One Wicked Sin (17 page)

“Of course. You have the money I need?”

“Naturally.”

The exchange took place.

“Where do you go next?” Ethan asked.

“I travel south,” Chard said. “I’m for Portsmouth, and then Plymouth.” He grinned again. “I need to speak to a few smugglers, grease a few palms.”

Ethan nodded. Smugglers had always been great allies in helping the prisoners of war to escape—if the price was right. They also passed intelligence across The Channel and just now he had plans he needed to communicate to the French generals if they were to coordinate an invasion with an uprising of prisoners.

“Be careful,” he said. “Those places are crawling with troops.”

Chard gestured to his uniform. “I am just one amongst many, hidden in plain view.”

Ethan nodded, unsmiling. “Two weeks?” he asked.

The other man nodded, too. “I’ll send word.” He stowed the money in a battered leather satchel. “What will you do in the meantime?”

“What I always do.”

“Kick your heels and wait for news?”

“Ostensibly so.”

“Keep your mistress’s bed warm? I heard rumors.”

“Good,” Ethan said. “That is exactly what I want people to hear.”

Chard laughed. “Good luck, St. Severin.”

“And to you.”

The trees shifted in the breeze, the moon dipped behind a cloud and then the night was still again. Ethan waited. Nothing moved in the quiet landscape. And yet he felt sure he was being watched. The hairs rose on the back of his neck and the wind breathed gooseflesh down his spine. There was danger here. His instinct told him so.

He dropped down into the lane. There was no one in sight. He started to walk quickly downhill toward the town. He heard no footsteps behind him. He saw nothing. He wondered if he had imagined the watcher. He passed the tollbooth and turned into the end of Priory Lane, then quickly doubled back on himself around the back of the tollhouse in time to see the cloaked figure that dipped into the shadows at the corner of the road. She was gone before he blinked but he knew he had seen her. And he knew who she was.

Lottie had been following him. She had been spying on him.

Ethan’s first reaction was one of shock. He had suspected Lottie from the first, guessed that she was being paid as a British spy. Now he actually felt surprise to have been proved right because she had been so conspicuously lazy that she had lulled him into a
false sense of security. Evidently he had underestimated her.

He walked down the lane and turned into the gate of Priory Cottage. The house was locked. It was a couple of minutes before Margery came to the door, a shawl over her nightgown, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She did not seem particularly surprised to see him.

Ethan took the stairs two at a time and walked straight into Lottie’s bedroom.

He was not quite sure what he was expecting to find. He had given her precious little time to return ahead of him, even less to strip off all her clothes and leap into bed. Yet there she was, arranged prettily against the pillows in a fetching lace confection, reading by candlelight. He could see it was one of the many letters that these days the townsfolk sent to her on everything from matters of dress to problems of the heart. Really, he thought, there was no end to Lottie Palliser’s talents: scandalous mistress, purveyor of advice, British spy….

“Ethan, darling!” Lottie put down the letter and gave him her most brilliant smile. “How marvelous! I thought you had work to do this evening, and here I am, so very bored, although I do hope that now my night will take a more exciting turn.”

“Oh, it will,” Ethan said, smiling at her. “It will.”

He walked over to her wardrobe and pulled open the door. There was a dark cloak folded on a shelf. It felt cool to the touch and smelled of fresh air underlying the stronger scent of jasmine perfume. In the farthest corner lay a pair of slippers. They were clean but for the tiniest trace of white dust on the soles. Ethan touched it;
it had the dry, chalky smoothness that was characteristic of the local roads in the summer. He straightened up. Lottie had done well to hide her tracks but not quite well enough. He felt anger at her perfidy mixed with reluctant admiration that she had so thoroughly duped him.

“What on earth are you doing, darling?” Lottie enquired, from the bed. “I would not have had you down as a man who wanted to try on my clothes.”

Ethan sat down on the side of the bed. He looked into her eyes and saw nothing but guileless innocence there. He wondered if she would tell him the truth. There was only one way to find out.

“Why were you spying on me?” he said.

