Her Dearest Sin

by Gayle Wilson

  Fate can’t be that cruel, he thought. He wanted the pleasure of killing that bastard himself.

  Besides, he knew they were here. It seemed he could feel the malevolent force of Delgado’s evil, as rank as the miasma that drifted up from the waste carried by the river from the sprawling capital upstream.

  By now he had reached the beginning of the long pier. Before him in the moonlight lay what seemed to be a fleet of small boats. He would have to rouse the owner of each until he found the one that had carried the man and woman he sought.

  The stench rising from the river was almost a physical assault as he worked his way along the dock, asking the same question of each captain. And receiving the same answer.

  No one had carried a Spaniard and a woman out to any of the ships. No one, it seemed, had carried any passengers at all in the last half hour.

  Of course, if they had been detained during the journey for some reason or if the abduction had occurred later than he’d believed, it was possible they had arrived at the port only minutes before he had. His eyes lifted again to the masts silhouetted against the sky and then fell to search the dark water that lay between. No skiff was making its way across that empty expanse.

  Then where the hell were they? he wondered, fear that he had been wrong knotting his stomach. He turned, his gaze tracking the length of the pier jutting out into the sea.

  She was standing at the end of it, the wind off the estuary whipping strands of midnight hair free of the low chignon in which it had been confined at dinner. A dark cloak now covered her gown. Still, there was no doubt in his mind that the figure staring out toward the sea and the waiting ships was Pilar.

  There was nothing else there. No one else. There were not even any of the numerous tenders that crowded the port end of the dock.

  There was only the moonlight, lining the distant sails with silver, and the open sea and sky, which seemed to dwarf the solitary figure. The same icy finger of premonition that had touched his spine the day he met her brushed along it again.

  And suddenly, the memory of Harry’s sightless, slowly glazing eyes was in his head. Wetherly’s death had given him a warning he could not ignore.

  Julián had used this same trap before, he thought, remembering the forgotten cloak, lying dark and abandoned against the barren earth of that graveyard. That time Delgado had employed Pilar’s maid as the bait. This time he might have had his pick of any of the dark-haired strumpets who plied their sad trade along the streets and alleys of the port.

  He choked back the almost irresistible urge to call her name so that she would turn and he could see her face. Despite what his senses had told him when he’d first seen her, he assured himself that this wasn’t Pilar. It couldn’t be.

  His hand closed around the butt of the dueling pistol he had concealed in the inner pocket of his cloak. He couldn’t see where Julián or his men might be hidden. There was literally nothing at the end of the pier but the woman and the unbroken panorama of sea and sky.

  Still, he knew Delgado was here. He could feel him, waiting in breathless anticipation for Sebastian to do whatever it was he wanted him to.

  He had no way of knowing how many men he might be facing, but Delgado wouldn’t have come to England alone. Just as he had taken part of his troop to Paris, he would have brought them here to help him retrieve his fiancé. Who is now my wife. My wife.

  It seemed to Sebastian that there was now only one way to find her. He must spring Delgado’s trap.

  He began to walk toward the figure at the end of the pier. In the eerie silence his boot heels echoed more loudly on the wooden planking than they had before. At that sound, the woman turned, looking toward him for the first time.

  Whatever Delgado intended, there could be no more doubt about the bait he was using. The moonlight fell across the perfect oval of her face, giving her skin a luminescence that was almost spectral.

  And then he saw her eyes, which had, only hours ago, been full of fire and life and joy. In contrast, they were now strangely flat, black and lifeless.

  “Pilar?”

  He spoke her name because he could not help himself. The questioning inflection was a reaction to the profound change reflected in her eyes. For a heartbeat he doubted his identification, his gaze again sweeping over her face.

  His footsteps had not slowed. And gradually, as he came closer, her features began to become more distinct. To arrange themselves into a pattern that was familiar. Beloved.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  The hair on the back of his neck had begun to rise. There was still no one else around them. No footsteps followed his across the betraying surface of the pier. He fought the impulse to glance behind him, expecting at any second a musket ball to explode against his spine.

  “Don’t come any closer,” she said. “You must understand that I’m not going back to London with you.”

  She had not raised her voice, but the words were clear and precise, each of them dropping with the coldness of a stone onto the surface of his heart.

  “Why not?” he asked, listening to the water-lapped silence around them.

  Every nerve was attuned for the least suspicion of a sound. For any movement. For anyone drawing breath or a weapon.

  There was nothing. It seemed there was no one else in the whole world. Only the sea and the sky. And the two of them.

  “I am returning to Spain with my fiancé.” Her voice was perfectly calm, the words spoken without any trace of emotion.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of him,” he said. “I told you that.”

  Delgado was forcing her to say these things. Like a puppet master, he was somewhere behind the scenes, pulling the strings for what Sebastian recognized, as he had with Dare tonight, was merely a show.

  Pilar said nothing for a moment, and then her lips tilted. “You don’t understand, Sebastian, and you must. I’m going home. I want to go home. To my country. To my people.”

