The Duke's Night of Sin (15 page)

“I received a letter from my … my guardian’s grandmother. I had requested that you be invited to spend Michaelmas with us at her country house outside Bath.”

Dear God.
“You did what?” Siusan leaped from the bed.

“I did not know what else to do. I fear that my guardian is planning to remove me from the school. I know that if he and his grandmother came to know you better, as I do, he will not entertain
such an idea. I do not wish to leave the school, Miss Bonnet. I cannot leave.” Tears budded in her eyes. “You and this school are all I have.”

Siusan hugged the girl to her. “Your guardian cares deeply for you. I am sure he will do what is best for your interests.”

“Remaining here is what is best, but I fear he will not realize that until it is too late.” Miss Gentree hugged Siusan around her middle. “Please, come. Say you will.”

Siusan’s eyes began to burn. “Dear, Gemma, I cannot. I have not been invited.”

Miss Gentree peered up at her through tear-filled eyes. “But if you are asked formally, you will come?
Please.”

Siusan knew it was wrong, for spending Michaelmas with Lord Wentworth and his grandmother was naught but a worried girl’s wish. But it would give her a few days away from Bath—and the columnist Mrs. Huddleston told her was investigating her.

And then, there was also Lord Wentworth, to whom she owed so much. If she spent Michaelmas with …
the family,
she would at last have an opportunity to thank him.

It was selfish, she knew, but she nodded her assent anyway. “If I am
formally
invited to spend
the holiday with you, certainly I will accept, Miss Gentree.”

Gemma jumped to her feet, but then remembered herself and curtsied like a proper lady. “My guardian arrives on the morrow. I will secure a proper invitation for you then.” She dropped another curtsy, then dashed from the room.

Lord Wentworth will be in Bath tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Siusan snatched up one of the newspapers, then lay back on the pallet and tented the paper over her face. What would she say to him?

Och, life is so much easier in Scotland.

T
he change in the weather had come without clear notice. Though a dark line traced the horizon that morning, the sun shone brightly, and the air was as crisp as the dried leaves tumbling across the ground. By afternoon, the sky was heavy with angry dark clouds, and the wind bit viciously at exposed skin.

Siusan sat before her window, feeling forlorn as she watched the last of the students happily herded into family carriages and wheeled from the school.

Even Miss Gentree had been collected. Or so
she’d been told. The teachers had each been tasked with making arrangements for the closing of the school. Miss Hopkins was positioned like a sentry at the front door to assist families with the collection of their daughters. Miss Grassley saw to washing the morning’s dishes, while Siusan had been sent to the bakery to cancel the school’s order for the coming days.

Though Siusan had dutifully packed in anticipation of an invitation to spend the holiday with Miss Gentree and her family, it hadn’t been offered.

Now she was in a pickle. What would she do? She’d made no arrangements for lodging. Sighing, she looked up at the menacing sky and shivered. If she did not leave the school to find a place to stay now, she’d be walking in sleeting rain.

She pushed up from the chair, already weary from the thought of having to venture out of doors again, then turned around and closed the leather bag sitting atop her pallet.

“Lord Wentworth has come to collect you.” Siusan wrenched her head around. Mrs. Huddleston was standing in the doorway, leaning on her walking stick.

“I beg your pardon?” Siusan folded her arms
over her chest and crossed the small room in three strides. “Did you say that Lord Wentworth is here … for me?”

“You have been invited to stay at Clover Hall over the holiday.” Mrs. Huddleston snickered.

“Miss Gentree did speak of an invitation, but I was never formally asked.” Confusion loomed as heavily as the gray clouds brushing the rooftops.

“Of course you were. Why, I accepted the letter myself from Lord Wentworth’s man of affairs.” Mrs. Huddleston shook her head. “Tsk, tsk. If you did not intend to accept, you should have at the very least sent a card to the family in response. It would have been the proper thing for a lady to do.”

“Mrs. Huddleston, you
never
presented me with a letter.” Siusan narrowed her eyes.

“Oh, but I did. I distinctly recall you taking it from me and placing it in your drawer.” Jabbing her walking stick into the old pine-floor planks, she caned her way to the desk near the window. Tugging open the drawer, she reached inside and withdrew a letter.

