The Sinner (3 page)

The steward ducked out to claim his mount. Dante gazed up toward the chamber where Fleur slept.

If he had any sense, he would take Pearson’s horse and ride himself. To the coast. The disgrace waiting if he did not would be worse than anything he had ever visited on his family. However, he could not go until he handed Fleur over to someone he trusted to protect her.

She was in trouble, of that he was sure. In the morning he would make her tell him about it. It would give him something to think about while he languished in prison.

Fleur opened her eyes to the whitewashed walls of the cottage and the sun streaming through simple curtains.

Last night’s despair tried to submerge her again. She forced it down. Actually, if one looked at it a certain way, her situation was quite humorous. She had come looking for help from the one man she trusted, but he was gone, living his life as he should be. Instead of the viscount, the paragon, the rock of authority, she had found the brother, the rake, the wastrel. She needed the protection of a man who could intimidate judges and lords. Instead, she had been shot in the bottom by one who could not pay his tailor.

She struggled to sit. Movement sharply reminded her of her infirmities. She managed to get to her feet and inch around to take care of necessary business. She was contemplating how to get back into bed when Dante appeared at the doorway.

“You should have called me.”

“I can do it. Please go away.”

Strong arms braced under her shoulders and knees. He swung, lifted, and lowered. A sheet billowed down to cover her.

“Where are my clothes?”

“You mean the rags that you were wearing while armed men tried to hunt you down? The ones that led me to think that I was shooting a man? I burned them.”

“What am I supposed to wear?”

“If you have grown fond of trousers, you can have a pair of mine. Or you can use the dress that the steward secreted out of Laclere House.”

“Does the steward know why you wanted it?”

“I am sure we are both glad that he knows it is not for me.”

Fluttering panic beat in her chest. “Did he see me?”

“He knows you are here. Several people do, I am afraid.” He pulled the chair over and sat, propping his boot on the bed’s edge.

“We had visitors last night. Jameson—the justice of the peace—and his men. They were searching the whole estate. I could not keep your presence a secret. I assumed that you would not want them to know how you really got here, so I let them think that you were my guest.”

“Your guest? That is putting it very finely. Surely they did not believe you.”

“Well, Fleur, they did not want to, but the evidence was rather damning. Their shock almost brought this roof down when they found you in this bed.”

“Are you saying that they saw me? In this bed? Men whom I do not know witnessed this?”

“I regret to say that they did.”

“How could you permit such a thing?”

“A better question is how could I have stopped it.” He fixed her with his brown eyes. “Did I err, Fleur? Should I have told the truth instead?”

“Of course not.” She said it too quickly. “Only, the idea that people would think that we . . . Who saw me?”

“Just Sir Thomas Jameson and Hugh Siddel.”

“Siddel! He knows? Oh, dear Lord.” That promised to be very humiliating. Her mind began filling with the potential complications Mr. Siddel’s discovery could create.

“Forgive my impertinence, but do you have some relationship with him? He acted as if our love affair directly insulted him.”

“When I came out as a girl, Siddel briefly courted me, but that was years ago.”

He did not seem to notice that she had not answered his question. “My instincts on this are well honed by experience, Fleur. He was in a fury at the evidence that we were lovers. I half-expected him to call me out. As it happens, right now a duel is the least of the trouble the man can cause me.” Suddenly his attention focused on her face. “Which is why you need to explain things now. I find myself involved in a situation not of my making or understanding. I must insist on knowing why you acted as if you were running for your life last night.”

He had settled comfortably in the chair. A contained man, unruffled and smooth. A handsome man, at ease with his body and presence, confident of his physical impression.

A determined man, whose clear eyes watched her with patience. He was prepared to wait her out.
Take your time,
his whole pose said.
We have all day, if you want to do it that way.

“I would like you to bring up the dress that you spoke of, Dante. I will put it on and leave.”

“You are to rest, and I could not permit you to walk away on your own even if you were well.”

