The Duke's Night of Sin (21 page)

After a late dinner, Priscilla helped Siusan withdraw her meager belongings from her portmanteau and put them away. Her sister, however, was not going to bite her tongue.

“After all that passed between you,” Priscilla began, “why did you not admit to him that it was you, Lady Siusan Sinclair, with whom he was intimate in the library during the gala?”

“You do not understand, Priscilla. He values truth, industry, and moral fortitude above all. Admitting I had lied all the while about who I am would have shaken him and destroyed his trust in me.”

“You are wrong, Su.”

“I am not. Word would seep into Society, and soon enough Da would hear and cast me from the
family. That, Priscilla, I could not bear.” Siusan exhaled, feeling too keenly her defeat. “Nay, it is better that he believe me to be Miss Bonnet, a schoolteacher who has returned to Scotland.”

“But the duke might have accepted you if only you confessed.” Priscilla did not seem to be giving up.

Siusan looked away. “That was a risk I could not take. More likely he would think I had taken him for a fool and despise me.” Siusan sat down on her bed and covered her face with her hands for a moment before looking up at her sister. “In my life, all I have known for certain is the love of my family—you, and Ivy and our brothers. Nothing more.” Siusan felt her armor clamping down around her. She could not talk about Sebastian any longer. Not then. Her pain was too raw. Her emotions hovering just below the surface.

“But Siusan, did not your carriage accident in the snow prove his devotion to you?” Priscilla moved to the bed and hugged Siusan against her.

Siusan squeezed her eyes closed against unbidden tears.

“Nay.” Siusan lowered her head until she could contain her emotions. “He was hurt. The devotion was mine. I had to save him, even if it cost my life.”

“But what now?” Priscilla shook Siusan.

“What do you mean?” Siusan pulled away from her sister.

“You saved his life. Surely he will come for you. At the very least he deserves an explanation why you left so abruptly.”

“I wrote a letter. I gave him an explanation he could believe.”

“He deserves the truth.”

“Aye, he does deserve to hear the truth, but I will not risk my family just to ease my conscience,” Siusan admitted. “Unless the
Bath Times
has reported my identity, he does not know who Miss Bonnet of Mrs. Huddleston’s School of Virtues, truly is. And if I can prevent it, he never will.”

“But if you love him—and I know you do—”

“Aye, I do. I love him. I admit it!” Siusan rushed to the window and, unable to face her sister, peered out into the night. “Don’t you understand, Priscilla? I don’t deserve him. Any association with me would destroy his future.”

“You said you loved him. If so, then why—”

Siusan whirled around. The tears she’d held back as she stood before the window broke from her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. “I do. I am doing this
because
I love him.”

Priscilla tossed a newspaper onto Siusan’s pallet. “It has been weeks, Siusan, and yet there has been no mention of the Duke of Exeter’s returning to London.” Priscilla turned slowly before the looking-glass, admiring a saffron-hued gown of the finest satin, a gift from Siusan, paid for from her lesson columns, which were now being published weekly in London as well as Bath and Cheltenham.

“He is assigned to the Lord Mayor’s special committee on the Condition of England Question. I have no doubt he will return given the increasing unrest of late.” Siusan’s gaze rolled down the heavily inked columns of the newspaper.

“Still, he has not returned
yet,
which is why Grant is taking us to the Theater Royal Drury Lane tonight.” Priscilla grinned. “Hadn’t you better dress? You canna venture out looking like … a schoolteacher fresh from the classroom.”

Siusan didn’t dignify her sister’s comment with an answer. But Priscilla was correct about one thing. It was time to reappear in Society. Her prolonged absence, more than her attendance at events, was likely to set tongues wagging
amongst the ranks of the wellborn if it had not already.

Repositioning her snowy kid gloves over her elbows, Siusan nervously took her seat next to Priscilla and Grant in the private box at the Theater Royal Drury Lane. It was not as grand as the royal box positioned just to the left, but the view of the stage would be magnificent.

