One Wicked Sin (15 page)

“I am glad,” she said, “that we have that straight now.” She put a hand out and touched his lightly. Not for a second did she want to show how hurt she was. “The horses will be growing chilled, my lord,” she said. “Do you wish to come back with me tonight?”

There was a pause. “No,” Ethan said, after a moment. She could hear the smile in his voice although she could not see his expression in the darkness. “I have work to do and you distract me from it.”

“Work?” Lottie said. “How so?”

“Letters to write…” Ethan said. He sounded vague. She wondered if he was being deliberately so. “Matters to prepare to discuss with Mr. Duster, the Parole Officer.” He kissed her a final time, brief and light, and let her go. “If you will excuse me…I will call on you tomorrow.”

“Of course,” Lottie said.

The short carriage journey back to Priory Cottage seemed inordinately lonely. Lottie sat in the darkness and thought about what Ethan had said, not about his feelings for her, but about his work. It seemed easier to concentrate on that, to block out the other words that scorned and hurt her. Letters, matters of business…Those were the things that Theo would be interested in hearing about.

Those were the matters that Ethan would never discuss with her.

She knew that with absolute certainty. Ethan was such a self-contained man. He would never give anything of himself away, least of all those secrets that he had to guard with his life. To expect it would be to misunderstand him completely. She knew that Ethan trusted no one, least of all her.

She thought back over the evening and remembered Ethan’s cool blue gaze resting on her with such thoughtful appraisal. She shivered a little. She was almost certain that he suspected her and she had not even done anything wrong yet. When she did, she would have to be careful. She had every intention now of betraying him to Theo. Tonight had hardened her resolve. Ethan himself had spoken dismissively of the time his desire for her burned out. She would not wait
for that to happen. She would be the one who took control. She would leave him first.

E
THAN STOOD ON THE STEPS
of The Bear Hotel and watched the carriage roll out of sight. It had cost him a fortune to hire their best equipage on Lottie’s behalf for a journey of a couple of hundred yards. Lottie was proving to be vastly expensive, just as she had threatened to be, but she was also proving to be worth every penny in entertainment value. Ethan’s lips twitched into an involuntary smile. Gun emplacements? Cavalry maneuvers? If Lottie Palliser had any interest in those beyond what she had been told to pretend he would be astounded. Her artless questions about breaking parole had been equally transparent.

Ethan shook his head. All evidence suggested that Lottie had been bought by the British, another spy set up to report back on him to the authorities. It would have been easy enough for them to get to her during those two days she had been alone in London, and no one would be better placed to spy on him than she. A small smile curled his lips at the thought. Well, time would tell. And he would certainly derive a great deal of amusement from seeing how such a hopelessly indiscreet person, such a poor actress as Lottie Palliser, managed the role of English spy.

His amusement faded. The prospect of Lottie trying to deceive him was comical but he also felt an odd pang of regret. He had wanted to trust Lottie, which ran counter to common sense and went against all his experience, as well. Time and again life had taught him to trust no one. Lottie’s betrayal would simply be the latest
in a long line. Even so, it seemed to hurt more than it should. It proved that she had not a jot of genuine regard for him, not a scrap of loyalty. That was strangely painful to confront. It was one of the reasons—one of the many less-than-admirable reasons—why he had treated Lottie with such ruthless possessiveness that evening. Her duplicity had angered him. He had wanted to show her that she was his to command in every way.

He had wanted to go back with Lottie to Priory Cottage and ease the arrogance he had shown her with tenderness. He had wanted to hold her and make love to her with gentleness and passion, woo a response from her, not demand one.

Ethan gave an impatient shrug. It could not be. The truth was that Lottie was, in her own way, a mercenary. She sold herself to the highest bidder. There was no sentiment in her. If she was working for the British authorities then they must be offering her more incentive than he ever could. And now he needed to cease thinking about her perfidy, and about how much he wanted her, and concentrate on his work.

Ethan drove his hands into his pockets and strolled down the narrow, noisome passageway at the side of the inn. Here, amongst the rotting vegetables and scavenging cats, the empty beer barrels lay discarded, waiting collection by the local Wantage brewery. The wooden stoppers were scattered about, some pushed carelessly back into the casks, others lying on the ground. Ethan picked up the stopper that was lying nearest the wall and tossed it casually into his pocket before entering the taproom of The Bear by the side door and making his way back up the stairs to his room.

