One Wicked Sin (26 page)

“M
ADAM
!”
Margery came into the bedchamber just as Lottie was folding the last of her gowns up and placing it in the third portmanteau. “You’re leaving,” the maid said flatly, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“Yes,” Lottie said. “I go with Lord St. Severin tonight.” She picked the maid up and whirled her about the room, regardless of Margery’s pleas to be put down. “We are to be wed, Margery!” she said. “I am to be Lady St. Severin!”

“And a good job, too,” the maid said stringently, “given that you have been behaving as good as married these two months past.”

“I have not!” Lottie said, stung. “I have been behaving like a mistress, not a wife, Margery. No wife sleeps with her husband. It is too, too bourgeois.”

“Fiddlesticks!” Margery said. “You’ll have to stop talking like a London lady now, ma’am,” she added, “and simply admit you love your husband.”

“Oh, very well,” Lottie said, sighing. “I suppose I shall.”

She looked more closely at the maid. Margery was fidgeting, her face full of unhappiness rather than pleasure. Lottie felt a swift rush of compassion. It was all very well to be so caught up in her own good news, she thought, but Margery could not be expected to share
her joy. There was no chance that the maid could come with them. She would be left behind with no work in a town where jobs were scarce and poverty an ever-present threat.

“I am sorry,” she said, putting out a hand to touch Margery’s hunched shoulders. “I will write you a glowing reference, of course, although such words of praise from me may well do you more harm than good with the local matrons. And I will leave you money to tide you over for a good long time—” She stopped, a brush of fear touching her heart, for Margery had shaken her head, a little motion of denial that nevertheless spoke louder than any words.

“It isn’t that, ma’am,” the maid said a little awkwardly. She got to her feet, smoothing her palms down her apron. “You’ve been the best mistress to me a maid could ever ask for, ma’am. At the beginning,” she gulped, “you told me that you were no lady, but it weren’t the truth, ma’am. I worked for Lady Goodlake for over two years and she never once thanked me. I don’t think she even knew who I was. But you, ma’am, for all your fancy London sayings you’re a lady through and through.”

“Margery!” Lottie said, feeling ridiculously affected. “You’ll make me cry.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Margery said. She dived a hand into the pocket of her apron. “I think you should see this, ma’am. My brother gave it to me.” She was pulling out a rather dog-eared piece of paper. “He works as tap man at The Bull, ma’am. Like as not he shouldn’t have interfered, but curiosity killed the cat, they say,
and once he had got it out he couldn’t put it back—” She stopped.

“Margery,” Lottie said, frowning. “I don’t understand—”

The maid pushed the paper at her and Lottie took it a little gingerly. It was dirty and stained.

“It was in the bung of one of the beer kegs,” the maid said in a rush. “It’s in a funny foreign language, mind, so I knew it must be something to do with the prisoners, ma’am, and I didn’t know what to do. I don’t want John to get into trouble so I came to you.”

“Of course,” Lottie said automatically. “Don’t worry, Margery. I’m sure we can sort it out.” She took the paper. It felt smooth, as though it had passed through many hands.

Margery dropped a hasty curtsy. “I’ll be in the kitchen, ma’am, if you need me,” she said.

After Margery had gone out Lottie unfolded the letter and scanned it carefully. It was not in French, as she had expected. Margery’s funny foreign language was Latin and it was also in code.

Lottie frowned. She had seen these words somewhere before, glanced at them on a gravestone perhaps. She looked out of the window at the spire of St. Andrew’s church piercing the blue of the sky. She grabbed her
bonnet and spencer and the letter, and hurried from the door.

