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Authors: Sharon Page

Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Historical, #Fiction

Engaged in Sin (6 page)

BOOK: Engaged in Sin
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The gown gaped at her breasts. It was fashionable enough that it hung on her without proper underpinnings. There was no way she could lace her corset by herself, nor could she fasten the back of the dress. And
she had left Kat’s in such haste she had no other clothing except her cloak, bonnet, and gloves.

Someone knocked lightly on her door, and the most delectable scents wafted through from the other side. Anne let the dress fall in defeat and dragged on the borrowed robe. “Come in.” She prayed it was a lady’s maid—someone who could help her dress.

But when the door swung wide, a footman backed in—the same wide-eyed young man who’d relayed the duke’s message the night before. He carried a tray laden with dishes. Steam coiled into the air in front of him. “Your Grace insisted this be sent up, miss. And he”—the young man blushed beneath his powdered wig—“requests that you eat heartily.”

Before he sent her back to London, His Grace meant.

The last thing she could face was food. She waved the tray away. “I can’t accept it. I’ve trespassed on his kindness long enough.”

The footman looked stricken. “His Grace will be angry if I don’t deliver this as I’m supposed to. I don’t want him displeased with me.”

The lad appeared to be absolutely terrified. Why? The duke had fought her last night, but that was during a dream. The rest of the time he was controlled, cool, and gentle. Far kinder than she deserved, given she was telling him a pack of lies. Though he had mentioned he threw chairs …

One thing she realized: The duke must be awake if he’d arranged for her breakfast. “Where is the duke? In his study? Or is he eating in a dining room?”

“I think His Grace is in the library, miss.”

The library? It seemed … odd, since he could not read, but perhaps it was a pleasant room. “I will need a maid to help me with my clothing.”

The lad vehemently shook his head. A poppy-red blush flooded his cheeks again. “His Grace used to have
parties—naughty ones—here. So no women servants, His Grace said. He has me mum and me sisters come once a week for cleaning and dusting. And His Grace wishes to see you after your breakfast. When you finish, miss, if you ring for me, I’ll take you to him. He told me to say he wants to ask you some questions.”

He bowed and she waved him out. She could have slammed two of the silver lids together in frustration. She had no way of getting dressed.

What sort of questions did the duke want to ask? Fear roiled in her stomach. Did he not believe her story? It shouldn’t be a surprise—her tale was weak and filled with holes. Last night he’d been obviously suspicious. After all, he was right—a London madam would hardly spare a thought for a whore like her. There would be a dozen more innocents who could be plucked off the streets to replace her. Surely, though, he couldn’t know about Madame Sin’s murder. He wouldn’t have let her stay if he suspected she was the object of Bow Street’s hunt.

Her plan had been as filled with holes as her story. She’d believed that, because he was hiding here in the country, she could keep her identity a secret and become his mistress. How could she have hoped to do that forever?

Remember, Anne, it doesn’t have to be forever
. Young handsome dukes probably didn’t keep mistresses for longer than a few months. By then, from gifts he gave her, from the allowance he would provide, she would have enough money to escape.

She glanced toward the window. A long drop to the ground, but dense woods ringed the lawns beyond the house. She could easily disappear in there. She could try to run now.…

But even if she did manage to avoid the Runners, how far could she get with no money? She’d used all her
blunt to send three young girls from Madame’s brothel back to their homes and then to hire the carriage that had brought her here. The only way to truly escape was to leave the country, but she couldn’t afford passage on a ship.

Perhaps the only thing she had left was honesty. She should tell the duke everything.

Yes, tell him about her confrontation with Madame Sin and what had happened when Madame was going to shoot one of the three virgins Anne was trying to rescue. She would have to tell him Bow Street wanted to arrest her and admit that the Earl of Ashton had not paid her to come to him. Perhaps once he heard the truth,
all
of it, the duke would believe her. He would believe she did not deserve to die for saving a girl’s life. He would—

Anne almost laughed aloud at her foolishness. A duke would not help her. Would he care that she’d acted to defend herself and the girls? Or would he condemn her for being a murderess and believe she should hang, regardless of the circumstances?

“Damnation, why do this? Why torment yourself by touching books you’ll never read again?”

