Sinful

by Charlotte Featherstone

  “I believe you,” he soothed. “Here,” Matthew whispered, reaching beneath the blanket. “Here is Lady Bess.” He withdrew a doll dressed in a ball gown and Sarah clasped it like a lifeline to her chest.

  She had the appearance of a young woman, a startling beauty, but her mind was clearly that of a child.

  “Oooh,” Sarah moaned, “it hurts. My tummy…”

  “My lord, your sister is suffering from appendicitis,” Richard announced from the foot of the bed. “We need to operate before her appendix bursts. If it ruptures and the poison goes into her abdomen—well, the odds are not in your sister’s favor. Your father has ref—”

  “Don’t listen to a goddamn word he says,” Matthew snarled.

  Richard momentarily froze, before gathering himself. “Yes, well, your father is disinclined to consent to such an operation.”

  Matthew flung himself up off the bed. “My father wouldn’t lift a finger to help her,” he hissed, “but I would do anything for her. So if she requires an operation, then you will do it.”

  Richard flushed crimson. “I cannot just perform a surgery, my lord. Your sister’s mental capacity—”

  “Is of no matter here. If you value your livelihood, Doctor, you will get started now.”

  “I…I need consent, my lord, and your sister, in her capacity, is unable to give it. And as her brother you have no say in her care. Now, if you were her legal guardian—”

  With a viscous oath, Matthew swept past them. “Prepare your things and be ready for my return. You will operate, Inglebright.”

  13

  Throwing open the door of the sitting room, Matthew barged into the room and found Miranda, his stepmother, lounging on a settee, looking at fashion plates. She was dressed in the height of fashion, her throat and wrists dripping with jewels. She did not look shocked to find him standing in her private salon, breathing fire.

  “Welcome home, my son,” she said with the skill of an actress. “Have you come to give your mama a kiss?”

  Christ, he despised this woman who had taken his mother’s place. He loathed her, couldn’t stand looking at her and the amused glint in her eyes.

  Her son…

  He cringed at the very thought.

  Ruthlessly he shackled her wrist and pulled her up from the settee. She was tall for a woman and able to look him in the eye. She did not even attempt to struggle with him. Instead, her back went rigid and the air of motherly affection was replaced with a venomous, calculating gleam in her eye.

  “You will tell your husband to consent to whatever the doctor deems necessary for Sarah,” he snarled between set teeth.

  She smirked and tried to tug free of his hold, but he tightened it, forcing her to bend back and look up at him. “Your father—”

  “You will tell your husband,” he ground out, “that you wish to consent to the operation. Do you understand me?”

  “And how do you expect me to persuade His Grace?” she snapped.

  “Why don’t you try using the allurements you cast when you got him to agree to marry you?”

  Her eyes turned to slits and her lips thinned. “I see your disposition has not improved. You’re still the same surly, sulking brat you always were. Darling Elizabeth’s little boy,” she taunted. “The little boy she didn’t want, the one she ran away from.”

  “Shut up,” he roared, tightening his hold. The bitch smiled, and he saw red. She always did know how to bait him. “I hate you as much as I ever did, but never more than now, knowing that you’d let your child suffer in pain.”

  “It’s better this way,” she sniffed. “You know that. She has no prospects, no life ahead of her.”

  “She’s your child!” he roared. Disgusted with her, he shook her, trying to shake sense into her.

  “She’s dead to me,” she shot back. “What do I want with an idiot like her? She brings me mortification and humiliation whenever I look at her. I want to be rid of her!”

  He tossed her back and she landed on the settee in a pile of silk and petticoats. In the sunlight, her jewels glistened around her throat. He had the urge to strangle her with them.

  “You disgust me,” he sneered. “You’re inhuman.”

  She laughed, and Matthew wondered when it was his stepmother had descended into madness. “And how would you know what it is to be human? If you want her saved, my lord, then do it yourself.”