Pity the uninformed gentleman who unwisely accepted Grant’s bet at White’s and lost the use of his family’s box during Edmund Kean’s special performance in
Othello.
Foolish man. Didn’t he know that, since their brother Sterling had returned to Scotland, Grant’s skills at cards were unrivaled in London?

Hundreds of candles glowed, but the theater was so cavernous that the chandeliers shed no more than a dull light upon the hundreds of patrons below.

Siusan gazed at the dozens of ladies and gentlemen sitting in the crescent of boxes nearby. Even as her vision gradually adjusted to the low light, she could not discern faces well enough to identify anyone. And this pleased her quite well. For
if she could not recognize individuals, then the chance of her being seen was also greatly reduced.

Still, a bout of worry filled her. Though it was highly unlikely that the Duke of Exeter would choose tonight to make his return to Society, she ought to take precautions. Siusan raised her fan before her face until only her eyes peered over it. Much better. Between the hazy gold of the candlelight and her fan, she finally felt able to relax and enjoy the performance.

As the orchestra began to play and the curtains opened to reveal the famous actor, Edmund Kean, Priscilla giggled with excitement. “Thank you for bringing us this eve, Grant.”

He leaned forward and peered past Priscilla at Siusan. “I hope
both
of my sisters enjoy the play.”

Priscilla nudged Grant back and turned to Siusan. “Put that fan down,” she hissed. “You are being a goose. Please, just do as Grant bade you—enjoy Mr. Kean.”

“I said to enjoy the
play,”
Grant said, snickering.

“To each her own. I plan simply to gaze upon Edmund.” Priscilla sighed. “Siusan may enjoy whatever she chooses so long as she retracts that distracting fan.”

Siusan snapped her fan closed with a huff. She was not ready to enter Society, not until she was
certain that the Duke of Exeter was back in Devonshire for good. Honestly, she preferred to be at home writing a new lesson about attending the theater for her columns.

She sat and forlornly stared across the theater. Lud, she should be happy. She was with her family again. Money was no longer such a concern for her family, and she was proud that she, of all of them, was the one earning their daily bread—and gowns—and whisky.

Who would ever have guessed she had the potential to do anything of consequence? Until she had been forced to leave London and teach, she had never had the inclination to try anything of consequence. And, until she arrived in Bath, her life had been naught but a practiced study of leisure.

Who would ever have imagined that Lady Siusan Sinclair would miss planning her daily lesson plan and spending her day teaching her pupils?

Or that she would miss the one man in the world who could separate her from her family forever?

A thin golden thread suddenly appeared a finger’s length before her eyes. She shifted her focus to it and saw that from its end hung a tiny black spider. She gasped, but the draw of air pulled it to her face and at once she felt it crawling on her
nose. “Ahh!” Siusan screamed, leaping to her feet and clawing at her face.

Grant was on his feet in a instant. “Hold still.” His words were more of a growl than a whisper. His huge hand covered her face, and cinched closed in a quick movement. “I’ve got it.” He squeezed the spider in his fist, then brushed it from his palm to the floor. He smiled, looked very pleased with himself.

“Oh, do sit down, Grant.” Priscilla appeared mortified. She glanced sideways at the stage.
“Please.”

Siusan looked up and saw that Edmund Kean was standing center stage in complete silence. Peering around, she saw, too, that the entire audience had turned to see who had caused the disturbance.

While it was conceivable, evenly likely, that in the low light no one had noticed Lady Siusan Sinclair’s return to Society, the opposite was true now. The Sinclair name rushed through the audience toward the stage like a wave crashing on the beach.

If there was a lesson to cope with extreme humiliation, it was one she, herself, had never learned.

With a wave of her gloved hand as apology, she sat down, then promptly snapped open her
painted silk fan and fluttered it before her entire face.

As though her fan had become the conductor’s baton, the violins tentatively began to play, and Edmund Kean resumed his impassioned oratory.

From the corner of her left eye, she could see Priscilla intermittently glaring at her for causing them all such embarrassment.

Siusan’s cheeks burned for several minutes. By degrees, she retracted her fan, stick by stick, until she was sure that no one was staring at her any longer.

And then, she bent forward and crept from the box.