  “I understand that he’s forcing you to say this.”

  “No. No, he’s not,” she said. “I asked him to let me tell you myself. So that I could try to explain how—”

  “There’s nothing to explain,” he broke in, his voice savage with the force of his anger. “Whatever he’s threatened you with, you don’t have to be afraid. He can’t hurt you. You’re in England now.”

  Delgado had just taken her from under the very noses of the Sinclairs. He wondered after he said them if those words sounded as ridiculous to her as they had to him. All along, he had promised her protection, and yet, with her sheltered in the very heart of his family, he had not been able to provide it.

  “You are no longer bound by the promises you made,” she said, her voice unchanged. “Not by any of them.”

  He examined the words, wondering which promises they were intended to free him from. And why, if she really wished to return home, she had felt compelled to tell him that.

  Except she didn’t want to return. He knew that she didn’t want to go back to Spain and Delgado, no matter what was in her voice or her eyes.

  “And if I don’t wish to be freed from those promises?” he asked, taking a step closer to her.

  “Don’t,” she said, moving back to the edge of the pier.

  From where he stood, he could see that she was poised on the very last board. Another step would send her tumbling into the dark water below.

  “What has he threatened you with this time?”

  For a moment it seemed that something gleamed in those lifeless black eyes. Then she blinked, and whatever it had been was gone. A trick of the moonlight or…?

  “Why are you crying?”

  That’s what he had just seen. Tears. And as a result, he took another step toward her. An unthinking reaction to her distress.

  She turned her head, glancing at the dark water before she looked back at him. “Please, Sebastian. Don’t come any closer, I beg you.”

  Whether it was the change in the angle of light or the f
act that he was now much nearer, for the first time he could see the bruising that was beginning to darken the fragile skin at the corner of her mouth. A wave of incredible fury roared through his body.

  Whatever Delgado had threatened her with, it was obvious he had already struck her. To force her to tell these lies? To force her to become the bait for his trap.

  His trap. He had to remember that this was Delgado’s game, carefully orchestrated to make him react exactly as he almost had. Whatever was going to happen, he knew now that he was supposed to take those final steps, the ones that would bring him to Pilar.

  Delgado intended him to take them—whether in rage or fear or desire. That’s what he was supposed to do. To approach her so that Delgado could kill him. The only question was, if Pilar’s guardian was in position to do that, why hadn’t he done so already.

  “What bargain did you make with that devil this time, my darling?”

  She had begged for his life once before. That day by the river. She had knocked his pistol away, leaving him helpless to prevent what had followed. She had done it then because she believed that otherwise Delgado would kill him. This…this, he knew, was no different.

  For a second or two, he thought she would refuse to answer him. Then she said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me. It matters a great deal to me.”

  The breath she took lifted the slender shoulders under that dark cloak. A strand of hair blew across her face. One small white hand was lifted to brush it away, holding it out of her eyes so that her gaze rested undisturbed on his face.

  “It matters to me because I love you,” he said, realizing only now that he had never told her. Perhaps he had assumed she knew.

  “If that’s true, then know that this is right,” she said. “For both of us.”

  And then she watched his smile form before she lifted her eyes again to his.

  “There is nothing right about this,” he said softly.

  “They will never accept me as your wife,” she said. “Even if you could somehow convince them you married me because you wanted to.”

  “Why else do you think I married you?”

  “Because you had no choice. Neither of us has a choice.”

  The tense was wrong. Neither of us has a choice. Which implied…that she wasn’t talking about what had occurred in France.

  “Tell me you don’t love me,” he demanded. “Make me believe it.”

  “I can’t make you believe anything but what you want to believe.”

  “At least let me hear you say it.”

  The ultimate test, he acknowledged grimly.

  Her eyes seemed to focus somewhere behind him. When they came back to his face, they were as cold as the water flowing beneath the pier. And her voice, when she spoke, was raised so that the words rang out clearly in the nighttime stillness.

  “I don’t love you, Sebastian Sinclair,” she said. “I have never loved you.”

  There was only one thing that could force her to say that. One thing that could have induced her to deny everything that had been between them. It seemed that Delgado could be depended on to reuse again and again the tricks that worked.

  This one wouldn’t, he vowed. It was time for a deception of his own.

  He wasn’t going to give the bastard a chance to shoot him. Instead he was going to make it seem he was giving Delgado what he wanted.

  The Sebastian Sinclair who had held his murdered friend in his arms would have closed the distance between them, pulling her away from the edge and forcing her to come with him. The one who loved the woman at the end of this pier more than his own life was going to walk away from her.

  Retreat was often the better part of valor. He would watch for Delgado’s next move and arrange things so that when the inevitable confrontation occurred, Pilar wouldn’t be in the line of fire.

  His lips tilted as he thought how pleased Dare and even Wellington would be to hear that for once he was being ruled by his head and not his heart. Without taking his eyes off her face, he inclined his head politely, almost as if he were turning her over to her next partner after they had finished some sedate ballroom set.

