Deeper in Sin

by Sharon Page

  “And just who might be you be? Lying in wait for His Grace, were you? Were those your associates? Don’t try to steal anything off His Grace. I’m watching you.”

  “You think I’m a thief?” She swung around, fiercely glaring at the coachman. “One of those men tried to carry me off to do God knows what! I’d be dead except for your master, so I’d suggest you help him. I’m not a thief, I’m—” She broke off. Summoning pride, she tipped up her chin. “I left the ball with the duke. He was going to take me home.”

  “Was he now?” The coachman was middle-aged but muscled, and wore a look of suspicion.

  “To my home!” That wasn’t exactly true, of course.

  The coachman glanced around the seedy area. “Why was he doing that?”

  In truth, she did not live far from here. The small slummy room had been all she could afford. Most of the money she’d gotten from Devars’s bracelet was set aside for looking after the children and to pay the rent on the cottage where they and Belle lived.

  “It doesn’t matter what he was doing,” she cried. “He is now lying unconscious on a London street. Could you stop asking me idiotic questions? He was trying to rescue me, and look what’s happened to him. We must fetch a doctor. I can take care of him”—she could—“but I can’t get him into a carriage. Not on my own.”

  The coachman made a disgruntled sound. “All right. Best to get him back to Caradon House. I’ll put him in the carriage and take him home.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “Be off with ye, miss. I’ve no way of knowing if yer tale is true.”

  “Of course, it’s true.”

  The coachman rubbed his nose. “I don’t know. It’s not the first time something’s happened to His Grace. Thieves and vagabonds everywhere, there are. Though it’s a strange coincidence, all these things happening so close together.”

  “What else happened to His Grace?” she asked sharply.

  “A footpad almost got him a fortnight ago. And last week, he was shoved in front of a carriage on St. James’s Street.”

  “All those things . . . within two weeks?”

  “Aye. Two attacks and an accident. Not a lucky gentleman, His Grace.”

  “No. But for now, we must get him home. And I will come too. You have to drive the carriage—someone has to watch the duke.”

  The coachman looked wary. “All right. I suppose ye should. Her Grace and the others are still in the country.”

  Her Grace?

  No, not his wife, Sophie remembered. He was supposed to be looking for a wife.

  It must be his mother. Thank heaven, she wasn’t there, Sophie thought. But it did mean the duke needed someone to look after him.

  Nurse him. Heal him.

  Then she looked at his ashen face and clasped his hand. Her heart pounded.

  How badly hurt was he? He couldn’t . . . couldn’t die, could he?

  She couldn’t deny the horrible stabbing pain in her heart at that thought.

  The sort of pain you felt for someone you love.

  5

  What woman of beauty and grace would not choose to become a courtesan? My servants are girls who came from the country—like me—but who had not the wit to see what power they could wield. Whereas I had the ear of the most powerful men in the land.

  Dukes would bow to me and clamor for my attention. My jewels were as magnificent as those belonging to any duchess. Perhaps more magnificent, for inherited jewels are always ghastly.

  I was content.... No, I had reached a level of perfect happiness. And to my surprise, my love for my beautiful viscount only enhanced my joy. We were both careful and circumspect. I found I could justify my dalliances, because my marquess—my protector—was continually unfaithful to me. I had wealth, jewels, gowns, carriages, and love. I resided at the top of the world.

  So there, all you English subjects who live and die by propriety! I found perfect happiness simply by indulging in some rather athletic carnal pleasures.

  —From an unfinished manuscript entitled A Courtesan Confesses by Anonymous

  Cary knew this jiggling, jarring sensation. Knew it from being carried on a stretcher from a battlefield.

  But this was different. That time he had only been bleeding from an arrow wound in his thigh and a saber’s slice across his hip. He hadn’t felt like every inch of his body had been beaten black-and-blue. His arms felt as if they were being pulled off his body.

