Her Dearest Sin

by Gayle Wilson

  Her mouth tightened. “In desiring to marry me,” she said.

  “Apparently he had the same motives for both. I’m trying to keep you safe, from him and from what you see around you. If you truly prefer either of those choices, then I assure you I won’t insist on this marriage.”

  Her eyes left his face to consider the rough-hewn, battle-weary veterans around her. Unwashed, wearing threadbare uniforms that had seen them through years of service, they were also unkempt, untutored and uncultured.

  When her gaze finally returned to his face, his voice was lower and more intense. “Or perhaps you would like me to find you another British officer to marry so that he might then convey you safely to England. My brother would, I assure you, still honor my promise of protection.”

  “Your comments are insulting, Captain Sinclair.”

  “My comments are simply the reiteration of your choices, Doña Pilar. Which of them you make is up to you.”

  He had once called her a coward. That was not the word he wanted to use now, but he couldn’t see that telling her how pigheaded she was being was apt to win her agreement.

  The breath she finally took was deep enough to lift her breasts, making him too aware of the low neckline of the blouse she wore. Something he didn’t want to think about.

  Not now. Not while he was trying to convince her to enter into a very necessary marriage of convenience. A marriage that might not be either a marriage or convenient, but one that was, in these circumstances, certainly necessary.

  “That man isn’t a priest,” she said again.

  “Perhaps not,” he conceded, “but if he agrees to marry us, will you let him? Will you exchange vows with me, and trust that as soon as I get you to England and to safety, I shall endeavor to do whatever is within my power to make this right?”

  Exactly what that might be, he admitted, he had no idea.

  * * *

  “A Papist?” the Reverend Dargood Reynolds said.

  His mud-colored eyes considered the flawless skin and midnight hair of the daughter of the late Conde del Castillo as if they were somehow offensive.

  “My betrothed is Catholic,” Sebastian confirmed, since there was little point in denying the obvious.

  “And now she wishes to join the covenant of true believers?”

  If it would get this man’s signature on a document proclaiming he and Pilar were husband and wife, Sebastian thought, then he would agree that she did. Agree that they both did. At this point, he would have agreed to anything short of eternal perdition. And he doubted, given their predicament, that lie would come close to qualifying him for that punishment.

  “She wishes to marry me,” he said. “And I wish to marry her.”

  “To save her immortal soul?”

  To save her body from a brutal and despicable madman.

  “Yes.”

  As the lie came out of his mouth, it seemed he caught a whiff of sulfur lingering in the air from the sermon they had just heard.

  “Does she believe in the Lord Jesus as her savior?”

  “Of course,” Pilar said disdainfully.

  Sebastian had cautioned her to silence, but he could tell by her tone that she was rapidly approaching the point where she would turn and walk away, even if it meant accepting another of those choices he had threatened her with.

  “Will you wed us?” he asked Reynolds, pressing the decision.

  “You seem to be in a great hurry.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, those transports are loading,” Sebastian said in exasperation, pointing at the waiting ships. “According to the quartermaster, I need documentation that this marriage has taken place in order to take this woman aboard them. If you don’t wish to help me save her immortal soul, then perhaps you’ll be good enough to direct me to another of your brethren who won’t be so stingy with his authority to offer that salvation.”

  “My authority comes from God, sir, and you have no right to question it.”

  “I’m not questioning it. I’m asking you to use it to wed me to this Papist, so that as her lawful husband I may teach her the errors of her ways.”

  His fingers tightened around Pilar’s shoulder so hard that he felt her flinch. It was as forceful a reminder to keep her mouth shut as he could manage under the circumstances.

  Incredibly, it seemed to work. As he and Reynolds watched, her chin came up. Her dark eyes flashed him a look that spoke volumes. Her mouth, however, remained closed in a line that could be called nothing short of obstinate.

  “You’re sure, my son, that you’re up to the job?” the Reverend Dargood Reynolds asked.

  Sebastian could have sworn he’d heard a note of sympathy in the question.

  “I’m sure that if I don’t undertake to try, no one else in her country or in this one ever shall. She’ll be lost forever. Do you really wish to have that on your conscience?”

  He could feel the small shoulder stiffen indignantly beneath his fingers, but he didn’t ease his hold. Instead, his fingers tightened warningly again.

  “And you promise to instruct her in the true path?”

  Vague enough to win his agreement, Sebastian decided. And apparently vague enough to win Pilar’s too, for remarkably she continued to hold her tongue.

  “To the very best of my ability,” Sebastian said, and again felt the depth of the breath the woman beside him took as the preacher nodded his agreement.

  “It seems very…small,” Pilar said, looking doubtfully around the cabin they’d been assigned.

  “At least we’ll have some privacy,” Sebastian responded.

  Having seen the other parts of the ship as they made their way here, she knew that it was incredibly crowded below decks. Sebastian had told her that many of the soldiers would simply spread a makeshift pallet topside tonight, sleeping under the stars. Providing, of course, that they had calm weather for the crossing.

  “Are you a good sailor?” he asked.

