Sweetest Little Sin

by Christine Wells

  Returning his snuffbox to his pocket, Radleigh took Louisa’s arm and introduced her to his guests. She was relieved to see he didn’t claim her as his fiancée, though his proprietary air left them in little doubt that such an announcement was imminent.

  “And here, Louisa, I’ve saved the best for last,” said Radleigh, leading her to a sofa on which two ladies sat.

  The younger female was plump, curvaceous, and dimpled, with brown hair and green eyes and healthy roses in her round cheeks. The other lady bore all the hallmarks of a poor relation—shabby dark clothes, dark hair scraped back from her brow in a no-nonsense knot, and a certain gauntness about her neck and shoulders that made Louisa wonder if they kept the poor woman on half rations.

  Louisa smiled impartially on them both. She glanced up at Radleigh and found herself arrested by the tender expression on his face. Clearly, he adored this girl.

  “Lady Louisa Brooke, may I present my sister, Miss Radleigh?”

  The young lady curtseyed, large eyes round with excitement and curiosity. Louisa suppressed a grimace. Lying to Radleigh was one thing. She didn’t relish misleading an innocent girl.

  “How do you do?” she murmured. “I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Radleigh.” Louisa spared an inquiring glance at the companion, but the poor woman went unnoticed.

  “Oh, you must call me Beth, for we’re to be sisters, aren’t we?” The girl made an impatient shooing gesture at her companion. “Do go away, Honoria, so that Lady Louisa may sit beside me.”

  Unruffled, the diminutive companion turned to gather up her embroidery. When she turned back, Louisa held out her hand. “How do you do, Miss . . . ?” She sent Beth an inquiring look.

  Far from abashed, Beth said carelessly, “Oh, that is Honoria Beauchamp, my companion. A dreary soul! Don’t mind her.” She offered Radleigh a saucy smile. “I never do.”

  The companion bowed her head and murmured a greeting, apparently eager to get away. Louisa allowed her to pass, but she blushed for Beth’s rudeness. The glance she slid at Radleigh showed he’d no more notion of how bad such behavior appeared than Beth herself.

  Seeing no alternative, Louisa sat in the space Miss Beauchamp had vacated. Radleigh made his excuses and drifted in search of other guests.

  Louisa barely repressed a sigh of relief.

  “I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I heard of my brother’s betrothal,” gushed Beth. “It must have been so romantic!”

  “Oh, er, um. Yes. Yes, I suppose it was. We are keeping it secret for the moment, however. Just in the family, you know.”

  “Oh, you may rely on me. I’m very discreet.”

  Beth clasped her hands together and gave a little bounce. “Lady Louisa, I am tremendously glad you’re here, for you will enter into my feelings completely.”

  The girl had an emphatic way of speaking that set Louisa’s teeth on edge. But she smiled. “Are you in love, Miss Radleigh?”

  She doubted Beth knew the meaning of the word.

  Beth nodded, her eyes shining with puppylike devotion. “How did you guess?”

  The sour spinster inside Louisa recoiled at the thought of listening to romantic outpourings. But her better self knew what was expected of her, and nobly, she rose to the occasion. “Tell me all.”

  “I have known him a bare week, yet it seems like an eternity.”

  Oh dear. This tale would not end well, she knew it in her bones. An ache for another young, passionately deluded girl echoed in her chest.

  “I expect he’s very handsome,” said Louisa.

  “Yes. How did you guess? I have never seen such a man before.”

  He is like a wicked god in human form. And he makes you feel as if you are the most beautiful, most desirable woman in the world. . . .

  Inwardly, Louisa shook herself, wrenched her mind away from that path. Instead, she looked about her, lending only half an ear to Beth’s ravings about her lover. This would be the perfect time to assess Radleigh’s guests.

  It was a relatively small party, unless there were more guests yet to arrive. Foreign diplomats, a banker, minor European royalty. Did they all know why they’d been gathered here? It seemed a strange way to conduct the covert sale of a piece of intelligence.

  But perhaps the eccentricity of it appealed to Radleigh. Perhaps he liked having them all here, dancing to his tune.

