One Little Sin

by Liz Carlyle

  “Will she be all right?” Esmée asked, touching Mrs. Henry gently on the arm. “What is wrong?”

  But Mrs. Henry would only shake her head.

  It seemed an eternity until Dr. Strauss arrived. He was a round, elderly gentleman with wire glasses and a heavy accent. He and Mrs. Henry conferred in grave tones, then went in together. Not knowing what else she could do, Esmée dashed upstairs to check on Sorcha. Lydia was cutting strings of paper dolls, thoroughly captivating the child. Once or twice, Sorcha began to turn sulky, but Lydia persevered. Esmée lingered, marveling at how cleverly the maid averted Sorcha’s tantrums.

  Half an hour later, Esmée went back downstairs to see MacLachlan standing outside Mrs. Crosby’s door with the doctor, their heads bent in quiet conversation. MacLachlan looked stricken. He saw Esmée and motioned urgently at her. “Miss Hamilton, what happened? Did she trip? Did she fall?”

  “I don’t know,” said Esmée. “I do not think so.”

  The doctor was already shaking his head. “She says she did not,” he said emphatically. “She reports a sudden onset of pain and a strong cramping sensation.”

  “Good God,” MacLachlan whispered, dragging a hand through his hair. “Is there…any hope?”

  The doctor looked pessimistic. “Some, perhaps,” he said hesitantly. “The pain has stopped, and the child is not lost. Not yet, anyway.”

  The child? Mrs. Crosby was with child? Esmée’s head began to swim.

  Beside her, the men continued to whisper. Suddenly, MacLachlan’s voice rose. “But what caused it?” he demanded. “And what is to be done about it? Should she remain in bed? Stand on her head? What?”

  The doctor shook his head. “I cannot say what caused it,” he confessed. “Her age is against her. You must know that.”

  MacLachlan was losing his self-control. “I don’t know that!” he almost shouted. “Older women have children all the time.”

  “And they lose children even more often,” countered the doctor. “It is nature’s way.”

  “Why, my Granny MacGregor was nearing fifty when she had her last!” MacLachlan roared. “And she can still strap me with one hand tied behind her back.”

  Dr. Strauss grasped MacLachlan by the elbow. “You needn’t shout, Sir Alasdair,” he said. “We’ll do all that is possible, I promise. Now, if you’ll permit, I must return to my patient.”

  “Yes, yes, fine,” agreed MacLachlan, further disordering his hair. “We’ll do…anything to help. Anything. You have to understand that. She wants this child so desperately.”

  The doctor already had one hand on the doorknob. “If the child is to have any chance,” he said, “then she must remain perfectly still until the bleeding has stopped, which could be days or even weeks. Under no circumstances may she be moved beforehand.”

  MacLachlan swallowed hard, the knot in his throat sliding up and down. “I shall tie her down if I must.”

  “You shan’t need to,” said the doctor grimly. “She, too, will do anything. Now please, leave all this to me.”

  MacLachlan nodded, then turned to Esmée as if she were next on his list of Catastrophes to Be Dealt With. “You,” he said decisively. “Come with me into the study. We’ve a little something to settle, you and I.”

  Esmée must have faltered.

  MacLachlan’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, come now, Miss Hamilton!”

  The doctor had already vanished. MacLachlan seized Esmée by the arm and steered her almost roughly down the corridor. He pushed open the door, urged her inside, and slammed it shut.

  “Good God” he said, exhaling sharply. “What a bloody awful nightmare this day has turned out to be!”

  “Oh, aye, d’ye think so?” asked Esmée, her voice tart. “Then how would you like to have your womb tied up in knots like poor Mrs. Crosby, with your life’s blood leaching out, and your child all but lost? That, MacLachlan, is what a nightmare feels like.”

  The muscle in MacLachlan’s too-perfect jaw began to twitch. “I am not insensible to Julia’s anguish,” he gritted. “I would bear it for her if I could, but I cannot. All I can do is to try to be a good friend.”

  “Oh, would that every woman had such a friend!” she returned. “You are off gallivanting about town with a brandy bottle as your boon companion, whilst she is all but miscarrying your next child!”

