The Duke's Night of Sin (25 page)

There was only one explanation Siusan could muster. Miss Aster has a connection with Basil Redbane, the man who had fashioned the bet at White’s. Then, finding her own self round with child, the girl blames it on Sebastian, knowing somehow that he did not know the identity of the woman he had bedded in library.

Well, he’d know it now.

And soon, the whole of London would know.

When the carriage halted, the driver stepped down, opened the door, and handed her out. She pressed coins into his hand and had started for the hall’s huge double doors when she reconsidered.
“Please wait, if you would. I should not be long.” The driver agreed and climbed back onto his perch. What hackney driver worth his whip wouldn’t prefer a paying gentry miss to a long, fareless drive back to London?

The front doors opened before she had ascended the first two steps, and to her astonishment, Gemma bounded out to greet her.

“Oh, Lady Siusan! You have come. I told my Guardian you would, but he seemed certain you would not.” Gemma grasped Siusan’s hand and pulled her up the steps and into the great entry hall, where she took Siusan’s cloak and bonnet and handed them to a hovering footman, who promptly disappeared into the shadows.

Siusan was staggered by the sudden onrush of emotions. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized just how much she really missed Gemma and all of the other girls. She bent and hugged her former student to her, her eyes welling with happiness. “Och, look at me so flustered. I have missed you so.” She straightened as it suddenly occurred to her that the girl should have been in school. “Why are you here? Why are you not at Mrs. Huddleston’s School of Virtues?”

Miss Gentree lowered her eyes. “I begged Her
Grace to remove me from the school once you had gone. Everything changed so miserably. Mrs. Huddleston began teaching your classes. And it”—her voice began to quaver—“was terrible. We were never permitted to leave the school, nor were the other teachers. We were locked in our rooms at night and not freed until morning.” She threw her arms around Siusan’s waist. “But I am so pleased you have come, and my uncle will be as well.”

Siusan took the girl’s shoulders in her hands and eased her back until she could see her face. “Your …
uncle?”

“Gemma meant her
guardian.”
When Miss Gentree gasped, Siusan whirled around to see Sebastian’s grandmother standing a few feet from them.

Siusan honored the duchess with a deep curtsy. “Duchess.”

Miss Gentree stepped back from Siusan and, again, lowered her gaze. “Yes, I … I meant Lord Wentworth, my
guardian.
He is so kind to me I sometimes think of him as family.” She lowered her head.

“No, Gemma,” came Sebastian’s voice from the end of the grand hall. He hurried forward, holding
Siusan tightly in his gaze as if she might flee if he blinked. “Gemma is my niece—she is my late brother’s daughter.”

“She is your
ward,”
the duchess hissed.

“Yes, she is, but she is also my niece. Your great-granddaughter.”

Miss Gentree seemed moved by Sebastian’s claim, but it was the duchess’s piercing gaze that prompted her to speak. “My father was not married to my mother. So, I am not truly family.”

“Yes, Gemma, you are,” Sebastian insisted, reaching out for her. “We share blood. You are family, and from this moment forward you will be presented as my niece.” Tears started down the girl’s cheeks, and Sebastian hugged her to him as he stared down at his grandmother until she turned and stalked away.

“Lady Siusan has come.” Miss Gentree reached out and took Siusan’s hand.

Sebastian seemed somewhat startled. “You mean, Miss Bonnet.”

“She has always called me Lady Siusan … in class.” Siusan smiled at the girl.

“But you
are
Lady Siusan! I read the article in the newspaper. I was looking for your lesson, but instead, a column all about you was in its place.
You are a true lady. You are Lady Siusan Sinclair.”

“Aye, I am.” Siusan smiled a little embarrassedly, then turned her gaze up to Sebastian. “But, if you do not mind, Gemma, I urgently need to speak with your uncle alone.”

A pleased smile tilted the girl’s lips, and without a single word of protest, she walked down the hall and started up the huge sweeping staircase.

“Siusan.”
Sebastian reached out for her. “There is something I must confess to you—”

“And I you. Please, may we retire to the library?” She gestured to the passage cutting off to the left from the grand hall.

