beach.”

His mouth lengthened with disapproval. “It’s steep and not easy for a lady. That’s how I remember it nine years ago.
I suspect it’s in worse repair now. You’d be better staying in the grounds.”

Lady Charis Weston would have stepped aside, let him return to his work as he clearly wished. Sarah Watson was a more demanding creature and desperate for a few more minutes of his company. “Can’t we at least try?”

Sudden amusement flashed across his face, banishing the sternness, making him look years younger. “You’re a stubborn scrap of a thing, aren’t you?”

Even more astonishingly, his black eyes swept her body, subjecting her to a thorough, masculine inspection. Instant agonizing tension extended between them. Heat crawled over her skin, and her heart bucked and plunged in her chest. Her nipples puckered with painful swiftness, and something warmed and melted in the pit of her stomach.

The powerful, unfamiliar sensations frightened Charis. It was as if the body she’d known for twenty years suddenly belonged to a stranger. With every ragged breath, the hard points of her nipples rubbed against her shift. The friction was maddening, unstoppable, infuriating.

She lifted a shaking hand to her breast to ease the ache, then realized what she did. Her face became hotter. He couldn’t miss her discomfort. She wished the ground would open up and swallow her like the whale had swallowed Jonah.

She lowered her head to hide her mortifying reaction, to break that scorching connection with his eyes. “Not exactly a scrap,” she muttered, turning away to rip at the leaves of a camellia.

“No, perhaps not.” He released a harsh laugh, bitter and without amusement. She didn’t have the courage to check his expression. “Let’s show you our fine beach.”

She sucked in a shuddering breath while delight and self-consciousness vied within her. Now that she wasn’t looking at him, she gained some small control over herself.

“I’d like that,” she said almost inaudibly.

Feeling like the greatest fool in Creation, she scattered
the shreds of greenery on the ground and nerved herself to glance at him under her lashes. She’d expected to see anger or contempt or disgust, but his expression was, as so often, inscrutable. Was there a chance he hadn’t noticed how flustered she was?