Sweetest Little Sin

by Christine Wells

  She felt his gaze, intent on her mouth as he did this, slowly, carefully, over and over. By the time he bent his head to taste, her lips tingled with sensitivity.

  The leisurely caress of his mouth on hers made her knees buckle. He caught her around the waist, pulled her against him.

  She gave a shuddering sigh at all that masculine heat and hardness pressed against her. He deepened the kiss, tantalized her with slow strokes of his tongue. And she was his, as she always would be his to take.

  How she’d missed this. She’d almost forgotten that wild sensuality he awoke in her, the need to give him everything, to do unspeakable things with pleasure and wholehearted trust.

  Trust.

  Could she bear to trust him again? He’d rejected her. He’d refused to acknowledge her as his wife.

  His hands molded her hips, traveled up her waist to cover her breasts, teasing her aching nipples.

  In spite of her growing unease, the place between her legs grew damp and needy. He seemed to know it, because his hand bunched up her skirts, reached beneath.

  “Ah, Louisa. It’s been too long.”

  Her heart twisted. How could he speak that way, with a voice so full of raw emotion? Yet he’d still discard her like a used mistress when he was done.

  “No.”

  He didn’t hear her. His hand skimmed up her thigh. “Jardine, I want you to stop.”

  She shoved at his chest, suddenly frantic. “Jardine!”

  She said it sharply enough to penetrate. His head jerked up. He was breathing hard, his lips a little swollen, his eyes glittering with passion.

  Gasping for air, she rested her head against the wall. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “Let me? You were begging me a moment ago.”

  He closed in, as if to resume his assault, but she held him off. “You don’t want me.”

  His incredulous look made her say, “I mean you don’t want me as your wife.”

  He continued to stare at her as if he didn’t understand plain English. A small dart of satisfaction that he didn’t seem quite as knife-witted as usual sang through her.

  She raised her brows, silent, though her blood still pounded through her veins, though she wanted to take his stupid, stubborn head between her hands and dash some sense into it, then pull it down to her for a kiss.

  She sucked in a breath. “I believe there is an expression about cows and giving their milk away that, though crude, is apt in this case.”

  Men don’t buy the cow when she gives her milk for free. Where had she heard it? From one of the maids, probably.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “That old chestnut,” he muttered. But he didn’t meet her eyes.

  With a stab of pain, she noted he didn’t argue the point. How could she be alone in this, every time? Their passion had been so all-consuming, so right, she’d hoped he’d be swept up in it, as she had. That he’d beg her to come to him and be his wife.

  Wife. Radleigh. Oh, confound it! A fine time to recall she had a more obvious reason not to allow further intimacy.

  The deepening look of the satyr on Jardine’s face told her that the thought had struck him, too.

  A slow smile spread over his face. “Well, well. At least I stand reassured on one point. Radleigh hasn’t laid a finger on you, has he?”

  She wondered at his reasoning but didn’t ask, merely turned to pick up her lantern.

  “You would have remembered him sooner if he had.” Jardine’s voice grew tight. “When’s this farce of a wedding supposed to take place?”

  She didn’t owe him an answer, but she said, “Not until my mother returns.” She tried to steady her pulse, her breathing. “But he is impatient.”

  “Don’t let him touch you. I will kill him if he does.”

  She gave a broken laugh. “Oh, pray, be my guest. And what about the next man?” Raising her gaze to his again, she whispered, “I don’t want to be alone anymore, Jardine. Can’t you see that?”

  She turned to go.

  “What were you really doing here, Louisa? What are you doing with Radleigh?”

  She tensed. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Then you are being willfully obtuse. Good night.” Before he could say more, she hurried from the temple.

  JARDINE watched until the glimmering lantern light vanished, swallowed up by the forest.

  His deception was like a vise around his chest. Should he have told her the truth? But if he did that, she would expect some sort of commitment, and he couldn’t give her one. Not until he’d finished off Smith for good.