Siusan peered at it, confused. Indeed, there was a letter—one she’d never seen before—though the wax wafer had been broken. It was clear that while she had not, someone else had already read the letter.

“Here it is. And, I think it quite evident that you read it. See here?” She shook the letter from its folds and flicked the broken wax seal with a ragged fingernail.

“I never saw that letter,” Siusan protested.

“And yet, here it was, in your drawer.”

Siusan winced. She’d been warned to keep the drawer locked, though she never had. She trusted the students completely, never once considering that Mrs. Huddleston herself might invade the drawer, for whatever reason. She stalked forward and snatched the letter from Mrs. Huddleston’s hand and quickly read it.

It was an invitation, conveyed by Lord Wentworth’s man of affairs, to spend three nights at Clover Hall. Her hands shook with anger as she lowered the letter to her side.

“When you did not come down to the carriage when you were summoned and could not be found anywhere in the school, I suggested to the driver that it would probably be best to outpace the coming storm and deliver Miss Gentree to Clover Hall safely.” The edges of her withered lips quivered. “Who would have guessed that Lord Wentworth, himself, would return to collect you? Certainly not I.”

“Mrs. Huddleston, you sent me to the bakery
to cancel the school’s orders during the holiday. Though when I arrived, I was informed that those arrangements had already been made a week ago.” Siusan stuffed the letter in her portmanteau, then whirled around. “You deliberately sent me away so I would not be present when Miss Gentree was looking for me.”

Mrs. Huddleston’s eyebrows crept toward her nose, but the smile that only teased her lips before spread across her mouth. “Such an accusation, Miss Bonnet!”

Siusan turned, meaning to leave Mrs. Huddleston, find Lord Wentworth, and explain everything to him, when she remembered the open drawer … and the letter from Priscilla inside of it. She squeezed past her employer and felt inside the drawer. Nothing but a stub of candle. Her heart clenched as she bent and wrenched the drawer off its runners.
Empty.
She felt inside the cavern left behind, hoping that maybe the letter had been caught up inside. Nothing.

She let the wooden drawer drop to the floor. The candle stub rolled beneath her pallet. “Where is it? Where is the letter from my sister?”

“Why, Miss Bonnet—or shall I say Lady Siusan Sinclair?—I fear I do not know what you mean.” A low chuckle rolled off her tongue.

Dear God. She knows who I am. She knows I am Lady Siusan Sinclair!

Siusan scurried to her pallet, dug deep in her portmanteau, and drew out her reticule. She fumbled inside it, but thinking further, cinched it closed again. “Here, take the money. All of it.” She shoved the reticule toward the older woman.

“Now, now,
my lady,
we both know it will take more than a few pounds to hush me, knowing what I do about you … and the gentleman who threatens you.” She chuckled nastily. “The Duke of Exeter, is it? I rather guessed as much. I only needed more proof.”

The reticule in her hand suddenly became too weighty for her to hold out to Mrs. Huddleston, and she lowered it to her side. “What is it that you want from me?”

“Well now, that I do not know. Yet.” She started from the room, talking as she walked, not bothering to turn around. “Mayhap I will think about it over the holiday. Yes, I think that is what I shall do. We will speak of this again upon your return. Of that,
Miss Bonnet,
you can be certain.”

Siusan’s mind was caught in a dizzying whirl. What could she do? God above, what could she do now? She paced across the bedchamber several times but came no closer to grasping a solution.

All she could think to do was run. Just as she had before. Leave Bath and never come back. But the idea was nonsensical.

Her heart thudded in her chest. If the columnist learned her true name, it was only a matter of time before her connection with the Duke of Exeter became known in London as well. And then … her father’s man would report it to her father and—”

“Miss Bonnet.” Lord Wentworth was standing just outside the doorway. For how long, she did not know. “I waited, but when you did not come down to the entry hall I thought perhaps you required assistance with your bag.”

“L-lord Wentworth.” She could barely find her voice. “I beg your pardon, but I confess I only learned of your family’s kind invitation minutes ago.”

