“My memories are very fresh, thank you. Remarkably vivid. In particular, I remember a woman in my arms who was well pleased, and very eager.”
Her mouth fell open. She glanced past him to be sure no one had entered the room to overhear. “Mr. Knightridge, how dare—”
“I also remember your kissing me back very erotically, with enthusiastic passion.” His gaze lowered to her chest in a way that made her nipples tingle.
“Sir—”
“I remember stays undone and the most lovely breasts in my hand and mouth.” His gaze rose until it locked with hers. “A man would have to be a fool to regret any of that, Lady M. It would be hypocritical of me to apologize for that part of your visit, and equally so for you to demand such a lie.”
She gaped at his boldness. She tried to find something indignant to say. Unfortunately, his shocking frankness had her body warming and her mind clouding.
He stepped closer. He dipped his head toward hers until his dark eyes were mere inches from her own. She was sure he was going to kiss here right here in the second drawing room while the remaining guests drank punch beyond the doorway.
She should step away. Only she couldn’t because she was remembering too. His words had called forth the sensations again and they were too seductive to deny.
“I remember every caress and kiss we have shared, madam, and I will not pretend otherwise,” he said quietly. “I tried, but have discovered I am incapable of maintaining the deception.”
She closed her eyes for the kiss that was coming. She waited for those firm, warm lips to press hers. She waited for his strong arms to embrace her and hold her close.
She waited for the fire of passion to blaze through her soul yet again.
Nothing happened. No kiss. No touch.
Confused, she opened her eyes to see the back of Nathaniel’s frock coat passing into the main drawing room.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Memories filled Charlotte’s head as she tossed in bed that night. Beautiful, cherished images invaded and lingered, demanding attention and reconsideration.
She saw Lyndale’s private drawing room, full of shadows dotted with pools of candlelight. Musicians played by the windows and she could hear gaming in an adjoining room. The earl’s notorious collection of art was barely visible. Like the figures on the sofas and chaise longues, only its vaguest features could be seen.
The atmosphere and lighting demanded whispers and furtive kisses. Instead people spoke freely. Joyfully. Except for the Roman costumes and the women’s masks, if one ignored the entwined bodies barely visible here and there, it appeared a pleasant, normal party.
That had surprised her. She had expected something very rare, more like a bacchanal one might view in a painting. These guests wore the right garments but they seemed too much of this world. Of her world.
She recognized some of the men. She stood there in her own costume, wondering if her mask obscured her identity enough. Now that she was here, she did not know what to do.
“Are you realizing that you do not belong here?” a voice said.
She froze. She knew that voice. Worse, it sounded like he knew her.
She looked over her shoulder. Apollo sat on a chaise longue in the corner. Not reclining, but resting his back against the wall behind it. A belted white linen tunic covered his body to his knees. Golden hair fell around his face and bronze sandals laced up his shins. He sat alone. He did not participate in either the conversations or the pleasures.
Nathaniel Knightridge suited the role of the god of light very well. She could not stop looking at him.
His gaze reflected no recognition. Nor did she see the kind of interest that several other male guests had sent her way already.
“Sit here. No one will approach you.” He gestured to the end of the chaise longue.
She walked over, wondering if the nearby candle would give her away. It did not, but it revealed much more about him. He appeared melancholic and reflective. He barely paid her attention as she perched on the edge of the cushion.
He closed his eyes and listened to the music, but eventually he looked her way again. “Are you disappointed? Did you expect naked people writhing on the carpet? Nude women served up like so many platters of food?”
“I suppose,” she whispered.
His gaze drifted over her. A little of that male interest showed this time. “Did you come to watch or play?”
“Neither.”
“Then why?”
Why, indeed? She had no answer now. The idea had made sense an hour ago.
“Perhaps you just did not want to be alone.”
His statement made her stiffen. A tremble shook inside her. She stared at the musicians and tried to contain her profound reaction to his simple observation.
He cocked his head so he could see her face. He looked so deeply that it frightened her. She felt horribly exposed.
Comprehension entered his eyes. A warm understanding. He did not know who she was, but she sensed that he knew everything else.
“We have much in common tonight,” he said. “It is not a bad place to hide from oneself. The music is pleasant and the joy of the others lightens dark thoughts.”
His perception stunned her. She knew Mr. Knightridge well, but he was not the man in front of her now. The Nathaniel Knightridge she knew had never been this gentle and understanding. He had never shown this side to Charlotte Mardenford.
Nor had he ever appeared so . . . defenseless. This Apollo wore an air of very mortal vulnerability as he brooded alone in the shadows.
Hadn’t he lost a defense recently? A murder case? In her madness over preparing for this party, she had not been reading the papers, but she believed she had heard a boy selling a broadside about it on Oxford Street early in the week.
That must be the reason for his odd mood. He had failed, perhaps for the first time in his life. Just as well he did not know who was seeing it affect him like this.
“You do not have to hide from yourself,” she whispered. “You are not really a god, and you did your best.”