  She turned at the question, but found it difficult to meet his eyes. She’d had difficulty doing so since they had gone through the exchange of vows back on the dock.

  As much as she might try to convince herself that there was nothing binding about a marriage ceremony that was not a mass performed by someone who was not a priest, the pledges they had repeated seemed to argue otherwise. Despite the fiery sermon they had listened to, the Reverend Reynolds had spoken the simple words with a dignity she’d found unexpectedly moving. And Sebastian’s deep voice, when he had made those vows, had seemed incredibly solemn.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’ve never been on a boat.”

  “Ship,” he corrected, smiling at her, more out of relief that they were aboard, she believed, than from pleasure in her company. “Then we must hope for a smooth crossing.”

  That was a hope, however, which was not destined to come to fruition. They sailed with the evening tide and before they were out of the harbor, the motion of the ship, along with the smells that permeated the area below deck—tar and fish and the scent of too many unwashed bodies pressed too closely into the space—had given Pilar the answer to his question.

  “I think…” she whispered, having controlled her growing nausea as long as she thought possible. “I think that perhaps I am not a good sailor.”

  In the darkness, she heard Sebastian rise to light the lantern that hung from a hook in the middle of the cabin. He knelt beside the narrow bunk on which she was lying, looking down into her face, just as he had when he’d taken her to the house in Madrid.

  The lantern moved with the motion of the ship, alternately lighting and then casting his face into shadow. Fighting her sickness, she managed to hold her eyes open long enough to discover that he was neither angry nor disgusted with her weakness. Actually, she thought, he seemed to be slightly amused.

  “Some fresh air, I think,” he said, putting his hand under her arm to urge her up.

  She didn’t want to move, afraid that she might embarrass herself if she d
id, but the thought of breathing something other than the stale, malodorous assortment of scents below deck was enticing. Enough so that she let him help her off the bunk and lead her to the door.

  Once there, Sebastian removed his cloak from the hook to wrap it around her. Then, just as he had while he’d talked to the man who had married them, he kept his arm around her shoulders. He guided her unerringly through the darkness, down the passageway and past the sleeping troopers, none of whom stirred.

  As they climbed the narrow stairs that led up to the deck, like a miracle, the first inhalation of brine-scented breeze dispelled her queasiness. She lifted her face into a fine mist, either the remnants of a storm or of the spray produced as the ship cut through the water.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She nodded, her eyes shifting upward to watch the full-bellied sails snap taut in the wind. Above them, the clouds had parted to reveal a few stars dotting a midnight sky.

  “Not the sea, then,” he said.

  She lowered her eyes, to find his on the water of the channel, which churned whitely along the hull.

  “Not the sea?”

  “You weren’t seasick,” he said, turning to look at her. “Humanity sick, perhaps. All those bodies packed too tightly together.”

  The imagery the phrase produced wasn’t that of the sleeping men below. It was of a dark garden instead, and of the muscled wall of his chest pressed against her breasts. For a moment, it seemed she could again feel him breathing, his body moving in unison with her own.

  The motion of the ship, she told herself resolutely. Still, in the back of her mind she couldn’t disavow the knowledge that this man was now her husband. Perhaps the church might not recognize their union, but one made just the same. Whether or not it could legally be dissolved when they reached England…

  “Tell me about your family,” she said, realizing only now how much she was dreading what was to come.

  “My mother and father are both dead,” Sebastian said, his voice distant. Nostalgic, perhaps. “They died within a year of each other. My father first, and then… As strange as it may sound, I think my mother chose to follow him as quickly as she could arrange it.”

  “Not… suicide.”

  He laughed, and the chill she had felt at his choice of words dissipated. “Not suicide. Grief perhaps. Loneliness. They were the whole world to one another.”

  The whole world to one another. Just as her own mother and father had been. Just as she had always imagined…

  “What of her children?” she asked. She could not bear to dwell on what she had always imagined about this moment. Her wedding night. “Didn’t she think of them?”

  “We were grown men by that time. At least we thought we were,” he said, his voice still touched with amusement. “At least I thought I was. Since they’re older, I’m sure that was true for my brothers as well.”

  His eyes were focused once more on the sea. She studied his profile, willing to wait for the rest. And when it came, the amusement had been supplanted again by the nostalgia she had heard before.

  “Dare inherited the title, and I can think of no one more suited to it. Aristocratic to the core,” he said. “He can freeze you with a look. Incredible presence.”

  “And a friend of the Regent,” she said, repeating what Malford had told her.

  “A trusted member of Prinny’s inner circle. There’s a difference, you know.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “It doesn’t matter. When you meet him, you may form your own opinion. I would prefer that. And then there’s Ian. My second brother.”

  Perhaps because she couldn’t see his face, his voice seemed more revealing than it ever had before. There was within it now a warmth, a subtle relaxation of the tone in which he had discussed the earl.

  “I’ve learned only recently that he wed,” he added.

  “And the earl?” she asked. “Is he also married?”

  “For almost a year now. I haven’t met her, but Ian tells me that she is…remarkable,” he said.