Once there he sliced the wooden bung in half and extracted the note that was inside.

As he watched the wood flare into flame and the paper blacken to ash in the grate, Ethan reflected that if Lottie were indeed an agent for the British he would have to be even more careful in keeping his secrets. There would be no confidences exchanged in the aftermath of lovemaking no matter how expertly and blissfully she pleasured him. He was too experienced a hand at this game to fall into so obvious a trap.

He smiled cynically. If Lottie really was a spy then she had most definitely bitten off more than she could chew. Beautiful,
treacherous
Lottie Palliser would rue the day that she had agreed to sell him out.

T
HE DAYS SLIPPED
past and nobody called. There were no invitations. Lottie did not really expect it. She knew that she was a social outcast as far as the respectable elements of Wantage society were concerned. She was welcomed amongst Ethan’s military colleagues, of course, but she had no desire to spend her days in the alehouses or playing billiards at The Bear. Amateur theatricals appalled her and she could never manage to rise early enough in the mornings to join the officers on their daily ride.

Ethan came to visit her most days. Sometimes he stayed overnight. Physically they could not have been more intimate. In all other respects, though, Ethan held himself apart. He gave nothing of himself, his thoughts or his emotions. He never spoke of his childhood or his son or of anything of import. Lottie was no stranger to skating over the surface of life herself, but she wanted more from Ethan. The need for intimacy started as an ache and grew to a hunger, but it was never satisfied.

Nor was life in Wantage anything other than the dead bore she had predicted it would be. Lottie would dine with Ethan alone and occasionally with his colleagues at The Bear but it was hardly a social calendar to set the world alight. When Ethan had been given leave to visit Lord Craven at Ashdown Park to dine and to advise
on his purchase of a couple of hunters for his stable, Lottie had not been invited to join the party. Naturally not—she was Ethan’s mistress not his wife, and the Countess of Craven would never have countenanced it. Lottie understood, but the slight rankled with her. She was a woman no longer recognized in the world where once her place had been assured.

She imagined that the life of a courtesan in London would be vastly different from this. True, she had Margery to bring her a pot of hot chocolate in bed in the mornings, and to draw her bath for her, but Lottie secretly felt unkind making the poor little maidservant haul heavy buckets of water in from the well to heat up, then drag them up the stairs, as well. There were no newspapers to read over the breakfast table unless she took the
Wantage Chronicle
and she had tried that once only to find that it was full of reports of a sale of farmyard animals, articles on the building of the local canal, and very little else. There were no reviews of plays, or accounts of balls or exhibitions, or gossip about her friends as there were in the London papers. There
were
the shops, of course, poor as they were in comparison to London or even Oxford. There were three drapers in fierce competition with each other, and Lottie considered them all hopelessly old-fashioned, though John Winkworth’s emporium, the windows draped with velvet and silk, was the one patronized by the more well-to-do families of the town. Mr. Winkworth had greeted Lottie’s first visit with nervousness; she could see that it was a delicate problem for him. On the one hand she was likely to spend a great deal of money. On the other, her presence in his shop might
drive away more respectable customers. Whenever she called he danced around her like a large moth to a flame, trying simultaneously to serve her and hide her from the other patrons.

Disaster occurred on her fourth visit. Whilst Lottie was browsing behind several large bales of silk, Mrs. Ormond, the wife of the richest lawyer in town, arrived with her daughter, who was intent on purchasing some material for summer gowns. Lottie saw Mr. Winkworth throw her an agonized glance. She wondered if, given the chance, he might roll her up in a carpet to hide her until Mrs. and Miss Ormond had left.

“What do you think, Mama?” Miss Ormond, a young lady with a bright, expressive face and brown ringlets, was holding up two different bales of muslin. “The blue with white spots or the pink?”

“The blue,” Mrs. Ormond said decisively. “It vastly becomes you.”

“I apologize for interrupting,” Lottie said, unable to hold her tongue, “but I advise you to choose the pink, Miss Ormond. I fear the blue is too pale for your complexion. It will make you look sallow, whereas the pink is very pretty indeed.”

