Lady of Sin

by Madeline Hunter

  She gestured Mrs. Powell forward and they finished their turn of the room in silence.

  The conversation unsettled her, and not only because of the anger that had spiked on Pen’s behalf. It reminded her of how those whispers spread and grew wings, and took on a life removed from fact and truth. She knew their danger too well, and imagined them buzzing about this house, ruining the people who lived in it.

  She pictured drawing rooms down through the years, where smiles would turn a little cruel as she walked by. Worse, she imagined Ambrose forever shadowed by either rumors or scandal. Each time he met a new person, that person would soon be treated to the whole story.

  Hell of a thing, to be heir and then learn there was another son before you. Spanish no less. Mardenford must have lost his head.

  Even if no such displacement occurred, the question would follow Ambrose forever. The inquiry itself would be public and humiliating.

  Nathaniel knew that, but she doubted he really understood the cost. He was the sort of man who lived life as he chose. He did not bow to society. She suspected Ambrose would be more like his father and uncle. Like all the Mardenfords, he would want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of the best, secure in his place and free of scandal.

  Right now at Albany a man was deciding whether to permit that, or whether truth had a bigger claim on his conscience.

  After the last guests departed, James silently headed for the library. It was customary for Charlotte to join him there for a short while after such dinners, to assess the event’s success.

  She did not want to do so this time. She felt too much as she had as a girl when she anticipated a scolding from Laclere for her behavior. Only she was not a girl anymore and James had no right to scold. She was not in the mood to suffer it with grace. If he criticized, she might just put him in his place.

  She did not follow. Instead she took a small lamp and walked up the stairs to the high chambers that housed the nursery.

  Ambrose was whimpering when she entered. He made a low, careening drone that wrenched her heart. He had not woken the nurse, so he cried alone.

  She hurried to his bedroom and picked him up. His little arms hugged her tightly. After a few deep sobs he began calming.

  “Ancharl,” he said contentedly, rubbing his tear-stroked face on her gros de Naples bodice. “Ancharl” had been one of his first words last winter, and his way of saying “Aunt Charl.”

  “Did you have a bad dream?”

  He shook his head. “Wanna play,” he said accusingly, sounding much like James in his tone.

  When she had visited earlier, he had wanted her to get on the floor as she often did and join in games. Dressed as she was, the result would have been a disaster. She wished she had been less particular about her appearance now, if the child on waking in the night had still been hurt by her rebuff.

  “I had to be hostess at your father’s dinner, Ambrose. We cannot always play when we want. I love you even when I cannot play.”

  He angled his weight back so he could look at her. Her arms strained to balance him. Soon he would be too big for her to pick up and embrace.

  He considered her with a skeptical inspection, as if judging whether she had meant it when she said she loved him. She wondered what James had said the last two weeks when he explained to Ambrose that they could not make their visits to Ancharl’s house.

  He suddenly embraced her neck and kissed her. “Wuv too.”

  The light shifted. They both looked over. James stood at the bedroom door.

  Ambrose reached out a pudgy hand to his father. James joined them. “You should be asleep, son.”

  “He was awake when I came up. I think he will sleep now. Won’t you, Ambrose?”

  He rubbed his eyes with his fists and nodded.

  He let her put him down and tuck him in. He curled on his side at once and stilled.

  She enjoyed the sweetness of watching his innocence in the dark. Then James moved away and she reluctantly followed him.

  “He is getting big. In a blink he will be too old for me to hug,” she said as they left the nursery. “I will turn around and he will be at university, turn again and he will be on his grand tour—”

  James walked beside her. She knew he wanted to say something or he would not have followed her upstairs. His bad humor was palpable, but that was not what made her speech falter.

  His body had tightened, visibly flinched, when she mentioned the grand tour.

  She looked at him in the lamp’s glow as they descended the stairs. His face had gotten very long indeed. His eyes appeared dark in the yellow gloss, very dark. Dark and cautious. A cramp gripped her stomach and an eerie sensation overtook her.

  He appeared much like Harry right now. The resemblance had emerged vaguely, like a form pressed against the back of thin silk.

  The effect unsettled her enough that she had to use the banister for security. Her feet sought the last stairs awkwardly.

  He peered at her as if he noticed her unrest and found it suspicious. She was imagining that, certainly. She was imagining all of it. He had not flinched, and he was not worried, and he did not find her reference to a grand tour odd at all.

  “After that, I will be the old aunt whom he is obligated to visit when he is in town,” she finished. “Such is the way of life, however.”

  “He will never think of it as an obligation. I will not allow him to grow so callous.”

  “All young men are somewhat callous, James. They must be, to find their paths away from those childish embraces of mothers and aunts.”

  They were in the reception hall now and more lamps lit the space. The fleeting resemblance to Harry was gone. It had been nothing more than the dim light and the peculiar mood between them tonight.

  Her shock bled away and her stomach unclenched, but a newly born instinct in her would not completely retreat.

  She asked a footman to call her carriage and send for her wrap.

