Duchess of Sin (35 page)

I
s my mother home, Smythe?” Anna asked as the butler opened the door for them. She leaned lightly on Caroline’s arm as they
stepped into the foyer, still a bit unsteady after the day’s adventures.

“No, Lady Anna. She is still at her Ladies’ Charitable Committee meeting, and I must go to the market for her before she arrives
home. She wanted veal chops for dinner and cook has run out, and it seems the kitchen maid has a cold,” Smythe said with a
suffering sigh. His eyes widened as he took in their disheveled state. “Shall I send up some hot water before I go, my lady?”

“Yes, please, Smythe. A great quantity. And some tea,” said Anna.

“Of course, my lady,” Smythe said. “Right away. Oh, and this letter arrived today from Switzerland. I thought you might like
to read it immediately.”

“News from Eliza!” Caroline cried, taking up the thick letter. “At last. It has been ever so long since we have heard from
her.”

“That is something cheerful, at least,” Anna said.
“Come, Caro, you can read it to me while I change my clothes. We can certainly use the distraction.”

Deeply grateful that her mother was not home to see the state of her daughters, Anna hurried to her chamber and tore off her
ruined jacket. The sight that greeted her in the mirror almost made her shriek—wild, tangled hair, red cheeks, and her eyes
glittering with nervous excitement. No wonder Conlan called her a witch.

As soon as the maids delivered the hot water and tea tray, she splashed great handfuls on her face and scrubbed with her scented
soap. But it couldn’t erase the violence of the fight or the fact that, despite her resolve to be respectable from now on
and not embarrass her family, she had brought gossip onto them yet again.

“That was quite an adventure,” Caroline said after the servants departed and they were alone again. “Should we talk about
it?”

Anna shook her head. She reached for her brush and yanked the bristles hard through her tangled hair. “Not yet. I’m not sure
I could be quite coherent. Read me Eliza’s letter.”

Caroline looked as if she very much wanted to argue. But she just nodded, poured out some tea, and opened the letter. Anna
closed her eyes as she listened to her faraway sister’s words, trying to lose herself in Eliza’s accounts of walking in the
beautiful, sparkling white snow, skating on frozen lakes, and Swiss Christmas festivities. It sounded like a magical, unreal
world.

“Even though I don’t much care for sweets, I have had such cravings for the
stollen
, a sort of Christmas cake they seem to adore here, because…” Caroline suddenly
broke off with a squeal. “Because I am to have a baby in the summer! Oh, Anna, we will be
aunts.
”

“A baby!” Anna’s eyes flew open, and she snatched the letter away to read it herself.

“Mama will be so happy when she hears!” Caroline said.

“Indeed she will. A grandchild at last,” said Anna. “And it should also distract Mama from my brawling in the streets of Dublin
like a market woman.”

“Oh, Anna, she won’t be angry,” Caroline protested. “You had to come to the duke’s aid when he was attacked.”

Anna laughed ruefully. “I hardly think someone like Adair needs
my
assistance in combat.”

“If I was in trouble, I would definitely want you at my back. You were quite fearless, the way you hit Grant Dunmore over
the head with my book.”

“Speaking of that, I will be sure and buy you a new volume tomorrow.”

Caroline shrugged. “It was only Herodotus. I have more of his work somewhere around here. Have you definitely decided against
Dunmore then?”

Anna remembered the raw, burning fury in his eyes. “I would say assuredly yes. He is not the man for me. He never was.”

“But Adair is the man for you?”

“He hasn’t asked me to marry him.”

“He will, I’m sure. Especially after today. And you always did say you wanted to marry a duke.”

“He is not quite the duke I imagined when I used to say that!”

Caroline propped her chin on her hands, steadily
watching Anna with her solemn brown eyes. “What did you imagine? Pomp at Court in London? Coronets of strawberry leaves while
everyone bows to you?”

“Something like that, I suppose. Something grand and—and purposeful.”

“And what do you imagine with Adair?”

With Adair she had, or could have, everything. Everything she had never realized she needed so much. Love, belonging, a place
where she could be really useful. Passion like she had never imagined, but danger, too.

“Caro,” she said slowly, “how do you know so decidedly that Lord Hartley is what you want?”

Caroline shrugged. “I just knew, the first time we talked together. We have so many mutual interests, and we understand each
other. I know he is not much to look at, but he is kind and intelligent. He will never expect me to be something I’m not.
We could have a comfortable and content life together.”

Comfortable and content—those were certainly two things Adair was
not.
“But what do you feel when he kisses you? Does it feel as if you’ll explode, burst into flames, when he touches you?”

Caroline looked at her in bewilderment. “I’ve never kissed him. But I doubt it would be like that. I’m not even sure that
would be—required. Is it that way with you and Adair?”

“Yes,” Anna said simply. “I forget everything when I’m with him. He makes me feel completely alive.”

“Well,” said Caroline. “I think you had better marry him, then. You should have no problem getting Mama’s permission now.
Once she hears Eliza’s news, she’ll want more grandchildren.”