  The half ear that was listening to Beth registered a word here and there. Only met . . . know someone in a week . . . feel as if I do know him . . .

  Yes, it sounded all too familiar.

  Suddenly, conversation halted. Beside her, Beth gasped, tensed, then seemed to quiver.

  With a tingle at her nape, a sense almost of inevitability, Louisa turned her head.

  There, in the doorway, stood Jardine.

  For once, he appeared perfectly groomed, his unruly black locks trimmed and tamed to a recognizable style, his shirt points precise, the tailoring of his black coat so exquisite it was certain to make Radleigh swoon with envy.

  Beth’s hand squeezed her wrist so hard, Louisa winced. “There he is!”

  Beth shot out of her chair and pelted across the drawing room. For one bewildered, crazed moment, Louisa thought the girl would leap into Jardine’s arms.

  Jardine’s gaze locked with Louisa’s over Beth’s head. An instant of searing heat passed between them in that look, and then his gaze passed over her and he was smiling—smiling—down at Beth.

  She couldn’t remember seeing him smile in quite that way for a very long time. Perhaps not since their courtship.

  Pain squeezed her heart. Had Jardine thrown her over for this?

  Why else would he have given her such a final farewell?

  Cold washed over Louisa, wave after shocking wave. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Jardine wanted to marry someone else. That was why he’d given her those marching orders, told her she couldn’t prove their marriage had taken place.

  He sauntered toward her with Beth clinging to his arm. She simpered up at him as if he were her only reason to live.

  Had she, Louisa, ever looked at him like that? Not lately. Perhaps not since the wedding that had never actually taken place.

  She pinched the meat of her palm, sank her teeth into the inside of her lip, willed herself to preserve her composure.

  When they stood before her, she wanted more than anything to bow her head and rush from the room. But she forced herself to meet his devilish eyes with a glaze of indifference in her own.

  “Lady Louisa, may I present the Marquis of Jardine?”

  Louisa inclined her head, as regal as Kate at her haughtiest. She raised her brows a little, the question in them clear—to him, at least: How well do we know one another today?

  For an instant, Jardine’s eyes glittered with a passing emotion she couldn’t interpret.

  He bowed. “We’ve met. How do you do, my lady?”

  Beth looked from him to her and back again. “You know one another? Oh, now you have spoiled my surprise. I made sure to be the first to give you the news, my lord. Lady Louisa has consented to marry my brother. We shall be sisters! Isn’t that altogether delightful?”

  Wretched girl! Discreet, indeed! At this rate, the whole of England would know of Louisa’s sham betrothal.

  “I wouldn’t know,” murmured Jardine. “I never had a sister.”

  “Nor have I, but I’m persuaded it must be a very fine thing, indeed,” said Beth, tucking her hand into the crook of Jardine’s arm.

  Louisa’s gaze fixed on that comfortable intimacy. She couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away.

  With an effort, she cleared her throat. “Will you not sit down?”

  Her stomach churned with the need to escape Jardine and his new inamorata’s presence, but she couldn’t let him see how greatly he hurt her.

  With his usual elegance, Jardine disposed his long limbs in the chair she’d indicated while Beth plumped herself down beside Louisa.

  “Tell me, Lord J
ardine—” Was that her voice, all husky and strained? Louisa cleared her throat again and strove to modulate her tone. “Do you make an extended stay or are you merely a dinner guest?”

  “Miss Radleigh has invited me spend the summer,” said Jardine with a feline smile. “I shan’t trespass on her excellent hospitality for quite that long, however. I have duties that will take me back to my estate in Wiltshire before the month is out.”

  “How pleasant,” said Louisa, nearly choking on the words. Was she to endure Jardine’s presence for the rest of her stay?

  She caught herself. She was putting an end to this charade of an engagement and leaving as soon as may be. She’d made up her mind about that.

  Someone else would have to infiltrate the party, find this errant list, and bring Radleigh to justice.

  “We have such plans for your entertainment, you will be amazed!” said Beth, wriggling in her seat like an excited child.

  “I can hardly wait,” murmured Jardine.