  Matthew barged into Sarah’s room and prowled around the bed. Jane had removed her cloak and bonnet and rolled up her sleeves. Before her, on the commode, was a basin, along with a silver tray lined with instruments. She was in the process of pouring steaming water in the basin when he stormed in.

  “Begin,” he ordered.

  Inglebright was on the other side of the bed, his gaze fixed on Jane. When he turned to assess him, Matthew saw the question burning in the doctor’s eyes. It was not a question pertaining to Sarah, but Jane.

  They stared each other down as Jane worked silently. He watched her pour the water, then bend low to whisper something to Sarah. His sister seemed to calm, responding to the soft lilt of Jane’s voice.

  Matthew knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of that voice. To feel her hands gently ruffle his hair. It was calming. Peaceful. He needed that calm now.

  “Your father—”

  “I told you to begin. Now do so. I will deal with my father, you needn’t fear any repercussions.”

  “Richard,” Jane admonished, “he will stand by his word.”

  How Jane could have come to trust him, Matthew had no idea. The fact that she did, however, pleased him. He was scared to admit how much, actually.

  “All right then, Jane, you may begin. Two drops of ether.”

  It was late afternoon by the time they were done. Jane’s lower back was stinging from standing so long, and her feet ached. She couldn’t wait for a moment of privacy to untie her half boots and rub her toes. But she had a few things left to do before she could seek her own comfort.

  Jane went to the bed and checked once more on Sarah. She was breathing easy and her skin, while pale, was warm and dry. Peeling back the covers, she lifted the girl’s gown and made certain the dressing was intact. It was. She would have some pain there. Jane knew just how much, for Richard had removed her appendix last year. But it was nothing that a tincture of laudanum could not control. She stood staring at the girl, trying to find the resemblance of her brother in her lovely face. Sarah was fair, and Matthew dark. But both of them were tall and shared the same aquiline nose, no doubt a trait inherited from their father, the duke.

  Jane trembled, thinking of the man who had sired Sarah and Matthew. He had come storming into the room in the middle of the surgery, huffing and puffing like bellows. Any sane person, male or female, would have backed down from the imposing aristocrat, but Matthew had stood eye to eye with him, bellowing and huffing just as much as his father. The way he had protected his sister warmed her, gave her yet another confusing glimpse of him.

  Which man was he? Matthew, or the notorious rake?

  In the end, Matthew had squared off with his father in a verbal barrage, but Matthew had stood his ground, and won the battle. It had been too late to stop the surgery when his father had barged into the room, for Richard had already removed Sarah’s blackened appendix, and was in the process of repairing her.

  He had done an excellent job of it, Jane mused as she looked once more at the dressing. Sarah was fortunate it had been Richard, and not his father, who had done the surgery.

  Covering her up, Jane stood and stretched, rubbing her lower back as she did so. What she wouldn’t give for a good long soak in a warm tub.

  “Jane, may I see you?”

  Richard was standing in the doorway. She glanced in the direction of the chair in the corner of the room, where Matthew had quietly sat, watching them. He had drifted off to sleep.

  “Of course,” she whispered, tiptoeing past him. Silently she padded across the carpet and into the hall.
>
  “I thought we might go out into the garden. It’s spectacular.”

  “That would be lovely.”

  She followed him down the stairs and through a dark hallway that led out through the kitchen gardens. “I’ve already taken a walk,” he said as he strolled beside her, “and knew you would be desirous of the fresh air.”

  She was. On the drive over she had been taken with the view. It would be nice to see the grounds before she returned to Eden Park and Lady Blackwood.

  Once outside, Richard led her down a terraced staircase. At the bottom, it was if another world had opened up.

  “Oh, my,” she breathed. Shielding her eyes from the setting sun, she scanned the vista of trees, shrubs and flowers. In the distance there was a bridge that crossed a lake. On a hill on the other side of the water was a round Palladian-style temple.

  “Spectacular, isn’t it?”