A half hour later, sitting chilled and hunched in the parlor, she wished that she had not remembered, wished that she did not have such a talent for languages, and wished that she had not, like Margery’s brother John, had such an unhealthy curiosity. Her tea was cooling in a cup and on a piece of paper before her lay the code, transposed in all its chilling detail:

The list went on and on. The prisons at Norman Cross, at Greenlaw and at Perth all had escape plans by road or river, overcoming the guards, taking their weapons, escaping en masse. And at the bottom of the page:

Tomorrow night. Lottie shivered, drawing her shawl more closely about her shoulders as a long, long shudder crept down her spine. At last she could see the full grandeur of Ethan’s plan. She had always known that he had planned something far bigger than his own escape and that of Arland, but lately she had not wanted to
know. She loved Ethan. She wanted to run away with him. That was all that had mattered.

Not anymore. Now she could see that this was no small-scale plot to free Arland. It was an enormous conspiracy, magnificent in its scale, terrifying in its scope. Sixty thousand prisoners, French, American, Danish, Spanish, Irish, all nationalities would unite to rise up against the British on their own soil. No longer did Mrs. Ormond’s panicked fluttering seem like a bat squeak in the dark. Her deepest fears would come to pass. All the prisoners would escape and overrun the country and people would fight and suffer and die as a result. The government would fall. The war would be lost. Hundreds, thousands, of her countrymen and women would be killed. It was no wonder that the British authorities had been watching Ethan so closely. This was what Theo and his colleagues had been waiting for.

She had to tell him. She had to take the letter to Theo and betray Ethan’s plot.

She should not hesitate. This was treason. It was lethally dangerous. Yet still she sat staring into the fire, trying to feel its warmth, and she thought of all that she had heard, of the hell of the prison hulks with their torture and starvation and disease, of gaols like Whitemoor with their ragged prisoners, filthy and emaciated, the brutality of the guards, the cuts and bruises on Arland’s face. She had seen the way that officers were treated in a parole town, seen the civilized face of captivity, not its violent, cruel underbelly.

She swallowed hard. It was not fair to expect someone like her to bear the burden for such a heavy moral
decision, she thought bitterly. She was not equipped for it. Normally she only had to choose between red or green silk, not weigh the lives of her countrymen and her patriotic duty against justice and her overwhelming love for one man.

Intolerable choices…

She let the letter fall from her hand to the carpet. She knew what she had to do. She had to betray Ethan for the greater good. Not for money but for principle this time. It was the greatest irony that she admired and respected Ethan so much for his passion and his devotion to his principles. She loved him because of his certainty and his fierce loyalty to his cause and to the people he believed in. And now, finally, she had to sacrifice her self-interest and her love and try to find some of that deeply buried principle within herself because if she did not, her countrymen would die in their thousands. In the end it really was as simple as that.

She wrapped her arms about her. Only a few hours ago she had thought to be secure in Ethan’s love. The world was a cold place without the strength of that love to draw upon. No doubt Theo would reward her for her loyalty to her country. She would not starve now. But life after love was going to be very empty.

She stood up and walked slowly over to her escritoire, dipped her quill in the inkpot, and started to compose a letter to Theo. When she had finished she sent Margery with instructions to find a post boy to take the letter directly to her brother, without delay. Then she sat down to compose a note to Ethan. She knew that she had to warn him, and give him the chance to escape. She would foil his conspiracy but the one thing
she could not bear to do was to give him up to arrest and execution.

But what to say, when her heart was breaking?

I have betrayed you one last time. I love you, but it was not enough. I had to put my duty to my country first….

It sounded so pompous, so unlike her.

I found the principles I thought I lacked and unfortunately I discovered them at the most inconvenient moment….

There really was nothing that she could say, so she scribbled a few stark words of warning and left it at that. The last thing Ethan would want from her was words of regret or, God forbid, protestations of love.

Two hours later she was still sitting there, feeling stiff and cold, and twilight was starting to fall outside. Theo would have her message by now. He would be on his way. And so would Ethan. She prayed fiercely that he would be able to escape the net and take Arland to freedom.

The letter detailing the escape plans had slid from the table in a slight draft from the door. Lottie bent slowly, like an old woman, to pick it up from the floor. It fluttered, skipping out of her reach. She grabbed it and straightened up just as someone stepped into the room.

