Too Sinful to Deny (18 page)

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Authors: Erica Ridley

Tags: #Man-Woman Relationships, #Historical Fiction, #Smuggling, #Smugglers, #General, #Romance, #Historical, #Secrecy, #Fiction, #Love Stories

BOOK: Too Sinful to Deny
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“When I let go,” he whispered, gripping her by the shoulders, “I want you to run back to your room as fast as you can. Lock your door. And stay there until morning.”
“W-what are you going to do?” she whispered back, eyes wide with terror.
He grimaced. “Provide a distraction.”
If anything, her eyes got wider. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
No, no, he didn’t. But if he slipped away while he could and let them catch her spying, she’d undoubtedly learn one hell of a lesson. Evan let go of her arms and pushed her toward the open gate. He couldn’t put her in danger.
“Go.
Now.
”
With a distressed little cry, she ran.
Evan shouldered the shovel and wished fervently he’d thought to bring his pistols instead.
The inexorable rising of the sun didn’t calm the anxiety itching beneath Susan’s skin. She sat at her escritoire, scratching a fingernail against the scarred wood. Was Mr. Bothwick all right? Should she have stayed with him? What had he been doing there, anyway?
Although dressed, coiffed, and breakfasted, she couldn’t quite work up the nerve to exit her bedchamber to find out. Particularly if this time she really
would
run into Mr. Bothwick’s ghost. She shivered.
Had the still-living Mr. Bothwick been hurt? Had he been caught? Had he—Susan’s spine snapped up straight—had he been in league with whoever belonged to those footsteps, and simply took advantage of an opportunity to send a frightened young lady back up to her room?
Her forehead thunked forward onto the hard surface of the escritoire. Of course.
She was so slow sometimes. Hadn’t she just decided (all right, re-decided) that he wasn’t to be trusted? Hadn’t she just wondered if he were not in fact responsible for his dead brother’s . . . deadness? Mr. Bothwick .had just happened to show up in the rock garden, alone, in the middle of the night, directly following her mention of a third grave. Which meant—whether he was in collusion with the others or not—he had definitely not been colluding with
her.
Next weekend could not come soon enough. She had to get out of this town while she still could.
Susan snatched a sheet of parchment from a yellowed pile and dipped a pen in a clotted inkwell. Although they still hadn’t deigned to reply to her previous missive, her first letter was going straight to her parents.
Dear Mother,
I am desperately unhappy and wholeheartedly repent for all my sins. Please let me come home. I promise to behave.
Yours &c,
Susan
P.S. If you won’t send a carriage, do send money.
P.P.S. Actually . . . please send both.
Her second letter . . . Susan stopped to think. Who else could she send a letter to? Her
ton
acquaintances were quite diverting, but otherwise useless. She didn’t
have
any friends unconnected to Society, except—Oh! Wait! At a dinner party she’d been to last Season, one of Lady Wipplegate’s unconventional guests had been a Bow Street Runner. Susan couldn’t remember his name off the top of her head, but if she sent a note to him inside a letter for Lady W., it should eventually find its mark. If she were lucky, he’d arrive even before her allowance did!
She scribbled off a few lines of twaddle for Lady Wipplegate, and an even more cryptic message regarding Important Matters of Extreme Urgency for the Runner (for Lady W. would no doubt read it aloud at tea before passing it along) and folded both into a neat pile for Janey. Who had hopefully spoken the truth about having some means to secretly post mail and wasn’t just tossing all Susan’s missives directly into the closest fire.
A Runner would fix everything. He’d solve Dead Mr. Bothwick’s murder (assuming Susan hadn’t just deduced the villain herself), rescue cousin Emeline (ideally both master and servant would become unfortunate casualties in the ensuing scuffle), and whisk Susan back to London where she belonged. Perfect.
Correspondence thus completed, Susan leaped to her feet—and almost collided with Lady Beaune’s ghostly form.
By hopping on one foot and windmilling a bit, Susan somehow managed to steady herself without accidentally brushing against the wraithlike woman with palsied fingers and long white braids.
The ghost fluttered to her fireside vigil, morose, head bowed. She worried at the ornate crucifix about her neck with spotted, trembling hands. And, as before, said nothing. Of course, she
was
a deaf-mute. Which made meaningful conversation difficult—but not impossible. Susan tiptoed to her side, hesitant to startle the ghost, but eager to attempt interaction.