  Esmée had not sat down, a circumstance which MacLachlan either did not notice or did not care about. He had begun to pace the floor between the windows, one hand set at the back of his neck, the other on his hip. His jaw was growing tighter and tighter as he paced, and his temple was beginning to throb visibly, too.

  “Well?” she challenged. “Have you nothing to say, man?”

  Suddenly, he whirled on her. “Now you listen to me, you spite-tongued little witch,” he said. “And listen well, for I mean to say this but once: Julia Crosby’s child is none of your business—nor any of mine, either, come to that.”

  “Aye, ’tis none of my business if you sire a bastard in every parish,” Esmée returned.

  “You’re bloody well right it’s not,” he retorted. “And perhaps I have! But whilst I’m defending myself from your hot-headed notions, let me say that I have not spent the day idly drinking, either.”

  “Oh, faith! You reek of it!”

  “Yes, and yesterday I reeked of coffee,” he snapped. “Neither you nor Lord Devellyn possess a modicum of grace, it seems. He slopped brandy down my trousers.”

  Esmée didn’t believe him. “Oh, aye, you’ve been gone all day, and when at last you come home, you smell as if you spent the afternoon in the gutter. What’s anyone to think?”

  He stabbed his finger in her face. “Miss Hamilton, had I any wish to be nagged, insulted, or upbraided, I would get myself a wife, not a goddamned governess!” he roared. “And besides that, you do not get paid to think!”

  Esmée felt her temper implode. “Oh, no, I get paid to…to what?” she demanded shrilly, as he resumed his pacing. “Satisfy the master’s base instincts when his itch wants scratching? Remind me again. I somehow got muddled up over my duties.”

  He spun about, and grabbed her by the shoulders, shoving her against the door. “Shut up, Esmée,” he growled. “For once, just shut the hell up.” And then he was kissing her, brutishly and relentlessly.

  She tried to squirm away, but he held her prisoner between his hands. The harsh stubble of his beard raked across her face as he slanted his lips over hers, again and again, his powerful hands clenched upon her shoulders.

  She tried to twist her face away. His nostrils were wide, his mouth hot and demanding. Something inside her sagged, gave way, and she opened her mouth to him. He surged inside, thrusting deep. Her shoulder blades pressed against the wood, she began to shudder. There was no tenderness to his touch now, just a black, demanding hunger. Esmée began to shove at his shoulders, then to pummel them with the heels of her hands.

  As abruptly as it had begun, he tore his mouth from hers and stared her in the eyes, his nostrils still wide, his breathing still rough and quick. And then, his eyes dropped shut. “Damn it all,” he whispered. “No, damn me.”

  For a moment there was an awful silence. Then Esmée broke it. “I ought to slap the breath of life from you,” she gritted. “Don’t ever touch me again, MacLachlan. I am not Mrs. Crosby. I am not even my mother, lest you be confused. Now take your lecherous hands off me, or I’ll be kneeing you in the knackers so hard you heave.”

  He pushed away from the door without opening his eyes. “Yes, go,” he whispered, turning his back to her. “Go, for God’s sake! And don’t ever come in here again—no matter what I say.”

  The hinges squeaked in protest as she jerked open the door.

  “Esmée?” The word was a raspy whisper.

  Hand already on the doorknob, she turned.

  Without even looking at her, MacLachlan withdrew a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket, and thrust them at her. “Put this in a safe place,” he said. “And if ever yo
u leave here, take it with you.”

  Chapter Five

  A Walk in the Park

  The following fortnight passed with a strange sense of pessimism hanging over the house, as if Mrs. Crosby’s collapse had set the entire household on edge. The lady herself remained ensconced in the bedchamber nearest the front door, her head and feet propped on small mountains of pillows. Each afternoon, Esmée would drop by and offer to read to her, but Mrs. Crosby always declined. She seemed almost embarrassed by her predicament.

  Dr. Strauss came every day, tut-tutting over his patient in his strange foreign accent. And once, when Esmée failed to knock loudly enough, she found MacLachlan seated by Mrs. Crosby’s bed, his head bowed so low it rested atop their clasped hands. It was a private, poignant scene. Neither noticed Esmée. She felt stab of something which felt oddly like sorrow, then lightly closed the door.

