A Season to Be Sinful

by Jo Goodman

  Sherry nodded, faintly discomfited by her gratitude. “I hope you will have joy of it.”

  “I will.” Lily stepped forward, once again into the dim glow from the fireplace. “Have you need of anything before I go?” she asked. “Another rug? Perhaps I should add more coals if you are not going directly to your own bed. I used precious few the first time.”

  So it was not Lane who had directed that someone see to his comfort. Sherry required a few moments to accustom himself to that. Everything he’d thought when he’d believed his retainers had cared for him was challenged by the realization that it had been Lily. Where he’d found no comfort in their fussing, he discovered that he quite liked the idea that she’d thought to lay a fire for him and place a rug over his legs. Far from feeling as if he were in his dotage, he was warmed by the notion that she had wanted to make him easy. He wished now that she had been more insistent that he keep the pillow under his head.

  To prove that he was appreciative of such efforts as she’d shown him, Sherry reached over the arm of the chair and scooped up the pillow. He slipped it behind his neck. “I believe all is well enough for me.”

  Worrying her lower lip, Lily nodded.

  “What is it?” he asked. It was plain that she was teetering on the edge of something of consequence. “Is it that you want another book? Pray, do not make me suppose what it is. I am not foxed, but I am dull witted.”

  Lily’s bare feet were rooted to the rug, but the rest of her slender frame inclined forward in a posture of earnestness. “I deeply regret my ill-advised temper,” she said quickly. “It was unconscionable of me to speak to you so vilely. I don’t think I knew all that I said until I was done saying it. I have had more than sufficient time to reflect on my words, and I cannot find them anything save appalling. I do not understand why you didn’t cuff me. It would have been a mercy—for both of us.”

  “Hit you, you mean?”

  She nodded and touched her index finger to one side of her chin. “Just here. It’s a proper good clip, but it doesn’t knock my teeth about.” When he was silent for so long, Lily clamped her teeth together and drew back her lips in a semblance of a smile. “See?” she asked, speaking from behind the double row of pearlies.

  Sherry knew himself to have an almost indecent desire to kiss her and something more besides. He was glad for the rug covering his lap, or she would have known it, too. What sport she might have made of that, he didn’t want to think about. “Go to bed, Miss Rose,” he told her with a credible show of weariness. “You have made a good apology, and I am accepting it. We shall endeavor to go forward.”

  Lily still hesitated, then gauging that he was impatient with her, she added quickly, “Then my immoderate behavior will not reflect poorly on the boys.” There was the faintest inflection at the end that made it more question than statement.

  Sherry was tempted to reach for the finger of whiskey left in the tumbler on the side table. “I am not certain it even reflects poorly on you, so I am not inclined to say how it might affect my opinion of the lads.” He could see that she was very clearly stunned by this intelligence. He sighed, not because he was in the least tired or out of sorts with her but because he wanted her to believe that he was. Every moment that she stayed, he felt a measure of his considerable control eroding.

  Sherry did not permit his eyes to drop to her bare feet. Her toes, all ten of them, were as provocative peeping out from under the hem of her robe as her teeth had been when she flashed that absurdly artless smile. He could make a feast of those toes, he thought, sucking on one until all of them curled.

  He reined himself in before he came out of the chair or his skin, the order of which no longer mattered. “When you said those things to me, Lily, I had the impression you felt threatened in some way. Was that true?”

  Lily’s breath hitched, but she stayed her ground and answered quietly, “Not for me, but for them.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That was it. And everything you said and did was in aid of protecting them, isn’t that also true?”

  She nodded.

  Sherry shrugged. “Then why should I reproach you for it? I admit to a lack of comprehension regarding the particular threat, but I acknowledge you perceived one. That being the case, you reacted with some courage.” He smiled mildly, the warmth of it not quite reaching his eyes. “That confounds you, does it? Well, good. It seems a fair turn. What say you, Miss Rose; it occurs to me the time is finally upon us for you to say your prayers.”

  Sherry had meant the suggestion to put a period to their discussion and send her to her room. He was unprepared for her to drop his first edition, leather-bound copy of Delphine to the floor and approach him. Even more singular was the moment she parted his crossed ankles by nudging them with her toes and came to stand between his splayed legs. He was forced to widen his stance each time she stepped nearer.

  Lifting his eyes, Sherry schooled his features so no thought or emotion was revealed. For once, Lily was his equal. Her face was pale, the eyes unblinking. There was little in the way of expression behind them. They darkened ever wider at the center until the deep green iris all but disappeared, and Lily with it. These black wells of the soul were empty.

  Sherry reached for her but only grazed her upper arms as she dropped to her knees in front of him. His hands were still clutching air when she was already flinging aside the rug. He made to catch it, but it was a poor use of his resources. By the time he attended to her again, she was yanking the tail of his shirt out of his trousers.

  “Lily!” Sherry grabbed her wrists, stilling them, and discovered quickly this grip did nothing to prevent her fingers from deftly unbuttoning his flies. He said her name again, as urgently as before, though with considerably more huskiness, and began to peel back her hands. For the first time he saw something in her face that he understood most likely mirrored his own: confusion.

