The Deadliest Sin

by Caroline Richards

  There was the rub—why? Not that Strathmore could afford to care, to discover why the Woolcotts had at one time raised the enmity of the powerful man. He would do well to remember his only aim was to gain access to Faron. He had already infiltrated the first ring of the man’s circle and accepted the murderous assignment to prove his worth. All that remained was for Beaumarchais to be convinced the deed had been done.

  Strathmore would await the summons from Lowther. For the interim, Miss Julia Woolcott would simply have to be his guest until such time when she could resurface, alive and well.

  Across from him she sat still, too still. He traced her profile, that straight nose, the wide mouth, distinct in the semi-dark and he realized he had already memorized her features. She was pretending, her breathing too deep and even, her eyes with their thick lashes open to mere slits. He’d thrown a lap rug over her body, more for his own benefit than for hers.

  It was too tempting to slide in next to her and pull her into his arms. He’d played fast and loose at Wadsworth’s country house, his actions arising both from instinct and years of intrigue in inhospitable places. Or so he believed. Typically, he preferred a brutal honesty in his affairs, yet there was an unpalatable truth lurking behind Miss Woolcott’s wide, blue gaze. There was something about her, a vulnerability she desperately tried to hide, that made him question his judgment, his ambition, and his unaccountable attraction to a woman that threatened all his plans.

  She was not the sort of female who typically caught his interest. His palate was accustomed to the worldly, the experienced, and above all, the eager. The bored diplomat’s wife, or the seasoned concubine. Mewling virgins, nervous spinsters, and prim bluestockings had never held the least appeal.

  He crossed one booted foot over the other. She had a surprisingly remarkable form, a body made for carnality. Reluctantly, he remembered the length of her white thighs and the curve of her breasts encased in barely-there midnight silk. And her response to his touch—bloody difficult to reconcile. It made it all too easy to imagine angling her head back into his palms and brushing her lips with his own for another sweet, dark taste of her mouth, her tongue. He eyed the small expanse of silk clad shoulders rising from the enveloping lap rug, envisioning how he would drag his fingers slowly over the midnight fabric, pulling the flimsy bodice gently down to expose her skin to his fingers, his palms, his lips.

  White heat coursed through his veins. It had been too long.

  The hardening between his legs offered more proof than he needed. Celibacy. That was the root cause of his unease. Nothing else. Certainly not the untutored and surprising ardor of a starchy, bookish virgin. He adjusted the length of his legs in the confined interior of the carriage. His time would be better spent thinking about Faron.

  The sound of the rain continued, mingling with the rumble of cobblestones beneath the carriage, telling him that they had arrived in London. Julia still didn’t stir when the coach pulled to a stop, nor did the tempo of her breathing change. All Strathmore heard was the drumming of the rain on the coach roof. He decided it would serve his purposes to carry her quickly into the town house.

  The white residence glowed in the dark, one of the many in the Dunedin Duchy collection, secluded by Regent’s Park from the front and by a mews to the rear.

  With studied indifference, he drew Julia into his arms and carried her from the carriage. With a murmur of thanks to the coachman he entered via the servant’s entrance, nodding briefly to his steward before proceeding up the staircase to the main floor. All of the Dunedin family retainers were unquestionably loyal, and Baxter was no exception. He followed Strathmore on soundless feet into the library where he quickly lit several lamps, stoically ignoring the limp body in his master’s arms. Strathmore instructed him to prepare one of the guest rooms and to ransack one of the many wardrobes for suitable clothing. For his own sanity, that bit of silk lying against Julia Woolcott’s white skin had to be replaced.

  Bending low, Strathmore placed Julia on a settee, tucking the rug around her, all too aware of her breasts rising and falling against his chest in a gentle rhythm. He’d realized the inherent danger in taking her there, but he had little choice.

  “Could you really have killed me?”

  Despite the heaviness in her voice, he could tell she was completely awake and Strathmore found himself looking into wide blue eyes. He backed away, a man who had never backed away from anything in his life.

