One Wicked Sin

by Nicola Cornick

  I am no good for him and I never shall be.

  It is my fault that he was imprisoned and is now on the run in terrible peril. I could not protect him. I have failed him.

  He felt Lottie’s touch on his arm and threw her off. The pain inside him spun like a Catherine wheel, spark after spark of grief.

  “I do not want to talk about him,” he said. His voice was so rough it did not sound like his own.

  Her chin came up. “I understand that you must be upset—”

  Upset?

  “You have no idea.” He bit out the words, turning on her, blind in his fury and desperation, wanting to be alone. “Now go.”

  “No. Ethan, you need me.”

  “I don’t want you here.” He did not know how to make her leave. She stood there stubbornly, holding her ground with that damnable obstinacy he was beginning to see was one of her defining characteristics, and she would not leave.

  He stepped back, raised his hands. “Go before I put you from the room myself.”

  She walked right up to him. “Do it, then.”

  Slowly his hands came down to rest on her shoulders, lightly, stiffly, as though he was afraid of what he might do to her.

  “Lottie—” It was her last chance.

  She stayed still beneath his touch.

  “I saw you in London after Northesk spoke to you about Arland,” she said softly. “I know you care for him as a father should care for his child.”

  “I do not.” His voice shook.

  I cannot afford to care.

  “We cannot always choose how we feel.” She sounded as though she knew.

  “I chose to bring him into the world,” Ethan burst out. “And then I could not protect him.” The anger flared in him, died. “I am just like my father,” he said quietly.

  “You are nothing like Farne.” Now Lottie sounded angry. “When he took you from your mother it was an exercise of power. He cares nothing for doing the right thing! Whereas you—” She made a little helpless gesture. “Well, you would not be here now, would you, if you did not hold fast to your principles.”

  Something eased a fraction inside Ethan, like the very tiniest slipping of an intolerably tight knot. “You give me too much credit.” His voice was rusty. “Let me tell you how it was and then you will see.”

  Lottie said nothing, but she moved away and sat down on the edge of his bunk, curling her legs up under her like a child settling itself for a bedtime story.

  “I was nineteen when Arland was conceived,” Ethan said, “twenty when he was born. His mother was older, a French aristocrat whose family had fallen on hard times during the Revolution. Most lost their heads. Louise survived through selling herself body and soul.”

  He saw a flicker of expression in Lottie’s face. “Poor girl,” she said softly. “Did you love her?”

  Ethan shook his head. “No, I did not. I wanted her and I was flattered that she should choose me of all the gallants who flocked to her door, but I was young and careless and I loved no one but myself.” He sighed. “Nevertheless, when I knew she was carrying my child I swore to care for them both.” He smiled faintly. “Truth to tell, I could not be certain that Arland was my child—until I saw him.”

  “Is the resemblance very strong?” Lottie asked.

  “Undeniable.” Ethan said. “The moment I set eyes on him…” He frowned. How could he explain the sense of bewilderment, the miraculous disbelief, that had possessed him when he, barely more than a child himself, had seen the life that he and Louise had created? Except that the emotion had terrified him, too, and in the end it was the fear that had won.

  “I loved him,” he said with difficulty, “but I was too immature to accept the responsibility. I behaved like a coward. Louise had an aunt and uncle still living, farming in the Midi. When she said she was going south to join them I—” he made a hopeless gesture “—I let her go. To my eternal shame—” He swallowed hard. “I did not offer to accompany her, to try to make a new life with her and my son. I let her go alone and I let her take Arland away.”

  “You were barely twenty years old—” Lottie began. But Ethan brushed aside her attempt at comfort. “I was old enough to father a child but not brave enough to be a father to that child,” he said scathingly. “Yes, I was young and poor and dependent on the favor of the Emperor. I had nothing to offer them but myself. But that could have been enough.”

  There was a silence in the hot little room. Down below came the shouts of the cellarer as he rolled the barrels of the beer into the taproom.

