The Most Wicked Of Sins (19 page)

“Oh dear me. No, no, no!” Mrs. Wimpole came hurrying up the passageway toward him. “You can’t be here, my lord. You can’t!” She grabbed his arm and drew him into the parlor. “She’s got that other fellow here. The yellow-haired one.”

“Where are they?” Nick made no effort to hold his voice low. “I must see Lady Ivy at once.”

“Well, you can’t, my lord,” she whispered. The heavyset cook set her chubby hand against his chest to hold him in place while she leaned back and peered down the passage. She turned her head back to him. “Here comes Poplin. He’ll know what to do. Just give me a tick.” She thumped his chest once more. “Stay here, and please don’t say a word.”

She cast a look of warning to him and raced into the hall.

Nick heard whispers of varying tones, growing more and more urgent, but a moment later, Mr. Poplin and Mrs. Wimpole appeared at the open parlor door. “Where-is-she?”

Poplin raised his knobby-knuckled hand in the air. “Stay in here, and I will let her know you are in the parlor presently.” He looked worried, and very little blood pinked his gaunt visage.

Nick nodded. “Three minutes, my good man. Three minutes, then I am coming to look for her.”

Having just closed the French windows behind her, Ivy clapped a hand over her mouth. Gorblimey, she couldn’t believe the things she’d said. But she’d meant them, every last one of them.

She lowered her hand and turned slightly to glance back out of the French window. Lord Tinsdale was still sitting where she had left him, staring at her empty chair.

Blast! She might have ruined everything. She wished she could rush back out to the garden and snatch back her spiteful words from the air—every last one of them.

Ivy set her hand on the door latch, intending to make amends, when she heard footsteps. She turned her head around to peer into the passage. Poplin was hurrying toward her.

It was all the incentive she needed to reverse her decision to go to Tinsdale. She released the latch.

“Please see Lord Tinsdale out, will you please, Poplin? I-I…please. As quickly as possible.” She continued walking up the passage, making for the refuge of her bedchamber, when she noticed the oddest expression on Poplin’s ancient face. “My God, what is it?” She halted just before him.

“I apologize, my lady. But you have a visitor waiting for you in the parlor.” Poplin looked ready to burst into tears. “I did not invite him inside; in fact, I told him twice over that you were not accepting visitors. He just barged in. There was nothing Mrs. Wimpole nor I could do. He means to see you, now.”

Ivy’s eyes went wide. “Who? Who just barged in?” But she knew already. Dominic, or whatever his name truly was.

“Lord Counterton,” Poplin sputtered. “He’s in the parlor.”

Good heavens.
Ivy shot a worried glance behind her. “Please escort Lord Tinsdale out directly. Do not tarry or pause for any reason outside the parlor.”

When Poplin nodded, Ivy sidled past the butler, then lifted her skirts and ran down the passage to the parlor.

There is much less envy of the rich by the poor than there is of the happy by the unhappy.

Dennis Prager

What are you doing here, Dominic?” Ivy hissed as she pressed the parlor door closed behind her.

Dominic strode toward her, but Ivy stopped him in midstride by raising a stalwart hand.

“You are a very intelligent woman, Ivy. You know exactly why I have come.”

“Shh! Dominic, you can’t stay,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Where is Tinsdale?” His eyes were like steel.

“In the garden.” She turned and leaned her ear to the door and listened, then turned back to Dominic. “Please, you have to go—now.”

“I won’t until we discuss between us what happened last night.” He opened his arms and stepped toward her.

“No. Dominic, not now.”

“It must be now. Tinsdale is already here, wishing to claim you. But I won’t let him. I can’t.”

“Why not? This has always been our agreement. This is why I hired you. You know this.” She was doing it again. Using her words to wound when what she meant to sound strong, sure, convincing—like a Sinclair. Her heart clenched like a fist, drawing a whimper into her throat.

“Because you love me. I know you do.”

“What an absurd thing to say.” Ivy twisted the key in the lock and set it upon the table nearest the door. “Ours is a business relationship, nothing more.”

Dominic prowled toward her, and she retreated one pace and then another until her back pressed against the door. Another moment, last night, was immediately called to mind.