She pointed at her chest. “I’m—”
The ghost was already nodding, although still not meeting Susan’s eyes.
“Er . . . you know who I am?”
Another quick, shy nod.
Susan’s hand flattened against her chest in shock. Lady Beaune’s ghost had just responded (if nonverbally) to spoken communication. Twice. Which made her sense of hearing suspiciously acute for an alleged deaf-mute.
“Can you speak?” she asked softly.
The ghost shook her pale head.
So. At least part of the tale was true.
A horrific gasp sucked from the ghost’s lungs and she began to spin, round and round, faster and faster. Susan scrambled out of the way.
Agitated, the ghost ripped the crucifix from her neck, held it aloft. Little by little, her crooked body unraveled as she spun. Ribbons of clothing, of flesh, of essence, trailed out from her disintegrating form and disappeared into the suddenly Arctic air.
Then she was gone.
The crucifix clattered to the floor and winked from sight.
Susan swallowed, allowing her shoulders to slump against the wall. On a scale of one to ten, her communication attempt was perhaps a two. Possibly a negative two. How was she going to grant the ghost’s wish if the ghost was incapable of asking for whatever it was she desired?
Then again, if
she
were Lady Beaune—or her barely alive daughter—what she would ask for would be for someone to pull the still-beating heart from the giant’s overlarge chest and feed it to the grinning scarecrow before tearing them both to pieces with a pickax. Or something of that nature.
Perhaps she was better off incapable of comprehending the ghost’s mission.
Since there was no point hanging about Moonseed Manor if she wasn’t going to kill her host in his sleep (and who’s to say giants ever slept?), Susan tied her pelisse about her shoulders and headed into town.
Before she’d set foot among the half-ring of tumbledown buildings, it was already clear that Something Was Different.
A motley crowd of locals were milling about the sand, instead of creeping out of sight among the shadows as they normally did during the day. If the fair had come to town, such a turnout might make sense. But Susan saw no signs of revelry.
They all had their faces pointed in the direction of Moonseed Manor, not-so-surreptitiously observing her careful approach. If this had been a matter of a quick glance instead of watching an hourlong tramp down the windy path, such casual attention might make sense. But these were no quick glances.
They backed away as she neared, bending their heads together in excited conversation, letting loose with the occasional titter. If they had just heard a rumor that Miss Susan Stanton got a thrill from spying on trysting couples through dirty windows, such rude behavior might make sense.
Bloody hell. This was not remotely conducive to her plans. But she imagined it was plenty conducive to the evil porcelain doll’s. Far be it for anyone to say Miss Devonshire didn’t stick to her open threats.
Spread rumors about Susan Stanton, would she? Very well. In return, Susan would investigate Miss Devonshire’s treasonous French silk and report her findings to the magistrate the moment he arrived back in town. That’d teach Miss Devonshire a lesson for her crimes against the sovereign.
Or not. What dress shop was without French silk?
Her steps slowed to what one could only describe as a dismal trudge. It wasn’t that she was depressed (which, of course, she was) or that she was actively trying to suppress the urge to unleash her inner harpy on Miss Devonshire in a rabid fury (which, of course, she was) but that it was going to be damn near impossible to secretly keep watch on anybody, what with ninety pairs of eyes following her every move. No doubt waiting to see if the Peeping Tom of Mayfair had come to town to spy on someone. Which, as it happened, she had.
Argh.
Susan smiled at the townsfolk as if she were the Queen and they the peasants—er, constituents—who’d come to greet their mistress. She added a little wave of her gloved fingers. Perhaps if she acted normal, if she acted like one of them, they would get bored. They’d return to their usual pastimes and all this would blow over.
Except she didn’t know how to act like one of them. She
wasn’t
one of them. Thank God.
Dejected, she brushed past the crowd and wandered into the Shark’s Tooth. As nonchalantly as possible, she ordered a round for all three patrons too drunk to make it outside to stare at her. Susan couldn’t afford the tab anyway, so who cared how expensive it got? She crossed into each establishment one by one, ate a meal on (suspect) credit, and carefully, casually, just-so-happened to end up right outside the Dress Shop of Iniquity.
Rather than go inside and alert the demonic duo to her presence, she collapsed ever so softly against the back of the building, just beneath the open window, and fanned herself as if catching her breath from all that shopping.
(It was a new fan. French, too, by the look of it. Hand-painted and quite lovely.)