  Lottie sighed and stirred slightly. “What happened?” she said.

  “For ten years I told myself that Arland was better off without me,” Ethan said painfully. “I told myself that he had a secure home, and a family, and that in contrast I could give him nothing. My behavior grew more and more reckless.” He moved his shoulders restlessly beneath his jacket. The room was stifling. He wanted to be out in the fresh air, to try to clear his head of these feverish, desperate thoughts and come up with a cool, rational plan of how he might save Arland. But of course he could not leave. He was locked in, a prisoner, useless, emasculated.

  “I took on suicidal missions,” he said. “I felt as though I wanted to kill myself. I did kill others.” He shook his head sharply. “Oh, they tell me it made me a hero, that it was for a cause worth believing in, that men die in battle…. Only I know that my reasons were dark and twisted, not always prompted by principle, as people credit me.”

  “You were punishing yourself,” Lottie whispered.

  “Perhaps,” Ethan said. “Anyway, it did not serve. The need to see Arland grew stronger and stronger. It did not diminish. So once I had made a little money and bought some land I wrote to Louise.” He stopped. He could remember every searing word of the letter he had received in reply, an indictment of his selfishness, tearing apart the defense he had carefully constructed, the belief that he had been doing the right thing in turning his back on his son.

  Through your utter indifference toward Arland you have forfeited the right ever to call him your son…

  He had known it for the truth it was. He was not worthy of the child. He had pretended it was best for the boy to let his mother take him away. He had soothed his conscience by thinking that he was a bad example, a man with nothing to offer, the wild, bastard son of a whore-mongering father. He had told himself that Louise and her family could offer Arland the home and the steady life that he never could. But it had all been lies to cover his weakness. The truth was that he had failed. He had failed as a father. He had failed his son.

  “What did she say?” Lottie asked.

  Ethan gave a faint smile. “She told me that I had left it too late. She had never told Arland his father’s name and that as far as her family was concerned, I was dead to them all.”

  Lottie winced. “Like as not she did not really mean it,” she said. “We all say harsh things in the heat of the moment.”

  Ethan shrugged. “Louise had justification,” he said. “God knows, I deserved nothing from her. I had never sent them a scrap of money or anything else to help them, even though I knew that the Emperor’s taxes were punitive and the harvests had been poor.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I wrote to Arland.” He had written, time and again, as reckless to regain his son as he had been to repudiate him. He had snatched moments in between campaigns, with the heat and the stench and the filth and the despair of battle all around. He had not known what to say to the son he had never met, and yet he had tried because it had been the only thing he could do.

  “His mother only gave him the letters when she died,” he said. “And then Arland came looking for me.”

  “He wanted a father,” Lottie said softly. “I understand that.”

  Ethan’s stomach lurched. “He lied about his age to join the Emperor’s army,” he said. “It was the only way that he could get to me.”

  “He sounds just like you,” Lottie said. “I expect you did that twenty years ago.�
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  “I did,” Ethan admitted. “But that does not mean I wanted my son to do the same.

  “I wanted to send him back to Angeville,” he added, “but it was too late and Arland refused to go. The cavalry was already at Fuentes de Onoro. I tried to protect him, to keep him close. But I failed in that, too. We were captured. Then I tried to keep him out of the hands of the British. I offered a ransom, I offered myself…” He stopped. The despair had left him feeling hollow and drained. “You see how it is, Lottie,” he said. “I have failed Arland every step of the way.”

  Lottie came across to him and put her arms about him. “All I see,” she said, “is a man who has had to overcome so much, who has made mistakes and has tried to put them right.”

  Ethan tried to pull away from her. He did not want her sympathy because he did not deserve it. Nor did he want anyone to draw close to him. But Lottie would not be rejected now. She rested her cheek against his chest and kept her arms about him and he felt the resistance in him shiver and start to dissolve, like a veil parting, falling away as he reached out hungrily to her for comfort.