He smiled at her. “I thought as much. When my man of affairs did not receive a response to my invitation, I knew something was amiss. A fine lady, such as you, would not have neglected to acknowledge the invitation.”

At the moment, Siusan didn’t quite know if his comment was a compliment or jibe, and his expression gave no clue. “But Miss Gentree left several hours ago—early this morning.”

“And when you were not with her, she was so very disappointed that I decided to come myself and do whatever I must to convince you to grace Clover Hall with your esteemed presence.” He flashed a charming smile at her. Just then, he caught notice of the packed bag on her pallet and gestured to it. “I hope this means you have decided to accept our invitation, belated though its delivery may be?”

She nodded and smiled brightly at him. “Aye, my lord. I am greatly honored. For if not for your family, I would certainly be spending Michaelmas alone.” Grabbing the leather handle, she whisked the bag from the pallet and carried it easily to the doorway, where she set it down before Lord Wentworth. She closed the door behind her and locked it with the turn of a key.

Lord Wentworth looked positively stunned that she had carried the bag so easily. “How very kind of you to offer assistance with my portmanteau.” She rubbed her shoulder briskly. “I fear it is heavier than I realized. Already my arm is sore.” She smiled demurely at him, feeling quite missish as she fluttered her lashes at him like a fan.

He hoisted the portmanteau. “We had best hurry, Miss Bonnet. The journey this evening is not a brief one, and the sky smells of snow.”

“Snow? So soon as this?”

“The Avon is already crusting with ice.” He gave her his arm, which she graciously accepted. A tingle swept through her body.

Had the circumstances been different, had the invitation to Clover Hall not been merely a convenient means of escape, how welcome a party at a country house would be. Especially with a devilishly handsome gentleman as host.

Though Lord Wentworth had thought to carry several blankets and an oilskin, with only the carriage header to protect them against the elements, Siusan was shivering within minutes. Freezing rain made travel treacherous and slow on the road toward Bristol, and already it was growing dark.

Though she knew it improper, for shared warmth, she moved closer to Lord Wentworth as he drove the phaeton. Drawing a blanket tightly around her shoulders, she buried her face in it to claim the warmth of her own breath.

Admittedly, her muslin dress was entirely inappropriate for severe weather. She was a Scot, and, aye, she did own a woolen cape, but in Town, a fashionable lady never wore more than a mantle,
no matter the conditions. And, too, there was the fact that when she left London for Bath, she had had no notion she would be staying for more than a fortnight. Even if she had, this weather was extreme for autumn, and would have been even north in Edinburgh. But excuses for her dress were not going to keep her warm. Perhaps she ought write a lesson about extreme circumstances superseding fashion. A bone-deep shiver shook her body. Aye, she would write the lesson. Most definitely.

The horse’s breath was white against the freezing twilight sky, and several times its hooves slipped on the ice-slickened road, causing it to falter.

“How much farther?” Siusan asked, hoping he would tell her Clover Hall was just a mile down the lane.

He sighed. “We’ve been driving nearly two hours, which would normally put us halfway.”

“But the weather …” Siusan fought back a whimper.

“We are no more than a quarter of the way to Clover Hall, and with the worsening conditions, I honestly cannot gauge the length of our journey.” He glanced across at her but quickly returned
his gaze to the road. “We should never have left Bath this afternoon. I should have followed my instincts and insisted we remain in Bath until the storm passed. I am truly sorry, Miss Bonnet. I hope you will forgive me.”

“Neither of us expected the weather to become extreme.” Siusan felt her heart sink. “Should we … return to Bath?” She cursed her words. She had no place to stay were they to return. Nowhere to go.

He paused for a long while before replying. “I fear our only choice is to push on for another five miles or so and secure lodging at the Crux Inn … assuming there is a room to be let on such a needful night.”

She shifted her numb knees beneath the blankets. A thin crust of ice crackled on the oilskin. She’d be frozen to his side in another rotation of the minute hand.

To her surprise, he passed her a flask of brandy. “Medicinal purposes. It will help warm you.”

Unflinchingly, Siusan accepted it and took several draughts.