One Wicked Sin (3 page)

She had heard that Gregory was to remarry, to one of the Season’s most eligible heiresses. Evidently the scandal that had ruined her name had left him spotless. But then, he had the money and the power to wash his reputation clean. In fact his influence was so great that
even had she told the truth of his sexual proclivities, no one would have listened to her. She hoped that his little virgin heiress would not be too shocked. She was afraid that she would be.

She turned back to look at Ethan Ryder. He was good-looking, attractive in that dangerous, devil-may-care way that had once been so appealing to her. Two years ago it would have taken one look for her to resolve that she wanted to take him to bed. Now she felt racked with nervousness. Her whole body was trembling. What on earth had happened to her? She was not sure, only that the court case had left her with not only her reputation in tatters. She had changed. Somewhere along the way all her certainties and all her confidence had been hammered into the ground.

She fumbled with the ribbon on her robe but Ethan’s hand closed over hers, warm and firm, stilling her shaking fingers.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. Not here.”

Lottie closed her eyes briefly. She felt a curious mixture of relief and chagrin. It was so foolish to be irritated that he did not appear to want her when she was also relieved that she did not have to play the whore for him here and now. Perhaps he was another, like Gregory, who preferred men. Perhaps it was only the pretense of a mistress he wanted, the appearance of being as other men. Gregory had wanted a wife to act as hostess, but more importantly he had wanted the camouflage that she gave him. Yet she doubted that of Ethan. When he had kissed her she had felt the need in him as hot and sharp as a whetted knife. She had known that he wanted her.

His fingers released hers. He stepped closer to her so that his breath stirred her hair. His lips brushed the line of her jaw, sending little shivers of awareness along her skin. She looked into his eyes and saw again the hard glitter of desire.

“They are watching and listening,” he said softly, “to make sure that you do your job properly this time.”

Lottie spun around, her gaze searching the paneled walls of the boudoir. Of course they would be watching her through spy-holes, keyholes, peepholes, the whole prurient range of the brothel’s trade. Perhaps Mrs. Tong had even taken John Hagan’s money on the promise that he could watch her with Ethan before Hagan had her himself. She felt sick, hot and naive not to have thought of it before.

“I don’t perform for crowds,” she said defiantly.

Ethan smiled. It deepened the lines at the corners of his eyes and made a crease appear down one lean cheek. He had a crease in his chin, too. It did not soften his looks. In fact it gave even more resolution to a face that already had no gentleness in it.

“If it comes to that,” he said, “neither do I.” He moved away. “Put some clothes on. We’re leaving.”

Lottie let out her breath on a sigh. “Thank you.”

Ethan held her eyes for a long moment. A smile still tilted his lips. Heat shimmered between them, robbing Lottie of breath. She felt flustered, taken by surprise. Then he turned away and scooped up the bags of guineas. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I’m simply protecting my investment.” He sounded impatient now. “That old procuress would only rob you blind if I left you alone
to deal with her. I don’t want you costing me more than is necessary.”

Lottie scrambled in the wardrobe for a gown and shoes. Most of the clothes Mrs. Tong had provided her with were unpleasantly cheap quality as well as cut to enhance every asset she possessed and to fall off at the slightest touch. There was not a single tasteful garment among them other than the one gown and spencer that she had brought with her from home, from her lost life. She bundled them up under her arm. The cupboard smelled of stale scent. With a pang of loss she remembered the bottles of perfume she had once bought at Piver’s and at Rimmel’s in the Strand. Flower-scented gloves had been one of her favorite indulgences in the old days…

“Are you ready?” Ethan still sounded impatient. How long did he think it took a woman to dress? She did not even have a maid to help her. She opened the cupboard again and dragged a cloak about her shoulders then grabbed the canary’s cage from its hook.

“Is that your bird or are you stealing it?” Ethan raised one black brow.

“It’s mine.” It was the only thing she had taken with her from Grosvenor Square. She looked around and raised her chin. “I don’t want anything else from this godforsaken place.”

“An understandable sentiment,” Ethan said, “but not very practical. I am not prepared to pay to dress you from scratch.”

Grumbling, Lottie gathered up some underclothes, stockings, gloves, a shawl, two fans, a feathered head-dress, a couple of gowns and a parasol, and threw them
into a small bandbox she had found at the back of the cupboard.