Both ladies turned to look at her, appearing as startled as though the bales of cloth themselves had spoken. Mrs. Ormond, who was a thin woman with a tightly pinched mouth gasped aloud and looked as though she was not sure if she ought to faint with shock at being addressed so impertinently by a fashionable impure. Lottie checked her reticule for sal volatile just in case. Mr. Winkworth, who was showing another lady a se
lection of kid gloves at the counter, froze as though he were playing a game of statues.

“Come, Mary Belle, we are leaving!” Mrs. Ormond snapped.

“Oh, Mama, not without my dress material!” the young lady protested. “Besides, we have only just arrived, and I have my entire allowance to spend!” Her bright brown gaze was fixed thoughtfully on Lottie and there was amusement lurking in her eyes. She had the sort of face that looked as though she were perpetually smiling and now it seemed she was finding it difficult to keep her face straight. “You know that Miss Palliser is correct, Mama,” she added. “The pink is a great deal more flattering.”

“It would look divine with this silver-gray spencer,” Lottie added, catching Mr. Winkworth’s eye, “and perhaps a little of this lace for the hem?”

“Oh yes!” Mary Belle clapped her hands together appreciatively. “You have quite the eye for color, Miss Palliser! And if I could achieve a quarter of your style I would be most happy. That bonnet is so sweetly pretty—”

“Mary Belle!” Mrs. Ormond’s neck and face were a mottled purple. “You must not
speak
to such a creature as Miss Palliser—”

“Oh fie, Mama, I doubt that I shall become corrupted simply by
speaking!
” Mary Belle said blithely. “It takes a great deal more than that, or so I believe! Besides—” she shot her mother a swift, teasing glance “—you yourself said that Miss Palliser is the cousin of the Duke of Palliser.”

“Yes, but I fear that I do not acknowledge Cousin
James,” Lottie said, smiling. “He is quite beneath my touch, Miss Ormond.” She smiled at the girl to soften her words. “Your mama is correct, you know. It could damage your reputation to be seen to speak with me.”

“Thank you, Miss Palliser,” Mrs. Ormond said stiffly. “I am glad that you possess the sense of propriety that my daughter clearly lacks. Come, Mary Belle!”

“But my purchases, Mama!” Mary Belle wailed. She hurried over to the counter with the bale of pink muslin, scooped up the Brussels lace that Lottie had indicated and gestured to the silver-gray spencer with pearl buttons.

“If you please, Mr. Winkworth,” she said, with a very pretty smile. “Oh, and I would like a pair of silver-gray gloves to go with the spencer, and a straw bonnet with a silver ribbon!”

“You will exceed your allowance, Mary Belle!” her mother said. “She is ungovernable,” the matron complained in an aside to Lottie. “I fear she gets her headstrong nature from her father.”

“Miss Ormond does indeed have a most independent spirit,” Lottie agreed, very diverted that Mrs. Ormond had briefly forgotten her disapproval of her in a greater displeasure with her daughter’s waywardness. “However, that can be a good thing under some circumstances.”

“The sooner we marry her off the better,” Mrs. Ormond said darkly.

“Oh, pray do not be in too much of a hurry,” Lottie said, looking across to the counter where Mary Belle was dazzling Mr. Winkworth with her dimpling smile.
“I was married off at seventeen and look what happened to me!”

Mrs. Ormond blushed. She gave Lottie a doubtful look. “Well, that’s as may be,” she said. “My prime concern at present is to thwart an elopement between Mary Belle and any of those
appalling
French officers who hang about the town!”

“I fear they have no choice other than to hang about,” Lottie said, “if they do not wish to break their parole. And they are very rich and charming, you know. Miss Ormond could do worse.”

“There are more than sixty thousand of them in the country, Miss Palliser,” Mrs. Ormond said. She swelled with indignation. This was clearly a familiar refrain for her. “
Sixty thousand
of the enemy, living amongst us! We could be murdered in our beds at any moment!”

“Most of them are locked up,” Lottie pointed out.

“That’s as may be,” Mrs. Ormond said again. Lottie saw Mary Belle cast a quick glance in their direction, note that her mother was preoccupied, and slip another pair of gloves onto her pile of purchases. “And I know what you will say, Miss Palliser,” Mrs. Ormond continued. “You will say that the officers are gentlemen and that they are welcome in all the great houses and that they are no true enemy of ours….”