  It was also possible that she’d want to help. His gut gave a sick twist at the thought of Louisa running headlong into that danger. He’d worked so hard to keep her safe all these years. Now that Smith was back, a threat to everything Jardine held dear, he couldn’t possibly confide the real reason for his abandonment of her.

  He couldn’t blame her for trying to make a life for herself when he’d so unequivocally cut her out of his.

  And yet . . .

  The sheer coincidence of her choice made it impossible for him to let the matter rest. Why had she come up here at such an hour? Prurient curiosity? His gaze alighted on the wall before him. This particular piece of frieze depicted a woman being serviced by two men. Slowly, he shook his head.

  No. Not Louisa. She was up to something.

  He held his lantern aloft and shone it slowly around the small room, his eyes searching every crevice for the reason Louisa had come.

  Nothing. Bare walls, bare floor. The place must be tended regularly, as there was very little dust. Pity. If there were, it would be easier to see where the dust had been disturbed.

  The only item of interest in the room was the table, covered in a brightly patterned rug.

  Then he remembered Louisa’s pose as he’d seen her when he arrived at the temple. She’d been crouching, hadn’t she? Next to the table.

  He emulated her pose, went down on one knee, holding his own lantern up to examine the cloth.

  Suddenly, a detail leaped out at him. He stared at it, his brows knitted.

  Then he swore viciously and long.

  RADLEIGH hovered on the threshold of his father’s bedchamber, listening intently. The old man had to be asleep by now.

  His enormous mahogany bed was set on a high dais, with ornate draperies hanging from a gold-tasseled canopy. It was a bed for a nobleman, a king. A sour taste pervaded Radleigh’s mouth. His sire had always enjoyed an inflated sense of his own importance.

  Wealth, power. Those had come easily. He’d come by them dishonestly, it was true, but that didn’t diminish the old man’s insufferable sense of self-importance.

  The once-fearsome criminal was now an invalid, confined to his bed, but he still held the purse strings, still wielded his power like a warlord.

  Radleigh moved toward the bed, shielding the candle flame with a cupped hand.

  He mounted the steps to the dais and set down his candle on the table at the bedside.

  Careful not to make a sound, he drew back the curtain that shielded his father from stray draughts.

  The candlelight barely illuminated that heavily lined face, now relaxed in sleep. The big chest rose and fell in a steady motion. A bank of pillows clouded beneath the old man’s head.

  His hand trembling a little, Radleigh reached out toward his father, then snatched back his hand. With a deep breath, he tried again. This time, his fingers sank into a loose pillow. He eased it free.

  Radleigh stood there, clutching the pillow for a long time, heart pounding, chest aching, his mouth parched and sore. Vignettes of his childhood flashed through his mind. The air, scented with spice, his flesh raw and aching from another beating.

  The rage built and built until he shook with it, until his head was so suffused with fury, he thought it might explode. He reached a kind of tipping point, then. His arms unlocked and the pillow seemed to float over the old man’s slumbering f
ace.

  “You spineless little bastard.” The voice, deep and calm, came from the supposedly slumbering figure.

  Radleigh staggered back, cold shock sliding through his body. The pillow dropped from his grasp. He nearly toppled down the carpeted stairs, but managed to regain his balance just in time.

  Heavily hooded eyes stared fearlessly into Radleigh’s. “You can’t even kill me.”

  God, the man was totally helpless, yet he was unafraid of the son who hated him.

  “Have you married that wench yet?”

  Radleigh’s body slumped. He didn’t know why he couldn’t simply kill the old man, release himself from the prison of his father’s overweening ambition. “Not yet.”

  “Well, you’d better snap to it, boy. I’m not dying until I see you wed.”

  Fourteen

  JARDINE stood silently among the dense foliage that skirted the Hindu temple. Cold fear gripped his heart, shivered down his spine.

  It was a boy. A boy had come for the message that blue ribbon contained. Stuffing something in his pocket, the small figure darted out of the entrance, keeping to the shadows. He headed for the village, if Jardine judged correctly.