Her slippers barely touched the floor as she hurried down the dim corridor. She turned the corner for the staircase. A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, another cupping her mouth, stifling her startled scream.

“Good evening, Siusan.”

Oh, God.
She closed her eyes and stilled. She turned as best she could in his grip and raised her eyes to his.

Sebastian.

S
ebastian’s expression was dark and angry. “I need to speak with you. Now, if you please.”

Siusan nodded in agreement, and he slowly lowered his hand from her mouth.

“My carriage is just outside the doors. We will speak there.” It wasn’t a request, and yet, she knew she could not leave with him.

“I must inform my family—” She whirled around toward the corridor, but his grip upon her wrist was still firm.

“The play has just begun. We have plenty of time.”

Blast him for being logical.

“Come, my dear.” He released his hold on her
wrist then and pointedly offered her his arm. She had no other choice but to take it and go with him.

Several footmen, who had collected wraps earlier, stood near the theater’s front doors, but no patrons lingered about, not with the great Kean in the middle of a performance. Sebastian paused and allowed Siusan to retrieve her woolen cloak. He whisked it over her shoulders.

“Do not say a word,” she warned, hoping to lighten his mood.

“I wasn’t about to.” A slip of smile disappeared from his lips.

After the accident, Siusan had set aside the notion of fashion before warmth. And, though Priscilla complained during the entire ride from Grosvenor Square about the spectacle she was making of herself by wearing a heavy cloak to an evening event, Siusan had learned her lesson the hardest way possible, and it was not one she would ever dismiss.

Once outside, Sebastian summoned his driver, and Siusan was quickly ushered into the carriage. He rapped on the front wall. “Drive on, if you will. Anywhere.”

Siusan sat across from Sebastian, trying to appear calm. Unfortunately, she was caught up in a whirl of sorrow, regret, and even hope, but
his implacable stare was only making her efforts more difficult.

“Why?” His voice cracked, but his expression remained tight with anger.

“You must know now why I had to leave.” She gazed down at her hands, unable to look him in the eyes.

“I vow, Miss Bonnet, I do not. None of this makes sense to me. A beautiful woman risks her life to save mine, then leaves without a word. I search for her, finally accepting that I will never see her again when suddenly I find her across a crowded theater in London.”

Keeping her eyes lowered, she gazed across at him. His fingers flinched, and he balled them quickly into fists to conceal his agitation. “I had to leave … after … what passed between us.” Her voice was a mere whisper over the rumble of the carriage upon the pavers.

“I do not understand why you left me in the shed—and why you left again after you managed our rescue.”

She raised her chin. “I left because I had no choice. I still do not. I have shamed myself and my family.”

“No, you have not. We would have died had we not shared our bodies’ warmth.” He leaned forward
and took her hand. “Siusan, I love you. You must know this.”

Yanking back her hand, she shook her head furiously. “Nay, you do not love me. You do not even know me, and if you did, if you truly
knew
me, you would never use the word love in the same sentence.”

“I do know you.”

“Nay, you do not. I am not the respectable, moral, hardworking woman you think I am. I am everything but those things.”

“I do not believe it.”

She could see in his eyes the truth of his reply. But he would come to believe it in time. Soon he would learn her name. Perhaps as early as tomorrow. Then, he would read all about her and her family in the newspapers, he’d hear the gossip, and he would believe.

And he would leave her. It was inevitable.

Better he hear it now.

Better that she not allow herself to believe someone could love her for who she really is.

“I do love you.”

Siusan twisted her fan. “You canna. I am not worthy of your love, Sebastian. Believe me.” She peered out of the cab window in an effort to hold back her tears and belatedly realized that they
were no more than a block away from the theater. “I am not worthy of anyone’s love.”

Her words stunned Sebastian, giving her the time she needed to escape. She rapped twice on the wall behind her, and the carriage rolled to a stop.

Pushing down on the door latch, she waited for the lock to release. She turned quickly then and pressed a kiss to Sebastian’s mouth, the sad sort of kiss that always means good-bye. “Forget you ever made my acquaintance,
please.
If you love me, as you claim, let me go and do not follow.”