One Night of Sin (34 page)

“No! No!” she finally choked out, struggling to shake her head negatively. “I won’t—tell—anyone!”

“Good. You see?” He dropped her. She slumped against the wall, protecting her reddened throat with both hands. “That wasn’t so difficult.”

She scanned his face with the most genuine look of fear that he had ever seen in her eyes.

“Get out,” he finished in an icy tone.

She fled, slipping past him and darting to the door. Without another word she was gone.

Alec cracked his knuckles. Unpleasant that, but he trusted he had made his point.

He raked his hands slowly through his hair, a bit stunned that he had done it, but refusing to wonder how threatening to murder a woman corresponded with chivalry. But he was past such nicety of feeling. He’d make a deal with the Devil himself to keep Becky safe.

Taking a deep breath, he struggled to calm the beastly rage in his breast, then stalked out of the room where the despised scent of Eva’s French perfume still lingered.

Becky had heard the whole thing, leaning in the deep shadows of midday with her back to the wall of the corridor, her arms folded across her chest. She had seen Eva rush out, looking shaken, and now Alec prowled out, also going past without noticing her there.

She marveled to see that he immediately headed for the exit as well. It seemed he had no intention of seeking her out to explain what in blazes had just happened in there. “Unavoidable?” she flung out when he reached the top of the stairs. “Our marriage is unavoidable? That’s what you said.”

He stopped, stiffening. He turned around slowly, the look in his eyes so painfully guarded, all those steely defenses locked back into place. “You know I had to say that.”

Becky pushed away from the wall and approached cautiously. “Would you really murder her in cold blood?”

He considered the question for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Possibly. The important thing is that she believes I would. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go. The Regent is expecting me.”

Becky followed doggedly but kept a safe distance. “Are you quite all right, Alec?”

“Fine. You?” he clipped out like an automaton.

“I’m not fine,” she informed him. “I’m still trying to figure out if you wanted me out of there simply to protect me or to stop me from finding out whatever it is that you’ve been hiding from me.”

Reaching the foyer, he took his black top hat from the wall-hook and lifted his walking stick from the corner stand, scrupulously avoiding her gaze. She was only a few steps behind him.

“You can’t ignore me, Alec. We need to talk about this. Who was she, and who is that man she mentioned, Mr. Dunmire?”

He put his hat on and walked past her to the door. “I have to go.” His voice was devoid of emotion.

“Nonsense, this is more important.” She reached for his arm, but he pulled away roughly.

“Don’t touch me. Just—let me go.”

“Alec,” she pleaded, though she obediently released him. “Can’t you even look at me?”

When he turned and stared at her for a second, Becky marveled at the tortured look in his eyes. “Alec,” she murmured, searching his face. She touched his arm; he brushed her off.

“It would be folly to keep the Regent waiting.” Faltering, he gave her a stiff bow and retreated.

“Alec?” She followed him again. “Alec, don’t you dare leave!”

Becky gasped at the door’s slam: He was gone.

His stomach was in knots, but Alec strove to put the incident aside for the moment and tried to focus on the company at hand. Drax had already asked him what was the matter, and Fort was regarding him with worry. Alec offered nothing. His heart, his hopes, were crushed. If Becky hadn’t figured it out yet, innocent as she was, she soon would. The girl was no fool.

Perhaps it would have been better if he had just let Dunmire’s thugs kill him a year and a half ago, when he had been unable to pay back the loan. Instead, he had proved himself the Hawkscliffe Harlot’s son and sold himself for gold to a woman he had come to despise.

A sense of doom had settled over him. His arrangement with the baroness had cost him Lizzie, and now he knew it would cost him Becky, too. Yet this fresh wound was somehow worse than all the ones before. Even worse than the ancient wound of losing his mother. Worse than losing Lizzie’s blind devotion. He had never known love, but with Becky, he had come close.

It was no use.

Well, he thought, lacerating himself with his own black humor, that had certainly been the shortest-lived betrothal in the world. Sweet while it lasted. He dreaded the thought of going back to the house. Again he strove to put it all out of his mind. Amid the noise of pounding hammers and the rough, busy zigzag of handsaws, the party of gentlemen marveled at the metamorphosis that Mr. Nash’s army of carpenters and craftsmen were steadily working over the Regent’s Marine Pavilion.