  Then he turned and began to retrace his steps along the echoing boards of the dock, walking away from her. Back along the way he had come.

  He had transversed less than half of the distance when the ball struck him, the sound of the shot a heartbeat behind its impact. As his shocked brain managed to put those two unexpected events together, he heard Pilar begin to scream.

  Chapter Twelve

  “No!” When she saw that telltale check in Sebastian’s stride. Outrage at her guardian’s treachery drew out the single syllable until it became a crescendo of sound that echoed off the water as loudly as had the shot. “You promised. You promised me.”

  She’d done everything Julián had told her she must do, and he then had reneged on their agreement. She should have known better than to trust him.

  After all, he had told her at the beginning that this time he wouldn’t leave Sebastian alive to cause trouble. Then, after she had given him all the valid reasons why he didn’t want to face the Sinclairs, who would be out to avenge their brother’s death, he had pretended to relent.

  Seared by guilt at her own culpability, she was stunned as Sebastian turned and began running toward her. Another shot rang out, but she heard the splash of the ball as it hit the water harmlessly behind her.

  Suddenly Sebastian was beside her. Without breaking stride, he wrapped his arm around her, dragging her with him.

  Toward the end of the pier. Toward that cold, dark current she had watched race beneath the boards she was standing on. It had been strong enough to carry the occasional piece of flotsam, which had bobbed to the surface only to be carried down again by its swirling force.

  It seemed she hadn’t had time to take a single step before Sebastian’s momentum carried both of them off the end of pier. She had a split second to look down at the water before they hit it, plunging beneath the surface.

  At some point she must have instinctively drawn breath. And despite the shock of their submersion into the cold water, she managed to hold it.

  After a few seconds she became aware that Sebastian’s arm was still firmly around her, holding just beneath her breasts. He was pulling her along as he swam, the powerful muscles in his legs propelling them away from the danger. The weight of the cloak Julián had wrapped around her acted like an anchor, making progress difficult.

  The slow seconds ticked by as Sebastian continued to tow her, deaf and blind, through the black void. They had been under so long that her lungs had begun to ache. The urge to breathe in the brackish water was almost overwhelming. She began to struggle against Sebastian’s hold, her fingers prying at the arm around her chest.

  She had to escape. She had to get to the surface. She had to breathe. And eventually the litany of that need drowned out any other fear.

  Panic lent her strength. Or perhaps Sebastian finally understood what she was trying to tell him, because suddenly she was free.

  She fought her way to the surface, not worrying about who or what might be waiting there. Two of Julián’s men had been in the rowboat hidden beneath the pier. She had no idea where that boat was now.

  Her head broke the surface and immediately her mouth opened to pull in life-giving air. She took two or three whooping inhalations, the noise magnified by the eerie quietness around her. She was aware that Sebastian had surfaced nearby, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything but her need for air.

  Something hit the water beside them. It took her too long to realize the sound meant someone was shooting at them again. When Sebastian’s hand closed around her arm, all she really understood was that he intended to pull her under.

  She jerked away, although another ball struck the water nearby. And by now, she understood what was happening. Still, the notion that she would rather take her chances on getting shot warred with her horror at returning to
that cold, silent world below.

  Finally, unhappily, she recognized that she had no choice. This time, however—

  “Wait,” she said, the word as breathless as she.

  Her trembling fingers fumbled with the fastenings of the cloak. After what seemed an eternity, the wet cords finally loosened enough for her to untangle them. She pushed the heavy garment free, letting it sink beneath the surface.

  Then she drew another breath. Almost before she could close her mouth, Sebastian’s hand had fastened around her arm, pulling her once more under the water that had swallowed the cloak. Only as it closed over her head, did she think about the too-revealing paleness of her gown.

  She gave herself over to Sebastian’s guidance, praying that his sense of direction was better than hers. She had lost all orientation to the pier or the shore or the ships.

  She realized that he was using the flow of the current to help propel them, which must mean they were heading out into the estuary rather than back to shore. In her head she allowed the image of those tall-masted ships, gently drifting on the swells, to form. As it did, she tried to evaluate the distance to them.

  Too far away, she thought, feeling a growing sense of panic. Too far. Too far.

  The men in the rowboat would find them before they could swim there. Or their stamina would fail.

  Already the cold of the water was seeping into her bones, draining the strength from her limbs. She could no longer feel her feet. And Sebastian—

  Sebastian had been shot. Or was it possible…

  She allowed herself to focus again on that terrible moment, watching in her mind’s eye as his body reacted to the impact. How much longer could he continue the exertion necessary to get them away from the pier?

  Even as she questioned his strength, he began to urge her upward. Although her lungs were beginning to burn, she wasn’t at the point of a desperate need for air as she had been before.

  She made no objection, however, when they broke the surface together. She simply breathed, trying to control the volume of the sound she made.