The Duke's Night of Sin (18 page)

Siusan turned her head on his shoulder, drawing back on his muscled biceps to see his face more fully.

“Over a month ago, I made love to a woman
in London during a gala. It was dark, and I was foxed, and had mistaken her for someone else.”

Christ above!
Siusan tensed, and her heart thudded as fast as a bird’s.
This cannot be! Oh, dear God, help me!

“I have been searching for her since that night, knowing nothing more than that she was a Scot and had ebony hair. Like yours.” He eased his head to the side and peered intently. “Siusan, my hands know you. My body knows you.”

“W-what are you saying … Sebastian?” She was petrified of what he would say next. Of what each additional word he spoke was informing her, not so much about her identity but confirming his own.
Oh God.

“That I do not know how Providence led me to you in Bath, or why, but I believe with every fiber of my being, that you, Miss Bonnet, were the innocent I bedded in the library during the gala.”

Her heart pounded in her ears, and she could scarcely breathe. Siusan felt as if she didn’t run, her lungs would burst from lack of air.

How had this happened? She had fled from London only to fall into his arms. To disgrace herself yet again. Lud, her father would never forgive her for this.
Never!

“Siusan, Miss Bonnet. I beg you to forgive me
for pretending I was someone else. Truth is very important to me, and yet these past weeks I have found myself being less than truthful again and again. I even lied to you, at least by omission.”

Siusan looked away from him, wanting truly to hide her head beneath the blankets. He spoke of lying, and yet his deception could never match her own. Since she had arrived in Bath, lying had become second nature to her.

“While it is true that I am the Marquess of Wentworth, a title I gained only recently, that is only my secondary title, inherited with my real title when my brother died a few months ago.” He slipped a hand from the blankets and ran his fingers through his hair. “I had my reasons for not revealing myself, none of which had to do with you. Still, I must offer you my confession now.” He paused a long while, drawing in deep inhalations of breath, as if summoning the courage to admit to her what she already knew.

She held her breath.
Please do not say it. Please do not let this be true.

“Siusan, in truth, I am Sebastian Beaufort, the Duke of Exeter.”

Dear heavens.
She had wanted to believe that she was fitting the pieces of his memories together incorrectly,
but now there was no more pretending. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she was sure he could hear its pounding.

She had no other recourse. She peered blankly back at the duke and feigned ignorance. He resolutely believed her to be the woman he bedded during his gala. That much was clear, but he still did not know that her name was not Miss Bonnet.

Though, if Mrs. Huddleston was correct, and an
on-dit
columnist was already snooping about, he and everyone else in Bath would learn of her true identity within days—if not sooner.

“I do not know how to respond, Your Grace,” she muttered. Truly, she didn’t.

“I know you do not.” He slid from the blankets and hurried to their frozen clothing. “I reviewed my grandmother’s guest list more times than I care to imagine, and I am fairly certain there was no Miss Bonnet upon it.”

“Of that, Your Grace, I am already sure.”

“As I said, I know this is all confusing to you, but I know what I feel.” He turned around, leaving his hard, muscled body silhouetted, edged by a thread of white light coming through the plank walls.

Siusan squeezed her eyes tightly closed. Even knowing what she did now about his identity, her body still yearned for his.

“And, you agreed to call me Sebastian.” He smiled at her, wincing slightly as his brow lifted.

“And I am Siusan—even in the daylight.” She returned his bright smile as he carried the clothing back to their cocoon and began laying it out beneath the top layer of oilskin. “What are you doing?”

“Our clothing is only ice-slicked. Once that melts, it will not take long for everything to dry. We just need to keep shifting things between the oilskin tarp and hope the wetness is not sufficient to soak through the blankets to our skin.”

“Of course. How did I not think of this?”

“You, my beauty, were too busy saving me and keeping me alive.” He winked at her, then grinned.