Voices floated down from overhead. Boring voices. Voices that discussed this ream or that yard, or what grade of thread was better for such-and-such stitch.
Yawn
. Had she solved the mystery yet? Susan debated just going in and asking. Or buying up all the illegal cloth on her false credit and telling the hapless magistrate, “What silk? I didn’t see any French silk. . . .”
She wondered how long she could reasonably stand here, cooling her décolletage with her no doubt treasonous French fan. Perhaps she should come back later. Much later. Like
never.
Between the disastrous slip of the tongue regarding the chicken shed and the even more disastrous attempt at relaying messages from the dead, the last thing she needed in light of the current social climate was to get caught spying again.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing, woman?”
Susan yelped and dropped her new fan in the sand.
Mr. Bothwick. Solid as a rock.
Not dead, then. In league with the Others. Whoever they were.
“Nothing.” She snatched her fan back up and recommenced making furious use of the device. “Why aren’t you buried in the rock garden?”
“I crawled out.” He stared down at her as if tempted to throttle her and toss her in an unmarked grave himself. “Are you eavesdropping on Miss Grey and Miss Devonshire?”
“Nooo,” she protested weakly, fanning faster. “Why would you think that?”
He snatched the fan from her fingers, snapped it closed, and tossed it backward over his shoulder. “
Everybody
thinks that.”
When she glanced around his wide shoulders, her stomach curdled.
Apparently, whilst she’d been hiding behind her new toy and straining to overhear fascinating statements like,
I don’t know, Dinah, perhaps the mauve would be nicer,
the townsfolk had been creeping in. They now surrounded her in a wide, tense circle. Some held . . . rocks?
Chapter 14
The angry mob was edging closer. Tightening rank. Susan had the uneasy feeling a stoning could break out at any moment.
Miss Devonshire’s threats were certainly fast-acting.
Mr. Bothwick grabbed Susan’s upper arm hard enough to leave a five-fingered manprint. He jerked her out from beneath the window as one might tug forth a rag doll.
“Can you explain what the devil you’re doing here?” he demanded, voice low.
She nodded frantically.
His eyes narrowed. “Is there a
good
explanation?”
Susan nodded a bit more frantically.
Mr. Bothwick hesitated, clearly battling inner demons. He scowled at her, displeased with whatever he’d decided. He gave a resigned sigh, pulled her into the wall of his chest, and whispered, “Lesser of two evils.”
Then he kissed her.
Not false kisses, or air kisses, or a simple buss to the cheeks. Nor the sort of chaste, closed-mouth kiss, a brief pucker, that one might be able to explain to one’s fiancée—however unsuccessfully—had been a mere trick of the light.
No.
This was his strong hands gripping her upper arms in suspicion and anger, the heat from his muscular frame melting her core in pure lust, and his warm tongue sweeping into her welcoming mouth in nothing short of . . . desperation ? As if he, too, had never put that first kiss from his mind. As if he, too, had lain awake every night, reliving each moment, each taste, each sensation. As if he, too, had been driven to the brink of madness with the overpowering desire to have the weight of her body pressing into his . . . and never stop.
But then he did stop. Briefly.
He tore his lips from hers and tilted his head back just long enough to say, in a tone deep enough to be intimate yet loud enough to carry, “I thought I told you to meet me behind the stables so no one would know I wished to make you my lover.”
Lover.
The word careened through her spinning mind. The entire town had overheard him. A flash of pique. This was his best attempt at rescue? Although at least he’d had the sense to imply it hadn’t come to fruition—yet—her reputation amongst the locals had just gone up in smoke.
Then another word crashed into the first, shattering her vexation:
stables.
What stables? She was really going to have to start exploring past the town borders.
Then his warm lips were on hers again and the only thing she wanted to explore was his mouth with her tongue, his bare chest with her fingertips, his naked body with her hands and eyes and mouth.
Her back thumped against the dress shop wall. His leg pressed between her thighs, insistent. His hands now tangled in her hair. She should push him away. Surely this was too much, going too far. Surely this—this
farce
—had carried on long enough.
But he didn’t stop. And she didn’t try to make him. In fact, one might suppose that the trembling hands tugging him closer were nothing short of encouraging. One might further suppose that the rush of unchecked desire drowning her brain (and the delicious pulsing between her legs) indicated a distinct state known as rampant sexual arousal. A respectable lady wouldn’t feel such salacious, shocking sensations.