“I would not dream of saying so,” Lottie said promptly. “I feel your concerns are most justified, Mrs. Ormond. I remember my cousin, the Duke of Palliser, saying much the same thing about giving prisoners of war parole after Trafalgar.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Ormond looked taken aback. She looked at Lottie, curiosity and reticence at war in her eyes.
Curiosity won. “Is it really true, Miss Palliser, that your family has cast you off?” she demanded.

“I fear so,” Lottie said, sighing. “And who can blame them when I am such a black sheep? But who knows—” she smiled “—now that I am living so near my family home perhaps my relatives may be persuaded to welcome me back.”

“Pray do let us know if they do,” Mrs. Ormond said, her face brightening. “You would then be most welcome to take tea with the ladies of Wantage.”

“Oh, I could not possibly,” Lottie said, trying not to laugh. “You yourself pointed out a few moments ago that I am quite beyond the pale, Mrs. Ormond, my reputation shattered, my respectability blown to pieces—”

“Well, of course, we could not entertain you to tea
now,
” Mrs. Ormond said, blushing. “That would be most inappropriate. But where the Duke leads…”

“Of course,” Lottie said. “I quite understand.”

She did. Mrs. Ormond could not be seen to give so notorious a woman as herself countenance by receiving her publicly, but oh, the lawyer’s wife ached to be first with the gossip.

“You could not be persuaded to give up Lord St. Severin, I suppose?” Mrs. Ormond pursued, her eyes gleaming with the excitement of the
on dit
. Now she had started gossiping she could not stop, not even with a Cyprian.

“Oh, I could not!” Lottie said, casting down her gaze. “I have the greatest regard for Lord St. Severin.”

“He is a dangerous renegade, so I hear,” Mrs.
Ormond said, leaning closer. “Ungovernable as a boy, ruthless as a man.”

“I heard that, too,” Lottie said.

“A man who is drawn to danger, Miss Palliser,” Mrs. Ormond said darkly, “will pursue it whether he is confined or not.”

Lottie began to wonder whether the Wantage circulating library had a big collection of Gothic novels. Mrs. Ormond certainly seemed to have fallen under their influence at some point.

“I confess that my regard for Lord St. Severin has nothing to do with his personality,” she said, “dangerous or otherwise. It is based solely on the enormous size of his—”

Mrs Ormond drew back with a gasp.

“—fortune,” Lottie finished sweetly.

“Oh!” Mrs. Ormond straightened, seemed to recall precisely whom she was addressing and took a hasty step back. Her hands fluttered. “Well, Miss Palliser…” She seemed at a loss.

“It was a delight to make your acquaintance,” Lottie said, smiling, “though you need not fear that I will boast of it amongst the more straitlaced ladies of Wantage. I would not wish to put you to the blush.”

“You are very good, Miss Palliser.” Mrs. Ormond hesitated. “I wonder…before we go… Do you think the puce or the maroon silk would suit me best? With my complexion?”

“Either,” Lottie said, smiling broadly. “Both. They are equally flattering.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Ormond gushed. “Mr. Wink
worth? Mr. Winkworth! I would like to place an order for material for
two
gowns….”

A couple of hours later, as Lottie was sitting alone at home taking tea, a letter arrived:

This missive was signed artlessly, “Your very great friend, Miss Mary Belle Ormond.”

Highly entertained, Lottie sent for ink and paper and composed her reply.

She sent Margery off with the letter and a half hour later the maid returned carrying a large parcel wrapped up in brown paper.

“Miss Ormond was very grateful for your help, ma’am,” Margery said, starting to untie the string. “She asked if she might trespass further on your kindness and beg you to take a look at the enclosed material. Her mama wishes it to be made up into an evening gown for Miss Ormond but the young lady is afraid that it will make her look like an old maid.”

“Oh dear,” Lottie said, holding up the material. “Oh dear me, no. Poor Miss Ormond! She should wear cream, not white, with her coloring, and not this shiny satin! This will not do at all!”

“Dear Miss Ormond,” she wrote, ten minutes later: