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Authors: Caroline Richards

BOOK: The Darkest Sin
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“Yes,” she said with conviction.
“Very well, then.” He nodded, returning his gaze to hers. “The basic facts are these. I found you floating face down in the Irthing River, near to Birdoswald. It was close to one in the morning, and I thought you were dead,” he said brusquely, clearly unwilling to add any more detail to the narration. “I couldn't be sure whether you still lived, so I threw off my jacket, jumped in after you, and pulled you to shore.”
Rowena fought against the remembered sensations, the heavy drift of her skirts pulling her down. Her lungs close to exploding. Rushford watched her expression carefully before continuing. “You had obviously been fed opiates because it required two days for you to awaken fully. I had taken you to a small inn nearby, and I was reluctant to leave you as you were racked with fever.”
When she could finally speak, she said, “I remember being cold and then warm . . . and the nightmares . . . being held captive in the dark.”
“Do you wish me to continue?” he asked.
“I don't have any other choice,” she said, sinking farther into the copper tub until the water covered her shoulders. “I must know.”
“There were no indications of harm, Rowena, no marks.” His face was granite, but she sensed that he was alert to her every reaction. “On the third day you awakened, your fever having broken. Do you remember?”
She thought for a moment, the images unfurling in her mind's eye. Rushford at the side of her bed in a cramped, slope-ceilinged chamber with room for little else save a bed, an armoire, and a small side table. She had been distraught, woken from a nightmare when he had taken her in his arms. He had begun to rub her back with strong fingers, finding a slow, lulling rhythm. As his fingers worked, she had felt her muscles and her anxiety let loose their punishing hold. Slowly and in an unhurried silence, he massaged the small of her back, circled his thumbs upward toward her shoulders, and worked the length of her arms. It had been the beginning.
She looked up from her position in the tub. “I regret nothing,” she said simply, seeing reflected in his eyes the moments they had stolen together over a year ago.
“You are wise for a young woman,” he replied after a moment. “Regrets are useless.”
“You are referring to something more, I sense.”
“It's of no account,” he said, his voice neutral. “You refused to tell me your name or where you lived,” he continued, “and I believed once you were physically recovered it would be best to leave you in the care of an elderly couple I knew of in Kendal, far enough away from Birdoswald.” He caught the flash of worry in her eyes. “We were together a total of three days and nights.”
And Rowena could suddenly account for every last moment of every hour with him, like the individually precious pearls on a string. “What were you doing there? So far from London?” she asked awkwardly, grasping for an explanation that could set her world to rights.
“Going after someone. Something.”
Rowena regarded him for an instant through narrowed, disbelieving eyes. “As usual, that tells me very little.” She'd shared enough with Rushford to recognize that whatever was troubling him ran deep.
“Have you heard of the Rosetta Stone?” he asked with what she discerned as instinctive reluctance. It was time to return to the real world, he had somehow decided. Or that he owed her that at least.
She nodded, easing her head back until it rested on the lip of the copper tub. “It is an ancient Egyptian artifact. Meredith took us a few years ago to the British Museum, where we saw it in a collection of Egyptian monuments captured from the French over thirty years ago.”
“Montagu Faron wants it. Badly.”
Rowena's head snapped up, water sloshing onto the floor with her abrupt movement. “And that's why you were close to Birdoswald that night?” The pieces were beginning to fall into place.
“We had heard that he had landed in Calais the night before and was making his way to Eccles House, where we were endeavoring to intercept him.”
Rushford, she realized, was far from the amateur sleuth who had involved himself in the Cruikshank murders. “Who is
we
? Or will you even entertain that question?”
Rushford stood abruptly, utterly careless of his nudity. “The Rosetta Stone is still in British possession. So you may surmise the rest,” he said briefly.
A shiver ran through her as the water cooled on her skin.
Who are you really, Rushford?
she wanted desperately to ask. Instead, she attempted to moderate her desperation. “At the very least you must tell me who this man Faron is and what he wants with the Stone.”
“Montagu Faron is a difficult man to explain, other than to say that he has the power and the resources to get whatever he desires—including some of the world's most valuable, ancient artifacts.”
She frowned. “For his own gain?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “From what we know, Faron is many things, chief among them an amateur scientist and explorer whose hubris leads him to make unwise decisions.”
“Such as trying to steal the Rosetta Stone?” she prompted.
He agreed with a somber nod of his head, before gazing at her directly. “What that has to do with the Woolcotts I'm not certain, if anything.”
For a moment she fell silent, then said, “You are telling me the truth finally. I sense it, Rushford. You know nothing of the reasons behind Faron's obsession with my family.”
“But we shall learn more when we visit with Sebastian and the lovely Miss Barry this coming weekend. That I promise you.” His gaze raked her face, but her expression remained calm, her blue eyes returning his scrutiny with resolve. “I know that's what you wish,” he said, continuing to regard her for a moment, then nodded as if satisfied.
“The Rosetta Stone is still in the British Museum, you say?” she asked, unsmiling now. “I suppose I will not learn much more from you,” she amended, answering her own question, Rushford filling the frame of her gaze. He was tall, broad-shouldered, honed to physical fitness, a man who, she sensed, would not accept failure. Ever. She had sensed that from the first. A rush of desire flared, burning a path through her senses. Amazing, how accustomed she had become to the combustible effect of his nearness.
“What of your bath, my lord?” she asked, having had enough of reality for the moment. A heartbeat later, he stood at the foot of the tub, exhibiting a splendid erection. Rowena forced herself not to stare.
“I thought you would never ask,” he said, stepping into the water before she had a chance to react. He sank to his knees between her legs. His hands slid under her bottom.
“How often can we do this?” she asked, naturally curious, balancing a calf on the edge of the tub to accommodate him.
He grinned. “As often as you like.” As they had already proven in the past twenty-four hours.
She sighed her contentment as he lifted her gently until her pulsing core met his hard length. Water rippled around them as he forced his rigid erection downward, easing into her sleekness, moving forward by slow degrees. Rowena gasped as he filled her, lifting her mouth to his, murmuring with inchoate longing. “Don't ever stop,” she breathed, his penetration all encompassing, chasing away all thoughts of danger or the future.
“I'm here,” he whispered, and glided a fraction deeper, reckless as he had never been before in his life. His thumbs moved to trace the shape of her neck, his palms flattening against the curve of her cheeks. How could he do this to her, Rowena thought helplessly, reduce her to whimpers with the slightest touch?
One of his hands moved between them as he held himself motionless against the mouth of her womb. Rowena arched her back, the world dissolving, a heated ecstasy overwhelming her mind and body, every nerve drawn to a feverish pitch. Water sloshed over the edge of the tub as he began to withdraw. She clutched at his back, trying to keep him inside her.
“Don't worry. I'm here,” he said, his voice low. And then he reached the limits of his withdrawal, plunging in once again as she tightened around him and he buried himself in to the hilt. Sensation shook their bodies; they moved in the heated water in a concerted flow, sending waves onto the tile floor. They partook wildly, greedy, impatient and consumed by a hunger that scorched away anything else but their shattering climax, leaving them both bereft of breath, conscious only of the all-consuming present.
“I thought I'd died,” she said, her head thrown back, her arms still around him.
“I think we both just did,” he growled, his forehead resting on the edge of the copper tub.
“Just remember, this does not make me your mistress in actual fact.” The words left her in a rush, a statement she was convinced both of them needed to hear.
He turned his head and met her dark blue gaze. “Lover then,” he said softly. “Undeniably.”
“As long as we're both clear.” What she really wanted suddenly alarmed her, and she needed to put some distance between them.
“Whatever you wish.”
For now, she thought, finishing his sentence, knowing full well that theirs would be a continuing contest of wills. She moved her hips in the smallest of undulations, aware of the one area upon which they unequivocally agreed. Impossibly, he had grown rigid again, the sensation bringing a smile to her lips. This, at the very least, she could control.
“Whatever I wish?” she asked with a cheekily raised brow.
His response was to lower his head to hers.
Chapter 13
“W
here is she?” Faron demanded, pacing in the hall of mirrors on his estate, Claire de Lune, outside Paris. His voice behind his leather mask was raw. “Why is Rowena Woolcott alive when we believed otherwise?”
Lowther, accustomed at managing the violent and unpredictable demands of Montagu Faron, stood patiently with his hands behind his back. “Montagu,” he soothed. “I was as surprised as you to learn of this turn of events, but Sebastian assures me that he will remedy the situation post haste.”
“I do not reward you to be surprised, Lowther,” Faron said, gesturing for emphasis. Lowther tried not to be repelled at the line of raised scars on the back of the Frenchman's hands, a souvenir from the night at Eccles House not so long ago. “It enrages me to think that Julia Woolcott is not only alive but safe with Strathmore in North Africa after deliberately causing the fire that almost killed me. And now to learn that her sister has not been dispatched as I asked?”
Lowther cleared his throat, focusing on the line of oak trees framed in the French doors. “I do understand your concern about the Woolcotts,” he began carefully, “but we have rather more important matters to discuss at the moment.”
A momentary pause. “I decide what's important,” Faron snapped, beginning to pace again along the hall, his tall, lithe form reflected in the multitude of mirrors. “I'm assuming you are about to apprise me of the whereabouts of the Rosetta Stone. The Woolcott matter having thoroughly escaped you.”
Lowther bowed his head, waiting for the storm to pass.
“I demand that all of my requests be executed. Neither is more important than the other.”
“I understand completely,” Lowther said. “So you will be pleased to learn that we intend to have the Stone in our possession and dispense with Rowena Woolcott at the same time.”
Faron's barking of laughter echoed in the cavernous hallway. “Intend? Your intentions do little to inspire my confidence. So do try to bolster my enthusiasm and enlighten me,” he said caustically.
Lowther had planned to explain the plan earlier, but Faron had shut himself in one of his elaborate laboratories for several days, playing with his beakers and specimens, declining to meet with anyone. At least one of his uncontrollable rages had not overtaken him, Lowther thought with relief. He recalled how several weeks earlier the Frenchman had completely destroyed one of his laboratories, leaving behind a small mountain of broken glass. He was far from the gentleman scientist, retiring genteelly to his laboratory, to be served tea by the housekeeper and to jot notes of profound significance in his journal. Lowther took a deep breath, wishing he could delay the inevitable. “Rowena Woolcott is with Lord Rushford,” he said finally.
The Frenchman halted his pacing, turning around slowly to face Lowther. The features behind the smooth leather of the mask, Lowther had heard, were handsome and unblemished but oftentimes beset with wild tremors beyond the Frenchman's control. And now only a pair of dark eyes stared back at him with focused venom. “Impossible,” he hissed through the leather slit of his mask. “I won't have it.”
Experienced with the wild swings in mood, Lowther continued undaunted. “You'll recall, Rushford interfered with our plans for the Rosetta Stone last year, despite his involvement with the Duchess of Taunton.”
“I recall—and with some displeasure.” Faron's voice had become so quiet that Lowther had to move closer to hear the words. The low timbre was not a good sign.
“We were in Cumbria,” Lowther continued, marching into the breach, “dealing with Rowena Woolcott. Rushford was in the environs as well, having learned of your intended visit to Eccles House. He'd been following our trail but happened instead upon the Woolcott chit floating half-dead in the Irthing. He never did get to Eccles House.”
“Details. Always details. They don't interest me in the least if the objective is not reached.” The dark eyes bored unwaveringly into Lowther's. “At least Meredith and the wretched sister still believe her to be dead. A small consolation.”
Lowther bowed his head. “Rushford saved her life, ensured that she recovered with a family in a neighboring village, and in turn, Rowena Woolcott is now intent upon working with him to ensure your downfall.”
A man who was wealthy beyond belief, damned by a family fortune that gave him unrivaled power and had led him down the darkest of paths, Faron demonstrated his displeasure with a string of curses. “The Woolcott women are all cut from the same cloth,” he said softly, the words laced with poison. “Meredith has ensured that they are endowed with the same irredeemable qualities that she herself possesses—a feral recklessness that has done nothing but bring sorrow into her life. I have made sure of that.”
Lowther knew enough not to ask why. There had been rumors for years that Montagu and Meredith Woolcott had spent their childhoods together and that she was somehow responsible for his mental imbalance.
“You should be concerned that Rushford is at Woolcott's side,” Faron added scathingly. “The man is a formidable opponent, and if you need more proof, recall how he willingly forfeited the Duchess's life in order to fulfill his duty to his country. Totally unexpected. I trust you have a worthy plan in place.”
“We do. Both for the Woolcott woman and for the Stone.”
Faron glanced at him briefly, a jerk of his chin the only reply. Then he turned away, looking out to the parterre beyond the windows, gazing down a long tunnel of memory. “I don't like this, Lowther. I don't like this at all.”
“What might we do to win your confidence?” Lowther asked dutifully.
Faron turned from the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “Just what I should like to hear at long last. Surely it's time that you do something to earn my confidence. Although you truly do not understand the power of motivation, do you, Lowther?”
When Lowther did not reply, Faron gave a small shake of his head. “Use Meredith Woolcott, you fool,” he said in little more than a whisper. “The Woolcott women will do anything to protect one another, don't you see?”
“Use her?”
“Use them both. When Meredith learns that Rowena still lives but is once more within our grasp, she will wish her ward had perished a year ago,” Faron said harshly. “And as for Rowena, dispose of her in any case. As a matter of pride, for God's sake, if nothing else.”
 
With Julia's departure and Rowena's death, Montfort, though little changed, felt deserted. For the past year, Meredith Woolcott had watched the seasons change from the windows of the drawing room in the medieval fortification where she and her charges had lived safely for close to twenty years.