They had paid their respects to His Royal Highness and had been warmly received; the corpulent Regent, so dashing in younger days, still had a soft spot in his heart for the band of handsome young rogues who still lived the Don Juan fantasy that had eluded him with the passage of years. Their audience with the future king was brief, however.

Poor royal George was harried by the inescapable, everyday matters of state—what little of it, anyway, that his ministers entrusted to him. He bid the young men to have a look around the Pavilion to observe his famed architect’s magic, and so they did just that.

With the brim of his top hat shading his eyes from the full sunshine, Alec sauntered around the grounds with his friends and a few other hangers-on. He kept to the back of their party, distracted, saying little in response to his friends’ exclamations of surprise at the whimsical construction.

The building really was astonishing. The neoclassical mansion by Henry Holland was being steadily transformed into an exotic Oriental palace. The domed Roman portico still stood in the front center, dignified as Tacitus, but now it was flanked on both sides by shocking minarets. Even Alec, for all his imagination, could not decide if this
thing
the Regent was building would be a delight in the end or a monstrosity. At the moment, he frankly didn’t give a damn.

If there was one bright spot in the depths of his despondency, it was that he had managed to learn the fate of the real Rose of Indra. That had been his true reason for coming here in the first place. Before disaster had struck, he had thought it would make a splendid wedding gift for his bride.

Alec had asked the Regent privately if he had ever heard anything about the Talbot jewel. To his fascination, His Royal Highness, with a boyish sparkle in his eyes, craftily revealed that he not only knew of the famous ruby: He owned it.

“I bought it, oh, thirty years ago from old Lord Talbot, lately deceased,” the obese “Prinny” had confided to him, wheezing with exertion as they promenaded down the garish pink Long Gallery. “I was going to present it to a, er, lady friend, but, you see, we had a falling out, so I kept it for my own collection. Why do you ask, dear boy?”

Alec had been evasive, but that bit of information was well worth tucking away in the back of his mind.

“I hear you are winning again, by the by. Will you be entering the annual whist tournament?” the Regent added with a knowing look askance.

Alec had forced a rueful smile, strolling beside him with his hands clasped behind his back. “I fear not, sire. Too rich for my blood. The entry fee this year is, what, ten thousand pounds?”

“Your friend Draxinger tells me he has bought in.”

“That’s because Parthenia Westland asked him to play,” Alec murmured confidentially. “We are to pretend, however, that my Lord Draxinger has no particular attachment to that lady whatsoever.”

“Ah, I see.” Prinny looked pleased at being included in the Society gossip.

“Do you plan to join in the game, sire?”

“Indubitably. Pity it’s only whist, though. Dreadfully dull. Give me faro, hazard. “

Alec had laughed politely at the Regent’s eager mention of the games that had been his own nemesis.

At present, his attention ambled back to the foreman explaining the workmen’s various projects. “Over there, my lords can see the kitchens, which are complete. Here we’re building the banqueting hall, and on the other end they’re working on the music room.” The foreman’s voice trailed off as something in the distance caught his eye.

Furrowing his brow, Alec turned and followed his glance. At once his eyes narrowed and he felt a sudden chill in the warm afternoon. A black traveling chariot trimmed in silver was wheeling around the crescent-shaped road that banded the Pavilion’s front garden. It was drawn by six black horses with white plumes on their heads and surrounded by an escort of mounted Cossack guards in full regalia.

Kurkov.

So, the reprieve was over. Their enemy had finally come, arriving right on schedule for the Lieven ball tomorrow night. Making a damned showy entrance, at that. Alec’s heart began to pound fiercely.

Becky.

He had to go to her. Warn her. Make sure she stayed out of sight. He did not know how he would face her, but that mattered less than his overwhelming need to keep her safe.

He did not even try to explain himself to his friends, but clipped out a curt farewell and excused himself abruptly, striding off across the sculpted grounds.

“Alec?” Fort called.