“You are lying, Ivy. You know it as well as I.” He stood too close, only a breath away. Just as he always did before he kissed her.

Ivy hadn’t heard any sound in the passageway. Hadn’t heard the click of the front door opening. “Please, lower your voice.”

“Why? So he can’t hear us. Ivy, I don’t care. Do you know why? Because I will not be party to his claiming you. I won’t do it. I can’t. Not after last night.”

Ivy set both hands against his chest, holding him back from her. “We have an agreement. I
paid
you.”

Dominic flinched, her words stinging as surely as she had slapped his cheek.

“Ivy, I love you.” Gently, he stroked her hair back from her face. “And I know you feel something for me as well, else you would not have offered yourself to me.”

He leaned against her then, his lips hovering just above her own.

There was a pounding of boots in the hallway just outside the door. Ivy froze, but Dominic did not. Instead, he tilted her head slightly with his hand and moved his lips over hers.

The front door slammed shut, awakening Ivy to her more logical senses. “You suppose too much, sirrah.” It was so hard looking into his eyes, knowing he spoke the truth. But it was a truth neither of them could ever live. Her father would never allow it.

“I want you, Ivy. I have since the first moment our lips touched outside the theater.” He kissed her again. “I have never met a woman like you. I have never loved anyone the way that I love you. I want you, Ivy. I want you in my life forever.”

Ivy couldn’t seem to breathe. He was too close, making promises she could never allow him to keep. Her eyes grew watery and hot. She had to push him back emotionally, even if she could not bring herself to do it physically.

“Is it me you truly want? Or the life I have, the life I have given you?”

Dominic stepped back from her, his eyes confused.

The tears were coming into her eyes, and she hated it. “Because I have nothing.” She waved her hand about the room. “This is all false. The chandeliers, the silk draperies, the fine furnishings. It’s all we have. All my brothers and sisters can afford since our father banished us from our home in Scotland. All we have until, like our brother Sterling, we reform and show ourselves to be respectable and worthy.”

“Ivy, none of that matters to me.”

Ivy gave a forced laugh. “Really? Then come with me. Let me show you the reality of my life if I do not marry Tinsdale.” She snatched the key from the table, turned it in the lock, then grabbed Dominic’s hand and led him upstairs, away from the splendor of the public rooms of the house.

The druggets on the stairway were worn and threadbare, and with each step they took, the house began to look more forlorn.

Ivy tugged at Nick’s hand and pulled him up the staircase faster still, until they reached the next floor.

“This is where my sisters and I reside. It’s rather luxurious, at least compared to the attic garrets where my brothers, the sons of a duke, sleep.”

“Ivy, you don’t need to do this. It doesn’t matter to me. You are all that matters in my life. Nothing else.”

Ivy marched him down the passage, then flung open a door and led him inside. The room was barren, devoid of furnishings save a little table near the window with a small, hazy mirror upon it. Against the far wall was a pallet, barely a bed at all, blanketed by a worn old coverlet.

Releasing his hand, Ivy stepped into the center of the room. “This is my reality, Dominic. This is who I really am.”

Nick set his hand on the door and shut it. Ivy blinked at him in confusion. “Ivy, I don’t care about the trappings of Society.” He closed the gap between them in two short strides. “You are everything. You are all I need.”

Her eyes were bright, still wet with tears as she scrutinized him.

“Don’t say anything, Ivy.” He took her into his arms, and from the expression on her face, he wasn’t sure if she would push away. She didn’t. Ivy folded against him, and he felt her surrender.

Nick ran his fingers through her copper locks. Splaying his fingers, he loosened her silken hair, removing any hairpins he found, dropping them to the floor, until her hair hung free about her waist.

He smoothed his hands around her, turned her face up to him, and kissed her. Her lips were sweet as sugared tea, and she parted them for him and welcomed his tongue inside.

She murmured something as their kiss deepened, and she slid her arms around his neck, drawing him closer still.

He felt the tip of her pink tongue gliding over the roof of his mouth, then urging his tongue into her mouth and, to his surprise, sucking on it.

His groin tightened, and he tried neither to imagine her naked in his arms nor think about the tiny bed only a stride away from them.