  Mrs. Crosby had other visitors, too. A couple by the name of Wheeler came every morning like clockwork. Mr. Wheeler, a handsome man of perhaps fifty, looked perpetually dyspeptic and worried. He also looked very familiar. Esmée was almost certain she’d seen him during Sunday services at St. George’s, but his wife had not been with him.

  And so it went, Mrs. Crosby slowly regaining her spirit and color. Three weeks to the day after her collapse, the Wheelers and Dr. Strauss arrived in Great Queen Street with a van and a canvas litter. Mr. Wheeler and one of the footmen carried Mrs. Crosby gingerly down the stairs, and the lady was at last borne home. MacLachlan was nowhere to be seen.

  Indeed, save for the instance in Mrs. Crosby’s room, Esmée had seen little of him. He had taken to staying out all hours each night and returning home in a disheveled state each morning. “Shot in the neck again!” she heard Ettrick whisper to Wellings one morning as the former headed upstairs with what looked like a glass of soda water and a pot of coffee. Even from a distance, Esmée could see that the lines of dissipation about his face had hardened and that he looked every one of the thirty-six years Lydia had casually ascribed to him.

  At least he was more attractive than his brother. Save for their height and wide shoulders, there was not a drop of resemblance between the two. Where the former was handsome in a rakish, golden-god sort of way, Merrick MacLachlan was swarthy and dark-haired, with a nasty scar which ran the length of his jaw. He looked mean-spirited and a little cruel. Mr. MacLachlan lived, Lydia reported, at a “very posh place” called the Albany, an establishment which let suites of rooms to wealthy, unwed gentlemen of the ton. As a result, Merrick MacLachlan treated his elder brother’s home, particularly the dining room, as if it were his own.

  On those rare occasions when Esmée chanced to pass him, she took great pains to look down her nose at him. It was difficult, of course, since he towered above her. Still, she had managed to make her point. Merrick MacLachlan always bowed stiffly, then circled wide.

  Sometimes Lord Wynwood accompanied him. Wynwood was warm, and his eyes were kind. He never failed to ask after Sorcha, and twice when he was waiting for MacLachlan to come down, he asked her to join him for coffee in the dining room. Wynwood was easy to talk to, and Esmée was glad to pass a few moments in his company.

  Sorcha’s moods did not improve, but Lydia was officially assigned the duties of part-time nursemaid. Each afternoon, Lydia would relieve Esmée so that she might go belowstairs and take tea with Wellings and Mrs. Henry, which was a welcome respite.

  Oddly, during these times, a pattern began to develop. Esmée would go down the back stairs, and at almost the same moment, MacLachlan, apparently having coffee’d and soda-watered himself to a more sober state, would go up the front stairs to the schoolroom.

  There, according to Lydia, he would simply sit and watch Sorcha play. In some faint hope that she could actually begin to teach the child, as a governess ought, Esmée had purchased chalk and a small blackboard. Regrettably, Sorcha had shown little interest in her alphabet. But she showed a great deal of interest, Lydia laughingly recounted, in the strange stick figures and surreal animals which MacLachlan sketched for the child’s amusement. Other times, Sorcha would engage his help in dressing her doll or stacking her blocks.

  Mid-October came, by which time a sort of undeclared truce had developed between Esmée and MacLachlan. As if by mutual agreement, they avoided at all costs being alone with one another. This changed when, on one particular afternoon, Esmée went downstairs to tea, only to find it delayed by some minor crisis in the kitchens. She dawdled about the house for well over an hour, then gave up and returned to the schoolroom.

  She peeked inside to see that MacLachlan was wedged into one of the small wooden chairs, and Sorcha was sitting on the tabletop. The other nine chairs, which had thus served as nothing but an extravagance, had mysteriously vanished. In the back of the room, however, someone had pitched a makeshift tent using an old brown blanket which looked suspiciously lumpy. Well. At least the chairs had proven useful for something.

  She returned her attention to MacLachlan and Sorcha, who looked oddly incongruous together with his long, booted legs stretching almost the width of the table and Sorcha’s flounced skirts spread round her like a princess.

  Several books which Esmée did not recognize lay scattered about the table. Amongst them were some of the small wooden boxes which had formerly been shelved in the nursery, a few with their hinged lids thrown back. Sorcha and her father were peering into one of them. Just then, Esmée realized Sorcha was gnawing on something round and shiny.