“Knight, where are you going?” Rush demanded.

He didn’t answer; he didn’t even look back.

Jumping up into his hired phaeton, he urged the pair of cherry bays into motion; a moment later the light, fast carriage went barreling down the street, the horses’ hooves clattering over the cobblestones. He knew his hasty exit would seem entirely bizarre to his companions, but there would be time for apologies later. It was a grim enough matter to ponder what Becky would have to say to him when he walked through that door.

Becky had
nothing
to say to him.

No, Alec was the one who had blasted well better start talking, so far as she was concerned, and an apology for the callous way he had walked out earlier was only the start of what she wanted to hear.

Before all of this had happened, she had meant to continue on with her day as usual. Wash up in the kitchen. Make the sauce for the pudding. Work some more on her knitting for the babe. But after that conflagration, she did none of this.

Moments after his desertion, she had walked up to their bedchamber, hurt and dazed, and sat down on a chair in a state of astonishment.

She couldn’t believe that he had
left
in the middle of the crisis between them, more concerned, apparently, with keeping up appearances before the Regent than mending the huge tear in their hours-old betrothal. She knew the supposed urgency of his visit to the Pavilion was just an excuse.

He had shut her out.

Becky clenched her jaw and fumed, glaring at the summer bed, twisting his signet ring angrily on her finger, half tempted to take it off, but that seemed too harsh, too definite a rejection. She did not want an end to their affection, but if he did not tell her what this deep dark secret of his was, then she was going to have to reconsider marrying him at all.

Whoever Mr. Dunmire was, whatever Lady Campion had meant by her tirade, lacking Alec’s explanation, her mind conjured up all sorts of ominous possibilities that she assured herself were probably worse than the truth. He was Alec, after all. He was a wonderful person and she loved him. How bad could it be?

But in spite of herself, the gnawing fear that had set in shook her faith to its foundations. Had she not told him
her
entire story weeks ago, when they had sat together in that little church? She had taken the risk of trusting him, so why couldn’t he do the same? It hurt to think that he had been deliberately keeping secrets from her all this time. As much as he had urged her again and again to trust him at the start of their alliance, now she was beginning to wonder if maybe she shouldn’t have.

All she knew for certain was that she did
not
like being kept in the dark.

Listening constantly for the sound of his return, she fought not to let her fears run away with her and ordered herself again to await his explanation.

At last, she heard his carriage come clattering back down the lane. A few minutes later, Alec came into the room.

She looked at him coolly over her steepled fingers, her elbows resting on the chair’s arms, her legs crossed. She held him in an unblinking stare. With a subtle blanch, he dropped his gaze and ventured cautiously into the room, taking off his jacket.

“I’m back.”

“So I see.”

He glanced over guardedly at her cool tone, putting his coat down on the bed. He kept a safe distance and leaned against one of the bedposts a few feet away. He folded his arms across his chest. As he studied the carpet, she could almost see him casting about for any neutral topic. She offered nothing, but with considerable satisfaction let the villain squirm.

From beneath his dusky lashes, Alec’s searching gaze was hopeful, ginger, conciliatory; but the trace of stubbornness that hardened the angles of his jaw suggested he was still unprepared to explain himself.

We’ll just see about that.

“Kurkov’s come to town,” he announced, treading carefully. “You’re going to have to be mindful again about staying out of sight.”

“Fine.”

He licked his lips and dropped his chin, his forelock falling into his eyes. “How much did you hear?”

“Not enough to make sense of it.”

The scoundrel had the nerve to look relieved. He ventured forward and went down on one knee before her chair, laying his hand on her forearm. “Don’t let her ruin what we have, Becky. Please. She has no hold over me. She had no right to come here. You’re everything to me—”

“Charm won’t work this time, Alec.” She withdrew her wrist from his light grasp and folded her arms across her middle. “I want answers. Real ones.”

He stiffened, rose, and turned away, pacing over to the window. Resting his hands on the sill, he gazed unseeingly at the sunny cobbled street below. “What happened between Eva and me is a closed chapter of my life, Becky. One I wish neither to return to nor discuss.”