The door hinges squealed behind him. Startled, Ivy broke their kiss and looked around his shoulder. “Su, have you ever heard of knocking before entering a bedchamber.” She didn’t break away. It was almost as though she clung to him to keep her footing.

“
I-I
apologize, Ivy,” Siusan stammered. “I heard Lord Tinsdale and…I wasn’t aware that you had a another caller.” He could tell from the tone of Siusan’s voice that she was not so much surprised at finding him there as amused. “Good afternoon, Dominic.”

Nick started to turn, but Ivy’s hold on him prevented it. “Siusan, I trust you are having a lovely day.”

“Och, aye. Very diverting.”

He heard the whisper of slippers behind them, then the creak of the pallet. Turning his head slightly, he saw Siusan leaning back and gleefully kicking her feet over the low edge of the pallet like a little girl. The grin on her face was huge.

“Is there something you wanted, Su?” Ivy leaned her forehead against Nick’s chest, and, from the upward curve of her reddening cheeks, he could tell she was smiling too.

“Oh, come think of it, there was. I came to remind you that we are leaving for the fête at five of the clock.”

Ivy exhaled. “I had quite forgotten.”

“There are so many festive activities at this time of year that everyone, in Society, will be there. I do hope you will join us, Dominic. The whole family is attending.” It was clear that Siusan could barely contain her laughter, for it leaked through and heightened the tone of every word she spoke. “I know Ivy will be very disheartened if you refuse—as will I, of course.”

Ivy’s grip on his shoulder tightened, but he did not know how to read what it meant, whether he should join them or refrain. And so, he went with his own heart. “I should greatly enjoy joining your family at the fête.”

Ivy looked over at Siusan. “Is that all, sister?”

Coming to her feet, Siusan walked straight over and, from a distance no wider than the circumference of a teacup, she smiled at them both. “No, that is all. I…well, then I will see you both directly in the parlor then.”

Nick couldn’t tell for certain, but from the thump and wisp on the floor, he guessed that Siusan had just skipped from the bedchamber.

Ivy looked up at him and laughed. “Sometimes I want to wring my sister’s neck like a Christmas goose’s.”

“I hardly heard a word she said, which—given that she had found her sister in her bedchamber in the arms of her hired hand—were probably all quite derisive.” Nick touched his forehead to Ivy’s, and their noses brushed.

“Nothing contemptuous at all,” Ivy told him. “Though you did accept an invitation to attend a fête, and I fear Siusan will never let you wriggle out of it.”

“When she came in, all I could think about was making love to you.”

“Well, it was fortunate she came in when she did…because I was having the same wicked thought.”

To his dismay, Nick hardened again, and his breeches were feeling rather tight.

“Are you ready to meet everyone in the parlor?” Ivy broke their embrace and stepped back. Her gaze dropped below his waist. “Oh my.” Her words rode a giggle. “Maybe not just yet.”

Thimbletweed
Regent’s Fête

Flaming branches and twigs crackled and smoked, burning brightly in more than two dozen cresset baskets framing an open field just outside of Thimbletweed.

The quaint village, which really was no more than a crossroads bordered by two dozen thatched-roof cottages, was known for only two things: the annual fête and the popular Thimbletweed buns, which were carted to teahouses, restaurants, and bakeries in London each morning.

The moment the crowed Sinclair carriage arrived at the fête, Grant immediately made for the stand selling hot and buttery Thimbletweed buns, while the others strolled through the center of the fête.

Colorful flags and tents dotted the flame-illuminated field, while dancers, musicians, and low actors in bright harlequin performed on a litter of stages.

“La, only a guinea to actually ride an elephant in the ring!” Priscilla was nearly jumping up and down with excitement as she pointed at a tired, dusty beast.

“A guinea? Are you serious?” Lachlan stared at his sister. “We don’t have coin to waste on elephant rides.”

“Go and have a look, Priscilla,” Killian said to his twin. “I am headed for the refreshment stall for a pint of porter. Anyone want to join me?” Lachlan was at his side in a moment.

“Since I am quite sure Ivy and Lord Counterton have their own plans for the evening”—Siusan turned their way and tossed them a wink—“I will stay with Priscilla beside the elephant. But bring me a tip of something wet with you, will you, Killian? The dusty drive from London has left me quite parched.”