  Jane glanced at Richard. “I…I can’t describe it. All this,” Jane said, sweeping her arm in a wide arch, “is the duke’s?”

  “Yes, and some of the forest, too.”

  Jane could not fathom owning something as glorious as this. To be able to walk out of the house and stroll through such beauty, she could hardly imagine it. There was a peace and tranquility in the vista lying before her that made Jane think of taking moonlit strolls and reading a book beneath a tree by the water’s edge.

  “There is a lovely little spot over here, with a bench.”

  She followed Richard down a stone pathway and sat on the iron bench. Beside her were peony bushes, whose buds were swelling, preparing to open. Next to her, Richard’s knee brushed her thigh.

  “Apologies.”

  “No harm done.”

  He smiled and reached out, brushing back a lock of hair that had fallen from her pins. When their gazes met, there was something in his eyes she had never seen before. “You cannot imagine how pleased I was seeing you standing there this afternoon,” he murmured, his voice much deeper than Jane had ever heard it. “Almost as though you were fated to be there, at my side. You are a helpmate, Jane. A wonderful nurse. A…special woman.”

  Jane didn’t know what to think, how to reply. A month ago she would have swooned at the thought of Richard speaking to her like this, but now, an image of Matthew flashed in her mind, and she realized that everything came back to him. Despite the fact he was Wallingford.

  “I have embarrassed you.”

  She shook her head, but her complexion told the truth. She was blushing, and she didn’t know what to say in return.

  “It’s been a long day. You’re tired.”

  “It has,” she agreed, stretching, trying to alleviate the burning in her back. “It was a rather early morning getting the bride ready, and now this.” She indicated the house, and everything that happened.

  “How did you come to be here?” she asked, hoping to change the track the conversation had taken.

  “Father,” he groaned. “He is the duke’s personal physician. It was my father who figured out who our patient was. The duke invited us here to thank us, but if you ask me, he brought us here to bribe us to keep our mouths closed about his son’s activities that night.”

  “Activities?”

  Richard pursed his lips, as though he was deciding whether or not to answer her question. “Well, I suppose you should know. The earl was in the East End at a gentleman’s supper club. He was auctioning off a painting he had done. It was…not in good taste,” Richard said with a grimace.

  “Oh,” she murmured, looking away.

  “His lordship has a reputation, Jane—”

  “I’m aware of it,” she admitted. But there was another side to him. She had glimpsed it.

  “So you know what he is?”

  A rake. A scoundrel, a womanizer. A heartbreaker.

  “I have a reasonable idea.”

  His hand rested on her knee, and he squeezed, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Stay away from him, Jane. He is not a man to be trifled with. From all accounts he is cold-blooded and cruel, and I would hate for you to be his victim.”

  Too late. She had seen that cruelty, been on the end of it, yet she had also seen such passion and warmth.

  “Well, then, shall we?” Richard asked. “I requested tea and you look as though you could use a strong cup.”

  “I’ll follow in a moment. I’d like a few more minutes out here. It’s so lovely and fresh. I can breathe,” she teased, “without choking on soot.”

  “Very well. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Jane watched Richard retreat up the path, and up the stone steps that led to the terrace. She waved when he turned back and looked at her. A movement in an upstairs window captured her attention and her hand lowered as she watched the white curtain move.

  Someone had been watching them.

  The window remained black, the curtain still, and finally, Jane rose from the bench and continued along the garden path, marveling at the fruit trees that were in full blossom. The quince blossoms were her favorite, so delicate and heavenly scented. Stopping, she grasped a handful of blossoms from a low-hanging branch and inhaled the sweet, heady scent. She wanted to bathe in it, to be covered in that decadent perfume.

  “Beg pardon, miss, but this is for you.”

  Jane let go of the branch and reached out for the folded paper on the footman’s silver tray. As she did so, she glanced over her shoulder to the steps that led to the house. “I didn’t see you come out.”