  Louisa looked up at him sharply. There was a lazy glint in his eye. Was he up to something?

  As Beth went on, enumerating the arrangements she’d made for her guests, Louisa’s grip on her own hand turned brutal. But the more Beth talked, the less inclined Louisa was to believe that Jardine had fallen in love with the chit or had any serious intentions toward such a rattlepate. Besides, it was all too coincidental to ring true.

  What was Jardine’s real reason for being here? Had he merely used Beth to get an invitation to this party?

  Perhaps he’d come to put a spoke in the wheel of Louisa’s betrothal. If so, what did he plan to do? Even Jardine wouldn’t accept a man’s hospitality and then turn around and kill him.

  Surely not.

  Could he be here for the same reason as she was?

  She frowned. That didn’t seem right. If Jardine were here to find that list, why would Faulkner send her and Harriet to the house party at all?

  Regardless, Jardine clearly enjoyed her discomfiture. Which of course made her determined to be excruciatingly polite.

  “What a fascinating house this is, Miss Radleigh. I’m intrigued by the Indian influence I’ve seen.”

  Beth made a moue. “Not our doing, but Radleigh likes it. He was smitten as soon as he saw the place. I suppose it reminds him of our childhood.”

  She lowered her voice. “Some of it is quite . . .” She leaned forward to whisper. “. . . Shocking. Not at all the thing.”

  Was she referring to the erotically decorated temple Harriet had mentioned?

  Jardine’s lip curled. “Great art is often not at all the thing, Miss Radleigh.”

  Beth’s face dropped ludicrously at the mild setdown.

  With a slight smile, Jardine added, “Perhaps you ought to show me these despised creations. Then I can offer you my opinion.”

  The silly girl melted into a puddle of shining gratitude and hurried away to get her hat. Obviously, she’d missed the implications of Jardine’s ploy to get her alone.

  “Like shooting fish in a barrel, isn’t it?” Louisa narrowed her eyes at him. “Jardine, she’s a child.”

  “I find her . . . refreshing,” he said. “I’m hardly in my dotage, either, you know.”

  “Using her to punish me is just about the most despicable thing you’ve done,” she hissed. “Do you have an understanding with her?”

  “Who said I was using her to punish you?” He threw his arms along the back of his chair. “The planets and all their moons do not revolve around you, strange as it might seem. My lady.”

  Anger flared at the rebuke. Was she really nothing to him anymore? No matter how she suffered at his hands, she couldn’t believe it. What about that desperate kiss in Richmond Park?

  Oh, she knew better than to set store by the physical affection a man might show. But he’d kissed her as if they were the last mortals left in the world, as if his life would be nothing without her. Folly to believe it, and yet inside, in her soul, there was no doubt. They belonged together.

  Her voice grew husky again. “How long have you known her?”

  Shrugging, Jardine spread his elegant white hands. “A day? An hour? What does it matter?”

  This bit of whimsy would have drawn a scathing reply if they hadn’t been sitting in the midst of the other house-guests. His lips curved into a smile that held a hint of understanding and a healthy dose of challenge.

  The ache in her chest flared to a knifing pain. Not jealousy, no. She knew he was shamming it. But this parody of courtship playing out between him and Beth cut her to the quick.

  She looked away.

  Beth returned, bonneted and flushed with happy anticipation. Louisa studied her, took in the sparkling green eyes, the warm honey tone of her hair, the lush curves of her well-developed figure. The adoration in Beth’s gaze as she lifted it shyly to Jardine’s reminded Louisa of another besotted girl, many years ago.

  Jardine rose and offered Beth his arm.

  Raw with pain, Louisa watched them go.

  Nine

  JARDINE escaped to the card room that evening in time to see Louisa denude her slender arm of a glinting bracelet and toss it on the table between her and Radleigh. It landed with a chink against its mate.

  His jaw tightened. The intimacy of that little tableau made his blood simmer with rage. But he forced himself to hold back and wait for them to play out the hand.

  If Radleigh had been any kind of gentleman, he wouldn’t allow Louisa to stake personal valuables, but Radleigh was no kind of gentleman at all, was he?