  However, he couldn’t be sure, so he followed, silently, swiftly, tamping down the fury, the fear. He needed a clear head to deal with whatever lay beyond this wood.

  The boy had been taught a few tricks, it seemed, but then, so had Jardine. He simply melted into the night when the boy doubled back on his path, or stopped to take a piss and glanced around casually to check for pursuit.

  Finally, the boy approached the busy village inn. This was the week of the Glorious Twelfth, of course, the opening of the hunting season, and the place was packed to the rafters.

  The boy slipped into the Bird in Hand’s noisy taproom. Jardine hesitated. He didn’t want whoever was in that taproom to know he’d been found out.

  He went around to the side of the inn, where the diamond-paned windows were too smeared with soot and goodness knew what to see inside. He took out his knife and soon had one casement open a fraction, enough to see inside.

  The boy was nowhere to be seen. Damn!

  The time he’d lost while he tried to find a way in had meant he’d lost the boy, too. He scanned the patrons who sat around tables with foaming tankards in their hands, but there was no one he recognized. Certainly, the man he’d expected to see wasn’t there.

  He searched the faces again. Perhaps . . . A bent old man rose from his table and walked slowly, a little unsteadily, to the door. Some helpful lad put a hand under his elbow to support him, and when the old man turned his head to thank the lad, Jardine suffered a shock.

  Yet, he’d known it had to be. He’d known from the moment he’d seen that bloody ribbon.

  Faulkner.

  Hell.

  Jardine set his jaw. He wanted to storm into that inn and knock Faulkner’s teeth down his conniving throat.

  The rotten swine was using Louisa.

  Now her betrothal made some sort of sense, didn’t it? For some reason known only to that Machiavellian mind, Faulkner wanted her to get close to Radleigh.

  Bastard! One did not force civilians into such dangerous and sensitive work.

  Jardine strode away, thinking furiously. Louisa had fallen into Faulkner’s orbit because of that damned business with the Duchess of Lyle’s diary. Bloody Max! Why had he seen fit to involve his sister, even peripherally, in something like that? Max knew what Faulkner was. How could he let the old man get his manipulative and very grubby hands on her?

  Max ought to be horsewhipped . . . But no, that wasn’t fair, was it? Who could have foreseen that Faulkner would grasp an opportunity to recruit a new operative? Jardine hadn’t dreamed of it, that was certain.

  Why? The question pounded through his brain as he strode back to the house.

  Why would Faulkner want Louisa at this party? What did he have to gain by sending someone so inexperienced . . . Was she inexperienced, though? She’d planted that ribbon with the aplomb of a seasoned professional. Too bad for her that he was by nature the most suspicious of men. Any casual observer would not have given her movements a second thought.

  He frowned. Had Faulkner trained Louisa in secret for this work? Was she here for the same reason Jardine was? And if Faulkner had known she’d be here and the reason for her presence, why hadn’t he briefed Jardine accordingly?

  Too many questions. And he’d be damned if he’d go to Faulkner for answers, or at least, not immediately. Might as well keep the element of surprise up his sleeve. He had bugger-all else to his advantage, it seemed.

  When he cooled down, he’d be sure to think this through logically, but he was too unsettled by this new discovery—not to mention his recent round with Louisa—to think with any semblance of clarity.

  What did that blue ribbon mean?

  He’d been striding along without consciously thinking of where he was going and almost left the screen of the wood without dousing his lantern. Grimly, he extinguished the light. He’d send Ives to sniff around the inn, report on Faulkner’s movements.

  As for Louisa . . . Oh, Louisa he’d handle personally.

  DESPITE not gaining her bed until almost dawn, Louisa rose early, ready to start the day.

  She never missed her morning ride. It was an ingrained habit, one that her darling Miniver depended on. They always went out, even on the most dismal day, even when Louisa had danced the night away at some ball or other. For some reason, it had become a point of honor never to miss.

