Oh, my God!
What was she going to do?
She knew Lord Nester never made empty threats. He was far too ignorant to even think of playing games. He was going to kill the unknowing Sin, to be able to get his hands on her. How could she warn Sin without telling him the truth about her stepfather? Again she felt caught between her desperate wish to come clean with Sin and her fear of losing him when he found out the truth.
She closed her eyes in despair, not knowing what to do. Not telling Sin about the threat wasn't an option: he should be able to defend himself, to be a bit more cautious, and especially to have a chance of not putting himself in a position where her father could fulfill his dreadful quest.
“I've gone through Mother’s things and packed the ones that meant something to me. Do you want to see if I there’s something I’ve missed?”
Penelope stood in the doorway, too caught up in their mission to notice her sister’s disheveled appearance and the faint odor of vomit. Most of the time Penelope’s bad habit of daydreaming and walking with her head among the clouds would vex Charmaine, but not this time. For once she was grateful for her sister’s tendency to not notice details.
“Did you get the little box with her ancestors’ heirlooms?”
A frown marred Penelope’s forehead as she dug through her bag, but it disappeared as she held up a small leather box. “Aha! Yes, I did get it.”
“Good,” Charmaine acknowledged, ushering her sister toward the stairs. “We’d better get going. One never knows when Father will return.”
As they sat in their carriage, slowly leaving Harveyfield behind them, Charmaine’s gaze met the triumphant eyes of their stepfather where he stood in the large library bow window. He lifted his hand and made a cross in the air with his finger and she sank back into the cushioned seat, her heart filled with anxiety.
“Charmaine, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Penelope’s inquiring voice was filled with compassion as she for once could sense her sister’s distress, and Charmaine forced a light smile.
“It’s nothing, really. Just a few old memories of our childhood days.”
“Ah.”
Apparently satisfied with the meager answer, Penelope lost interest in her sister and instead started to turn the pages in an old diary of hers, while Charmaine sighed silently with relief. She had no wish to start explaining herself to her sister. It was bad enough that she had to say as little as possible to Sin. Having to face Penelope’s disgust, too, would be a bit too much for her. At least for now.
The mere thought of Sin made her heart beat faster. Could he be in love with her? Lord Nester seemed to think he was, and he was usually right about such things.
Her stepfather had always loved turning her suitors away and had more than once encouraged a beau just to have the satisfaction of denying him her hand. In her name, of course. No one knew she never was told about the interview until much later.
“What do you think Father will do when he hears about our visit?” Penelope looked a bit worried. “He has a tendency to act rashly, after all.”
“Don’t you worry.” Charmaine patted her sister’s hand affectionately. “Father has no use for you anymore, as you now are married to Rake, who most effectively made sure Lord Bolton never would look your way again.”
“But what about you? You are Father’s diamond. Do you really think he will let you go so easily? He has always seemed a bit too obsessed with you, and sometimes it felt as if Mother was the only thing that held him back from misbehaving.”
Charmaine forced a giddy laugh to take the edge off the subject. “Yes, I do have to be aware of the man who is desperate for loving me to death.”
“Putting it that way, it sounds quite ridiculous, I have to admit.” Penelope laughed and lifted her old diary, again dismissing her sister, and Charmaine closed her eyes briefly.
Thank God for her sister’s fickle mind.
Penelope had been a bit too close to the truth. Luckily, she had never understood just how twisted their stepfather's feelings were.
Which brought the killing of Sin back into her mind, and Charmaine shivered again at the mere thought of Lord Nester’s intentions.
She had to do something to stop him from ever hurting Sin. She was too tired to think about it right now, but as soon as she had rested she would sit down and try to figure out what to do.
Lord Nester might think he held the upper hand, but somehow she was going to prove him wrong. Sin was her husband, and she was desperately in love with him. And if she dared to believe what her stepfather said, Sin might be loving her back, at least a little.
A good night’s sleep, and then she would be ready for Lord Nester. He might think it was going to be an easy killing, but she would prove him wrong and save Sin. All she had to do was come up with a good, if untrue, explanation of why her stepfather was threatening him.
That couldn’t be too hard now, could it?
Chapter Thirteen
“Don’t you think it’s time to stop hiding behind your ledgers and instead go and find out what’s bothering your lovely wife?”
The sarcastic voice cut through the thick silence of the study, and Sin lost track of the numbers he had been adding. Irritated, he looked up and frowned at his younger brother, who strolled across the dark study to throw himself down into one of the visitors’ chairs across the desk.
“Bloody hell, Ian, now you made me lose my count.”
“And?”
Sin sighed heavily. “And I’ve been trying to find an error in the ledgers which has been eluding me for days, and now you’ve made me lose it all over again.”
“Honestly, Sin, you should lock those boring, unimportant books away and throw the key as far as you can and start living life instead.”
“This is my life, Ian. These, as you call them, boring and unimportant books are what make you able to live the comfortable life you have. If I didn’t follow up on all things accountable, we soon would lose more money than we earned.”
Sebastian grinned mischievously. “Lord, how dull it sounds.”