  “I know what it is like to want a father to admire and respect,” Lottie said. She gave him a fierce little shake. “There is much to admire in you, Ethan Ryder, and Arland recognizes that. You are all he has left. Do not deny him the right to love you if he chooses. Live up to his regard.”

  The crack in Ethan’s heart gaped wider. There was a moment when he resisted, teetering on the edge, and then he pulled Lottie to him fiercely, holding her close, as though he would never let her go again. He spoke urgently, heedless of her loyalties now, heedless of what he might be giving away.

  “I would have got him out of there, Lottie,” he said. “I had a plan to help him. Twice I had tried to free him, only to be thwarted, but I would have tried again and again….”

  Lottie hushed him like a child. “Shh, I know. I know you would.” She rubbed her cheek against his chest. “I understand.”

  He wanted to sink into the feeling then, to grasp the comfort she offered and hold it tightly, never letting it go. Once, in London, he had felt this impossible grief for Arland, and he had taken Lottie and used her physically as a means to forget, as an escape, for a few desperate moments, from the torture. Now, though, the solace he wanted went deeper. He did not want to lose himself in her body only for the pain to reassert itself as soon as his pleasure was spent. He wanted her always to be there so that they could shield each other, giving and taking, so that he could protect her as well as draw strength from her.

  It seemed impossible when there was so much to divide them.

  He drew away from her a little and looked down into her face.

  “Lottie…” he began, although he was not sure what he was trying to say.

  “Hush.” She pressed her fingers to his lips. She was smiling a little but her eyes swam with tears. “Don’t say anything. Just hold me.”

  He did. They stood locked together for a very long time and he felt at peace and he knew that somehow this time he had crossed a line and there would be no going back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT WAS A SULTRY late-August night, heavy and dark with the oppressive heat that precedes a thunderstorm. Lottie could not sleep. Her mind ran like a rat in a trap, scampering from thoughts of Ethan locked in his airless little room under the eaves at The Bear Hotel to his son, alone and friendless, being hunted through the length of the kingdom. She rolled over, thumped the pillow, then threw herself down again with a sigh. It was too hot to sleep anyway but her thoughts gave her no rest. Ethan’s powerful frustration had communicated itself to her along with a desperate desire to do something, anything, to help.

  She had spent the afternoon in the markets and shops, drifting from one place to another, listening to gossip, trying to pick up the slightest hint that anyone knew of the whereabouts of Arland Ryder. She had sent Margery out to make discreet enquiries amongst the servants and mill workers, dropping the delicate hint of a reward for information. She had heard nothing. Most of the gossip had been about her; everyone, it seemed, had heard of her jaunt to London and now the on dit was that she had shot her former husband with an antique pistol before riding off bareback on one of Ethan’s carriage horses. Encouragingly, most people seemed to applaud this imaginary action. Gregory Cummings was a banker, and many people mistrusted the grotesquely rich in these times of war, food shortages and hardship for so many.

  The bedroom curtains billowed in a sudden draft at the open window. There was a scrambling sound and then a man tumbled into the room and lay winded on the floor. Lottie grabbed the chamber pot and brandished it threateningly. He might be a very incompetent burglar but she was taking no chances.

  “Don’t scream!” The figure scrambled to his feet and raised a pleading hand. He staggered toward Lottie and grabbed her arm. He was panting hard, a long tear down his prison uniform sleeve and a slash to his face that oozed blood.

  Lottie stared and dropped the pot with a loud clatter.

  “Arland,” she said.

  The Marquess of Northesk had borne a similarity to Ethan in his features and bearing, but the likeness had been elusive and the coloring of the two men completely different. Arland, though, was the image of his father. There was no mistaking it. It was just as Ethan had said. Looking at Arland was like looking at a mirror image of Ethan. Except, on second glance, it was not. There was something so young and untried in the boy’s face compared to the strength and watchfulness in the man. Arland was already tall and broad, but he still had the slight clumsiness of youth, a gangling quality as though he had not yet grown into his own body. And he looked emaciated, ill and exhausted beneath the disfiguring bruises and cuts of his face.