“I will go to the house and ask for help. It will be better this way.”

“No.” He folded his arms over his chest.

The temptation to tell him, and pretend that there was some hope that he would know what to do, almost defeated her.

He watched her. Too much and too long. It became a compelling examination. She grew uncomfortable in a strangely exciting way and embarrassingly aware of that frightening something that shimmered around him like a subtle force.

“I think that we will pass the time with a game,” he said.

“What kind of game?”

“You do not have to look so suspicious. Not that kind. Although having you in my bed, but in a condition that prevents me from trying to breach your defenses, is enough to make me weep.”

“I doubt that you will weep when you are so clearly laughing. At me. Now, what kind of game?”

“The rules are simple. I ask you a question and you answer it honestly. Then I ask you another one and you answer that. And so on until I run out of questions.”

“It does not sound like a fun game at all. At the least I think we should take turns. You ask a question, then I ask one of you. And so on.”

“Sounds almost too sporting. I think that I should be allowed to press my advantage in some manner, since you are indisposed and cannot be seduced.”

“Stop teasing me like a clumsy lothario. Everyone knows that you are much smoother when you are really after a woman.”

That caught him off guard. “Does everyone know that, indeed?”

“Yes. Everyone,” she said, pleased that she had tipped the balance in this game, whatever it really was.

“Are you saying that a few of my lovers have been indiscreet?”

“You have been discussed in retiring rooms for years. I heard all about you when I was a girl. It is a wonder that you continue to be successful, what with every seductive strategy of yours so well documented by personal testimony.”

“I find this disconcerting.
I
have never discussed what occurred between myself and any woman.”

“As a gentleman, you are prevented from doing so. Women are not so constrained.”

“How naughty of you to listen to such things.” He smiled devilishly, and she realized that his dismay had been a ruse. He had deliberately led her into a very inappropriate conversation.

And, it appeared, was not going to let her out.

“I do not think that I could seduce you now, no matter how darling you look in my nightshirt, Fleur. I would be expecting you to be fresh and ignorant. Instead, you would be checking items off a list as I progressed.”

She swallowed hard. This conversation had gotten too personal all of a sudden.

His head angled. His lids lowered. He regarded her with a man’s warmth. That something shimmered. Right into her.

“I can see it now. I would be caressing up your bare leg and you would remind me I missed the sensitive spot behind a woman’s knee that I discovered that night with a certain duchess.”

He had definitely crossed the line with that. If she could find her voice she would give him a good scolding.

“Or I would be kissing your back and you would instruct me not to forget the trick involving the hollow at your spine’s base, as related by the wife of a prominent M.P.”

This had become outrageous, but his shocking descriptions of loveplay cast a spell. She could not take her eyes off him. Her pulse beat so loudly in her ears that she worried he could hear.

He angled forward in the chair until his face was not far from hers. “Perhaps if my performance did not meet expectations, you would demand that I show you how some parts of a woman’s body could be even more sensitive after lovemaking than before, as an indiscreet baroness confided I once showed her.”

“You are a depraved rogue.”

“And you are flushed and ready and I have not even touched you.”

He took her hand in the warmth of his. She gaped as he raised it to his mouth and kissed her fingers. Her body gave a physical shriek that scared her out of her wits.

She snatched her hand away. “How
dare
you.”

He relaxed back in his chair, bright eyed with dark amusement. “A very small dare, to remind you that I am not a fool. You are safe from me, but only because I choose to make it so. Do not goad me, because if challenged the choice of weapons is mine.”

Her heart, her blood, her very breath badly needed to settle. She struggled to keep him from seeing the horrible internal strife that his touch had provoked.

An exciting, mounting euphoria had crashed headlong into a sickening, numbing dread.

She stared down at the hand he had kissed and felt again the warmth of his breath. Her warring reactions left her nauseous.