L
OTTIE JUMPED
.
Ethan’s tone was mild but there was something else in it, something beneath the surface that was as cold and cutting as ice.

He was watching her. She felt anxious, flustered. She had only followed him this one time and she thought she had covered her tracks exceptionally well. Yet he had found her out. Damn him.

“Well?” This time Ethan’s voice was harder. She looked in his eyes and felt her heart give a little swoop of apprehension. He was angry and he was cold. She would not be able to cajole him out of this, or seduce him into forgetting.

She thought about denying it and pretending that she did not know what he was talking about but she quickly dismissed the idea. She had already discovered that lying to Ethan, cheating him, was not a good option. She had learned that in London. Besides, he had an uncanny and inconvenient way of knowing if she was not telling the truth. He was too quick and too perceptive.

“Devil take it,” she said, after a moment, “how did you know?”

She saw him relax a little and his voice warmed into amusement. “For a moment there I thought you were
going to deny it,” he said. “Then I would have been disappointed in you.”

“How so?” Lottie said.

“Because generally when I confront you, you tell the truth,” Ethan said. “Even if you try to deceive me first.”

Lottie winced. His assessment of her character was unflatteringly accurate.

“This time I didn’t have a choice,” she said. She found that she wanted to explain, to justify her betrayal of him, but she had the lowering feeling that none of her excuses would impress him.

“You always have a choice,” Ethan said. “I suppose they got to you that day I left you in London? You said you had a brother in the British Army.”

“You are too quick,” Lottie complained. “I hoped you had not remembered that.”

“I have been playing this game a lot longer than you,” Ethan said. He kept his gaze on her. It was shrewd and watchful and she felt very small, like a child caught out in a misdemeanor.

“I suspected you several weeks ago,” Ethan continued, “when you plied us with those hopeless questions about gun emplacements and cavalry maneuvers. That was very clumsy of you.”

“I know,” Lottie said. She gave a little exasperated shrug. “It was the best that I could think of under the circumstances,” she said. “I am not accomplished at this, you know. Theo should have thought of that before he asked me to be a spy. I have no talent for it.”

Once again she felt Ethan’s cool blue gaze search
her face. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Tonight you impressed me. You almost got away with it.”

“Did I?” Lottie felt ridiculously flattered when she knew she should actually be afraid. Would he turn her out into the street now or would he give her a chance to try to explain? Not that she could. She had betrayed him. Ethan was right; she had had a choice and she had not chosen him.

“You were very good at following me inconspicuously,” Ethan said. He leaned back against the wooden rail at the head of the bed. “You were quick and you were quiet.” He paused. “Tell me how you gained such skill.”

Lottie toyed with the bedclothes, averting her gaze from his. “I have no idea,” she said. “I suppose I had to be good at
something
.”

“You have had practice,” Ethan said. He put his head on one side, his gaze quizzical. “Your husband?”

Lottie’s heart jumped. She looked up, frowned at him. “I do not know how you guess these things,” she burst out. “You are too shrewd.” Just as Ethan had not confided one whit of his past life in her, so she had had no intention of telling him about her history. But now he was waiting for answers.

“I used to follow Gregory sometimes,” she admitted. “When we were first wed—”

She stopped. It was painful to talk of this, even now when the bonds that had held her to Gregory had been severed for good.

“Was he unfaithful to you?” Ethan asked.

Lottie made a slight gesture. “Oh, not in the way that you mean! I think I told you that I was seventeen when
we married and he a great deal older?” When Ethan nodded she continued.

“On our wedding night Gregory told me that he did not desire me, would never wish to sleep with me nor to have children by me, and that I was free to have
affaires
as I chose so long as I did not foist any of my bastards onto him.” The words slipped from her lips with as much bitterness as she had felt when first Gregory had uttered them. She had been so young and unprepared. The shock of Gregory’s repudiation of her had been devastating. And even now, with all that had happened since, time had barely started to heal her hurt.

Ethan was silent, waiting. Lottie looked at his still face and swallowed hard.