  “No,” he said honestly. He’d killed out of self-preservation but never out of mere convenience.

  She sat up straighter against the cushions, pushing the hair back from her face and, once again, he was struck by the woman’s singular lack of vanity. In the depth of her eyes, he saw not fear exactly but that same vulnerability that had made him question each and every one of his actions in the past twenty-four hours.

  “I need to go home. To Montfort,” she said simply.

  “You’re supposed to be dead. That was our agreement.”

  She gave him a slight shake of her head and made an impatient sound. “My aunt and sister will be devastated to learn the news. I can’t allow it.”

  “You would renege on our agreement, honorably made?”

  She regarded him with blank-faced surprise for a long instant. Then a type of resolve, almost despair, settled over her face. “Hardly honorable, and made in the heat of the moment. I refuse to allow my family to suffer unnecessarily,” she said haltingly. “At the very least, I must let them know. Warn them.”

  Sorrow lurked behind her wary gaze. Julia Woolcott was an unusual woman, possessing an elusive quality Strathmore couldn’t quite determine. He thought briefly of his mother and so many other women he’d known before he left England. Flighty, temperamental, gossipy and vain, not unlike the yapping lapdogs they kept close at hand. While Miss Woolcott, with her blend of innocence and determination, demonstrated not only a passion for her work, but also for her family.

  He turned abruptly to the small rosewood table that Baxter had set up with a brandy decanter and two tumblers. He splashed himself a liberal draft, drained it, then refilled his glass and poured one for Julia. A silent but persistent warning clamored at the back of his head.

  It was not right—jeopardizing everything. Miss Woolcott was not a damsel in need of salvation but rather a burden, in all truth, his burden, unless he could rein in those sudden and inexplicable impulses. He was nothing if not a practical man.

  He pressed the brandy snifter into her hands and leaned on the arm of the settee.

  “We could make this work to our advantage, Miss Woolcott.”

  She studied the crystal glass cradled in her palm. He ignored the clean, delicate line of her jaw, the elegant sweep of her neck.

  “It had occurred to me,” she said simply, lashes sweeping upward, eyes underscored with fatigue, “that you have a connection with Montagu Faron. Whether any of this can work to my advantage, as you put it, is unclear. However, you can hardly fault me from wishing to pursue any connection with Faron.” She took a tentative sip of the brandy before continuing, weariness in every line of her body. “I surmised that you, or someone amongst Wadsworth’s circle, were somehow involved with him.”

  “We keep coming back to my involvement. What about yours? I know fear when I see it. You are afraid of Faron, yet you refuse to tell me why.”

  Julia studied him closely, frowning a little. “Even if I knew, sir, I shouldn’t tell you. Until you honor your agreement to provide me with an explanation as to your role in this saga.”

  The brandy settled low in Strathmore’s belly, its warmth unfamiliar after a number of years’ absence. Imbibing spirits was punishable by death in many of the regions he had called home in the past five years. He wondered briefly if the alcohol, rather than Miss Woolcott, was responsible for loosening the reins on his ambitions.

  “Montagu Faron has something I want,” he said with a directness Julia was beginning to find familiar.

  “Which is what p
recisely?” She stopped short before continuing. “What would be of such value to you that you would kill for it, if necessary? It’s difficult to reconcile your possible motivations for involvement in this affair. Forgive me if I have cause to wonder who you are exactly—the younger son of Dunedin or the renegade explorer whose various exploits even managed to amaze Wadsworth’s jaded guests?”

  “The specifics are not pertinent at the moment.”

  “Then what is?”

  “That you follow through on your promise to remain dead, bizarre as that might seem at present.”

  “Do you intend to chain me here?” she asked tonelessly. “I assume this is your London residence.”

  “I doubt that will be necessary as I believe you’ll find the safety of my town house far more pleasant than once again becoming a target for Faron.”

  She drained the last of her brandy, her fingers resisting slightly when he reached to take the glass from her. Deliberately, he pressed his fingers over hers. Their eyes met, and somewhere in the blue depths he saw again a reservoir of pain and secrecy shuttered tight.