  An arrow wound and a few cuts had been much nicer, in retrospect, than what he felt now. Right now, he felt as if he’d fallen off a cliff and slammed a dozen rock outcroppings on the way down.

  Dimly, he began to remember. He’d been fighting three men on sidewalk of a slummy London street. Two of them had gotten him down on the ground—

  Miss Ashley? What had happened to her?

  Cary’s eyes shot open, and he fought to move, to sit up, but he couldn’t. He heard grunting around him, and then a female voice said, “Please don’t move, Your Grace,” just as he looked into huge, worried green eyes.

  Miss Ashley. And safe, thank God.

  “We are taking you home, Your Grace,” she said in her sweet voice. “Then I’m putting you in bed.”

  In bed? “Hell, no,” he muttered. “There is no way in hell I can do anything right now.”

  Out of swollen eyes, he was certain he saw her blush.

  “I mean, you need to go to your bed, and a doctor must come and examine you and stitch you up if you need it, Your Grace. And give you laudanum to get you through the pain. Then I shall look after you. For there might be fever. And you will be in pain, and looking after you is the least I can do after you saved my life.”

  Look after him? What in Hades was she talking about?

  Slowly, he began to figure out where he was. And why his arms hurt. His coachman and three footmen were carrying him across the drive toward his house by his limbs. How had he gotten here from the stews? Apparently, Miss Ashley had been in charge of that.

  Bugger it—his front steps loomed before them. That was going to hurt.

  “Put me down,” he commanded. But it wasn’t much of a command—his voice came out in a husky rasp.

  No one listened. Four grunting men lumbered over his gravel drive, panting with exertion, and they stopped at the base of the steps to catch their breaths.

  “You are not hauling me up those steps, damn it.”

  “We’ve no other choice, Yer Grace,” his coachman said with irritating cheer. “Unless we carry ye down the steps to the basement door.”

  That would be worse. There was no way they could negotiate the narrow tradesmen’s steps while carrying him. “I am capable of walking.”

  “I doubt that, Yer Grace. Ye’ve been badly beaten. I won’t have ye collapse and break yer neck, Yer Grace.”

  “I’ve walked after being stabbed and shot, Bryce. This I can do.”

  The footmen looked relieved, his coachman looked doubtful, but they set him on his feet. Pain shot through his legs, but it was just bruising of his muscles. Not as bad as having to pull out an arrow or stop the stem of blood from a blade.

  Ignoring the pain, he got his footing and his balance. Then he took slow, agonizing steps. Having Miss Ashley watch him made him fight for stoicism.

  He was, after all, accustomed to hiding pain. Second step—he grit his teeth as lightning shot through his side. In Ceylon, he’d fought while wounded. How in blazes had he done it? Maybe, at thirty, he was getting old.

  Though it was only two years ago he was in Ceylon.

  As a young man, from fourteen onward, he used to seek out physical abuse and pain. He’d liked to fight. Fighting kept him focused on the moment. A man couldn’t go off into memories when he was trying not to get beaten to a pulp.

  He’d thought soldiering would have given him the same thing.

  But the stretches between battles had given him too much time to think. So did being held as prisoner of war, between the moments when he thought his captors woul
d kill him.

  They reached the top of the steps. Bryce pounded on the door, and Miss Ashley touched Cary’s arm. “Your Grace, are you feeling better?”

  God, she looked afraid for him. She went on, “I’m sorry—that’s a useless question, but I am afraid you might be badly hurt.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to stand if so, love.”

  “But they were hitting you, kicking you. Even in your head. I tried to stop them, but they just pushed me away. Then one of them went for his knife again. I desperately tried to find some kind of weapon—”

  She went pale.

  Then she said, “Even though I hit him with a board, I couldn’t stop him. I thought he’d stabbed you before your coachman came and stopped them.”

  His body felt like he’d been run over by horses, and his head pounded like cannon fire. Now he realized something else. He felt an icy wetness along his right side.

  He put his hand there. With his black gloves, he couldn’t see the blood, but he could smell it on the leather. “Damn it.”

