Sins of a Virgin (Sinners Trio)

by Anna Randol

  “I told him.” Canterbury strolled into the room carrying an additional plate of toast.

  Ian sighed in resignation. “I’ll lose my reputation for being omniscient if you reveal I learn information in such a mundane manner.”

  Canterbury set the tray on the table as far away from Ian as possible. “The only one who mistakenly believes that reputation is you.”

  Ian leaned across the table to claim a piece of toast even though two remained untouched on his plate. “Huntford has kept you alive through three murder attempts. That says something in his favor.”

  “But that the three events were able to occur does not,” said Clayton.

  “Yet she trusts him so much she didn’t tell us she’d been thrown into a river and nearly burned to death. I think the implications are obvious.” Ian’s brows waggled, but his eyes were serious.

  Madeline kept her chin up and refused to look away. “That Gabriel’s competent, nothing more. If he continues to guard me, his life will be in danger. I want him to approach the situation with open eyes.”

  Clayton nodded once. “Tell him then.”

  Ian pointed at her with a piece of toast. “Might as well. It’s not as if the government thought to swear us to secrecy or any such thing. You could shout it from the rooftops if you desired.”

  Madeline sucked in a breath, feeling as if the floor had disappeared under her feet. She’d stayed awake half the night perfecting arguments to win them over. Now, their easy acceptance left her unbalanced. “But if he betrays us, none of us would be safe.”

  “If you thought there was any possibility of that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Although Clayton was calm, he didn’t look up from the tea he was stirring. She sensed that she’d hurt him by not coming to him first with her problems.

  “Besides, if Huntford shows signs of gossiping, I’ll kill him.” Ian bit into his toast with far too much relish.

  Perhaps if she’d been forced to argue her case, she would have convinced herself that telling Gabriel was the right thing, but as it was, she still hesitated. “But the knowledge might put him in danger—”

  Clayton tapped his spoon dry on the rim of his cup, his gaze hooded. “As you pointed out, he’s already in danger.”

  She twisted her napkin until it balled in her fist.

  As Clayton watched her, a fraction of the tension eased from his expression. He retrieved the abused cloth from her hand. “We’ve told people who we are before.”

  Without the napkin, Madeline began creasing her skirt. “Yes, other spies, couriers. But even then they didn’t know our real identities.” The last syllable sounded distinctly like a whine.

  Enough. When had she become so weak-willed and vacillating? Why did she care if Gabriel knew about her? If he thought her more detestable? She had to focus on her priorities, which were capturing the man trying to kill her and completing this auction.

  Ian glanced pointedly at the mangled napkin on the table. “You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?”

  The reminder of her goals bolstered her enough to laugh. “Not in any permanent fashion.”

  Gabriel rubbed the weariness from his eyes as Canterbury showed him into the study. The idea of sleeping had been laughable after he’d returned home from the ball last night, so he’d resorted to his favorite sleep tonic—prowling the streets of London for criminals and information until he was too exhausted to stand.

  The first part of the night had been a waste. It had been far too late to question any more of Billingsgate’s servants, and the few of the man’s terrified former lovers he’d found could shed no light on the killings. But while that particular investigation had provided no new leads, the night had improved in a seedy, little tavern by the dock. If the information he’d discovered was accurate, it was worth far more than a night’s sleep.

  Madeline sat behind the desk, the first clear sunlight in days greedily clinging to her.

  She looked clean, fresh, and altogether delectable. He, on the other hand, had barely time enough to change out of his filthy clothes from last night and scramble over here in time for their meeting.

  Their eyes met as he approached, and for a brief moment, awareness of last night simmered in her expression. He knew it must be in his as well because it was impossible not to remember his lips on her body, the imprint of her nails on his shoulders as he drove her to ecstasy.

  Or to remember the way she flaunted herself at the ball afterward. But it had been too late. He’d seen her stripped of everything, clothing and defenses. He meant to have her. Just as he meant to finally learn the truth.

  Whether or not her two dubious friends agreed.

  Gabriel nodded briefly at Campbell and Maddox, who stood flanking the desk. Campbell observed him with barely disguised dislike and Maddox with fascinated amusement.

  Had she decided not to tell him? Was that why she’d brought in the reinforcements?

  Madeline drew in a deep breath and met his gaze, the heat now extinguished. “While I was in prison awaiting my execution, a man came to me. He offered me a choice. I could hang or I could work for him. For the past ten years, I have been in the service of His Majesty’s government as a spy.”

  A spy.

  Given her talents, Gabriel had expected something of the sort, but hearing her straightforward confession was a bit staggering. The revelation tumbled about his brain for a few moments before he began to grasp the ramifications.

  With her beauty, there was no question about how they would have used her. She would have been a valuable resource. His gut clenched.

  Hell. How old had she said she was? Fourteen? “Why did they choose you?”

  She glanced down at her scanty bodice and the abundance of curves spilling over the top, then gave him a pointed look.

  “But there must have been other girls—women—he could have selected.”

  “The guards hadn’t touched me.”

  “What?” Gabriel asked even as a sick feeling warned him he wouldn’t like the answer. He knew of abuses, especially to young, unprotected women in Newgate.