  “Och, what’s she got?” cried Esmée, darting into the room.

  MacLachlan looked up, and frowned. “Devil take it!” he said. “Hand that over, minx.”

  Esmée waited for the tantrum. Instead, the child dropped the object, spittle and all, into her father’s hand, giggling as though it were a great joke.

  Alasdair wiped off the object on his trouser leg. “Good Lord!” he said. “Another Byzantine Hyperpyron.”

  “Lud, another fancy coin?” said Esmée. “Where’s she getting them?”

  MacLachlan grinned a little boyishly and pointed to the open chest. “I am trying to instill in the child a proper appreciation of numismatics.”

  Esmée looked at him blankly. For an instant, she could not think beyond the twinkle in his eyes. Then, with every ounce of her self-possession, she jerked herself under control.

  “Coin collecting,” he said, obviously unaware of the effect he had on her.

  She managed a nonchalant tone. “What, boxing up money?” She peered into one of the boxes. “I thought Scots came by that naturally.”

  MacLachlan threw back his head and laughed. “Most do,” he finally answered. “But these, Miss Hamilton, are rare, old coins.”

  “Aye, then,” said Esmée, setting one hand on her hip. “What’s so rare about the one she’s chewing on now?”

  MacLachlan’s brow furrowed. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, snatching it.

  “I be damn,” said Sorcha.

  The furrow deepened. “Don’t say that.”

  “Don say dat,” echoed Sorcha.

  “Oh, aye!” said Esmée with asperity. “She’s learning something, right enough.”

  MacLachlan gave a short, sharp sigh. “Don’t rip up at me, Esmée! I’m trying.”

  Esmée smiled. “Aye, well, I know what they say about stones and glass houses,” she murmured. “What else have the two of you been about?” She turned the slate toward her, and frowned.

  “It is an opossum,” said MacLachlan.

  “See ’possum?” said Sorcha, stabbing at it with her index finger. “See?”

  Esmée set her head to one side to better study it. “An opossum?”

  “A North American marsupial,” MacLachlan explained.

  “Indeed?” Esmée peered at it. “It seems rather…”

  “Ugly?” supplied MacLachlan. “You were thinking, were you not, that I lack talent? I assure you it is not so. Opossums are singularly unattractive creatures.”

  Esmée flicked a gl
ance up at him, and smiled. “And what’s this thing sprouting from its forehead?”

  “Horn!” said Sorcha, pointing at it. “See? See horn?”

  “I do see,” murmured Esmée. “A horned marsupial? How perfectly fascinating.”

  MacLachlan smiled a little sheepishly. “No, a horn like…well, like a unicorn.”

  Esmée’s smile broadened. “A unicorn?”

  MacLachlan ruffled Sorcha’s hair. “I had not forgotten, you see, that today is this imp’s birthday,” he answered. “Or, more honestly, I was informed of it yesterday by Wellings. I bought her a few new picture books by way of a gift. She was especially taken by that one about unicorns.”

  Esmée’s smile faltered as she picked up the book. She had not imagined he would know or care about Sorcha’s birthday. “I got her a wooden top,” she said dumbly. “And new mittens.”

  “Then she is a pampered little princess indeed,” he answered. “And today the princess insists on having horns drawn on all her creatures.”

  Sorcha leaned over and stabbed at the blackboard with her finger, smearing the sketch. “Horn, see?” she said proudly. “Nucorns has horns.”

  In response, MacLachlan scooped her off the table and settled her onto his knee. “Unicorns have horns,” he corrected, dusting the chalk from her finger with his neckcloth. “But opossums—real ones, mind you—do not. That one is just to please you, silly.”

  Sorcha just giggled, and began to fiddle with MacLachlan’s cravat pin. In response, he began to neaten her wild, curly hair, tucking it gently behind her ears.

  Esmée looked back and forth between them, a strange warmth kindling in her heart. Unfortunately, it went straight to her knees, causing them to weaken. Oh, it was unwise to remain too long in this man’s company! Unthinkingly, she snatched her hand from the back of MacLachlan’s chair and drew back a pace.