  His coachman swung his arm over the man’s broad, stocky shoulders. “We’ll help you up the steps, Yer Grace.”

  Miss Ashley surged forward and put her hand against his wound.

  “Don’t,” he said. “It’s bleeding, and you’ll be covered in blood.”

  He saw it now. Red against her white glove. She looked down and paled. But she lifted her chin. “I am fine,” she said stoically.

  “You’re not.” He pushed her hand away, determined to protect her. Witnessing his attack must have shocked her.

  She bit her lip, her full, lush lower lip that trembled. Her dark curls, half tumbling out of her pins, wobbled around her face. “I’m so sorry!” she suddenly burst out. “You were attacked and it was my fault—”

  “Aha!” barked his coachman. “Thought ye were a viper with a bosom. And I were right.”

  “The expression is a viper in the bosom,” she retorted. “And I meant that I . . . uh, distracted His Grace, which allowed the footpads to attack.”

  He was distracted because she wanted to “heal” him. That was damned impossible.

  Still, he couldn’t damn well stand by while she threw herself at one man after another until she found a taker.

  What in Hades was he going to do with her?

  “It was not your fault,” he growled.

  Now that he wasn’t so groggy from punches and kicks, Cary saw a dark shadow around her pale neck—bruises. Her pretty gown had been torn. So had her plain brown cape. “Are you all right?”

  “Thanks to your remarkable bravery, I am. I’ve never seen any gentleman fight with such skill.” She gazed at him, her face almost glowing with hero worship.

  That expression on her face made him nervous.

  She was a sweet thing, but she wanted him too much.

  He really needed to get her sent home. Fast.

  Then he remembered something else. The explosion he’d heard before he passed out. “I heard a pistol shot, but neither of us appear to have been hit.” He was certain he would be aware if a pistol ball had gone through him, even in his battered, dazed state.

  “Your coachman fired at them, but he had to ensure he missed so he did not hit you. But he had a second pistol, and the threat of that frightened them away.”

  “Good job.” He managed to turn his head toward his coachman. “There will be a raise in that, Bryce. For saving our lives.” They’d reached the top of the front steps. Sweat beaded his forehead. He wasn’t hiding his agony as well as he’d intended. He managed to open his eyes again. “Miss Ashley, I need to get you safely home.”

  “No!” She was trembling, watching him. “I want to stay with you. To make sure you are all right.”

  “I’m in the house alone, so that would not be appropriate.”

  “Alone? But you have servants.”

  “No chaperons.”

  She gaped at him in shock, but it was the truth. He had no intention of ruining her, and he refused to be accused of it by rumor. Nor did he want Miss Ashley ruined, much as she was willing to be.

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  She blushed fiercely. Then she told him. “It was the only room I could afford in London.”

  God, for anyone who knew London, the address was known as the worse cesspool of the stews.

  “Bloody hell.” He could not send her back there.

  But what was he going to do with her? It was too late to send her anywhere else. Vaguely, he thought of Grey and his wife, Helena. But it was the middle of the night. Would they take Miss Ashley in?

  Christ, he was still too dazed to think properly. Most of his servants would be asleep. Except for the coachman, three footmen, and his majordomo, no one else had to know. It was only one night, after all.

  “I’m not sending you back there. That’s madness. Stay here tonight. I’ll have a room made up for you.”

  He reached out, winced, and rapped on his door. Then his coachman applied the knocker with a lot more force.

  “You want me to stay with you? Watch over you?” she asked.

  He imagined that. Miss Ashley in his bedroom. Then his brain, long used to abstinence, started to play an evil game with him. It began to play out detailed images of her removing all her clothes. Touching her full breasts and nipples. Exposing her sweet round bottom while he waited for her in his bed.

  How did a man with a knife wound get hard? But he did, damn it.

  Except he knew he could do nothing about it.

  “No.” His voice was strangled. “You will be given a bedroom, and I want you to stay there. My majordomo, Penders, will send for a physician for me. You are to go to sleep.”