  But he still sent women to prison, many in fact. It was his job as a Runner. What was his alternative? To leave criminals on the streets because they were women?

  “I managed to convince the guards they didn’t want me.”

  “How?”

  “By doing the same thing I do now. I watched them. I knew who would fear me if I claimed to have the pox. Who had daughters at home I could compare myself to. Who would back away at the sight of vomit.”

  Her face was blank as she recited her list. This time, he didn’t begrudge her the shield she pulled around herself. She shouldn’t have to experience it again.

  She shouldn’t have had to experience it at all.

  In the absence of guards for pummeling, he was tempted to throw Maddox and Campbell out the window. They were, after all, the only reason he couldn’t pull Madeline in his arms.

  Because of their presence, however, she was able to continue. “I knew which women would shield me and which would trade me to the guards. It turned out I had a talent for noticing little things about people and using them to my advantage. So I perfected that skill, and in return, I escaped hanging.”

  “Then why this auction?”

  A thin smile pulled her lips. “Haven’t you heard? The war is over. We were given our pardons and let go.”

  “Our pardons?” He should have known.

  Maddox bowed. “Criminals, the lot of us. Well, not anymore, I suppose.”

  “You worked together then?”

  “We were a team.” Pride crept into Madeline’s voice, the first emotion since she’d started her explanation. “Does that answer your questions about me?”

  It hadn’t even begun to, but he intended to find out the rest after he’d expelled their audience. “The attempts on your life?”

  Madeline repeated what the note had said about Paris and about the threat.

  “Do you know who wo
uld have a reason to hold a grudge in Paris?” Gabriel asked.

  She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “The list is extensive, but everything we have pursued so far is a dead end.”

  “I have a lead.”

  Maddox and Campbell glanced at each other, then broke formation and approached, the animosity in Campbell’s eyes tempered by interest. “What did you find?”

  Gabriel hoped Madeline would follow them, but she remained seated at the desk, content with the distance between them.

  “The fellow who tossed Madeline into the river. I’ve discovered his identity.”

  Madeline’s lips parted with a swift inhalation. “Who is he?”

  The tiny gleam of admiration in her eye made him long to puff out his chest. “A man by the name of Nicholas Toole, who suddenly has a large amount of money to spend.”

  Campbell’s brows lowered. “Where do we find him?”

  “You don’t find him anywhere. I will arrest him at a high-stakes game of cards he frequents.”

  “You’ll spook him. You look too much like a Runner,” Campbell said.

  “And you could do better?”

  Maddox clapped him on the back. “We’ll deliver him to you in a nice package. Not too many pieces missing.”

  There was no way he’d trust Campbell and Maddox on their own, but they had a point. The organizers of the game hired spotters to raise the alarm if the law ever came too close. And Gabriel knew his face had become well-known to the criminals of London. “Meet me at the corner of Ash and East Thicket at midnight. I’ll tell you where the game is to be held then.”

  Maddox shook his head at Madeline. “Not a very trusting sort, is he?”

  Not of these two. He wouldn’t risk Madeline’s friends deciding to act without him.

  Campbell’s head jerked once. “We’ll be there.”

  “Good. Now I need to discuss the auction with Madeline.”

  Campbell and Maddox glanced at Madeline and she shrugged. “I can handle Gabriel.” As the door clicked shut behind them, Madeline leaned back in her chair. “So are you content? The puzzle of my existence has been solved.”

  The picture was indeed clearer, but he was nowhere near content. Gabriel closed the distance between them. “So all those stories you taunted me with, marching across France, the czar, those were the truth?”

  His proximity did nothing to discomfit her. If anything, it seemed to amuse her. “I’ve never lied to you.” Her lips nudged upward at his dubious expression. “Just told the truth in an unbelievable way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the truth is far stranger than any lie I could have created.”

  Her tongue swept her lips in a gesture that might have been nervous if it wasn’t so damned seductive. He followed the path of her tongue with his thumb. “So what happened last night?”

  “Which part? The ball, the attempted kidnapping, or the pleasuring each other by the fountain?”

  Had he expected her to be timid about it? “Definitely the fountain.”

  “What part confused you? Or do you just want me to recount it in erotic detail?”

  His body was happy to agree, but he was determined to avoid thinking with certain throbbing pieces of his anatomy. “What did it mean?”

  She sighed. “That neither of us can resist playing with fire.”

  “Should we resist?”

  “Unless you intend to marry me.”

  Gabriel choked. “I—”

  “Have no intention of that, correct?” Madeline asked, scooting her chair back, her voice wary. “You said you didn’t.” She looked as though he’d lied about having the plague.

  “I have no intention of marrying anyone.”

  “Good. Then unless you have a fortune I don’t know about, we can’t risk another event like last night.”

  Gabriel’s hand’s tightened at his sides. “Does it have to be about money?”

  She was fast coming to the conclusion that a romantic lurked somewhere deep inside Gabriel’s heart. She didn’t have the luxury of being one. “What else should it be about?”

  He picked up a quill from the desk and trailed the feather along the edge of her bodice. “Pleasure.”