Susan felt them like mad.
This time, she was the one to pull away. Raggedly. Reluctantly. But, at last, successfully. While she still could. She risked a heavy-lidded glance behind him.
Most of the mob had dispersed. Those who remained either wore expressions of shock or disgust, or smirked at her in knowing derision. She hadn’t won any friends today. The population still despised her, if for a wholly different reason.
Susan Stanton, village slut.
But at least they weren’t trying to stone her.
“They’re gone?” he murmured, his voice husky, raw.
“They’ve . . . lessened,” she whispered back. Startled—but not surprised—to discover her hoarse words as laced with unquenched passion as his had been.
He nodded, twined his fingers with hers, tugged her from the wall.
“Let’s go.”
She tightened her hold on his hand and allowed him to lead her away from the dress shop, away from the open window, away from the watchful eyes and leering grins of the remaining townspeople. To a desolate strip of empty beach, well out of the line of fire. Yet they kept walking.
“W-where are you taking me?”
“I don’t know yet. Out of here.” He didn’t slacken his pace. “Why were you spying on the dress shop?”
Susan chewed her lip. So he didn’t doubt it for a second. Well, he wasn’t a fool. The townsfolk might have bought his quick-thinking cover-up, but Mr. Bothwick was waiting on an actual explanation. A good one. Which she did not have.
“The magistrate asked me to.” All right, technically he’d asked her to follow Mr. Bothwick. But that made even less sense. So she mumbled, “Sort of.” And left it at that.
Mr. Bothwick was not leaving it at that. “Forrester asked you to spy on a dress shop? What the devil for? Is he afraid they’re embroidering state secrets into snot rags?”
“Not quite,” she muttered. “He thinks they’ve got French silk.”
“He thinks—” Mr. Bothwick came to a sudden stop. His eyes darkened with confusion, then doubt, then wariness. “He does, does he?” He resumed his previous pace. “What do you figure, Miss Stanton? Do the local girls deal in illegal cloth?”
“Of course they do.” Susan lifted a shoulder. This, at least, was solid ground. “No dressmaker worth her salt would be without all the latest French fashions. Silk is a mere subset.”
Mr. Bothwick watched her, his expression unreadable. “So that’s what you’re going to report back to Forrester? A simple ‘Yes, yes, they do,’ and he’ll be on his way?”
“Not exactly,” she admitted. “He wants to know where it’s from.”
“Where it’s from,” Mr. Bothwick repeated. For a moment, they walked in silence. Then he said, “Why, I remember now! As it happens,
I
know where it’s from.”
For the second time in as many days, Susan had the discomfiting impression that a man was inventing the “truth” with each word he spoke.
“You do?” was all she said aloud, however. “How serendipitous.”
“Yes,” he said, this time more firmly. “I’ve just recalled.”
Definitely
lying.
“Where might that be, if I could be so bold as to inquire?” she asked politely.
He nodded slowly, eyes narrowed at the horizon. “As it happens, Miss Devonshire has a French aunt, who is a famous modiste in Burgundy. I am certain the silk comes from there.”
A conveniently French aunt. Who also happened to be a modiste.
Right.
“There you have it,” he finished, as if she now had anything at all. “Simple as that.”
Utter balderdash.
“No intrigue whatsoever,” Susan agreed aloud—and, for the first time, became truly interested in the fabric’s origin.
There was definitely more to the story. If that
was
the story. But whom could she ask for the truth? Miss Devonshire herself? Hardly. Not only would that tip her hand—if Mr. Bothwick didn’t warn the porcelain doll before Susan had an opportunity to speak to her alone—but what were the chances Miss Devonshire would actually tell Susan the truth? Whatever
that
was?
Mr. Bothwick drew to a halt before a warped old rowboat someone had left to rot amongst the weeds and the sand. What drove Bournemouth folk to leave things—and people—forgotten for years at a stretch?
She didn’t realize she’d asked the question aloud until Mr. Bothwick shot her a quizzical glance over his shoulder.
“People?” He bent to pick at a section of peeling paint. “Like who?”
“Like Lady Emeline.” She shivered at the thought of that dank cellar. “And her mother. The town abandoned both of them.”