Ethan took her hand. His touch made her tremble. She felt disturbed. Misgivings stirred for the first time; more stark choices; stay in this hellhole or go with a virtual stranger. He slanted a look down at her, his gaze sardonic.

“Scared?”

She wished he could not read her so easily. It seemed extraordinary—and deeply inconvenient—that he could. She looked up and met his eyes boldly.

“No, of course not.”

“Liar.” A smile curled his lips. There was a hard light in his blue eyes. “It is your choice, Miss Palliser.”

“You are the lesser of two evils,” Lottie said.

His smile deepened, sending a quiver of awareness like a lightning bolt through her. “Or perhaps the devil you know?” He murmured.

“I don’t know you,” Lottie said.

“But you will,” Ethan said. “You will.”

It sounded like a dangerous promise.

T
HE GREEDY BAWD
had taken him for almost every guinea he had on him. Ethan was not surprised but he was wondering if it was worth it.

He sat opposite Lottie Palliser in the hackney carriage and watched her as the shadows skipped across her face in bars of light and dark. She was not at all what he had expected. How many times had he thought that this evening? How many times had he had the opportunity to change his mind, discard her and choose another, more biddable and accomplished woman for the role of mistress? How had he, the most cold and calculating man in the kingdom, ended up with a courtesan who seemed almost as nervous as a virgin, accompanied by a canary that could not sing? He shifted with irritation, with himself, with her, with the damned canary. This was too important a mission he was engaged on; he could not afford to ruin it all on a whim because for some inexplicable reason he preferred Lottie Palliser to another more compliant mistress.

And yet Lottie Palliser was no shrinking innocent. Despite the ordeal of her divorce and disgrace there was spirit in her still, a little crushed, perhaps, but he could see the ghost of the woman she had once been. That was the woman he needed, the scandalous, hedonistic pleasure-seeker who would outrage the populace of a
small market town and keep their attention firmly on her, leaving him to pursue his business away from their prying eyes. He needed a decoy, a distraction. Lottie Palliser was going to be that woman.

The first part of the jigsaw was now in place. Mrs. Tong had been suitably shocked and furious to lose the services of the most notorious jade in London—even if she had been hopeless as a whore—but had been unable to resist the lure of the money. The madam would undoubtedly tell the world and his wife how the scandalous Ethan Ryder had walked into her brothel and paid a king’s ransom to walk out with Lottie Palliser as his mistress. Everyone would be talking about it from London to Land’s End, which was exactly what Ethan desired. Before she even arrived in Wantage, Lottie would be the most infamous mistress in the country. She would set the town by the ears.

“London by night.” Lottie was sitting forward, holding the curtain back so that she could look out of the carriage window. “I have missed its amusements.”

There was something wistful in her tone, a regret for all she had lost, perhaps. For it did not matter how much he paid her at the end of their association, Ethan thought. She would never regain the life she had once had.
Ton
society was closed to her forever.

“How did you come to this?” he asked. He was not sure why he was even interested. Lottie’s misfortunes were none of his affair. And yet he wanted to know how a seemingly intelligent woman had got herself into so desperate a situation. He was curious about her.

He could feel her eyes on him in the darkness of the carriage as though she was thinking about how much
to tell him, whether to lie, perhaps, and paint her case as more sympathetic than it was. He was as indifferent to her scrutiny as he would be to her falsehoods. She would read nothing in his face. He just wanted to know her story. It would pass the time since the traffic was slow at this time of night.

“You know what happened to me,” she said, after a pause. “You told me yourself.”

“I know what happened, not why.”

She turned away, hunched a shoulder. “My husband divorced me because I became too careless and indiscreet in my love affairs.” For a split second, in a shaft of light, he saw her face, remote and hard. “I always was imprudent,” she said. “I liked the danger. But I let it go too far. I was too reckless.”

Ethan smiled.

I liked the danger….

He understood that because he liked danger, too. He liked the risk and the thunder in the blood and the race of the pulse, for what else was there to live for when everything you cared about had been taken away? He had been right. That instinct that had told him that Lottie Palliser was wild as he, a kindred spirit, had been correct. It should make her perfect for his purpose.

There was quiet but for the roll of the carriage wheels over the cobbles and the clop of the horse’s hooves. Outside the nighttime world spun about them with its glitter and gaiety, the noise of the crowd, the taste of excitement in the air.