Devon groaned. He didn’t have an answer. And wasn’t talking aloud to himself another sign he was losing his mind?

His fingers closed around a book and he pulled it off the shelf. He felt the leather binding, the smooth gilt of the title. But he couldn’t distinguish the letters by touch. It was all he had left—his senses of touch, smell, his hearing. So far he’d decided it was a fallacy that his other senses would grow better. He didn’t think they had improved. They were just all he could use.

He breathed in the different smells: the mustiness of old books, the rich scent of leather bindings on the new
ones, the tickle of the dust that clung to unreachable corners. His friends thought he’d taken the house solely to hold wild orgies, but he had liked to spend many of his evenings here reading. He’d stocked the shelves with thousands of books. Books his father never would have imagined he possessed. His father thought he spent all his time gaming, drinking, and skirt-chasing—and it was true he had spent most of his life doing that. Then, to everyone’s amazement, he had fallen in love. With Lady Rosalind Marchant. He had plummeted into it so hard and so fast it felt as if the world had rocked beneath his feet.

Rosalind had died before he went to war. His father died while he was in battle. He would never have the chance to talk to his father again. Never have the chance to apologize for the last argument they’d had—when he announced he’d bought his commission, and his father told him it was a damned stupid and selfish thing for the heir to a dukedom to do.

Devon launched the book toward the long table that stood in the center of the large library. Glass exploded. Right in the middle of his void, and he knew what he’d done. Misjudged, lost track of exactly what direction he was facing, and threw the book out the window.

“Your Grace, I—I brought you this letter. It came for you.” Hurried footsteps crossed the floor toward him. The servant sounded like a young lad—a terrified one.

“Who is it from?” Devon asked, but he knew the answer even before he heard the lad’s frightened stammer. Who else would write to him?

“H-Her Grace, Your Grace. Uh … the Duchess of March.”

Why did his mother continually send him letters when she knew he couldn’t read them?

Of course he knew why. How else was she to communicate with him when he wouldn’t go home? He couldn’t
go home, no matter how much he wanted to. Not when he could explode without warning and hurt someone he loved. He was too damned dangerous.

The letters might make his gut clench with guilt, but they let him know his mother and his sisters were well and safe. “You’ll have to read it, lad. What does it say?”

“I—I don’t know how to read, Your Grace,” the young servant said with a surprised tone, as though the boy thought he was cracked for asking.

His valet had read the other letters to him. But with Watson gone, there was no one left in the house who could read.

“Perhaps it’s time you learned,” he muttered. He stepped forward, his hand outstretched. He had no damned idea why. It was instinct to move toward the letter, wherever the hell it was, and his shin smashed into something sharp and hard.

“Christ bloody Jesus,” he roared. Pain shot up his leg. First the book, now this. He couldn’t manage to get around in his own blasted house. He reached out and his hand slammed against smooth wood. He grasped it. It proved to be a small octagonal table. A useless piece of decorative furniture. In one swift motion, he hefted it into the air.

Seconds later the table exploded, hitting the floor with a thunderous crash. It made a skidding sound across the wooden planks. The satisfying
crack
of splintering wood echoed through the vaulted room. The footman yelped.

“Have that thing chopped into kindling,” he barked. “Now.”

“Y-yes, Your Grace.”

Feet scuttled across the floor. The lad puffed, wood scraped. Devon groped his way to the fireplace mantel. He wrapped his right hand around the edge of it. Now he knew where he was. He would stay here so he would not look like a helpless idiot again—

“Do you wish to break anything else?”

The feminine voice made him jerk around. It was his would-be courtesan. The woman who had hauled him out of a nightmare last night, whom he had almost hit in return. She had been in his house only a dozen hours, but he already knew the nuances of her voice. Sultry and purring when she was trying to seduce him, melodic and light when she laughed, and sometimes, like now, as crisp as unripe apples and surprisingly authoritative. Indeed, she was like no prostitute he’d ever encountered before. What had she been before the brothel?

“Could I help?” she added. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to throw something just for the sake of breaking it.”

“Break whatever you like,” he growled. “I’d never know the difference anyway.”

Anne’s heart lurched.

