His Wicked Sins (5 page)

HIS WICKED SINS

Page 17 of 103

Chapter 3

B
eth slanted Griffin Fairfax a glance from beneath her lashes as she held tight to her

bonnet with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other. She thought they traveled far

too fast for either safety or common sense, and she was stunned to realize that though a

part of her was terrified, another part reveled in the excitement of their pace, the open

carriage, the feeling of freedom. The wind snatched her breath and the countryside flitted

past too quickly to see much of anything.

For his part, Mr. Fairfax spared her no further notice, instead focusing his attention on

the pair of matched horses, his strong, blunt-fingered hands at ease with the reins.

He made no attempt at companionable discourse, and that was of no matter to Beth. She

was just as happy to remain silent, for she feared that her tongue had been loosened by the

fatigue of her lengthy journey. She would be hard-pressed to limit her discussion to polite

observations of the weather. Likely, too many questions would find their way into her

remarks, and without a doubt they would center about the odd comment he had made

earlier.

What could he have meant when he said they'd have been better to choose a dark girl?

Had his intent been to disconcert her with that enigmatic observation? If so, he had

succeeded.

A feeling of discomfort and disquiet chased through her as she recalled his tone and the

alarming nuance of his expression as he had spoken. The way he had looked at her hair.

Beautiful he might be but, thus far, she had found Mr. Fairfax to be particularly

confounding.

Beth twisted to glance over her shoulder as thunder rumbled in the distance. The heavy

sky had grown more ominous still, a damp pewter blanket sitting low against the ground.

She wondered if she would be caught in the rain, after all.

"Have we a long way to go, Mr. Fairfax?" She raised her voice to be heard over the

pounding of the horses' hooves and the rushing of the wind.

"No."

Beth raised her brows. She had gone from Mrs. Beacon's verbose company to Griffin

Fairfax's taciturn and discouraging society. She would find it a difficult task to choose the

more annoying of the two.

He turned the curricle into a narrow lane, got down from his place, and went to open a

pair of iron gates. Beth stared at them for a moment, nonplussed. There were neither stone

walls nor ironwork fencing on either side, just two square brick columns and a pair of

gates whose only discernable purpose was to block the road.

They resumed their journey once more, and Beth noted that Mr. Fairfax left the gates

open behind him.

"I suppose they are ornamental," Beth observed, having no need to shout now over the

sound of the horses, for their current pace was quite sedate.

HIS WICKED SINS

Page 18 of 103

Mr. Fairfax made a soft sound she chose to interpret as a huff of laughter.

"They serve no purpose but to block the road," he said bluntly.

She pressed her lips together against a smile, oddly pleased that he voiced her exact

thoughts. It was a strange sort of connection, true, but her first in this new and foreign

place.

With a sidelong glance, he caught her eye. Humor shimmered in his gaze, and for that

instant, Beth thought they were in harmony, connected by some intangible accord.

He turned his face toward her, brows pulling together so a faint line appeared between

them. Inquiring. Puzzled. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and he quickly looked away.

Again came that strange little flutter in her belly.

Hunger? Fatigue? Perhaps. An oblique glance at Mr. Fairfax, and the butterflies danced

harder.

Unsettled, Beth turned her head to study the rows of trees that stood sentinel to either

side, their line curving as the narrow road curved, their foliage blocking out all else. They

had left the open fields behind, and here the forest grew dense and thick, separated from

the road by only a narrow margin of long grass. Again, thunder rumbled. Closer now, and

she twisted at the waist once more to look behind her toward the source of the sound.

She curled her fingers tight round the edge of the seat, and held on to steady her balance

as they rounded a sharp bend. To one side was a break in the trees, a flat field with long,

swaying grass.

A moment later, Mr. Fairfax drew the curricle to a precipitous halt.

"Burndale Academy," he said, his tone strangely devoid of inflection.

Beth's gaze snapped forward and up. Before her was a long gravel drive leading to a

massive house of two stories, framed on either side by a stretch of manicured lawn and

then encroaching forest. The brick was red, the window frames white, the roof black with

high, narrow chimneys that, in her fancy, appeared to touch the sky. A meager wisp of

gray smoke curled from one chimney.

Eight large windows spanned the upper floor, and on the lower floor was a door in the

center with three windows on either side. At the top of the house, a gable tented over a

clock, and above that was a short tower with a bell. From the rear of the main structure,

additional wings extended toward the woods beyond. From her current vantage point,

Beth could only see a small bit of them.

"It is … large," she said, searching for some warmer observation and failing to find it.

This imposing structure was Burndale Academy. This was her new place in the world.

A more unwelcoming facade she could not have imagined.

She shuddered, suddenly feeling inexplicably low. There was a frigidity, a barrenness

about the place. The house appeared both looming and impersonal and, surrounded as it

was by dense woods, so isolated as to make her shiver.

Perhaps it was the vast size, the isolation, or the sullen and dreary sky overhead that

made her feel so. Or perhaps it was her fatigue and travel-worn patience. She thought it

was neither; she thought Burndale Academy both grand and grim.

There was something…

Frowning, she noted three black and barren trees standing close to the west side of the

HIS WICKED SINS

Page 19 of 103

building, their twisted, bare branches twining together like the clawed talons of three

mythic beasts. Their presence only darkened her impression of the whole.

Foolish notions, she knew, but she could not seem to chase them away.

She started as the bell began to toll, a slow, mournful noise. It tolled six times, the

sound heavy and burdened, twisting about her heart and squeezing with a brutal fist.

"Does the bell toll all day?" she asked, turning to look at Mr. Fairfax.

His lips twitched in what might have been humor. Or disgust.