Dusk hung about the salon like a heavy mantle, despite her best efforts to shake it loose. She had tried to alleviate her malaise by taking a ride earlier in the day, finally ending her exertions at the stables where Rowena's horse, Dragon, still waited patiently for his mistress's return. There the ghosts of Rowena and Julia's childhood lingered, their laughter mingling with dust motes in the air. It seemed both an eternity and only yesterday that the two girls had played and planned their time together. Julia with her wide-eyed but cautious curiosity, and Rowena the hoyden with her boundless energy. What innocent times those were, times when the consequences of their aunt Meredith's actions had never entered the minds of her young charges.
Leaving the stables, Meredith's eyes had automatically scanned the expansive green of the estate, expecting to see Rowena on her horse, harboring a deep-set hope that her younger ward was still alive, although she knew it to be an illusion. Shaking her head at her folly, she had wandered restlessly toward the house, which posed majestically against the gently rolling green hills now enshrouded with fog.
At least Julia was safe with Strathmore, far away in North Africa. Their wedding in the small chapel at Montfort, their passion and love for one another, had been a comfort. Julia had found the protection with Lord Strathmore that she herself had been unable to provide.
Meredith was neither a weak nor emotional woman, and had done her best for her wards for many years. In a strange twist of fate, she had inherited wealth that had allowed her to shelter her young charges from the evil that she had had a hand in creating. But she would always carry the burden of knowledge that she had not done enough.
Rowena lay dead, somewhere at the bottom of the Irthing River, the loss forever mired in Meredith's heart. She could not bear to spend one moment thinking of the man who was responsible for the heinous crime, her hands shaking as she tried to contain her anger. When she had learned that Faron still lived, she thought she would go mad with impotent rage. Yet she could do nothing for fear that Julia would be harmed. About herself, she no longer cared.
Meredith stepped back from the window and surveyed the room. There were small reminders of her girls scattered about the place, Julia's favorite books, Rowena's riding jacket that Meredith could not bear to put away, and Rowena's favorite pen in its ebony box on the escritoire. She wandered over to the desk and picked up Rowena's favorite copy of Wordsworth's poems. It made her feel close to Rowena, to hold the source of her joy.
She stood there for a time, hoping for a miraculous gift, looking out the wide windows of Montfort where the horizon was a gunmetal gray. She could see nothing, but it didn't matter. She can't be dead, her conscious mind cried, even though logic told her that she must give up the illusion and give in to her grief. A full year later, she could not believe that Rowena would not come home.
Her stomach clenched, and she forced herself again not to think of Montagu Faron, not to remember that last afternoon so many years ago when they had ridden through the Loire Valley, the lush green of the countryside bounteous in the late summertime. As the sun set, it had cast a delightful glow upon the land, creating a feeling of magic. They had ridden to Blois just as the sun was slipping behind the low hills of the small city. Together they meandered through the narrow, empty streets and along a narrow road beyond prying eyes. Finally they dismounted and walked the rest of the way, the horses' reins dangling loosely in their hands.
Behind them stretched the valley of kings, extending along the river in a deep serenity and an aura of splendor and history. Presently, they had stopped at a small cottage with an arched door and a tangle of rosebushes. The sight of the charming domicile brought a smile to Faron's young face.
“Entirely unexpected, no?” he asked in English. “You are surprised, Meredith?”
Meredith had caught the intimacy in his voice. She had looked at him then with young love in her eyes, at the tall and handsome youth in the evening light. He had raked a hand through his coal-black hair, his cloak slung over his arm and a loose white shirt open at the throat. “Shall we go in?” he asked, producing keys from his cloak. Outlined against the golden light of early evening, he looked like the image she'd first had of him, the image from her dreams. He was dark and brooding like the heroes in the novels she loved to read. He was her soul mate, sharing his interests in science and the wide world. They had spent hours together in his father's laboratories, scoured ancient texts in the chateau's library, and exchanged heated words in heated debates about everything from galvanization to nitrous oxide.
Meredith remembered the vivid red of the roses as though it were yesterday, recalling how she and Faron had lingered on the cottage threshold. She had always known they would be together one day, and had felt an inexplicable premonition of a shared fate. And so she had put her hand in his, watching as he studied her face seriously for a moment and then pulled her to him with a searing kiss. Then he tore his eyes away and unlocked and opened the door. Lifting her in his arms, he had carried her inside.
Meredith raised her head from her reveries, the pain in her chest unbearable. Looking into the darkening sky surrounding Montfort, she wondered how her life had taken such a perverse turn and why the only man she had ever loved was now the man she would hate to her grave.

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