“The library?” Sebastian rubbed his forehead. “So you already know.”

“More than you are aware, and that is what I must speak with you about—in the library.” Without waiting for him, she started forward.

“Allow me to show you the way—”

“I know where I am going.” Her stocking began to slip as she walked, but she did stop to adjust it. As they grew closer to the library, she felt her cheeks flush pink.

Together, they crossed the grand hall, then turned down the dim passage for the library. A light pressed through the seam of the closed door.
Siusan looked up quizzically at Sebastian, wondering if someone was already inside … perhaps Miss Aster.

“I was sitting in here a few moments ago.” Sebastian opened the door and gestured for her to enter. “It seems I have retired here frequently since I came to London.”

“You are trying to remember.” Siusan set her hand on the sofa and followed it around to the other side. She sat down, just as she had the night of the gala; then she drew her skirts up to her thighs. One stocking puddled about her ankle, while other was tied high with blue ribbon.

Sebastian stared at her.

“I had barked my knee and was sitting just here in the darkness, rubbing the sting from it, when you entered.”

“Siusan, what is this folly?” Sebastian walked forward until he was standing next to her looking down.

“I thought you didn’t see me at first, but then I saw the angle of your head and followed where your gaze might have traveled. The moonlight had fallen across my thighs, and you were looking down at them. You thought I was someone else.”

“Siusan, why are you doing this?” He shoved his fingers through his hair.

“That someone was named Clarissa.”

“How did you know her name?” Sebastian’s eyes widened. “I never told anyone her name. Yes, it is shameful, but I was to meet Clarissa, a courtesan, in the anteparlor, or here during the gala. I could not remember which. Later, I learned she had never come to Blackwood Hall at all.”

He came and sat on the edge of the sofa, peering at her, appearing perplexed.

“But
I
was here. You started kissing me, like this.” Siusan leaned back against the sofa cushion and pulled him to her. He’d said once before that because it had been dark in library, his memories were mostly physical sensations. So, she would help him remember them. She pressed her lips to his, softly at first, then harder and more passionately.

He pulled back in protest. “Siusan—”

To force him to remember, to really believe her, she would have to do more. “Your hands were here.” She grasped his wrists and set one hand on her inner thigh, dragging his fingers over her skin. She moved his other hand to her chest, brushing his fingers over the upper swell of her
breast, before cupping his hand completely over it. “And here. And you were touching me like this—”

“Siusan!” He pulled back from her, staring at her like it was the first time he’d ever seen her. And maybe it was. The first time he’d really seen her—for the woman she really was. He pulled her gown down to cover her legs, then turned away in silence.

“Nay, Sebastian. I want you to look at me. I want you to see me, in the light, and know who I am.” Her heart was breaking, but she needed to do this. Needed to free him from the lies. She sat up and grabbed his face with both hands and turned his face toward hers. “I am the woman you were with in the library that night. I. Lady Siusan Sinclair.”

He stared without blinking for so long that his eyes began to water. Then he turned and took something out of a box sitting on a high bookshelf. He knelt before her. In his hand was her missing stocking ribbon.

She lifted her skirts over her knee and drew up her stocking. “You did not take advantage of some innocent miss in the darkness as you’ve been told. No matter how many glasses of brandy you may have had, Sebastian, you were with a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.”

Sebastian tied the ribbon around her leg, securing her silk stocking. Then he pulled away and shot to his feet. He began to pace, again shoving his hands roughly through his hair in agitation. He stopped before her and peered down. His face was reddening, and his fists were clenching. “Why, Siusan? Why did you let me make love to you when you knew I thought you were another?”

“At first, I had thought only to escape the library. But then you kissed me, and I had been so lonely that night. It was the anniversary of my fiancé’s death.” She wanted to look away in shame, but she could not allow herself to do that. She had to be strong, to make him understand that he had done her no wrong. “When you kissed me, I let myself imagine it was he kissing me, touching me so intimately, the way he used to do.”

“You imagined I was your fiancé?” His left eyebrow twitched.