  “What are you doing?” They spoke the same words almost in unison, though Lily’s voice was a softer echo of his.

  Sherry still held Lily’s wrists, but her fingertips grazed his heavy erection where it pressed against his drawers. If he relaxed his grip even a fraction he knew she would release him into her hands. He wondered if any man had had his resolve so sorely tried, then wondered immediately if it were not every man who met Lily.

  This last thought was what made one corner of his mouth lift contemptuously. “This is what you do?”

  Lily flinched, but then her chin came up. “You wanted this. How dare you scorn me for obedience. Or is it that you mean to test me again?” She stretched her fingers as far as she was able and scored the underside of his cock with the nail of her middle finger. The soft hitch of his breath was unmistakable. “You did ask me to say my prayers, didn’t you? I’m not wrong about that. But perhaps it is only that you mean to test yourself. Can a pederast surrender his perversions to a woman’s mouth? That is it, isn’t it, my lord? You are a pederast who wishes above everything that you were not. Shall we see if mayhap the screw can be turned?”

  Sherry had never struck a woman. Grunting softly with the effort not to do so now, he released Lily’s wrists. In the moment before he took her by the shoulders and flung her away from him, he saw how she prepared herself to pray at the feet of men. In attitude she held herself as a model of piety, while the reality was that she mocked it. Bowing her head, she also lowered her eyes, and the faintly derisive curve of her lips faded until it was as serene as it was profane. Her hands came together, the fingers steepled around his cock as she made to take it from his drawers. Her mouth parted and . . .

  Lily fell sideways to the floor. Sprawling at Sheridan’s feet was not as humiliating as the surprise of it was. She drew her knees up and lowered her head toward them, curling instinctively in the manner of a wounded animal.

  When he was free of her, Sherry catapulted out of the chair. He did not glance once in Lily’s direction, concentrating instead on quieting his rough breathing and righting himself and his clothes. He
went to the side table and lifted the tumbler with its single finger of whiskey to his lips. He did not drink but held it there a long time. Violent emotion ran the same course through his body as his blood. His fingertips pressed whitely on the glass, and his hand shook. Sherry thought he might crush it in his palm and realized the pain would not be unwelcome.

  Lily hunched her shoulders and squeezed her eyes closed when glass shattered somewhere beyond her head. She heard the pop and sizzle of embers, the hiss of liquid on the flames, and understood that Sheridan had consigned his drink to the fireplace.

  “Get up,” he said without any inflection save weariness. “I am not going to beat you.” He recalled her pointing out the sweet spot on her chin and hoped she would not do so again. He had no wish to further test his tolerance. “I have delayed my departure for the country long enough. I will be gone from here tomorrow. You may stay until Harris says you are sufficiently recovered, then you will do me the great favor of leaving. If there should be occasion again for you to save my life, I want you to resist it.”

  Save for her shuddering sobs, Lily did not move.

  Sherry hardened his heart enough to finally look in her direction. She was the most pitiable of creatures, curled as tightly as a child in want of a blanket or a breast. “Get up,” he repeated. “You cannot stay here for the servants to find.”

  Lily’s effort to stop crying only created great, wet sucking noises and spasms of her head and shoulders.

  “You cannot possibly carry on,” he said. “You’ll make yourself ill.” There was no sign from her that she’d even heard him. That was when it was borne home that she would carry on regardless of whether she became ill or not, that she was helpless to do anything else. He had never heard the sound of a heart breaking, was not at all certain that her crying was the source of that vibration in him, but he understood her aloneness and that he could not abandon her to it.

  Sherry crossed to her quickly enough, but it took longer to resolve what he must do then. Slowly, with considerable reluctance, he finally dropped to his knees beside her. Laying his palm lightly on her shoulder, he inched forward. Even through the fabric of her shift and robe, he could feel the heat of her skin and the taut bunching of her upper arm. The moment she was aware of his presence, of his touch, she tried to escape it.

  He didn’t believe that it was a thing done of conscious will. Lily was intuitively a survivor and most often acted in ways that supported the preservation of her own life. Perhaps the one time she had acted in opposition to her finely honed instincts was when she had leaped at him in Covent Garden. A single moment’s contrariness had set everything that followed in motion, and now she was lying on his floor, wracked by sobs and more surely troubled than he could properly understand, and certain to be sick on his new Aubusson rug.

  There was nothing for it but that he take her in hand, which of necessity meant that he must take her in his arms.

  She resisted at first, clenching so tightly that he thought she might snap her own bones. Sherry shifted his weight off his knees and leaned back against the chaise longue. He drew Lily up by the shoulders in much the same manner as he had flung her away earlier. Her strength was all turned inward, and she had little in the way of fight that she could use against him. She had no defense because he did not mean to hurt her. She had not learned how to fully arm herself against kindness.

  “Poor Lily,” he said softly, rubbing his chin against her hair. “You are hardly more than a child yourself.”

  “One-and-twenty.”

  “Hmm?” To Sherry’s ears it sounded only as if she had hiccuped.

  “I am one-and-twenty.”