This had never happened before. The fear had never permitted it. Not when she was a girl, and certainly not since she had put herself on the shelf.

“I have badly frightened you, haven’t I?” He reached toward her face, but stopped himself. “I should not have done that. Your virtue is really very safe with me. However, if I am to keep you safe in other ways, I need to know what this is about.”

He did deserve an explanation. She had involved him, now that others had seen her here. She had not had time to come up with a good lie, however. She would have to give him the truth. Or at least part of it. She would simply have to skirt any references to the Grand Project.

“Last October I left England to visit some friends in France. I stayed through the new year. I returned two months ago, in February.”

“February? No one ever mentioned your return or seeing you in town.”

“That is because my stepfather, Gregory Farthingstone, met me at the dock in Dover. I have been imprisoned by him ever since.”

chapter
3

I
had written that I planned to sail home on the
Sea Dragon
in February. Gregory was waiting in Dover. I was surprised but glad to see him. One can always use help after a long journey,” Fleur explained.

“Then he imprisoned you?” Dante tried to keep the incredulity from his tone. The accusation was bizarre enough that one might wonder if the fall had affected her brain.

Gregory Farthingstone was a man known for good sense and moderate living, and a trustee of the Bank of England. It would be easier to believe that Fleur had imprisoned Farthingstone rather than the other way around.

Fleur had been fussing with the sheet, tucking it up around her neck as if his earlier teasing had left her naked. Now she forgot about that as resentment lit her eyes.

“He claimed that he was looking out for me, and protecting me, and ensuring that I got the help I needed. He said that as an old friend of my mother’s family, and as her second husband, he was only fulfilling his responsibility. However, his intentions are far less benign than that.”

“What intentions would those be?”

“He is trying to claim that I am irrational and incompetent.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Because I have been giving my fortune away. That is how he sees my contributions to charities.”

Fleur’s generosity to schools, hospitals, and reform causes was well known. “Have you risked your own future with your largesse?”

“I have not given away all of it, but enough that Gregory thinks it is irresponsible. However, enough remains for me to live very comfortably. I am of age, and an independent woman. He is not my guardian and has no authority to interfere in my life. He says that he is the closest thing to family, and it is his responsibility to make sure that I receive the guidance and care that I need.”

“Where did he bring you after he met you at Dover?”

“To one of his properties, in Essex.”

“You walked here all of the way from Essex?”

“We were traveling. Gregory would not say where he was taking me, but I think it was one of those places near the sea where families put their problem relatives. I recognized that we were in Sussex and ran away, hoping I would find Laclere.”

Yes, Vergil would be formidable enough to take on Gregory Farthingstone.

“I am not addled,” she muttered, looking to her hands and their tense, entwined fingers. “It is not irresponsible to use money to help people. If I spent my fortune on ball gowns and jewels, no one would question it.”

She should have done both. If she had bought those gowns and jewels, she would have been safe from suspicion. It had been her repudiation of society and marriage that had raised the specter of instability.

She kept gazing sightlessly at those twisting fingers. He got the impression that there was more to tell and that she was deciding whether to do so.

She had given him the explanation she owed him. He would not press for more, but he hoped that she would go on.

“There is something else,” she finally said. “The night before last we stopped at an inn. As he has since Dover, he locked me in my chamber after supper. He did not realize that part of the wall had been removed to build in a wardrobe. When I opened the door of that wardrobe, I could hear a muffled conversation in Gregory’s chamber. Another man was there late at night. They were talking about me, I think.”

“Would it not have been obvious if they were?”

“At first I thought that they spoke of a thing, not a person. You see, the man was offering to buy the thing. Only later did I realize that maybe it was me.”

Now she
was
sounding a bit strange, like one of those people who thinks everyone plots against them. “Fleur, Farthingstone cannot sell you. If he did, what good would it do the buyer? As you said, you are an independent woman of mature years.”