Her parents had ignored them as well. Probably because they had the ill taste to live outside Town borders. She hadn’t known about either cousin until she’d been ousted from her home and sent to live with “Aunt Beaune.” But now that Susan did know, she couldn’t help but feel strongly for both women.
“Superstition and fear, I suppose.” Mr. Bothwick began to flip the ancient rowboat back upright. “There’s those who believed her disease was contagious. Nobody wished to risk catching it. Plus I suppose a bit of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was at play, too.”
“For thirty years? Shameful, is what that is. Criminal apathy.” Susan crossed her arms and glared at him. “And what of Lady Emeline? Why does no one call on her from time to time to see if she’s all right? For all they know, she could be dead.”
She’d been murderously angry at her parents when they’d confined her to Stanton House after Susan nearly destroyed a marriage by spreading rumors of an illicit tryst she’d had the (mis)fortune of witnessing firsthand. When her mother had tried and failed to pawn her off on the most ineligible bachelor she could find, it was back to the bedchamber for Susan until she’d managed her great escape to the Frost Fair. The friendless weeks of confinement while the bones of her broken arm knitted back together had been an additional torture.
Yet her troubles were nothing compared to what her cousins had been through. What Lady Emeline was
still
going through.
“Folks around here try not to nose about in other people’s business.” Mr. Bothwick grabbed the pointed front of the boat with both hands and began to move backward, tugging the reluctant rowboat toward the sea. “In case you’ve forgotten, that’s why they don’t like
you.
”
Susan’s mouth dropped open. Of all the rude, hypocritical—
“But we’re talking about another human being!” She gestured up at the cliffs behind them. “That’s horrible.”
“No,” he corrected, grunting a little. “That’s life.”
“How could being deaf-mute possibly be contagious?” she demanded. “That’s
ignorant.
”
Mr. Bothwick glanced up from the boat. “Her daughter caught it, didn’t she?”
Susan gritted her teeth. “Lady Emeline ‘caught’ being deaf-mute from her mother? How the bloody hell did she do that?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t there. Supposedly it happened on her wedding night. Shortly after her mother threw herself from a second-floor window.”
Susan stopped dead.
Two
rich, landed heiresses. Both with common money-grubbing fiancés. And both came down with an acute case of deaf-mute-itis the very night the contracts were signed and the ceremony performed. This wasn’t a case of happenstance. This was the next thing to murder.
The only thing the present mistress had “caught” was a husband with access to the same poison her father had used to incapacitate her mother. Had Jean-Louis Beaune been behind both unfortunate “illnesses”? Or when he’d passed on, had he also passed the family secret on to the new master of the house? Definitely possible. The giant was more than capable of drugging his helpless wife.
“Don’t you think there are awfully suspicious similarities between her case and that of her mother?” she asked Mr. Bothwick.
“I don’t know.” His boots began to splash. “I wasn’t here when Lady Beaune disappeared.” He rounded the little rowboat and began pushing it into the water. “My brother and I moved here four years ago. We didn’t know there
was
a Lady Beaune until there wasn’t anymore. And after that, nobody talked about it.”
“You weren’t born here?” Susan asked in surprise.
Mr. Bothwick shook his head. “Can’t imagine such a fate. I was always more for city life, until I fell in love with the sea. Still own property back home, though.”
She stepped forward and her shoes squished into wet sand. “Out of nostalgia? Or do you visit often?”
“Out of apathy. I’ve no plans to return.” He swung a buckskin-clad leg into the boat and gripped the thin wooden planks with one hand when a sudden surge of water almost unbalanced him. He reached out a hand. “Come. Get in.”
Susan stared at him, then at the raging sea, with its waves crashing so high and so fast she wouldn’t have risked being aboard a town-sized cargo ship. Then she looked back at Mr. Bothwick. One of his boots sank into knee-high water. The other pistoned alarmingly in the eminently unstable rowboat. He held out an upturned palm and motioned her forward, impatient.
“Are you
bamming
me?” she burst out, backing up several quick steps.
“Your choices are few, Miss Stanton.” Despite the ice-cold sea lapping at his knees, his open hand didn’t waver. “You can return to town and take your chances there—or you can come aboard with me.”
“In other words,” she said with a gulp, “certain death either way.”
He inclined his head in apparent agreement.
She placed her palm in his.
He hadn’t thought she was going to do it.
Even when Miss Stanton’s gloved fingertips brushed his ungloved palm, he was sure reason would intercede and she’d run screaming down the beach.

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