  She shook her head as a thought occurred. That she never missed a day showed exactly how dull and predictable her life had been to this point.

  As a girl, how often she’d longed to give her pony his head and gallop from her family home, through the fields of the home farm, far beyond the estate’s boundaries, and out into the world. She wouldn’t stop until she reached Scotland—or had an adventure—whichever came first.

  And then her father had died. Well, why wrap it in clean linen? Tobias Brooke had killed himself. She’d known all along his fall on the hunting field had been due to uncharacteristically reckless riding. No, not simply reckless. Wantonly dangerous. Max knew it, too, though they’d never spoken the truth to one another.

  Their beloved father had left them, and from that moment, Louisa had been terrified. Desperate to keep her home and her family intact. Holding everything together while Max went out to work and her mother collapsed with grief and self-pity.

  Today, with a wistful glance toward the stables, Louisa broke her habit and instead donned a dark blue walking dress and a becoming chip straw hat for her stroll to the village. She hoped Miniver wouldn’t fret. The dear would have an extra lump of sugar today as an apology for Louisa’s missing their regular appointment.

  She had an appointment with a far different character. Or, at least, it was to be hoped she did.

  She still hadn’t decided what she’d say to him.

  The two-mile walk to the village passed in mental debate. She barely registered the scent of heather and sun-drenched grasses mingled in the air. The Derbyshire countryside, with its peaks and rocky moors, would have to be explored some other time. Her focus remained fixed.

  The distant crack of guns made her start. Oh, of course, the shooting would be under way. The beaters would be out, sending flurries of grouse skyward. She shaded her eyes from the strengthening sun and looked up into a near cloudless sky.

  There. A flock of birds arrowed upward. One, two, three halted, arrested mid-flight, then plummeted to earth, their eventual resting places swallowed by the thick wood that stood between the moor and the road that led into town.

  Now, the dogs would fetch the kill, holding the limp, feathered bodies tenderly in their mouths so as not to maul them.

  She walked on, glad of an excuse to stay away. She preferred inanimate targets to birds these days.

  The road eventually wound into the village, a single row of buildings and cottages on either si
de. A pretty, picturesque place, as so many English villages were, culminating in the church at the end of a lane, and opposite that, a green with an enormous horse chestnut tree.

  The shops had opened and some displayed a selection of their wares in barrows outside.

  And there was the Bird in Hand. She’d reasoned that if Faulkner were in the vicinity, he would most probably put up at the village’s only inn.

  Of course, she knew better than to walk into the establishment and inquire after the head of the secret service. Quite apart from the damage asking for a man would do to a spinster’s reputation, Faulkner might not use his own name here.

  She wondered, for the first time, why he lurked in the vicinity rather than remaining in his headquarters in London. She’d always assumed he was the puppet master that set all his agent marionettes dancing. Now, here he was, “in the field,” as Max termed it, waiting for word.

  If finding that list were so important that he’d become personally involved, why would he entrust such a matter to her?

  Only, he hadn’t, had he? He’d entrusted the mission to Harriet.

  And Harriet had abandoned her post.

  The notion still rankled. What had taken Harriet away? Had she discovered something important? Had that note even been in her hand? Louisa couldn’t recall ever seeing an example of Harriet’s writing.

  Oh.

  “Oh God!” she whispered, furiously replaying the events of that morning in her mind.

  What if Harriet had been taken? What if Radleigh already knew that she, Louisa, was involved in a scheme to recover the list of names?

  Cold panic swept over her in waves. Her gaze darted right and left. She felt an overwhelming need to be with people. Not alone and vulnerable like this.

  Blindly, she entered a shop, a haberdasher’s. The abrupt tinkle of the bell overhead as she opened the door made her start.

  She sent a quick, nervous look over her shoulder, but outside it seemed as if everyone went normally about their business. Had someone followed her? They might have done, quite easily. How would she know?

  Suddenly, she was afraid. More afraid than she’d been last night. Then, all this cloak-and-dagger business had still seemed like a game.