"It calls the girls to a light supper now. It tolls at dawn to call them from their beds, then

to summon them to break their fast, to mark the start of lessons, and the end of them. So,

yes, you could say it tolls all day."

Any uncertainty she had harbored vanished now. His expression was definitely one of

disgust, his tone sardonic as he continued, "Nothing like order and regimentation to bring

light to the day."

Beth thought of her penchant for neatness, for arranging her clothes according to color

and shade, for lining her hairpins side by side like little soldiers. No, not merely a

penchant, a
necessity
that
did
bring light to her day. She needed order and regimentation to

stave off her ever-present fears.

"You prefer chaos, Mr. Fairfax?" she asked.

"At times." He shrugged, and his lips curved in a dangerous smile. "Disorder can be

liberating."

He sent her a sidelong glance. Dark lashes, straight and thick and long. The ridge of his

cheek, the stubble darkening the plane of his jaw. Masculine beauty.

She ought to look away. Instead, she simply stared.

His dark brows rose, and then she did look away, taken aback to have been caught

ogling at him like a lack-wit.

Clearly reading her expression as one of dismay, he offered a paltry encouragement for

what he must have thought was the cause, though his grim tone nullified any comfort his

words might have offered.

"You can grow accustomed to almost anything, Miss Canham. A day or two, and your

notice of the regimentation will lessen."

You can grow accustomed to almost anything.
She thought of the pretty little house in

South London, and of her father, laughing and teaching her to solve riddles and puzzles,

and of her mother and her brother … then she thought of the ugly, rank flat they had been

forced to and the noise and the smells and the rooms so small and tight and the terrible

fear that chewed at her all the time—

Mr. Fairfax was watching her. She gave a nervous little laugh.

"Yes," she murmured. "I am certain you have the right of it. One can grow accustomed

to almost anything."

He looked at her queerly, then set the curricle in motion once more, closing the last of

the distance to the gloomy, forbidding structure that was Burndale Academy. As they

drew nigh, the building seemed to grow larger, darker. Colder.

A fat raindrop slapped the back of Beth's hand, making her start just as the door of the

school opened. A black-clad, white-aproned maid stepped out, hovering just beyond the

HIS WICKED SINS

Page 20 of 103

portal with her palm pressed flat across her breastbone.

"Who's there?" she called timorously. Mr. Fairfax pulled the horses up, and when

recognition dawned, the maid's features took on a wary and guarded mien. "Oh, 'tis you,

sir." The observation sounded anything but pleased.

Beth glanced at Mr. Fairfax. He was watching her, his dark eyes shadowed, his

expression intent. It was the strangest thing, the way he looked at her, pensive, his gaze

dropping to her lips once more, and then jerking away.

Setting the brake, he climbed down from the curricle and went to untie her trunk. His

dark hair fell forward, obscuring his expression.

Her movements as subtle as she could make them, Beth twisted in her seat and watched

him. The cloth of his coat pulled taut as he bent and reached, accenting the breadth of his

shoulders and the shape of his back. She found the sight both alluring and … disturbing.

Confusing. She had the peculiar inclination to lay her hand on his arm, his shoulder, to

feel the play of muscle, to test the strength.

The urge was terribly disconcerting.

Beth dragged her gaze away, took a moment to gather her thoughts. Alighting unaided

from the curricle, she strode toward the maid.

"Good evening," she said. "I am Miss Elizabeth Canham, the new teacher."

The wind burgeoned, snagging the hem of her skirt and stray strands of her hair,

snatching her words to carry them away. She was forced to repeat them, louder, and as she

spoke the last, an eerie wail carried from above, raising the fine hairs at Beth's nape.

Her head snapped back, and she studied the windows overhead, but they were dark and

blank, revealing nothing.

She swallowed and glanced quickly about, but neither the maid nor Mr. Fairfax gave

indication of aught amiss. Perhaps it had been only the moaning of the wind.

The maid, a dark-haired girl with a frame as light as a bird's and enormous eyes that

were slightly protuberant, blinked at her, and blinked again. Then her gaze slid over Beth's

shoulder and she shivered.

"I'm sorry," the girl whispered miserably. "I have no liking for storms."

Startled by this greeting, Beth stared at her. She followed the girl's gaze, noting that she

looked not at the storm-darkened sky, but at Mr. Fairfax.

Tipping her head, Beth studied the menacing sky, ash and pewter and, in places, almost

black.

"Well, it is not so very dark yet," she offered placatingly.

The girl peered at her for an instant, her enormous, dark eyes flickering with an

unsettling edge of fear.

"Is she ready?" Mr. Fairfax asked in clipped tones.

Thinking he spoke to her, Beth spun about, but she found his attention directed at the

maid. Beside him was her canvas-covered trunk, sitting now on the gravel drive.

"She is
not
ready, sir." The girl shook her head. "She will not come!"

Mr. Fairfax made no effort to mask his displeasure. Two lines drew parallel furrows

between his brows, and the corners of his mouth pulled taut. Sleek, long strands of dark

hair fell across his brow, then whipped back, caught by the wind, making him look all the

HIS WICKED SINS

Page 21 of 103

more forbidding.

In an instant, he leashed it, leashed the anger, the displeasure, and his expression turned

cool, blank. He looked hard and cold, chiseled from marble, and again Beth thought of a

panther in a cage, leashed by self-imposed bars.

He was angry still. Beth
knew
it, though no emotion played across his features now.

Why, he can lock himself away, as I do,
she thought, surprised, the realization making

her feel an affinity for him once more, as she had when they shared their thoughts about

the gates that guarded the road to Burndale Academy.