  “What are you hiding, Miss Woolcott?” he asked softly.

  Her lips quivered, then compressed. She pulled her hand away from his and leaned forward, gripping the edge of the rug as if to keep herself sitting upright. He noticed the soiled hem of midnight silk splayed over the mahogany floorboards and wondered at her inner strength.

  “How does your leg fare? You should have the injury seen to shortly. I’ll have Baxter look for someone to prepare a dressing.”

  “My injury is the least of my concerns.” She lifted her chin. “I’m more concerned about what you want of Faron.”

  It was the elemental question he was not prepared to answer. The raking of her eyes over him reminded him of what was at stake. “Do you recall, when I warned you that knowledge can be a dangerous thing?” he asked. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “Nothing has changed.”

  “Everything has changed,” she insisted, the rug slipping to reveal a gaping neckline where only a filmy piece of silk saved the swells of her breasts from spilling into the golden lamplight. He steeled himself at the sight, like a wayward schoolboy.

  “Faron is intent upon harming my aunt and my sister, and I shall do everything and anything in my power to stop him. I am beginning to fear that means attaching myself to you, sir, like a limpet.”

  He’d absorbed many threats in his days abroad, but nothing like that one. Yet wasn’t it precisely what he wanted? Miss Woolcott at his side, his to use? She had knowledge of a man who was ultimately unknowable, but who clearly had a soft and vulnerable underbelly when it came to the Woolcotts.

  Julia rose abruptly from the settee and strode heedlessly to the window overlooking a courtyard below.

  Hell, she was transparent as glass. “Don’t even consider it,” he said. He shoved his hands into his pockets, wondering desperately whether Baxter had yet located appropriate clothing for his reluctant guest. Her long back curved away from him, rigid as a washboard, with the rug draped around her shoulders like a stole. “There is no escape. At worst, the fall would injure you and at best kill you.”

  “I’m merely illustrating that I refuse to stay behind, passive and fearful, whilst I could be doing something…” She turned her head, eyes looking up to his. The troubled reserve had fled and fires were banked there instead. “I have had enough of Faron and his omnipresent threats and machinations. I fear this attempt on my life is merely a prelude, a desire to punish and torment my aunt and sister for God only knows what lunatic reasons.” Truth rang in her words.

  “What are you proposing, Miss Woolcott?” He was tempting fate, but then he never feared risk.

  Her words were etched in steel. “You wish to find Faron as do I.”

  The situation had the ring of the familiar, of an uncomfortable though necessary alliance. He’d seen the same expression several years earlier in the hard eyes of the Sultan Seyyid Majid, who had, in exchange for firearms, offered Strathmore a caravan to guide him to Kampala. And that journey had not ended well, he remembered with a cynicism born of experience.

  Strathmore’s voice was deeper than usual when he finally answered, knowing he was making a mistake. “You are proposing an alliance.”

  “I am.”

  “An alliance is predicated on an exchange, Miss Woolcott, so it behooves me to ask what assistance you could possibly offer, other than staying well out of sight.”

  For a brief moment, Strathmore thought she was not attending to the conversation when she said, “Where is my camera and its accompanying apparatus?” A non sequitur. Her eyes darted around the room before she rushed back from the window to stand by the settee, almost tripping over the rug in her haste. “Damn. I suppose it’s all been left behind at Eccles House.”

  Strathmore shook his head. “I fail to understand. Your camera is of little use to me, Miss Woolcott.”

  She appeared deep in thought, cursing inventively under her breath, the smothered oath coming as a surprise. He saw the shadow again, the tension about her mouth, the suppression of some emotion. “It’s of great importance to me,” she said finally.

  Of course, her collection of photographs. “I’m certain there are other copies of your monograph available,” he offered, “although I still fail to see the relevance here.” He was a man who’d grown accustomed to having control of a situation and perilously found himself without it.