“Naturally I thought—” She stopped, started again. “I thought that he had a mistress,” she said, “and that he had only married me for the dowry the Pallisers had provided and for the connection to a ducal family. He was an ambitious man, a self-made man with no title nor estate to pass on after all.”

“The wonder is,” Ethan said, “that you chose to marry him in the first place. A man old enough to be your father?”

“He was rich,” Lottie said, a little defiantly. She hugged the bedclothes closer. No one had understood her need for the security that she had thought Gregory would provide.

“Money is your answer to everything,” Ethan said.

Lottie shrugged. “He was rich,” she repeated, “and I had nothing.” She strove to keep the bitterness from her voice but it seeped through like water through sand. “All I had,” she said, “was a father who ran off when I
was six, a mother who cried forever after and a family who did not wish to be burdened with me. So of course I chose to escape through a rich marriage.”

There was quiet in the room. The candle flame flickered in the breeze from the open window.

“Did you love him?” Ethan asked.

“Yes,” Lottie said. She smiled sadly. It was true; she had. She had always been looking for love. “I thought I did,” she said. “Gregory seemed like a father figure, a man to respect.” She shifted against the pillows. “So when he did not want me I was shocked and angry. On our wedding night after he had dismissed me I heard him go out, so I followed him. It was easier in London,” she added. “The streets were busier so there were more people to hide amongst.”

“Where did he go?” Ethan asked.

“He went to a private house in Prentice Street,” Lottie said. “I peeped through the window. There were men there—with other men. Some were dressed as women, in petticoats. Some had their faces painted. There was at least one man I recognized, a member of the government.” She stopped. “I used to follow Gregory sometimes after that….”

“You were curious?”

“I wanted to understand,” Lottie said fiercely. She gripped the bedclothes tightly. “I wanted to understand why he wanted them yet he never wanted me.”

“There is no explanation,” Ethan said, “other than that is the way some men are.” His tone was rough. “It was not your fault, Lottie.”

Their eyes met. There was something in Ethan’s gaze that comforted her and made her feel whole. Lottie had
known that it had not been her fault; she had told herself that time and time again, and yet she had never truly believed it. But now, with Ethan’s hand resting on hers, she finally felt the truth of it.

“I do know,” Lottie said. “I understand that now. But I was naive.” She shook her head slightly. The emotions tumbled through her, all the fear and confusion and dismay she had felt as a seventeen-year-old bride adrift in a world she could barely understand.

“I was frightened for Gregory, too,” she admitted, “in the beginning, when I still cared for him. If anyone had found out, he could have been hanged.”

“You held his life in your hands,” Ethan said. His gaze narrowed on her. “I am surprised that when he threatened to divorce you, you did not threaten in return to expose him.”

“Oh, I did,” Lottie said. She gave a mirthless laugh. “It proved to be a huge mistake, for it only made him more anxious to be rid of me. He told me that no one would take my word against his for he had the power and the influence and I would merely be seen as no more than a vengeful harpy. He said that if I spoke a word of it he would have me locked up in Bedlam.”

She knitted her fingers together. “They call me a whore,” she said slowly, “but it was five years before I took Gregory at his word and had an affair with another man. And then I only did it because I was so very lonely. And after I had started it became…” A frown wrinkled her brow. “It became an escape, I suppose, because I did not know how to endure otherwise.”

She had lived like that for eleven years. She had
taken lover after lover. She had been searching for something she had never found.

“I was good at it, too,” she said, defiant again, even though Ethan had not uttered a single word of condemnation. “I had always been very mediocre at my studies, apart from the French. Suddenly I discovered that I had an aptitude for something else. It was very pleasing to be so good at sex.”

A smile shadowed Ethan’s lips. “And so you practiced?”

Lottie smiled, too. “I enjoyed developing my skill. My first lover was an excellent tutor.” She paused for a moment. “Over the years my talents have gained me a great deal of appreciative masculine attention,” she said.