  “You are leaving already?” James asked.

  “I am tired.”

  “From your journey?”

  She had hoped to avoid further talk of that, but he had found a way back to the subject anyway. “Partly.”

  He appeared quite normal now. Normal and typical and the friend she knew, not the stranger on the stairs.

  “You seemed unhappy when I mentioned a grand tour,” she heard herself saying. The impulse to prod, to know, surged and spilled without enough thought.

  A subtle tightness flexed his face. Undeniable this time. One of the soul as much as the countenance. She felt it as much as saw it. Hollowness spread through her chest.

  “It only reminds me of the duties I avoid. I took my tour with a brother, and Ambrose has none.”

  “A young man does not need a brother for such things, although one is good to have,” she said. “I am sure it was a special time for you and Philip. A great adventure together.”

  He smiled reflectively. “Yes, a great adventure.”

  “You never speak of it. I am sure there are wonderful stories. Do the memories pain you now that he is gone?”

  “It was another life, another world. I try not to bore people.”

  “Memories are not boring, James. Not when they are about someone we loved.”

  His face fell. He shifted his weight and crossed his arms. He only relaxed when footsteps heralded the arrival of her wrap.

  A series of discomforting reactions and impressions bombarded her. They swept like winds from different directions as she accepted her long mantle and James escorted her to her carriage. She could not absorb their meaning because they came in fast succession, blowing her thoughts like weightless leaves.

  He closed the carriage door but put his face to the window, peering in at her. The resentful mood that had started this night poured off him, jumbling her reactions even more.

  “Did you make that journey alone, Charlotte?”

  His tone demanded satisfaction. Did he suspect Nathaniel had accompan
ied her? Had he learned of those discreet inquiries he had made here in London?

  “Of course I did not journey alone. I had my abigail with me.”

  She called for her coachman to drive her home.

  “You are not paying attention,” Lyndale muttered. He had taken a post behind Nathaniel’s shoulder at the faro table. “What are you thinking with such a stupid wager?”

  Nathaniel glanced back at his tormentor. “I thought you had tired of the game and left.”

  “I only tired of the easy winnings you offered.”

  “Then go find a bigger challenge and stop harping like an old woman. You are intrusive and irritating.”

  “I am not harping, but voicing the obvious, which your own brain appears incapable of grasping. It is a friend’s obligation to be intrusive when his fellow man is on the path to ruin because he is foxed.”

  “I am not foxed.”

  “Then you have no excuse. You are losing to Abernathy, Knightridge. Abernathy.”

  Nathaniel looked down the table at Abernathy’s glee.

  Lyndale was right. He wasn’t paying attention and his play was badly off.

  But then, his whole life had been off these two days since returning to town. He could not think about anything except the mystery woman who was no longer a mystery.

  He had tried to distract himself tonight with the company of others, only to sit in this gaming hall saying nothing, hearing nothing. He had barely been aware that Lyndale had taken position behind him until the incessant mutters of criticism began.

  He gestured for the dealer to skip him.

  “Now, that is being a sensible boy,” Lyndale said. His voice carried a soothing note, as if he were speaking to an imbecile.

  “I am not foxed,” Nathaniel repeated.

  “Then perhaps you are ill.”

  “Not the way you mean. I know who she is.”

  “She?” Lyndale’s face fell to that uncharacteristic blandness.

  “Yes, she.”

  “Whatever is the man mumbling about?”

  “Continue to feign ignorance and I will thrash you.”

  “You will try to thrash me, you mean.” He looked down seriously. “By ‘she,’ do you mean your friend from my last party?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Their gazes locked in tacit acknowledgment of who that lady was.

  “Astonishing, isn’t it?” Lyndale said.

  Lyndale did not know just how astonishing.

  “So, now you know. I am therefore no longer constrained, and can tell you that I am very disappointed.”

  Nathaniel rose to his feet. “Speak one word against her and—”

  “Against her? Why would I do that? I am disappointed in you. I was as bad as they come, enthusiastically so, and I never took advantage of the sister of a friend.”

  It was either hit Lyndale or walk away. Nathaniel strode to the side of the room. Lyndale followed, as if the move had been a quest for a private chat.

  “I did not know who she was, remember?” Nathaniel said, turning on Lyndale at the edge of a wall lamp’s glow.

  “And now you do. Since you have already broken the rule about a friend’s female relatives—”

  “There is no such rule. You made it for yourself but only so you could narrow the field to women who would cause the least trouble. You are the last man in Britain to criticize. Hell, it was your damned orgy.”

  Lyndale sighed with strained patience. “It was a good rule, as you have now learned. Have you spoken to her about it?”

  “I offered to do the right thing, if that is what you mean.”

  “Very decent of you. I assume she refused.”

  Lyndale’s confident tone raised the devil in him. “Why would you assume that?”

  “Because the lady does not like you. A masked encounter is one thing, but a lifetime is another.”

  “She likes me better than you think.” He heard himself sound like a petulant boy, and that made his anger rise more.