  “Ahh, a great age, then.” He wondered if it had passed her notice that he was cradling her like a child. When he felt her try to speak again, he simply bent his head and whispered against her ear, “Shh.” She buried her face in the curve of his neck, and her tears dampened his shirt and cravat. “I cannot offer you a handkerchief,” he said. “As Midge is still in possession of mine, you may use my sleeve.” He thought she might have tried to laugh, but the sound was all watery snorting, none of it pleasantly musical to the ear.

  She cried harder then, though Sherry wasn’t certain how that was possible. He absorbed her shudders. His embrace was firm but not confining. Sometimes he placed one hand between her shoulder blades and passed it up and down along the length of her spine. He said her name softly and spoke of nonsensical things. His left thigh grew uncomfortably numb under her, but he was loath to move and upset the delicate balance he had struck with her. What he had to do was wait her out, and eventually he was rewarded for doing so. The shuddering diminished. There were longer intervals of quiet between the sobs, and her breathing steadied. By slow degrees he felt her relax in his arms.

  For a time he thought she had fallen asleep, though he did not attempt to dislodge her from his lap. He found he still had the wherewithal to smile when he felt her fingers unfolding his damp neckcloth and drawing one loose end toward her eyes.

  “If you mean to use it to blow your nose,” he said in wry accents, “I beg that you remove it first.”

  Lily lifted her head and looked up at him. “You have a most curious sense of humor.”

  “Humor? I assure you, I am perfectly serious.”

  “I know. That is what makes it curious. There are your words, then there is your tone. One is frequently at odds with the other.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  But there it was again, she thought, and he knew it too, whether or not he could be made to admit it. Lily let her hands drop from his shoulders and started to move away.

  “What are you doing?” Sherry’s arms did not release her.

  “I am crushing you.”

  “Hardly. Crushing is what you did before I became numb. There is no reason you should move now.”

  “Do not be too kind to me,” Lily said quietly. “I don’t think I can bear it.”

  He nodded, understanding. “Then sit here. Beside me.”

  “On the floor?”

  “That’s where I am.” This time when she began to slide away, he let her. The distance that she put between them was not so great that he could not have her back again if it was his desire and her need that he do so. “What will you do?” he asked.

  Lily shrugged, not mistaking his question for real interest. “I suppose I shall return to Holborn. I have a room there if the landlady has not already given it to someone else. My rent was paid only for the week.” Her mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “I think I have answered my own question about the room. A full sennight’s passed since I gave her any coin.”

  “She will not make allowances? It cannot have escaped her notice that you have been absent.”

  “Nothing escapes Mrs. Cuthbert’s notice. If she can be persuaded to return the room to me, then she will charge me for all the time I was gone from it even though you can be certain someone else had the use of it.”

  “What about your belongings?”

  “Yes, well, that is the bigger blow, though I do not count myself as having many possessions. One doesn’t, you know, not in Holborn. What can be stolen from someone else can be stolen from you.”

  “Honor among thieves?”

  “A myth as there ever was.”

  “I see.” Sherry rubbed the underside of his chin with his knuckles. “Then it will be starting over for you.”

  “Not precisely. I think Blue will have me back.”

  Sherry remembered that Rutland had said something in that regard when Lily was taken away. “I’m sure he will. He’s not a rough sort, then?”

  “Blue? No. He does not suffer fools, so there is no advantage to be gained by crossing him, but he has a reasoned sense of ruthlessness. I do not fear him, if that’s what you were asking.”

  “I was.” Sherry raised one knee and laid his forearm across it. His inflection was casual; his interest was not. “What about Ned Craven?”

  Lily could n
ot suppress a shiver. “I should not have told you his name. It is better left unspoken.”

  “There is too much power for him in saying nothing,” Sherry said, “so we will speak of it.”

  She glanced sideways at him, intrigued that he would understand. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “I know,” Sherry said softly. “I just know. Ned is not so reasoned as Mr. Rutland, I collect.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He is a threat to you?”

  Lily hesitated. “No.”

  Sherry wasn’t certain that he believed her, but this truce was too delicate to call her to task for dissembling. “What about the scoundrels? Is he a threat to them?”

  She nodded.

  Sherry slowly expelled a breath, then plunged ahead. “He is a pederast?”

  Flushing deeply, Lily dropped her head. Her voice was but a thread of sound. “I should not have accused you of such.”

  He ignored that. “You are not answering my question. Is Craven a pederast?”

  “No.” She did not look at him, though she lifted her face again. “At least I’ve never heard of such. But he’ll pimp the boys to men who are. They’re of an age that is useful to him.” Lily impatiently dashed away tears welling in her eyes. “It’s happened to other boys. If they take to the life he fashions for them, they don’t live long. If they refuse Ned, their lives are forfeit anyway, though perhaps it is a mercy.”

  Sherry wondered if that was what she thought about her own life, if it would have been a mercy to have been able to refuse what had been done to her and accept sure death as the consequence. “It is easier to understand why Rutland held his tongue about Ned Craven.”

  “You spoke to Blue?” Lily’s head snapped around. “When?”

  “This afternoon.” He glanced over his shoulder at the clock that stood in the corner. It was long gone midnight. “Yesterday afternoon now . . . after I left you and before Lady Rivendale’s visit.”