How she wished she could admit everything to him. But that was impossible. The moment he learned that she was Lady Siusan Sinclair, she would be at risk of being cast from her family forever. And being without her brothers and sisters was something she could not bear. They were everything to her. Together they were strong. Unlike
everyone else, their love was unconditional, and they would never leave her vulnerable and broken as her parents and Simon had.

Nay, if she and the duke ever escaped their ice shed, she would have to leave him before he learned her identity. There was no other choice. She had to leave before he left her—as he surely would, once he knew the real Siusan.

They’d spent the rest of the morning looking around the corn crib for any means to make a fire. They tried rubbing broken planks over straw, striking two nails together to create a spark, but their efforts were fruitless and left them shivering and fatigued. They hurriedly retreated to the blanket cocoon until their shaking stopped.

By midafternoon, judging from the position of the sun slanting through the planks, Sebastian and Siusan donned their damp shoes and the top oilskin tarp to venture outside the corn crib with an idea to collect enough snow to quench their parched mouths.

As they opened the door, the frigid blast slammed their chests with the force of a charging bull, making them gasp for air.

“We cannot stay outside for more than a few moments.” Sebastian folded the edge of the tarp
they held around them into a pocket. “Put what snow you can inside. Hurry.”

Only Siusan couldn’t move. She just stared. More than two feet of snow blanketed the world outside, and had the broken carriage not jutted like a great black boulder from the white drifts, they could not have guessed that there was a road nearby. The backs of her eyes began to sting.

The air was bitingly cold, but the sky was a clear blue, and the sun was bright. Still, the snow showed no signs of melting. She could see no chance of rescue for several days at the very least.

They would not survive for that long.

“Do not worry, Siusan.” Beneath the blankets, Sebastian tightened his grip around her shoulder, trying to reassure her. “The sun is strong, and in a day or two, enough of the snow will have melted enough to allow a carriage or a rider to pass through.” Though Sebastian managed a slight smile, she could see that the doubt in his eyes matched her own. “Come now. Scoop up a couple handfuls of snow and let us hurry back to the shed.”

To their dismay, it was still too cold inside the corn crib for the snow to melt. They tried letting bites of snow melt in their mouths, but after a few minutes
they had swallowed only droplets of water, and their bodies had begun to shake again.

Sebastian reached for a husk of dried corn to fill their aching bellies, but the corn was inedible, and even the task of chewing the dried corn exhausted them. By twilight, they could hardly move.

“I heard a h-h-horse.” Siusan’s words were starting to slur. He pulled her closer and rubbed her body vigorously. Her skin had been cold since they ventured outside, and even though they been together beneath the blankets for hours, she wasn’t getting any warmer.

“Hush now, love, it is only the wind.” He folded back the top blanket from himself and doubled it over her. “I am sure of it.”

“Nay, I heard it clear—clear … the horse is near …” Her voice trailed off.

Damn it to hell!
He had to do something. She was going to die of the cold if he didn’t think of some way to get them out of there—and quickly.

It was night when the whinny of the horse woke her. She slid from their blankets, careful not to wake Sebastian, and pulled her clothing from beneath the upper layer of the blanket pile atop them.

Her petticoat and gown were very nearly dry.
She pulled on her stockings, which felt heavenly against her cold legs, then her walking boots. Flinging her pretty mantle around her shoulders, she bent and picked up a handful of dried corn for the horse and walked out into the night, looking, knowing it was near.

She trudged through the knee-deep snow around the corn crib, clicking her tongue and calling out soothingly to the horse.

And there it was. She stilled. The white mare gleamed like the snow in the moonlight. She held out her hand to it, showing the mare the corn. “Come now. This has been hard for you, has it not?” She clicked her tongue again. She rolled the corn around in her hand, hoping the horse would notice it. “Here you go. I know you are hungry.” The horse came forward and nibbled the corn from her hand, its bit clinking in its mouth.

She eased her fingers around its bridle and started to guide the horse toward the corn crib, when in the distance, she thought … nay, nay, she was sure of it … she glimpsed a dull light. She stared until her eyes watered.