“Won’t she have Lord Hartley’s brood, once you become their stepmother?”

“Yes,” Caroline said. For the first time a note of doubt crept into her voice. “I suppose she will. But they are not children.”

“I don’t think we can solve all our romantic dilemmas right now,” said Anna with a yawn. “I’m so tired I can hardly think
at all. Maybe I should just lie down until Mama returns.”

“I’m tired, too.” Caroline rubbed at her spectacle-less eyes. Without them, she looked younger, prettier, and more vulnerable.
Anna hoped her too-smart-for-her-own-good sister was not making a terrible mistake with Hartley.

She hoped
she
didn’t make a mistake with Adair, either. She couldn’t afford any more mistakes.

They both curled up on Anna’s bed as the day slid into evening, and Anna drifted into a troubled sleep.

Crash!

Anna sat straight up, bewildered, still caught in the sticky cobweb of sleep and dreams and startled by the sound of breaking
glass. Was it only part of her dream? But then she heard another pane shatter, and she knew it was no dream. In the hazy half-light,
she saw a large gloved hand reach through the broken window to unlatch the casement and swing it open.

“Caro, run!” she whispered frantically, pushing at her sleeping sister’s shoulder. She tried to jump off the bed, but her
numb legs refused to work. Her panicked brain couldn’t seem to command her body.

“Wha…” Caroline said as she sat up groggily. She, too, saw the man climbing in the window, and she screamed and rolled off
the bed, landing with a thud on the floor.

The haze vanished from Anna’s mind in a sinking, cold rush of terror, and she screamed. But it was too late. One of the intruders,
a large, burly man in rough wool, grabbed her hard around the waist and clamped his gloved hand hard over her mouth. She could
hardly breathe, yet the fear made her fight like a wild beast. Anna kicked at him through her skirts, ruing the fact that
she took off her boots before going to sleep. She twisted her head to bite his hand.

“Crazy bitch!” the man muttered. He didn’t sound Irish, or even English. He forced his palm harder over her face and pushed
her to the floor on her stomach. “How is yours?”

“Just as wild,” another man said. Then Anna heard Caroline drive her elbow into his belly, and the sickening crack as he slapped
her. “I thought these fine ladies were supposed to faint as soon as you look at ’em.”

“Well, I thought there was only supposed to be one. That’s what they told me when they said to use this window,” Anna’s captor
said. She struggled to roll over and gouge his eyes out, but he wrangled her arms back and bound them tightly together. Sharp
pain shot from her right shoulder as it was wrenched. “We’ll just have to take ’em both, let the toffs sort it out.”

Through the pain, Anna could hear her sister struggling. “I vote we just kill them and leave them here, troublesome sluts,”
one of the men said.

“Then we wouldn’t get paid. Here, tie this around yours and lower her out the window to Jim. I’ll follow with this one,” said
the other captor.

They meant to carry her and Caroline away to some horrible fate! Anna was an avid reader of Gothic novels; she knew just what
happened when fair ladies were kidnapped by villains. Terrified, she summoned up every bit of her strength and threw her head
back. It smacked into his jaw with a satisfying crack, but her head pounded.

“Bitch!” the man cried. “No more trouble from
you.
” Something landed hard at the base of her skull, and everything went black.

A
re my daughters home, Smythe?” Katherine said. She deposited her parcels with the butler and stripped off her gloves and cloak.
Sparkling bits of ice clung to the velvet folds. “I hope they haven’t ventured out. It’s terribly cold.”

“They’ve been resting upstairs for a while now, my lady,” Smythe answered. “I only just returned from the market with the
veal you wanted for dinner.”

“Yes, the meeting ran long, I’m afraid. And then I had to purchase some new paints for Lady Caroline’s lessons.” Lessons with
Nicolas. Just thinking his name made Katherine smile. It had been thus ever since they met at Christmas—and again, secretly,
once they returned to Dublin. She felt quite ridiculously ebullient these days, like she might burst out laughing at any moment.

“I will just go look in on my daughters,” she said. “I’m anxious to hear how it went at Parliament today.”

“Oh, I gather it was quite lively, my lady.”

Katherine laughed and climbed the stairs to the quiet corridor that housed the family bedchambers. At Anna’s
door, she could hear no voices or laughter. Parliament
must
have been tiring, then, if they were actually resting.

“Girls,” she called as she knocked on the door. “Are you awake? It’s nearly time for dinner.”

There was no answer. She turned the unlocked door handle and pushed it open. A rush of cold air greeted her, and the first
hint of disquiet touched her heart. The chamber was dark and silent.

“Anna? Caroline?” she cried anxiously. She stepped into the room and heard the grind of broken glass under her shoe.

In one frantic instant, she took in the terrible scene. The shattered, open window. The empty, rumpled bed. And, in the middle
of the mattress, a dagger hilt standing straight up.

Katherine stumbled forward to find the blade pinned to a note. By the moonlight from the open window, she read the scrawled
words.

If Adair wants his whore back, tell him to come get her. The Dowling wool warehouse by the river, midnight. Alone. Or she
dies.