“Everything in life can’t be fun.”
“Maybe not, but I still believe everyone needs to at least smile now and then. And you, my dear brother, never smile.”
“I smile.”
“No, you don’t.”
Sin closed the ledger with another sigh. He could tell Sebastian wasn’t going to leave him alone without informing him about what was on his mind. Thank God he wasn’t the longwinded kind.
Leaning back in his chair, Sin crossed his arms over his chest, trying to look just as annoyed and dejected as he felt. “I smile when I have something to smile about.”
“You have Charmaine.”
“And I smile when I’m with her.”
Sebastian looked a bit too surprised. “You are with her sometimes? I would never have thought so, considering how you insist upon spending all your time in this dungeon.”
So this was about Charmaine. Sin closed his eyes briefly. He had no desire to discuss his wife with anyone, including his only brother.
“My marriage is no concern of yours.”
Unfortunately, Sebastian didn’t care about his older brother’s wishes. “Of course it is. We all have to sit there every day, watching her fade like a flower as her grave-looking husband pretends she’s not there.”
“I do not pretend she’s not there.”
“You don’t? Are you just ignoring her out of old habit, then?”
“I don’t ignore her, either. She’s my wife and I speak with her when we’re in our private chambers. You know, when the rest of you aren’t there listening to every word we say.”
“You make it sound as if we eavesdrop. How utterly rude.”
Sin ignored his brother’s wicked grin. “You are constantly eavesdropping, the whole bunch of you, and there really is no need for my wife and me to have our intimate discussions while with the rest of you.”
&
nbsp; “So you do talk to her, then?”
“Of course I do.”
“So why does she sit there like a sad, beautiful puppy, never taking her eyes off your person, waiting for you to throw her a bone?”
Sin’s heart flipped at the notion of Charmaine secretly yearning for his attention, but he pushed the feeling aside. When they arrived home from Gretna Green, he had realized Charmaine craved his presence much more than he had time for, and when he realized how much he preferred spending time with her instead of managing the estate, he had mentally grabbed himself by the ear.
Chester Park and the Berkeley estate would one day become his responsibility, and as he had told Charmaine, he couldn’t let down the people depending on him. So, instead of spending his days with his wife as he wanted to, he locked himself into the study and filled his head with numbers and amounts. He had a large family for her to socialize with, including her very own sister, so he knew she couldn’t possibly feel lonely just because he wasn’t around.
“We are still acclimatizing to each other and our marriage. In time she will learn.”
Sebastian arched a very Darling eyebrow. “She will learn?”
“We will both learn how to compromise to make our new life together work out for the best.” Sin blushed as Sebastian grinned knowingly. Of course he had no inclination to change his own life, especially not for a wife and even more especially not for Charmaine. She was too used to getting all the attention from her parents, and it was his task to bring her down from her pedestal and teach her the important lesson of how unimportant she really was.
“I can’t help feeling sorry for your poor wife. Here she has had her whole life turned upside down and ends up with a husband who has made it into a sport to ignore her as much as possible.”
Sebastian was a bit too close to the truth there, and Sin felt his cheeks grow even hotter. “I don’t ignore her as much as possible. But she must understand my work here is important and I don’t have the time to dally with her and her every whim.”
“She’s ordering you about? I’m sorry, old chap. I didn’t know that.”
Sin’s eyes narrowed as he looked at his brother and tried to see if the imp was serious or making fun of him as usual, but Sebastian’s face was more than usually bland.
“Well, I wouldn’t say she’s ordering me about…”
“Oh, don’t say she’s the nagging type.” Sebastian made a compassionate sound. “They are the worst, and I must say I would never have thought Charmaine was one. But then again, what do I know?”
“Clearly not much. Of course she doesn’t nag. It’s Charmaine we’re talking about. She never does anything that would make her look bad.”
“So she’s just ignorant, then?”
Sin was starting to get a bit upset with his brother. Of course she wasn’t ignorant. She was much more caring than he ever had envisioned her to be. As a matter of fact, she had turned out to be just as beautiful on the inside as on the outside, and every time he was with her he could feel himself falling in love with her all over again.
The thing was, he knew what she had been like before, all egotistical and uncaring. He certainly didn’t want her to fall back into such behavior again. So he held her at arm’s length, to make sure she could never turn him into her puppet as she had her parents.
At first, after their return to Chester Park, she had seemed confused and hurt, clearly not understanding why he treated her as if she were a piece of furniture during the daytime and among others. But after a couple of days she must have understood what he had tried to teach her, as the confusion disappeared and she instead looked serene and sated.
The perfect wife.
Strangely enough, he had found himself missing the spontaneous and emotional Charmaine he had met in Gretna Green, but he couldn’t complain, as she now acted as sophisticated and urbane as she had always been before. The well-behaved lady with an even temper was, after all, the Charmaine he had fallen in love with. Wasn’t it?
The duchess had told him she thought Charmaine behaved as if she were a glass of milk, all tasteless, neutral, and utterly boring, and he’d had to bite himself in the cheek to not agree. Only in bed, when they made love, did the girl from Scotland come forward, and only then did he leave all his restrictions aside, throwing himself headlong into the fire they created together.