She regretted her sharp words. She should have been sympathetic rather than sarcastic. Her reaction had been instinctive—she hated the explosive and senseless violence men used. Her cousin Sebastian had used it to make her and her mother cower after he had inherited their home. Brutes used it in London stews to make women terrified and obedient. Madame Sin’s bodyguard, Mick Taylor, a former pugilist, had used it to keep Madame’s whores in line.

But now, when she saw how grim and pained the duke looked, Anne ached with compassion. He had simply thrown on trousers and a shirt—the tails of the wrinkled white linen trailed over his taut buttocks. His dark hair reached his shoulders. The thick stubble covering his jaw yesterday seemed to have grown more overnight. It looked like an unkempt beard this morning.

She remembered the beautiful gentleman with the dazzling violet eyes who had given her two gold sovereigns to spare her from selling her body. How different this man looked. The careless grin was gone. He looked so … ravaged.

Anne knew what she’d felt when she’d lost her mother, in that moment when she’d realized she had finally lost everything and everyone she’d ever loved. Anger. Horror. Despair. A pain so deep she had sat on the floor of their filthy room for two days, unwilling to move. Had the duke felt that kind of grief when he’d opened his eyes on a battlefield to sudden blindness?

She wanted to go to him. She wanted to slide her arms around his waist, press her lips to his wrinkled linen shirt, and trail kisses over his broad chest. If there was ever a man who looked as though he needed a woman’s loving embrace, it was the Duke of March.

She crossed the room, rounding a long table and a row of straight-back chairs. But when she reached the other end of the mantelpiece, a mere six feet from him, she stopped. It was mad. Yesterday she had touched his naked body intimately; now she stood awkwardly with her hands fisted. She yearned to touch him, but would it be welcomed? Softly, she said, “I don’t believe you truly care so little for your house and your belongings.”

He didn’t turn toward her. His thick lashes shielded his eyes. “Sorry, love.”

“I saw you collide with the table. It must have hurt you considerably. It frustrated you and you lashed out.” She suspected she sounded as her mother used to, when they had lived at Longsworth. Firm, sensible, very matter-of-fact. “I assure you I can nimbly get out of your way if necessary.”

His dark brow quirked. This time he cocked his head toward her. “You’ve seen me at my worst—I leapt upon you, I grabbed you by your wrists, and now you’ve witnessed
the way I throw furniture across the room. This is why you cannot stay here, love. It’s impossible. I told you I would decide what to do with you and I have. I won’t be responsible for harming you.”

“I don’t understand why you are so certain you will.”

“Angel, I know what I’m capable of. I know what I’ve done. You cannot stay. My carriage will take you as far as you want to go. If you want, I’ll pay for your services and you can use that money to go wherever you want.”

How much would he give her for a few tuppings? For one moment she considered it … then rejected it. It wouldn’t be enough. She would have the chance to eventually escape only if she could coerce him to give her the kind of allowance and gifts a mistress received.

“I wish …” She wished there was some way to help him. To stop his nightmares. To help him cope with his blindness. When Grandpapa had lost his sight, it had been gradual, over years. Even then, he had been delighted when she would walk with him and describe the gardens and grounds of—of her home. And Grandpapa had loved to have her read to him.

Of course, her grandfather had not been tortured by horrible dreams or prone to fits of rage. He had been an elderly gentleman who loved country life, not a young duke in the prime of his life who had been a notoriously wild rake in London.

She gnawed at her finger. She hadn’t wanted to think of the past, and she’d thought it had nothing to do with her now. But perhaps it did. Would the duke like the same simple things that had so pleased her grandfather? Would they help him heal? Was it not worth a try?

“What if I could help you in other ways?” Anne whispered. She spied the rectangle of white gripped in his right hand. “I can begin by reading your letter to you, Your Grace.”

Before Devon could say a word, the letter was plucked from his fingers.

He reached out to retrieve it, but to no avail. “You can read?”

“Of course,” Cerise said briskly, sounding much more like a governess than a saucy courtesan. “It is from the—the Duchess of March.” There came a soft crinkling of paper. Her voice faltered as she asked, “Do you have a wife, Your Grace?”

BOOK: Engaged in Sin
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