His whole body stilled. His face turned severe. She expected him to get up and walk away. Angry eyes sought hers and looked deeply again. Invasively. But he had no shield either, and she saw too much too. His skepticism and anger faded, leaving only warm lights that drew her deeper.
They stayed like that forever, silently connected by that gaze. She grew breathless from the astonishing bond. She learned so much about him, things she could never put into words. He examined depths and corners she never showed the world, or even acknowledged to herself. Their attachment enthralled her. She melted beneath the understanding he offered. Her soul stirred and glowed and yearned for more.
She almost wept. Yes, yes, you are guessing right, you are seeing the truth. Yes, I did not want to be alone, I will go mad in this separateness. Yes, I know the pain you feel for that failure, I know how you doubt yourself. Yes, I know how you hide behind strength, just as I do. Yes, yes . . .
They were both strangers on that chaise longue, even if he wore no mask. Strangers to each other and even to themselves. Parts of herself that she did not know existed stirred to life within the freedom of her anonymity.
He held out his hand to her. She did not think at all before accepting whatever he offered. With his touch the world disappeared. No voices. No music. Just the two of them, bound in spirit, connected physically now.
He drew her closer, beside him. “Are you afraid?”
She shook her head, then nodded.
“Sit here with me. You do not have to say anything. I do not need words to know everything about you.”
There had been words anyway. Before the first kiss he asked if she was married or in love.
“Long ago,” she whispered. “Years ago, I once loved.” Tonight it was a different woman loving in a different world, however.
He nodded, as if that confirmed what he already knew. “Long ago,” he said. “Too long.”
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The passion arrived in a torrent, fast and unstoppable, an extension and expression of that gaze. The deep knowing never waned. It transformed the pleasure. It produced an instinctive trust and made every touch holy. Wonderful emotions blazed through her and burned away the dull veil that had draped her world.
Just remembering that passion made her heart ache. She stretched out her arms and swept the empty spaces of the bed that flanked her. She closed her lids over damp eyes and tried to save the perfection. She wanted to keep that night unblemished. She could live off the memories forever then.
It did not work. Questions kept sneaking into her heart. They threatened to alter how she saw that passion. She held the doubts at bay for a while, but eventually they found their voice within the relentless silence of the night.
She had known that seeing him again would jeopardize the beauty. She had managed to avoid him for a month after Lyndale’s party. Visiting him this week had been a rash mistake.
No, it had not only been that. She had known what he was experiencing as that execution neared. She had sensed what it was doing to him.
Her empathy had been an echo of the intimacy they had shared. Helping him became more important than her own pride and fears, even if she assumed he would never know the real reason she intruded on his home.
I remember every kiss and caress that we have shared.
When she had entered the sitting room behind Jacobs, Nathaniel’s expression was exasperated, uncaring and resigned. She had thought it was because he did not know what they had shared, and he anticipated a contentious conversation.
Except maybe he did know, and had tried to pretend that Lyndale’s party never happened. If that was true, it changed everything.
She was not sure that she could face him again. Her behavior at that party had been shocking. Ruinous. She had thought that one person would not condemn her for it, however. Her lover that night would not see any sin. She had assumed that the man she embraced was as far removed from that salon as she, transported to a private world where an intensification of life’s energy existed and where souls replenished their vitality.
Now she had to admit that perhaps she had experienced the magic alone. It may have been an illusion, a self-deception, embraced in order to build an emotional excuse to satisfy a physical need.
If he had known who she was and later reacted the way he did in his sitting room, her partner at Lyndale’s party had remained firmly ensconced in the reality of carnal pleasure and experienced nothing more. He probably thought that she was merely a promiscuous widow who knew no shame. He might have been so bold the last time because he assumed her visit that day had been a wanton’s excuse to pursue him.
Unless she wanted to risk learning the truth about that visit, and about that precious night, she had better stay away from him completely.
The next Monday, Nathaniel entered Newgate Prison at dawn. Already a crowd had formed outside its doors as the curious jostled to procure tickets to view the trials in the Old Bailey.
Others waited to request permission to visit relatives in the prison. Women carried baskets of food to supplement the prison’s poor provisions. Some appeared worried, but most wore the dull faces that said they had conducted this vigil too often.
Inside the building, Nathaniel pushed his way past the lawyers waiting to see the accused criminals they would defend. They greeted him as a fellow member of their odd brotherhood. There was no recognized criminal bar, a matter that Nathaniel and they were close to rectifying. For the present, most of these men were, like him, lawyers who conducted trials in other courts most of the time. They aided defendants at the Old Bailey as time, interest, and a defendant’s purse permitted.
Defending was not respectable work and the lawyers waiting to do it were not an impressive group. As the son of a lord, his place among them was unusual. They accepted him, however, and also accepted that he was able to pass by them all and immediately gain access to the warden’s office.
Within ten minutes he was deep inside Newgate, following a guard through the warren of stairways and corridors and crowded yards. As he passed one of the women’s cells the bawds cooed like a chorus of doves, then broke into cackles and curses when he ignored them. In a crowded men’s cell past the next yard, a boxing match was under way.