“I can understand why your family might disown you,” Ethan said. The Pallisers were very high in the instep and divorce, scandal, would be anathema to
them. “But surely you had friends who would help you—”

A quick shake of her head silenced him. “I tried to seduce the husband of my best friend,” she said. “That was her second husband. He refused me. I had already slept with her first one.”

It took a very great deal to surprise Ethan. This did not even come close. Besides, he had heard some tone in her voice that betrayed her, that was at odds with the brashness of her words.

“Are you trying to shock me?” he asked.

Her eyes gleamed. “Am I succeeding?”

“Not remotely.”

“Oh well…” She sounded cross, like a thwarted child. “I could try harder but to tell the truth I cannot be bothered to do so.”

“You wanted your friend’s husband,” Ethan said. “Why?”

He sensed her surprise. “Do you know,” she said slowly, “no one has ever asked me that before?”

“Well?”

“You sound like a stern governess.” She sounded petulant. “I don’t know! I was bored, he was handsome….”

Ethan knew she was lying. He could hear it. He also knew she would not tell him the truth. Not now, not yet, if ever. Lottie Palliser had been badly hurt and that damage had made her draw her defenses so tight no one would ever come close to hurting her again. He understood that. He had been doing something similar since he was fifteen years old.

“You have an interesting concept of loyalty to your friends,” he said now.

“I have no concept of loyalty.” She sounded tired. “And it was not even worth it. He had a tiny penis and was only concerned for his own pleasure in bed.”

Ethan laughed. “How disappointing to lose a friend and gain so little in return.”

A small smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “That was the least of my betrayals. I deceived Joanna several times over.” She sighed. “Even so, I think she would have helped me, but she has been out of the country for over a year, in Scandinavia and Russia, or somewhere equally far-flung. I forget. I wrote to her but the letter probably went astray. Geography is not my strong suit.” She gave an irritable little shrug. “Must we speak of this?” He could feel her gaze resting on him. “There is no need for us to
talk,
is there, least of all about me?”

“Not if you do not wish.” Ethan was amused. For as long as he could remember he had had women desperate to tell him their life stories. He had been the one trying to escape the intimacy.

Lottie shifted on the seat and he caught a faint scent of her jasmine perfume, fresh and sweet. The hunger gripped him again, as razor-sharp as it had been in the brothel. It was a very long time since he had had a woman. As a prisoner of war he had had little opportunity to satisfy his lusts and had grown accustomed to ignoring them. Instead he had focused all his energies on the long, dangerous, treasonable game he was playing. Yet now it seemed that Lottie Palliser’s intriguing
combination of reticence and experience was proving a great deal more seductive than he had ever imagined.

At first he had thought she was acting the prude to titillate the jaded palates of Mrs. Tong’s clientele. An experienced woman playing the virgin was not unusual, but in Lottie’s case it would have been pointless since everyone knew her history. And at no point had she attempted to deny her promiscuity or the infidelity that had led to her downfall. That honesty interested Ethan. Not a single woman of his acquaintance would have been as open as Lottie had been with him, and he admired her for that unflinching truthfulness.

She moved slightly on the hackney carriage seat and he heard the rustle of her silk skirts. “How did
you
come to this?” she asked, turning his question back on him. “Since you seem so anxious to speak to me, you can tell me how you came to be a prisoner of war.”

“I was captured at the battle of Fuentes de Onoro in Portugal,” Ethan said. “When Wellington discovered who I was, he sent me back to England as a prisoner.”

“How careless of you to be caught.” Her voice was cool. “The British must have been delighted to lay hands on you when you have been a very public affront to your noble father for so many years. In fact—” her voice changed, became thoughtful “—I am surprised that they let you loose.”

“They kept me locked in a prison hulk at Chatham for a year.” Ethan spoke lightly, dismissively, even as he clenched his muscles with repudiation of every memory the words conjured, memories of the Black
Hole, a prison a mere six-foot square at the bottom of the hold, with no light and barely any air. Men had been driven mad in there and begged to die. Men had been clapped in irons, half starved, flogged until they could not stand. He felt as though he could still smell the stench of the hulks, feel the filth on his skin beneath the fine lawn of his shirt and hear the cries of those who had run mad. He would never forget it.