She had expected to see Theo, but it was Jacques Le Prevost who stood there. Lottie let out her breath on a gasp of combined shock and relief. “Oh,
m’sieur
, you startled me.”

For once Le Prevost made no showy bow and paid her no extravagant compliments. Instead, his gaze was
so keen on her face that it made her feel quite uncomfortable. As she blushed and drew back he looked down at the piece of paper in her hand—and held out his own as though to take it from her.

“What do you have there,
madame?
” His voice was quiet and expressionless.

“I… Oh…” Lottie felt hot. Though Le Prevost was French she had no wish to confide in him that she had discovered Ethan’s plans, for surely he would try to persuade her to hand them back. She felt trapped, torn. She crumpled the sheets between her fingers. “Nothing. A letter from a friend.”

Le Prevost smiled but his eyes were cold. “You are a poor liar,
madame
.”

Lottie looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

Le Prevost did not take his eyes off her face. “I have looked everywhere,” he said. “I should have known that St. Severin would hide it here. I thought of it—but then I thought he would not put your life at risk.” His eyes gleamed cold. “It seems that I was mistaken—and that he cares nothing for your safety,
madame
.” His brows snapped down. “Where did you find it?”

Lottie’s mind was whirling, full of darting thoughts and suspicions. Le Prevost, the foppish colonel who lavished those fulsome compliments on the ladies, who cared for no more than the set of his coat… Could he be an informer for the British? Had he been searching for Ethan’s plans, too? Suddenly she remembered the night she had followed Ethan to his rendezvous up on the Lambourn road and the messenger who had died. She had known it could not have been Ethan who had
murdered him, but on that night she had glimpsed another man strolling out of town. She had thought it was Le Prevost and had assumed that he was engaged in a dalliance….

Perhaps he had had an assignation with death rather than with a lover. She shivered.

“I don’t understand,” she said. The papers rustled as she clenched her fingers about them. “
You
were looking for these? But I thought that you—” She stopped. “You’re French,” she said foolishly. “Surely you must support Ethan’s plans—” But she stopped again before she had finished the sentence because she could see in Le Prevost’s face how naive her words were. And then she saw the pistol in his hand and the sword at his hip, and knew that her worst suspicions were true.

“You are a renegade,” she whispered. “You work for no one but yourself.”

Le Prevost shrugged. “I support whichever cause offers me the most,” he said.

“Because he has no honor and will sell his comrades and his enemies equally if the price is right,” said a soft, deadly voice from behind them.

Lottie spun around to see Ethan lounging in the doorway. There was a cold, hard light in his eyes as he looked from Le Prevost’s face to the pistol in his hand.

“Isn’t that right, Jacques?” Ethan continued. “British, French, American, it is all the same to you if the money is good. I knew someone was betraying me.” He took a breath. “I should have guessed it was you.”

The atmosphere sparked and tightened. Lottie
saw the flare of hatred in Le Prevost’s eyes before he shrugged, an ugly smile on his lips.

“We cannot all be heroes like you, St. Severin,” he mocked. “Besides—” he gestured to Lottie “—if you speak of betrayal then surely it is your
chère amie
whom you should be reproaching? She sold you out to her brother.”

Ethan turned to look at Lottie and her insides shriveled. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “I had to do it, Ethan—”

Ethan smiled then with such tenderness that she caught her breath. “I don’t reproach you, Lottie,” he said. “I would have done exactly the same.” His smile deepened. “Though I confess I was surprised to discover that you possessed a moral code after all. And disappointed that you discovered it at such a confoundedly awkward moment.” He turned back to Le Provost.

“Whereas you, Jacques…” His voice was ice-cold and level. “You possess neither principle nor conscience.”

“
Mon Dieu.”
Le Prevost was laughing. “My conscience is always quiet when I am paid enough.” He spun around on Lottie. “The letter, if you please,
madame
. Your brother and I have gone to a great deal of trouble to try to obtain it.”