Siusan ran her hand down the horse’s neck, following the thread of the long carriage reins from its bridle to the snow.

She was shivering again, but the light she saw
was not so far away. It could not be. She could ride the horse astride and reach the light in less than half of an hour. She could.

And they would be rescued.

She looked back at the corn crib, thinking to wake Sebastian before she attempted this, but quickly rejected the idea. He would only demand that he ride himself. He, injured from the wreck of the carriage. Nay, she would do it. She must. And when he was rescued, he would thank her for thinking of him.

Siusan held the reins in her teeth and grabbed the horse’s mane and jumped up, trying to balance so that she could throw her leg over its back. But she was too weak. She tried again, falling back into the snow.

In the moonlight, she could just make out the side of the carriage jutting from the snow. A mounting stool, or at least she could use it as one. “Come, horse. This way.” She would use the carriage to boost herself onto the horse’s back.

By the time she reached the carriage, she had fallen three times, and her skirts and back were sodden with icy snow. She walked around the turned carriage, trying to assess where she might best step up and mount the horse, when she noticed the edge of her portmanteau poking up through the snow. She
led the horse to it, tying the reins to the spoke of the broken wheel as she tugged the bag from the snow and opened it.

Inside was a single change of clothing, cold but dry, a brush, her reticule, and her lesson book of notes. She decided to take the bag with her.

Her hands were completely numb and shaking as she fumbled to tie the bag around her waist, using knotted woolen stockings.

The weight made it even more difficult to hoist herself onto the horse, but finally her foot managed to remain solid on the carriage footboard, tilted as it was, and she flung her leg over the horse’s broad back.

It had taken more than a quarter of an hour, and her teeth were chattering so fiercely that her felt as though her skull were rattling too.

Still, she had done it. She was riding toward the light. Dizziness and snowdrifts hampered her progress, and, once or twice, she was almost sure the light was moving away from her. She told herself it was an illusion, a trick of the eyes.

She would reach the light. She would.

And Sebastian would be rescued.

She would not stop, no matter how cold she was, until she was sure he would be safe.

***

When Sebastian awoke the next morning, he felt frozen through. Worse, Siusan was nowhere to be seen. He told himself that she’d probably gone to collect some snow, or take care of nature, but when she did not return after a few minutes, he realized something was wrong. “Siusan?” He paced the interior of the corn crib, calling her name repeatedly through the gaps between the planks. If she was nearby at all, she should have heard him.

And then he noticed that her clothing was missing. His heart skipped a beat. “Bloody hell, Siusan!” In her delirium, she’d probably gone looking for that damned horse!

Sebastian threw on his chilled clothes and coat. They were still damp and had retained the cold of the night, but they would give him some protection. She could not have gone far.

The sun was still low in the sky, working its way to its noon perch, making her tracks in the snow difficult to see. He squinted in the light and followed the snow wake left by her skirts around the corn crib. There, his gaze fixed on the tracks of a horse. “I’ll be damned.”

She had heard a horse after all. It made sense that the carriage horse would return after being spooked during the accident. Why hadn’t he believed her?

But Siusan’s tracks and those left by the horse were running parallel to one another, confusing him. They did not return to the crib, and it was evident that Siusan was not riding the horse. Instead, it seemed she had led the horse down the slope to the wrecked carriage. He trudged down the slope to the overturned phaeton.

Her tracks ringed the carriage, as if she was looking for something, but then, she eventually mounted the horse, for only one set of tracks set out over the next ridge.

“Siusan!” he called out. “Siusan!”
Damn it all.
Why didn’t she stay to the road, as best she could see it? She wasn’t in her right mind, he reminded himself, and she had no idea where she was going.

Sebastian paused to listen for any reply. He held his breath, warming it in his lungs before calling out for her again.

He listened again, and he thought he heard the jingling of bridles, followed by rumbling.

“Ho, there!” came a male voice from up the road. “Might you be the Duke of Exeter?” Something was coming over the rise. He could see it now. A farmer atop a dray being pulled by two strong plow horses.