  The servant looked straight ahead. “My apologies for the intrusion, miss, but his lordship was adamant that you be given this straightaway.”

  Jane unfolded the paper.

  Dine with me tonight.

  Refolding it, she placed it on the salver. “Please convey my thanks for the invitation, but I must decline.”

  The servant barely blinked as he said, “May I inform his lordship why, miss?”

  Jane was taken back, and the servant knew it. His gaze flickered to hers briefly, before fixing on a tree limb that was loaded with blossoms. “His lordship will ask why, miss.”

  “Tell him I won’t be staying for dinner. I expect to be gone shortly, as a matter of fact.”

  “His lordship has sent a missive around to Eden Park to tell them that you are needed here, miss.”

  Jane gasped in outrage. What right had he to do such a thing?

  “Miss?” the footman asked, knowing she now had no reason to refuse Matthew’s offer.

  “Tell his lordship that my possessions are not with me, therefore—”

  “His lordship has sent a carriage back to Eden Park to retrieve your trunks, miss.”

  Jane felt herself reddening with anger. “I have nothing suitable in those trunks to take dinner with a duke and an earl,” she snapped.

  The footman bowed and nodded before turning on his heel and leaving her.

  Bloody arrogant…oh, she wanted to spit she was so angry at his high-handedness. Just who did he think he was, ordering her about and organizing what she was going to do and not do?

  After a minute or two of gnashing her teeth, Jane stomped back up the path, and ran into the footman who was making his way down the stairs.

  “His lordship has made a reply, miss.”

  Jane grabbed the missive and opened it, feeling her face drain of blood.

  Then you may dine with me naked. Flesh is always suitable attire, and a nice accompaniment with wine.

  Eight o’clock, on the terrace.

  Jane crumpled the letter. As she looked up at the house, she saw the white curtain move once more. Behind it, appeared the Earl of Wallingford. He was looking down upon her, his handsome, fallen-angel face watching her.

  With a nod he acknowledged her, then disappeared from the window. Her traitorous heart quickened, and not in anger.

  Jane followed the footman and the warm glow of the lantern he held in his white-gloved hands. In the distance, thunder rumbled across the heavens. It was twilight, and with the storm clouds gathering,
it was dark, lending the garden an eerie, gothic feel.

  As they walked over the stone bridge, Jane studied the still, murky waters below. A white swan swam beside a black one. The black one was obviously the male, for it never left the white one’s side, and every time a rumble of thunder would roll, he would swim closer, directing her to the bank.

  Jane had never seen a black swan before. There was a quiet beauty to the creature. A sadness, too, she felt, as she watched the pair swim beneath the bridge. They were mismatched, yet they seem to suit one another as they floated atop the water.

  She watched them till they faded into the darkness, then took up her pace behind the footman who was waiting for her on the other side of the bridge. Turning down a path, they headed for the building that she had seen early this afternoon.

  Obviously, Wallingford was entertaining her outside the dining room. Jane didn’t know what to make of that, but her body did. It was already heating up, remembering how he had touched her. His hands, those beautiful, artistic fingers had touched her breasts, her quim, and the memory of it was enough to make her shudder—and not in revulsion.

  Climbing the hill, Jane lifted her skirts just as she felt the first drops of rain begin to fall. Damnation, she hadn’t brought an umbrella.

  “Here, I’ll help you, miss.” The footman offered her his hand, and she took it, allowing him to tug her along the incline that led to the folly. They were running, but it was of no use, the heavens opened in a deluge, and Jane was soaked to the bone in an instant.

  The door of the temple opened, and Wallingford appeared, running down the steps to them. He took Jane’s hand from the footman, and ushered her up to the building, exchanged words with his servant, then closed the door.

  Jane stood like a drowned rat in the middle of the building, which was decorated with artwork and statues. She was breathing hard, out of breath from running up the incline in a heavy gown. Raindrops marred the lenses of her spectacles, and her hair, which she had carefully pinned up, was wet and curling and slipping from her pins.