  Lottie felt her heart jerk and start to beat harder.

  “They said to come here,” Arland gasped. His English was good but he had a strong French accent, almost exotic. He caught Lottie’s arm, panting for breath. “Can you hide me?” he said. “Please?”

  “Who—” Lottie began, but Arland shook his head.

  “There’s no time to explain! Please, they’re close behind me—”

  As though to underline his words there was a pounding of steps outside, wild shouts and a volley of knocks on the front door.

  “They will find you if they search the house,” Lottie said. Her mind was spinning, running from one plan to another, searching for an idea. It was impossible to give him up to the authorities. In the past she might have been prepared to betray Ethan but this was different. Ethan could take care of himself. Arland was a boy, too young to have been made a pawn in such a dirty game of war. He had already seen too much and suffered too much. Besides, Lottie knew that she could never betray Ethan again now, least of all through his son. Something had happened between them that afternoon when he had finally confided in her, something fundamental and profound, something that tied her to him more tightly than self-interest or greed or security ever could. She was not sure she cared for it. Selfless love was scarcely her specialty. But she did not seem able to escape it now.

  “Take your clothes off,” she said abruptly.

  Arland recoiled violently from her. “I beg your pardon, madame?”

  “Take your clothes off, hide them and get into my bed.” The hammering at the door grew louder. Lottie could hear Margery’s voice and the drawing back of the bolts.

  “Do as I say,” Lottie added sharply. “Hurry!”

  She saw the understanding dawn in Arland’s eyes and pushed him toward the bed. Grabbing her swansdown negligee, she ran to the armoire, pulled out some clothes of Ethan’s and scattered them on the floor, entangling them with her own garments as though both sets had been discarded in a frenzy of passion. She hurried to the door. No need to disorder her hair; she had been roused from her bed by Arland’s arrival and a quick glance in the pier glass told her she looked tumbled and rumpled, hopefully sufficient to distract the soldiers from their duty. She glanced again at the negligee and the trans
parent nightgown beneath. Oh yes, there was plenty there to distract the search party.

  The hall was already seething with soldiers. Margery stood with a candle in her hand, looking small and frightened.

  Lottie stopped at the top of the stairs.

  “What is going on here?” She spoke with all the imperious authority of the Dukes of Palliser and saw the group of men freeze and turn to gaze up at her. She was incensed to see that they had already started to rifle carelessly through her possessions. The small table with its pretty flower arrangement had been overturned and one of the hangings pulled from the wall. She could hear raised voices in the parlor and the tramp of footsteps.

  “Soldiers, madam!” Margery was trembling. “They say that the escaped prisoner is here.” She cast Lottie a pitiful glance. “Are we all to be murdered in our beds, ma’am?”

  “Of course not!” Lottie spoke bracingly as she came down the stairs. “I never heard such nonsense.” She turned to the soldiers who were looking variously bashful, lascivious or nervous according to their dispositions. “Or do you mean we will be trampled to death by this mob of ruffians? Very likely!” Her eye fell on the officer who appeared to be in charge, a fair, tall young man who looked barely out of the nursery.

  “Lieutenant, what is the meaning of this intrusion?”

  The lieutenant blushed. “My apologies for disturbing you, ma’am. Your maid is correct in that a dangerous prisoner has been seen near here. It is my task to recapture him.”

  “How desperately dramatic,” Lottie murmured. “And there was I thinking that nothing exciting ever happened in Wantage. I fear you will not find your fugitive behind my tapestries, however. Kindly ask your men to show more respect for my possessions.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The lieutenant blushed more deeply. “Careful there,” he barked, as one of his men fell over his own feet and almost knocked over the bookshelf in the process. He turned back to Lottie.