  Remarkable. There had been a definite note of admiration in that. She wondered exactly what he had been told about a woman he had never met to cause it to be there.

  “Brave, beautiful and erudite,” he said, answering the question she hadn’t asked.

  All things he obviously felt a woman should be. And Pilar wasn’t sure she herself possessed any of those attributes.

  Despite her gift for languages, she could not claim to be erudite, a trait that would hardly be valued in a woman of her culture in any case. He had already deemed her a coward. And considering that only once in their acquaintance had he seen her dressed in anything remotely resembling the attire of a gentlewoman…

  “That’s the extent of my family. Two brothers, as different as daylight and dark. And two sisters-in-law, neither of whom I have yet met.”

  “What will they think of our…situation?” she asked.

  She had finally settled on that word because she could not bring herself to claim this was a marriage. Something he had entered into, by his own admission, only because there was no other way to get her out of France.

  “I’m sure they’ll feel as I did. That there was no other alternative.”

  He had never misled her about his motives. And unlike Julián’s, they were totally unselfish. Still…

  The hiss and snap of the sail drew her eyes. As she watched, it swelled with the wind, carrying them nearer to England and away from everything she had ever known. Suddenly the clarity of the white cloth and the scattered stars above it blurred until she was forced to blink to clear her vision. Unwanted, his words echoed over and over again in her head.

  I’m sure they’ll feel as I did. That there was no other alternative.

  Chapter Eight

  London

  “I regret to inform you, sir, that the earl is presently at dinner. If I may be so bold as to inquire who’s calling, I shall have word sent to him immediately when he’s finished.”

  “My name is Sebastian. Please inform Lord Dare that we’ve not yet dined. If between them, he and Ian haven’t yet managed to devour every scrap of food the kitchen sent up…”

  He raised one inquiring brow at the butler, again consciously imitating his eldest brother’s mannerism. By that time, comprehension, swiftly followed by consternation, had begun to dawn over the face of what Sebastian believed, knowing Dare, would be the perfect majordomo.

  “Sebastian?” the man repeated. “Then you must be—”

  “Captain the Honorable Sebastian Sinclair. Late of His Majesty’s forces engaged in fighting the French. Surely someone in London has thought to mention that the war is over.”

  “Of course, Captain Sinclair. Forgive me, please,” the butler said, a deep flush spreading into his closely shaven jowls. “No one told me to expect you tonight, sir.”

  “Perhaps because no one knew we’d be arriving. Actually, we didn’t know,” Sebastian said. And then he realized that any explanation as to why they had arrived, without prior warning, at the door of the earl’s town house should properly be made to his brother rather than his brother’s butler. “Would you be so kind as to tell them we have arrived, please…” He hesitated, searching his memory for the name. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

  “Watson, sir.”

  “Then would you tell the earl, Watson, that we’re here.”

  “Of course, Captain Sinclair.”

  The butler bowed formally, and when he straightened, his eyes touched on Pilar before they even more briefly considered Malford, who was standing behind the two of them. Those examinations weren’t prolonged enough to solicit a correction, but still, the shock of what he had seen was apparent in the man’s eyes.

  And after all, Sebastian acknowledged, choosing to ignore the breach, why wouldn’t he be shocked?

  All of them had, of necessity, been wearing the same clothing for several days. Sebastian hadn’t managed a shave since they’d lef
t Bordeaux, and with her hair spilling around her shoulders and her complexion darkened by the sun, Pilar resembled nothing so much as a Gypsy girl. Their appearances were certainly less villainous than that of Harry’s batman, who had not had the luxury of a private cabin during the crossing.

  The butler said nothing of what he was obviously thinking. He simply turned on his heel and disappeared down the wide hallway, moving as rapidly as the dignity of his office would permit.

  “For the servant of an earl,” Pilar said, “he seems very poorly trained.”

  “I suppose your father’s servants would have handled the arrival of unexpected guests in the middle of dinner better than that.”

  “My father’s servants would never have dared to gawk at anyone who came to his door, no matter how they were dressed. But then, they were well trained.”

  “My apologies for the ineptitude of my brother’s servants. I suppose you believe I should have chastised the man, but we are rather rough looking, you will admit. I confess I’m far too glad to be home to quibble over something that minor.”

  Pilar had managed the rigors of the journey from Madrid to Bordeaux and the even more trying channel crossing, where they had been forced to share a cabin, without voicing one single complaint. He could only suppose her criticism of Dare’s major-domo had its roots in an exhaustion which, given her femininity, must surely exceed his own. And his was staggering.

  When he glanced down at her face, about to attempt an apology for his brusqueness, he realized she had gone very pale. Her fingers lifted to the neckline of the blouse she wore, tugging it upward to cover the beginning curve of her breasts, which was exposed by its low cut. It was then Sebastian saw that her hands were trembling.

  Exhaustion or.. .anxiety? Of course anyone would be anxious, given what probably lay ahead.

  A door opened somewhere down the hall, the sound traveling clearly along that vast expanse of marble. He looked up, feeling his throat close with emotion as he saw his brothers coming toward him.