He had never grown accustomed to the prison. Its stench still repulsed him. The sounds were all sad ones—metal on stone, the moans of illness, the gruff orders of guards. Even when laughter pealed, it carried a desperate, wailing note.
Finley had been placed in a tiny cell high in the building, indicating he was considered a dangerous and important inmate. His place was among the cells of the condemned, perhaps to save trouble in moving him after his conviction. The privacy came with shackles that tethered him to the wall. He lay on dirty straw, his clothing soiled and his long, dark hair streaming in filthy strands over his face and short beard.
At the sound of Nathaniel’s entrance, he turned sly eyes to the door.
Bright eyes. Too bright, like those of a man drunk from rum, only these lights sparkled in ways hard drink never creates.
“Leave us,” Nathaniel said to the guard.
The guard hesitated, then shrugged and left. The door remained ajar. Finley noticed, looked down at his shackles, and laughed. He rose to his feet.
“Took that bitch long enough to send you. The trial’s today.”
“No one sent me. I am not your lawyer, if that is what you think. I do not believe one will be assisting you.”
Finley cursed. “Guess they all want to see Old John swing.”
“It would seem so.”
“Then who the hell are you? Not a warden, from that coat and shirt.”
“I am the prosecuting counsel.”
Finley cocked his head, as if that made no sense. Which it didn’t.
Nathaniel was not sure why he had come. Curiosity, perhaps. Mostly he had been drawn here out of a peculiar sense of honor. Finley would certainly be convicted of several crimes today. Information would be laid against him for murder, robbery, and blackmail. It had seemed to Nathaniel that if he was going to aid in sending a man to his death, he should look that man in the eyes before they stood in a courtroom.
He looked now, but these eyes were impenetrable. Hardness, he could delve beneath. Fear provided no solid barrier. But this brightness shielded Finley from him more thoroughly than a steel wall.
He had expected to see evil. Had counted on it. Instead he saw nothing.
Suddenly Finley sprang, with hands outstretched like two claws. The move made Nathaniel jump back. The shackles’ chains ran out until they jerked Finley immobile into a frozen pantomime of attack.
He grinned until all his teeth showed. A high-pitched laugh filled the chamber and echoed down the stones. Then the laugh died abruptly, as if the mind had lost connection with it.
Finley threw himself on the straw and stared at the ceiling. “What is your name?”
“Knightridge.”
“Fancy name. Fancy coat. You must be that other one’s friend. He’ll be lying today. Blackmail, hell. I gave him information about the boy and wanted payment, is all.” He turned his head and grinned at Nathaniel. “But I’ll be ’splaining all that when I have my say.”
“No, you will not.”
“I get my say. You can’t stop that. Even Old John gets his say.”
“The court does not permit a criminal to commit slander with impunity. Your right to speak on your own behalf does not go that far. The judge will not permit it, nor will I.”
“He says blackmail; I get to tell how it really was. I fed the boy, didn’t I? Kept him whole. If a man has been feeding a golden goose, he should at least get a feather for it.”
“What boy?” He knew better than to pay heed to the ravings of this rogue, but he asked anyway.
“My boy. Born better than you, he was. Born to be a lord. I told him that, your friend. Told him I had the family’s lost golden goose and
would sell it to him.”
“Was by any chance this boy snatched from his cradle by faeries?” Nathaniel asked sarcastically.
Finley shrugged. “Don’t know how he got lost. Just know I found him. Took a while to understand it all.”
“Mr. Finley, you do not have any lost boy. You did not offer Mardenford to return a lost child, since none has been lost. His son is happy in his home even as we speak.”
Finley grinned again. “Maybe he is, and maybe he ain’t.”
“I assure you he is.”
“Well, I get my say anyway. Get to explain what I said to his lordship.”
“You said nothing about golden geese or lost boys. You approached Lord Mardenford and threatened to expose unnamed secrets unless he paid you dearly for silence. Your misfortune was choosing a man whose life has been so colorless, so lacking in incident, that he knew better than anyone that there was no scandal to be revealed. I doubt there are ten men of wealth in the realm who could be so secure that you were bluffing, but you managed to fix your sights on one of them.”
“We’ll see if the jury agrees.”
“No, not on this. You will not be impugning his name with lies and fantasies.”
Finley gazed up at him. The brightness in his eyes did not dim, but something else did. His energy, and maybe his hope. It was so clear, so palpable, that Nathaniel had to look away.
“I’ll not be swinging,” Finley said. “You’ll see.”
Yes, he would be swinging. The execution of guilty men normally did not disturb Nathaniel much, but he could not ignore his impression that this man was not entirely sane.
It was not just the bizarre and incoherent story about the boy making him think so. Mostly it was those unnaturally bright eyes.
He stepped out of the cell. As he walked away he heard the desolate sound of the lock falling into place. He aimed for fresh air, and a place of privacy in which to prepare for his first prosecution.
“Dead?” The judge roared his astonishment. His shout quelled the buzzing surprise that had swelled in the courtroom with the warden’s arrival and announcement.
Lady of Sin Page 5