  “And tomorrow you intend to send me home,” she said softly.

  “I don’t know what to do with you,” he muttered.

  She was trouble. And keeping her near his room tonight would be like sleeping over a room filled with gunpowder. All it would take was one spark for a devastating explosion.

  He had to ensure he doused any potential spark immediately.

  His door opened, and his majordomo stood there in a robe, a look of shock on his face at the sight before him.

  The duke was letting her spend the night!

  He cared about her too much to send her back to her room—that must mean something, mustn’t it?

  The front door was wrenched open, and a man cried, “Good heavens, Your Grace. What has happened?”

  The man had dressed hurriedly, Sophie realized. He wore a thick robe, and his thin dark hair stuck out to the sides. What time was it? She got her answer then—a distant clock bonged and did it again and again. It was three o’clock in the morning.

  “Penders, good man. Unfortunately, I got into an altercation with footpads. Send for a doctor—I need one to stitch up a wound. And Miss Ashley needs a bedchamber prepared for the night.”

  For a moment, the butler, or whoever he was, looked stunned, but he swiftly composed his face. “Indeed. Very good, Your Grace.”

  But Penders looked at her then tipped up his nose. Obviously, he thought she was a ladybird. Well, she—

  Well, she was trying to become a ladybird, so she had no right to be offended.

  If she were a proper girl, she shouldn’t stay in his house. But she must be improper. And she could not waste a whole night with the duke.

  The coachman and the livery-clad footman supported the Duke of Caradon as they entered his foyer. For some reason, in his house, he seemed even more determined to act as if he were strong and not wounded.

  Thinking of his wounds, of the horrific beating she’d witnessed and then the blood that stained her only pair of white gloves, Sophie felt sick. He could have been killed trying to protect her.

  It was like Samuel, who had vowed to look after her, even though his family refused to acknowledge she and Samuel were in love. His family had threatened to cut him off.

  Samuel had loved her. Was it possible—?

  Her heart patte
red hopefully at the thought.

  Then she looked around her.

  Good lord, this was a duke’s home? What could a palace look like then?

  Dark, intricately carved woodwork soared around her, disappearing far above her into darkness. The light of Penders’s candle glinted on something shiny. The gilt of large picture frames.

  The floor beneath her was marble so well polished, she had to watch her step. She slipped once. When they reached the stairs, she almost lost her breath. The newel post was covered in gilt and so were the railings.

  Awed, she couldn’t find words. And when she reached the duke’s bedroom, her legs wobbled. She’d known a duke was wealthy, but this was beyond belief.

  It was almost as large as the assembly room ballroom in the village near her home, for heaven’s sakes. And this was just his bedroom.

  A huge bed almost the size of a carriage stood in the center, swathed in silk hangings of exotic turquoise. The sheets and counterpane were turquoise, the carpet a lush Eastern design and enormous. A pure silver ewer and basin sat on a gilt-decorated vanity table. There was only one mirror, on the vanity.

  The men carried Caradon to his bed and eased him onto it so he was sitting on it. Then she saw her red-stained glove again and gasped. “No, no! You must put something underneath him. An old sheet or something.”

  There was a trunk at the foot of the bed, and being useful, she opened it quickly. It contained blankets, but beautiful, thick wool ones.

  The coachman grabbed one from her and threw it across the bed so it covered the embroidered counterpane. The duke was looking at her, a ghost of a smile on his lips, then his men helped him lie back on the blanket.

  Sophie hurried forward. She’d been raised in the country by a doctor, so she’d seen some wounds on people—

  But almost at once, a brusque voice demanded, “What have we here?”

  It was the doctor, a short, barrel-chested man with silver-tinged black hair. The coachman and the majordomo tried to explain, but they hadn’t been there. She had. She raised her voice and raised it, the men ignoring her until the duke broke in. “The young lady knows and is determined to talk. Let her explain.”