“And was that what you wanted?” Ethan was very still. The candlelight reflected in his eyes, very dark, very steady. His question gave Lottie a hollow feeling beneath her breastbone. Yes, she had craved attention, the interest that Gregory had failed to show in her. But it had never been enough. For some reason, a reason that slipped through her fingers like water, her sexual adventures had given her pleasure and excitement in the moment but had always left her feeling empty and dissatisfied, grasping after an illusion. She did not know what it was that she truly wanted.

“It was most gratifying,” she said.

Ethan took her chin in his hand and turned her face to the light. Lottie thought of the way that it would show up all the wrinkles about her eyes and tried to pull away, but he held her still.

“I am sure that it was very enjoyable,” Ethan said
softly, his voice sending prickles of sensual awareness shimmering along her skin, “and yet it was never enough, was it, Lottie?”

Lottie’s eyes locked with his. “I don’t know how you could know that,” she whispered.

“I know it because I have been to all the same places, searching for all the same things.” Ethan touched her cheek in a brief caress and then his hand fell away. “I’ve sought escape in women,” he said wryly, “and in drink and plenty of other vices, as well.”

“And you enjoyed it,” Lottie said. “Admit it.”

Ethan laughed. “I enjoyed it. But in the end a man needs more than transient pleasures.”

“You have your cause,” Lottie said. “You have principles. You fight for what you believe in.” She felt cold. She had nothing to compare with Ethan’s sense of purpose or his ideals. She had flitted along the surface of her life, shallow, superficial, searching for entertainment and enjoying excess.

“So I do.” Ethan got to his feet and walked across to the window, drawing the curtain aside to look out onto the moonlit orchard. “I was only a boy when I heard Wolfe Tone speak for Irish freedom and praise the principles of liberty and equality embraced by the French,” he said, “but I knew from that moment that it was a cause I could believe in.”

“You have other things to believe in, too,” Lottie said. “More personal things. Your son—”

Ethan’s brows snapped down and she knew at once that she had trespassed. “My son would have been infinitely better off without me,” he said harshly.

There was such unhappiness in his voice that Lottie could feel his pain as powerfully as a physical touch.

“That cannot be true,” she said.

“I assure you it is.” Ethan looked at her and Lottie saw that his eyes were blind with pain. Her heart jolted. “Arland came looking for me when he was fifteen,” Ethan said. “I should have protected him. Instead I let him fall into the hands of the British and now he is a prisoner.”

He gave a shrug, as though trying to slough off an unbearable burden. It was the only time he had ever spoken to her of Arland, and now his expression closed and Lottie knew he would not speak of the boy again. Ethan’s next words confirmed her suspicions. He had shut himself off from her. That moment when she had seen into his soul was gone.

“How did you know that I was out tonight?” Ethan asked. He let the curtain fall back into place and turned to face her.

Lottie played with the edge of the counterpane. “I saw you in the garden,” she admitted. “I had been playing the piano in the parlor and got up to close the window because the breeze was getting cool.” She looked at him. “I saw you standing under the apple tree. It looked as though you had seen a ghost.”

Watching him, she saw in his eyes the same withdrawal and the same loneliness that she had sensed in him in the gardens. He looked as though he was looking through her.

“It was careless of me to be seen,” he said. He spoke so quietly Lottie had to strain to hear him. “I heard
the music you were playing. It reminded me of my childhood.”

“I was playing ‘
Au Clair de la Lune
,’” Lottie said. She hummed a few bars softly and saw Ethan shiver as though someone had walked over his grave. “You never speak of your childhood,” she said.

“My mother used to sing to me,” Ethan said. “I lived with her until I was five years old. I travelled with the circus. And then my father decided that despite my low birth, I should be brought up as a gentleman.”

“Your mother gave you up?” Lottie’s heart felt chilled. In her mind’s eyes she could see a golden summer morning twenty-seven years before and another parent saying goodbye to his child, never to see her again.

“My mother thought it would be for the best,” Ethan said. There was an odd note in his voice as though he wanted to believe it but did not quite do so. “She wanted me to have a place in life,” he said, “and an education. Even though I wanted to stay with her she thought it better that my father should take me away.”