“Only at first. But then you touched me, aroused me, brought out a passion in me that he never could. I could not imagine him any longer, but nor could I stop myself from needing to feel you inside me. I wanted you, and though I knew that what I was doing was wrong, you, Sebastian, felt so right.”

He stared at her as she took his hand and eased
his fingers from a fist, then brought his fingertips to her mouth and gently kissed them.

“Why didn’t you tell me after—”

“Afterward, I was ashamed of having given in to my passions. But, more than that, I was afraid you would learn who I was. I had put my family’s honor at risk. I could not let Society learn of my indiscretion. I hoped you would forget me and what we shared here.”

“I didn’t know whom I bedded and feared I had ruined an unmarried woman. I had to find you … to make amends for my deed.”

Siusan nodded. “When I later learned that you were tracking me, I knew I had to leave London for a time.”

“That is when you went to Bath.”

“Aye. A friend made arrangements for me to go to ground in Bath, working as a teacher to pay for my room and board. Until then, I had never worked a day in my life. I had only one skill, being a lady.”

Sebastian continued to stare at her. His face frozen in suspended disbelief.

“When you came to see your … niece, I did not know who you were. I had, so far as I knew, never seen you before. You were introduced as the Marquess of Wentworth, not the Duke of Exeter.”

He sighed. “I used my secondary title for Gemma’s sake … and admittedly my own. I worried that if it became known that Gemma’s unmarried guardian was a duke, both she and I would receive unwelcome attention from the students and their well-meaning mamas. It was foolish of me.” He exhaled a long breath. “Believe me when I tell you that my use of the title was never directly intended to conceal my true identity from you.”

“Neither of us knew we had shared an intimate moment with the other. And yet … I fell in love with you.” She shook inside, waiting for his reaction, but still he did not speak. “How was I to know that the man who had so awakened my body would also awaken my heart?”

To her surprise, Sebastian slowly withdrew his hand from hers and turned and leaned on the sill to peer out of the window into the darkness.

It felt as though her heart were being crushed inside her chest. “Sebastian, you owe me nothing. Nothing. But neither do you owe Miss Aster anything. You are not the father of her child, if one exists in her belly at all. A Mr. Basil Redbane saw someone, me, leave the library right before you emerged. I do not know the details, but my brother learned that, through a proxy, Redbane had entered a wager in White’s betting book. The
wager was that you would marry the daughter of a high-ranking member of the House of Lords within a week. While most would take this bet, thinking it impossible, Redbane’s young accomplice explained to my brother that the bet was solid, because you could not remember the woman you bedded during the gala. Miss Aster is posing as that woman—the woman you now know … was I.”

Sebastian’s shoulders tensed, but he did not turn from the window.

Siusan moved behind him, and she could see that he watched her candlelit reflection in the glass. “Sebastian, there has been no dishonor … except on my part. And I will confess my wrongdoing to anyone you wish—beginning with Lord Aster. I have already sent my letter of confession to him.”

He flinched when she mentioned the letter, but still, he did not turn or utter a single word.

“I love you, Sebastian.”

She had offered up her own honor to preserve his, the very same way she had risked her own life to save his. Sebastian looked down at his hands resting on the sill. His eyes welled, and he could not
allow her to see them. He just needed a little time to collect himself.

A moment more, then he could tell her he loved her.

Then he heard the door open, and in the reflection of the room he saw Siusan leaving. He whirled around.

She wasn’t going to leave him again after sacrificing herself. Not this time.

He raced though the doorway, where he found her leaning her forehead against the wall in the passage, hands pressed over her mouth, her shoulders shaking.

He approached her slowly, then eased his hands over her shoulders and kissed the side of her neck. “I love you, Siusan.”

She turned her wet, reddened eyes up to him. “I know, Sebastian. But we both realize that what we feel does not matter.” She tried to step away, but he held her firm. “I sent my confession to Lord Aster. My name is soiled beyond redemption, but your honor has been restored. We can no longer have any relationship. You know as well as I, Sebastian, you must sever all connections with me. We can never, ever, be together again.”

She did not have to say it—to preserve his
family honor. He knew what she meant, and the painful truth of her statement.