“No, he cannot legally sell me. But then, he cannot legally imprison me, yet he has done so. ‘It will be over before she knows what happened, and she will be the happier for it,’ the man said. ‘If she fights it, then we will put her away.’ I do not know what you think, Dante, but that sounds like a forced marriage to me. For my own good, no doubt. To make sure someone has the authority to take care of me.”

“Conveniently arranged before more of your fortune is gone.”

“I never liked Gregory. I never understood why my mother married him after my father died. He assumes that I should defer to his judgment, but he is not my father, and no blood relation. It would not surprise me to learn that after this marriage he and that man intended to divide up whatever I have.”

“Assuming that they discussed you at all. You do not know that.” For a woman not addled, she told a bizarre tale. Still, it would not be the first time a woman had been used thus.

A frown puckered while she considered that. “I suppose. At the time . . . it was that which made me decide to run away. Gregory saw to it that I had no money. At his manor and on the road I was closely watched. Getting away would not be easy. But the idea that he might force me into a marriage gave me courage. Imprisonment I might have surrendered to, but not marriage.”

“Certainly not. With that, he had definitely gone too far.”

“The next evening I climbed out my window, got down the building, and snuck away. I stole those clothes and left my dress as payment. Outside a tavern I traded a ring I had for the gun. Then I ran. We must have been ten miles from here. When you shot me and I fell, I think that I went out as much from exhaustion as from the bump.”

With the conclusion of Fleur’s tale a peaceful quiet filled the chamber, as if the very telling of it had calmed her fears.

Dante rose and paced to the window. For whatever reason, she had chosen a different path than most. In a man such eccentricities would be accepted. But a determined Gregory Farthingstone might make a case showing sufficient instability that would convince a judge to take away a woman’s independence.

“I ask a favor of you, Dante.” She appeared so helpless in that bed. Small and fragile and very alone. “When Laclere gets back, please tell him. Perhaps he will find me to see if things turned out all right.”

“Of course, Fleur, but it will not come to that. Whether you understood that conversation or not, he still has no right to confine you. If you went to such risk to get away, we should see that you do not go back.”

“Since I have been seen here, Gregory will learn where I am. I have been waiting for the sounds of his carriage.”

“If you hear a carriage, do not assume it is Gregory. I sent the steward for my sister Charlotte and Daniel St. John. They are in Brighton and should be here after noon.”

Her eyes brightened with something that might be hope. She relaxed into the pillows. “Even last night you thought to do that? It was very kind of you, Dante.”

“Nonsense. I do things like that every time I shoot a woman in the bottom. You rest now. I will go down and see about some food for you. You are not to worry.”

He reassured her with more conviction than he felt. Charlotte and St. John had better not tarry in leaving Brighton. If Farthingstone learned where she was, this could be a race to the finish.

She slept after breakfast, and Dante paced the lower level while the hours passed and the sun moved.

Most likely her concerns were not founded on anything real. Possibly she had behaved erratically in ways a chance acquaintance would not notice. Maybe Farthingstone just wanted to be sure she rested after her voyage. Undoubtedly she had misconstrued what little she had heard through that wardrobe.

Still, Farthingstone’s connection to her through marriage to her mother gave him the semblance of authority. Worse, he could put her away with no one knowing, since it was thought she still traveled the Continent.

Ridiculous, of course. She was in no danger.

He removed both pistols from their cabinet and loaded them.

A little before midday he heard her moving around on the bed. He went up and found her sitting on its edge, trying with her good arm to spread out the dress he had procured.

“I do not want them to find me like this,” she said. “I will dress, at least.”

“If you wish.” He brought over the undergarments that Pearson had found. He lifted her from the bed and set her on her feet.

She realized his intentions. “I can manage.”

“I know that you cannot. I will help you.”

“You must not.”

“Do not let my earlier attempt at wit discomfort you. The repetition of pleasure has dulled my susceptibility. I must deliberately light the candle or there is no flame. I am utterly indifferent. Like a physician or an artist.”