  Jardine watched as Louisa lost both her pretty pieces to the blackguard. Radleigh pocketed his winnings without a qualm.

  Louisa gave a small shrug, as if the matter was of no consequence, but her eyes shot daggers. And for once, the daggers weren’t for Jardine.

  Not for him. He ought to be glad, but something inside him reared up in protest. He wanted her glaring looks—all her looks—to be for him alone.

  He slid into the chair Radleigh had just vacated.

  “Fleeced you, did he, my little lamb?” He reached for the deck of cards, shuffling them between his long fingers.

  He suspected Radleigh had cheated. The fierce storm of emotion in those blue eyes confirmed it. Her expression shuttered. Then, with a long, cool look, she answered. “Apparently so.”

  “Never mind. I’ll send you another pair of bracelets. Prettier than those baubles you lost.” He hesitated. “If you’d told me you were short of funds, I could have franked you.”

  “I’m not short,” she snapped. “I just don’t have the ready with me. And thank you for the offer but I’m quite capable of buying my own baubles.”

  Slowly, he nodded. “Your brother is generous.”

  “Absurdly so.”

  “He owes it to you, I should think.”

  Louisa bowed her head, refusing to reply. He gazed at the complicated arrangement of her pale blond hair, remembering how it streamed between his fingers like quick-silver, like moonlight.

  He slapped the stack of cards on the table. “Will you cut?”

  She complied and he shuffled, then dealt the cards.

  “What stakes shall we play for?” she said.

  “I don’t want to take your money. Let’s play for something else.”

  His gaze flickered over her suggestively. One hand crept to the diamond at her throat. Did he make her nervous?

  Good.

  He tilted his head. “Let us play for truth.”

  “Truth?” Her brow furrowed, and the tiny line across the bridge of her nose deepened. “What do you mean, truth?”

  He leaned forward a little. “If I win, you tell me why you are here, what you are doing with a jumped-up toad-stool like Radleigh.”

  She shrugged. “You already know the truth about that.” She hesitated, her expression turning speculative. “And if I win?”

  “You’re not going to win.”

  She ignored the interjection. “When I win, you must tell me why
you’re here. What you are doing with Radleigh’s sister.”

  “Done.” There were many reasons for his presence. He could give her at least one true one. But he didn’t intend to let her beat him, so it was a moot point.

  The hands passed with little comment beyond the play. They were so evenly matched in skill it surprised him. There were large gaps in his knowledge of Louisa Brooke. The notion didn’t sit well with him.

  He was reckless, brilliant; she, more cautious, counted cards and calculated the odds. Luck remained firmly with the wicked, however, and Louisa was down by the final hand.

  “These cards have been marked,” said Jardine conversationally, running his fingertip over the slight scratch in the corner of an ace. “We ought to have called for a new pack.”

  He’d intended to rattle her and he succeeded. She played a card she should have kept. “I hope you’re not accusing me of cheating.”

  He swooped on her mistake. “Hardly. What would you do if I were? Call me out?”

  “At least admit I am as good a shot as you.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly. How do you fare with a smallsword?”

  Her mouth twitched slightly, as if it wanted to smile. As if she imagined how satisfying it would be to run him through. The idea made his blood race, and most of that blood seemed to collect in his groin.

  What did that say about him?

  He let his gaze wander over what he could see of her, the low-cut neckline making the most of her sweet, small breasts. The single diamond nestled between them as if to symbolize the treasures that awaited a man bold enough to explore. That slender throat and angular, intelligent face, the cold fire of her eyes.

  His.

  If he lunged across the table, picked her up, and dragged her away with him, would anyone notice?

  Hissing through his teeth, he forced himself to bide his time. If he showed more than a passing interest in her at this party, all he’d worked so hard to achieve would be lost. Almost as an afterthought, he played the winning card.

  At her look of chagrin, he smiled. “This will be most interesting.”

  Apprehension spiked her gaze. Louisa had a secret. Important enough to keep from him despite the implied promise of honesty. But he was skilled in the gentle art of interrogation. He’d have the truth from her this night.