  “Since she refused, what are you going to do about it?”

  It was a good question, and not an easy one to answer. It was the question that distracted him. There had been much of the grand finale in that last night together. It was as if they had grabbed at everything because they assumed it was their last chance.

  Lyndale rested his shoulder against the wall. He reached into his coat and withdrew two cigars. In companionable silence they clipped and lit.

  “It would help if the two of you could tolerate each other. Although when one sees such blatant dislike, one always wonders if . . .” Lyndale shrugged. “Well, if the arguing is not a way of concealing a physical irritation, so to speak.”

  “If so, I will be bickering and arguing a long time.”

  “Ah.” Lyndale looked down at his cigar. “Now you know why I never bought chambers at Albany. All those bachelors and servants. It is hard to be discreet.”

  Nathaniel realized that Lyndale had guessed all of it. That he and Charlotte had more than spoken of what had occurred, and that the bad play at the faro table was caused by a hunger to do more than talk again.

  Lyndale pushed away from the wall. “I hear the lady has returned to London from a fortnight in the country. If you call on her, convey my highest regards.” He walked away.

  Nathaniel found a chair and finished his own smoke. Then he called for his horse.

  He would return to Albany, where one could not be discreet, and lie on the bed of nails that waited there. He would think all night about Charlotte and try to decide whether and how this affair could continue in town.

  And he would conclude nothing, because the biggest obstacle was not Albany or her relationship to one of his friends. It was whether in her heart she would always be watching him as she had that night from the end of the table, worrying that he would have to know the truth.

  It was time for him to resolve the desire and distraction, and find out if he did.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Charlotte waited for the girl to build the fire in the library. Usually she spent her mornings in her apartment, but today she had something to do.

  Finally the servant left. Charlotte listened for silence outside the chamber, then rose and approached an old pedestal table tucked into a corner.

  With its scrolled edges and Corinthian base, the table did not fit the decor. She had redecorated this room last fall in the Tudor style. Now turned legs and medieval floral carving marked the furnishings, and deep prints upholstered the chairs.

  This classically inspired table should have been sold or moved. But it had always stood here, and it held Philip’s private papers. It had seemed at the time that to remove it would be akin to removing the last of him and his ghost, so she had let it stay.

  She grasped the two pulls of the large drawer beneath the tabletop. Her will hesitated. A fit of confusion and nostalgia made her heart pound.

  She had not opened this drawer in six years. After Philip’s death she had briefly assessed what lay in this drawer. Letters and papers and tokens of his childhood. Old school writings and missives from his father. It was the eclectric collection such as a person saves from habit or sentiment. She had been too grieved to read any of it then, and had never found the heart to do so since.

  Now she wondered if there might be something in here that would explain Jenny’s story about Mrs. Marden and Harry.

  If there was, did she want to see it?

  Her heart and better sense said no. The instinct born last night in James’s presence would not quiet, however. It had to know. There could be something here that explained everything in ways that did not threaten anyone’s peace or place in the world, after all.

  She opened the drawer.

  A scent rose from its contents. One of dust and staleness and something else. Him.

  Her eyes blurred as her heart recognized the crisp scent, so weak now, so vague. It filled her
head for a moment, calling forth images from the past. Then the atmosphere of the library absorbed it. The odors of polish and burnt fuel and her own perfume overwhelmed it.

  She eyed the stacks of letters and papers. He had been her husband, but she felt like an intruder, sneaking into things she ought not see. He had never shared any of this with her in life, and it did not seem natural to read it now.

  She lifted a stack of letters anyway. These were not documents that belonged to the estate, or Mardenford. They were Philip’s intimate possessions, and now they belonged to her.

  She shuffled through the letters, glancing at the signatures, wondering why he had saved these and not others. They all looked ordinary. Predictable. Letters from parents and friends, from his old tutor and nurse. She worked quickly, checking names and dates, fanning the sheets to find the oldest ones. Finally she saw a letter from a friend that must have been sent soon after Philip and James returned from their grand tour.

  The tone was jovial and man-to-man. It referenced adventures and expressed envy. A few joking allusions implied this friend assumed all young men on tour experienced a carnal baptism. Nothing in the letter suggested that Philip had confided a great secret to this young man.

  She returned to her search, looking for others from the time. She was concluding that she should give the drawer’s contents some order, when the library door suddenly opened.

  Feeling like a thief caught in the act, she slid the letters back into the drawer as a footman approached with a salver.

  She raised her eyebrows and glanced pointedly at the clock, which showed it had just passed ten o’clock. The servant grimaced an apology for the rudeness of this early caller.

  “He was most insistent, and said you expected him, and told us he would see we were all released if we did not inform you he was here.”

  She lifted the card but she already knew whose name it would bear.

  There had been three letters, but no requests for a meeting. She had responded, but had not asked him to call, either. She doubted it was indifference on his part any more than it had been on hers. After a fortnight they both had affairs to attend to and things to think about.