She had been acting a bit snuggly in the aftermath, though, and as he found himself liking the feel of her in his arms all night a bit too much, he had forced himself to turn away from her warm, inviting body. Instead he gave her a fatherly peck on the forehead before leaving her bedroom for his own, where she wasn’t a distraction.
“Can’t you sleep here?” she had asked the first time he had got out of her bed since returning to Chester Park. She had looked shy, almost scared, and for a second he had hesitated, wanting nothing more than to slip back under the bedspread and pull her warm body close to his. But instead he had forced himself to shake his head before escaping from her alluring presence.
To him she was a siren, like those in Greek mythology who lured sailors to destruction with their luscious beauty and their tempting songs. He had to harden himself against her so she wouldn’t drag him away from everything that mattered to him—everything that mattered to his family. She would have him live every day as it came, instead.
He looked at his brother, who had turned the easy life into perfection, and knew he couldn’t do that. He hadn’t it in him to let go of everything and simply live life. Not even for a day.
He had given Penelope a month, though, when he went with her and Charmaine to Gretna Green, but that was different. Penelope was a dear, dear friend, and it had been necessary for her chance at happiness. And in the end, the unusual neglect of his responsibilities had paid out: Penelope was now happily married to Uncle Rake.
“Why this sudden interest in my marriage? You never seemed to care much about it before, so why now?”
Sebastian shrugged lightly. “It’s such a waste to have someone as astounding as Charmaine in your home and then have to watch her turn into a miserable and disappointed wife.”
“She just lost her mother. Of course she is feeling a bit low. Wait and see. She’ll be back to her normal composed self in no time, and then you can go back to your drooling.”
It was disdain in the look Sebastian sent him, and Sin frowned again. What was with his brother? He, the happy and contented scoundrel, seemed almost distressed over the fact that his sister-in-law was a bit under the weather. Quite a bit distressed, apparently, to actually come to Sin with his concerns.
He felt a cold shiver run down his spine as a thought flew into his mind and settled like a thorn in his palm. Could Sebastian be in love with Charmaine?
Sin wouldn’t hold it against him. He knew exactly how easy it was to fall in love with her. He did it every day himself, over and over again. Charmaine was too alluring for her own good, and she didn’t even have to flirt to make men follow her every whim.
She was just too loveable.
Bloody hell.
“I can see you are not interested in your wife and her feelings, so I’ll leave you to your precious ledger. I hope the two of you will live happily ever after, as it’s clear to anyone who has eyes in their head that you won’t be with your wife.” Sebastian’s smile was just as icy as his clipped voice as he turned and headed for the door.
“She’s my wife,” Sin called out after him.
“I’m glad you’re aware of that,” Sebastian said over his shoulder, not bothering to turn and face his older brother, and Sin felt another cold shiver.
“You leave her alone, Ian.”
“Like you do?”
And there Sebastian had the last word again as he disappeared through the doorway and the door crashed shut behind him.
“I’m not ignoring her,” Sin pouted to the closed door as he slumped back into the chair again, not feeling as content as he had before his brother’s interruption.
&nb
sp; What if he was right? What if Sebastian had feelings for his sister-in-law? How could they ever see that through? He didn’t want to lose his closeness to his only brother because of a woman, and especially not over his own wife.
It was a bloody nuisance to have a magnificent wife. He had been secretly preparing himself for the Season in London, which was closing in too fast. He guessed it would be Gretna Green all over again. Charmaine had been constantly surrounded by eager men who did anything to catch the attention of the beauty and maybe perhaps win the way to her heart, and her bed.
There had always been lots and lots of bets in the infamous Book of Bets at White’s about her:
Who would win her heart.
Who would win her hand.
Who would sneak the first kiss away.
And now Sin was afraid there were more bets scribbled down, considering the notorious crowd of bored young men who had made a game of becoming a new wife’s first lover. All newly married women had a list of bets, and claims, from different men, over who the lover would be and how far into the marriage he would succeed with his quest of getting into the woman’s bed.
There were many women who were simply crossed off, in the end, as not one man had succeeded. But then there were the ones with whom someone had become the winner…
I wonder if Sebastian’s name is scribbled down on Charmaine’s page.
With another sigh he pushed the heavy ledger aside, unable to continue with the counting Sebastian had interrupted when he barged in. Instead, Sin stood and followed his brother’s footsteps out of the study. Soon enough he found Sebastian in the family room, having tea with the rest of the family, including Charmaine.
She sat beside her sister on a small sofa, looking lovelier than ever, clad in a lovely pink dress in the same shade as her full lips, her thick blonde hair tumbling down her back. She acknowledged him calmly with an almost invisible nod, inviting him to sit down in a chair across the table from her with a small, elegant movement of her hand.
So composed. So serene. So cold.
He sat down in the chair, accepting the cup of tea she handed him gracefully, before he crossed one leg over the other and tried to seem more relaxed and at ease than he was.
The Beauty of You Page 15