“That must have been vile.” Lottie’s voice was soft, as though for all his apparent unconcern she could feel his hatred seeping through.

“It was.” He shut his mouth tightly.

“Why did you fight for the French?” He could feel her watching him in the darkness of the carriage. “Do you hate the British so much that their enemy is your friend?”

Ethan laughed. “I don’t hate the British. Why should I?”

There were about a hundred answers to that one but he was not going to supply them. Like her, he would always hold back to protect himself.

“Then are you a mercenary, no more than a soldier of fortune, taking the Emperor’s money?”

Lottie Palliser certainly knew how to provoke a man, Ethan thought ruefully. Perhaps silence would have been preferable after all.

“I am no mercenary soldier,” he said stiffly. “I fought for Napoleon because I have principles. I believe in what he is doing.”

“Principles.” Lottie said the word as though it were foreign to her. “How extraordinary.” He saw her smile.
“Most men I know are unprincipled bastards. So you believe in—” she hesitated, “—liberty, fraternity and…the other one?”

“Equality,” Ethan said. “Yes, those are the beliefs of the revolution.”

“An odd sort of equality that sets one man up as an Emperor over the others,” Lottie said. “But then, I have never had much interest in politics so perhaps I am missing some crucial point. I fear that affairs of state bore me.” She yawned.

“Fortunately I have no desire to talk politics with you,” Ethan said. “I did not buy you for that.”

The air in the carriage cooled as though a breath of frost had blown through. Ethan saw that he had angered her with the blunt reminder of her situation. She still had plenty of pride. She turned her face away from him, her expression haughty. The carriage had slowed down at the meeting of two streets; it jerked forward and Lottie lost her balance, putting a hand out to steady herself against the door frame. As she moved, Ethan heard the unmistakable chink of coin, and expensive coin at that. Guineas. There could be only one place she had got those from. Their eyes met and in that moment he realized what she was about to do.

She was going to cheat him and run away.

Lottie had a hand on the door, already had it half-open with the noise and lamplight spilling in from the street outside the carriage. Ethan made a grab for her arm, felt the velvet of her cloak slip and slither between his fingers and caught her about the waist a second before she jumped.

“Not so fast.”

D
AMN HIM
. H
E STILL
sounded unperturbed. Was there nothing that could ruffle this man’s calm?

Lottie half sat, half lay across Ethan’s lap, breathing quickly and feeling as trapped and furious as a cornered cat. Ethan’s arm was as unyielding as a steel band about her waist. She shifted a little, trying to ease his grip, and immediately the bag of guineas she had stolen from him bumped heavily against his thigh. He slanted a look down at her. His lips turned up in a grim smile as he extracted the purse from the pocket of her cloak.

“I thought so. When did you lift that from me?” He sounded mildly interested, as though the pickpocketing habit of a society lady-turned-whore was a matter for careful consideration. Lottie felt her temper tighten further.

“I took it whilst you were negotiating with Mrs. Tong,” she snapped. “You weren’t paying attention to me.”

He nodded. “I underestimated you.”

He ran his hands over her in an impersonal search that felt oddly like a caress. Lottie trembled a little beneath his touch. She felt tense as a bow, frustrated, furious, to have been caught out, yet alive, aroused, and dangerously close to the edge.

“There aren’t any more,” she said. “I only had time to take the one.”

“And then you were going to run away from me.”

Lottie did not reply. She saw the cynical smile deepen on his lips.

“Where did you plan to go?” Ethan’s face was so close to hers that she could see the planes and hollows
illuminated by the skipping lamplight. His expression was dark and unrevealing. Some men were easy to read, Lottie thought, easy to understand and even easier to manipulate. Ethan Ryder was not one of them.

“I have no notion,” she said. “I had not thought that far ahead.”

“So only the theft of my money was planned?”

Ethan’s voice was smooth but there was contempt beneath the surface. Well, she was not going to apologize. Perhaps it was wrong by conventional standards but she had moved so far beyond convention that she no longer cared.

“Yes,” she said. She met his eyes very directly. “I planned to rob you from the moment I saw all those lovely guineas.” To have a little money would have given her back a tiny measure of control and the chance of freedom, she thought. Fate had presented her with an opportunity to wrest back some power so she had tried to take it. The fact that she had almost succeeded was infuriating. She had come so close—and then she had failed.