  She gasped, her eyes closing, not strong enough to draw away, not when she could so clearly remember the sensations of last night. He freed her breasts from the low neckline of her bodice and circled the already taut peaks with light flicks of the feather.

  “What good is pleasure?” she managed to ask in a credibly audible voice.

  He lifted her from the chair to the edge of the desk and raised the hem of her dress, baring her legs. The feather traced a torturous path up the inside of her thigh. “Do you really need to ask that?” His fingers replaced the quill.

  Despite her resolve, her body was just as susceptible to him as it had been last night. But while he could distract, she wouldn’t let him deter. “Do you think we could leave it at this? That neither of us would be tempted to take this further?” She wasn’t that much of a saint. Even this very moment, she wanted to lie back on the desk and feel the smooth wood on her back as he drove into her.

  “Would it matter if we did?”

  “I’d be lacking my only valuable commodity.”

  Gabriel’s fingers paused. “Then you were telling the truth when you said you were a virgin?”

  Madeline scrambled away from his hand. “I told you everything I said was the truth.” What good did it do to share her secrets if he still thought her a liar?

  Gabriel caught her before she could escape him. “Then what was your role as a spy?”

  “To seduce information from the men I was ordered to pursue.”

  If Gabriel had said anything at all or even just raised an eyebrow, she would’ve had the strength to let Gabriel form his own conclusions. But he was silent. And so she had to prove she was telling the truth even though she could think of no logical reason for the necessity. “In case you didn’t know, there are more ways to pleasure a man than by spreading my legs. Like using my mouth,” she said, her shoulders aching from the effort it took to appear nonchalant.

  But Gabriel refused her bait. “There must have been men who weren’t satisfied with that.”

  She hated not knowing if he believed her or not. “Ian procured a certain drug that when mixed with alcohol, had a strong sedative effect.”

  “You put them to sleep?”

  She nodded. “Except for a few who refused to drink, then a blow to the head achieved the same effect. I arranged the room so they’d think we spent a tempestuous night together before they’d passed out.”

  The skin next to Gabriel’s eyes crinkled. “You didn’t happen to give me anything last night, did you?”

  He believed her. Her heart could have floated from her chest. “Last night? Why? Did you think something happened last night—”

  Gabriel caught her chin with a growl and kissed her. “I couldn’t have imagined that.”

  Her blood was coursing too quickly through her veins to taunt him further. But when he would have claimed her lips again, she turned her head aside. She had to make him see the futility of this before she was lost. “How would I support myself while we spend our nights making passionate love?” And mornings and afternoons.

  “I would provide for you.”

  “How is that different than whoring? Simply not calling it by its true name doesn’t make it nobler.”

  “So every woman who sleeps with a man is a trollop?”

  Madeline paused, Gabriel’s point surprisingly valid. Was it possible to make love to a man simply for the joy of it? But she found the flaw in his question. “She is if she’s using her body to support herself.”

  “But what if she isn’t? What if she’s with the man because they desire each other? Care for each other?”

  The walls around her heart trembled. If she let Gabriel continue, they’d crumble. And the last thing she needed was for him to convince her that a night with him was wort
h a lifetime of poverty. She placed her hand on Gabriel’s chest and pushed away. “If I meet that woman, I’ll ask her.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Gabriel knew which house belonged to the man who sired him much in the same way he knew which shopkeepers sold tainted meat. There was a foul stench that couldn’t be disguised. The butler showed him into the study where Northgate stood next to a large pile of ledgers on his desk.

  Gabriel stiffened. “There’s no need for you to be here in person, Northgate.”

  “I’m quite concerned with the outcome.”

  Gabriel had to fight through his contempt in order to shrug. Every moment his time was wasted here was a moment when he wasn’t finding the evidence he needed on Billingsgate. “Do as you will, it’s no concern of mine.”

  Gabriel sat at the desk, leaving Northgate to find a chair elsewhere, and flipped open the first ledger. While Northgate wasn’t his murderer, Gabriel did hold a slight, petty hope the man’s solicitor was robbing him blind.

  His fingers trailed down the neat rows of figures adding the numbers and checking for inconsistencies. Incomes from rents on three different estates were distributed to butchers, coal vendors, servant wages, and everything else required to run an empire as large as Northgate’s.

  Beatrice Huntford.

  His finger stilled on his mother’s name. Next to it was listed a particularly large outlay of funds. What the devil? Three entries down, the money was logged back in. As Gabriel continued through the pages, a pattern built—Northgate withdrew a large sum of money from his accounts in his mother’s name, then a few days later, returned the funds. Gabriel’s head throbbed as he flipped through the ledgers. Every month was the same. Every blasted month. The money went out, then was returned.

  Gabriel finally looked up at Northgate through narrowed eyes.

  The other man relaxed in a leather armchair, his fingers loosely steepled together. “How is your mother, by the way?”

  Gabriel closed the ledger and slowly looked up at the marquess. Criminals often asked after their victims, receiving sick pleasure from the answer. It didn’t surprise Gabriel that Northgate was the same. “You lost the right to ask that question long ago. Perhaps you should ask about the woman you plan to deflower instead.”