  Julia took a sharp breath, released it, then tipped her head back in thought. “If we could send a messenger to Eccles House somehow, and have my belongings returned”—she looked at him sharply, as though considering his worthiness in the endeavor—“it would be of great help.”

  “And why might that be?” He hoped she heard the impatience in his voice but, if she did, she ignored it.

  “For our alliance,” she said simply. “I realize I shall need assistance locating Faron, and in apprehending him. You are precisely what I need—a man who is by nature and experience adventuresome, practical, and physically capable,” she continued as though reading from a laundry list.

  Strathmore did not feel the least flattered. He was confused and he looked away from her. He tamped down his impatience. “I’m pleased that you believe I may be of service to you, but I still don’t understand what your photographic accoutrements have to do with any of this.”

  “My part of the alliance.” She rubbed her hands together eloquently and stared up at him, aware that she had lost him some time ago. “Please let me ask—do you know what Montagu Faron looks like?”

  As a matter of fact, he hadn’t a clue, and his expression said as much.

  “Just as I thought.” Then she added, triumphantly. “But I do, or at least I shall, once I have access to my traveling case.”

  He went still, clearly surprised. “You’re still not making any sense. But go on.”

  “A daguerreotype of Montagu Faron. I have one—given to me by my aunt.”

  Strathmore was suddenly aware of the hissing fire in the small grate, coaxed to life by a few reddening embers. Possibilities bloomed in his mind. “Interesting in itself, but how might that help if we have no way to locate the man?” Restlessness made the statement curt. “You’ve seen the likeness?’

  “Not precisely.” She crossed her arms over her chest, fidgeting with the ends of the rug. She frowned and a shadow passed over her face. “My aunt gave it to me before I left Montfort, and I placed it among my copper plates, in my case.” She was thinking aloud.

  While he was thinking faster. Montagu Faron was a recluse—no one had clapped eyes on him in over two decades. As to his whereabouts, it was a further mystery, and not a detail Giles Lowther would readily reveal. Just yet.

  “There is just one caveat,” she added, “one little problem.” She stared momentarily into the grate’s glowing coals.

  “Which is?”

  She hesitated a fraction. “It remains undeveloped.”

  “What remains undeveloped?
”

  “The daguerreotype,” she explained. “The process involves a silver-coated copper plate which is sensitized with chemicals. When the portrait sitter is ready, the photographer removes the camera cover and times the exposure of the plate with a watch.”

  “You are losing me here,” Strathmore admitted.

  Julia brushed an impatient hand through her hair. “That preliminary step has already taken place but the photographer did not develop the exposed plate. In other words, the image on the silvered plate has not yet been brought out in a fuming box.”

  “So we have no image.”

  “Only the potential for an image,” she corrected.

  “How did you come by the plate and how likely is the image to have survived?” The muted hiss of the fire grew louder.

  Julia hesitated for a moment, as though reluctant to reveal the source of a hidden treasure. “Meredith declined to give me details as to how she came into possession of the plate. All I know is I have the option of developing it, if need be.”

  “Well done, Miss Woolcott,” Strathmore said. “Although of little immediate help to us. Nonetheless, I shall have your belongings sent for immediately. In the interim,” he continued, beginning to unbutton his jacket as he made for the door, “I suggest you make yourself at home and ask Baxter for anything you may need.” Shrugging out of the sleeves, he slung the coat over his arm.

  She nearly tripped on the damned rug again, following him closely, her knees very nearly touching the back of his own legs. Proximity between them, he decided, was not a good idea.

  “I don’t believe we understand each other, sir.” She hesitated briefly, as though his nearness was disconcertingly invasive. “In exchange for Faron’s likeness, I expect that you will allow me to send a message to my aunt and sister. At the very least.”

  He kept his back to her, addressing her reflection in the gilt mirror hanging over the fireplace mantle. “I’ve already said that’s impossible, Miss Woolcott. I don’t know how much more alarmist I can be. Understand that by contacting your family you could be doing them greater harm.”