“The physician yesterday said they are not indifferent, but I can see how
you
might be. The first naked woman would be exciting but the thousandth would be boring. A bit like too much marzipan.”

“Precisely. Except you are not the thousandth. I only recently passed eight hundred.”

She turned shocked eyes on him.

“I am joking, Fleur. Now, left arm up.”

He assumed the bland countenance of a valet and averted his eyes, but the candle glowed all by itself when the nightshirt dropped to the floor. Indifference hardly described his reaction when he glimpsed her ivory skin and feminine curves and high breasts. She looked away and blushed as he slid the chemise over her shy, trembling nakedness.

Getting the rest of the garments on was a clumsy process, due to their mutual attempts to pretend the other wasn’t there.

He roughly made the bed and then lifted her back onto it.

“See. No liberties. It was your lucky day when you got shot by a sated, jaded rake like me.”

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound, like the watery notes of a harp.

“My lucky day, Dante, but not yours. Now, I am all arranged, and dressed and fed. I think that you should go to the stables, get a horse, and ride to the coast as you had planned.”

He sat in the chair. “I cannot do that, Fleur.”

“I will be safe. Someone will be here soon.”

“It could be the wrong person. What if someone does not come? Tonight could be like the last, and those marauders might choose to burn this cottage or come in and hide here. I cannot leave you alone.”

“You could get someone from the house to stay with me.”

“The servants cannot stand against Farthingstone if he arrives looking for you. We will wait for Charl and St. John together. I said that you would be safe, and you will be.”

“I am sorry this has happened,” she said. “Are the bailiffs really on your trail?”

“Certain creditors sold my notes to a man, Mr. Thompson, who demanded payment. A bad night at cards ruined any chance of negotiating.”

“Couldn’t you ask Laclere to help you?”

“I could, and he would. It is probably what Thompson hopes for. But I will not. Verg has already been too generous.”

He wondered why he spoke so candidly. Maybe dressing her had deepened their familiarity. Maybe taking care of her had.

He experienced a peaceful companionship with her. Probably the survivors of shipwrecks developed friendships quickly too, while they shared a raft and tried not to watch the horizon.

“I would say it was unfortunate that things did not end happily between you and Bianca, except she and Laclere are so obviously right together,” she said.

Fleur was referring to the time when she was Vergil’s intended, and the plan had been for Bianca to be Dante’s. “I was not disappointed about Bianca wanting Vergil. She and I did not suit well, and she is good for him. However, I would lie if I denied that I have on occasion regretted losing her fortune.”

She laughed again. “I have smiled more this last hour than I have in the last year. Odd, that. After all, sooner or later I must face Gregory, and you must get away. If you miss that boat, how will you escape?”

“There are other boats.”

“How selfish of me, to be so caught up in my own problem that I did not see sooner how I had made yours worse. Please do not delay for me.”

“Until I know that you are safe, I will remain here. Any gentleman would, and despite my circumstances I hope that I am still that.”

“You are most definitely that, and much more, dear friend.”

Her gratitude touched him. The serenity he remembered in her from years ago had settled on her.

He should probably leave her to her privacy, but the bedchamber was airy and pleasant and her company pleased him. A day of waiting stretched out ahead of them.

He made himself comfortable. “I will tell you how I wasted my life, if you tell me how you have been flourishing in yours.”

The harp played again while she laughed.

She had never realized that he could be so kind. She should have guessed. His lovers always spoke well of him. They knew going into the affairs that he was inconstant and that the passion would be brief. If hearts had been broken, and some had, she suspected it was not because he promised more than he gave.

Not all kindness, however. A little ridge of darkness lurked within the charm. She could see it in his eyes sometimes, and hear it in his voice. It could manifest itself unexpectedly, as with his threat to turn her in, or with that toying flirtation this morning. She sensed that it wanted to become something bigger, but he controlled it. Most of the time.